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“No, stop.. I beg!”
“Please help me. Please… please…!”
“Sir……!”
“My Lord..!”
People were dying in front of his eyes.
The legs of people who had walked normally yesterday rolled on the floor, ligaments of all shapes and sizes laid scattered on the bloody ground.
Klein Moretti watched with a blank expression as a hand pierced through the chest of his biological father, ripping out a beating heart the size of a fist. It was pulled out and bounced on the hand of the perpetrator like a toy.
A familiar crystal monocle reflected in his brown eyes. Familiar pitch-black irises stared back at his frozen reflection, Klein’s body was rooted stiff on the spot.
It wasn’t fear that made him stiffen. He had no regrets about any of the people in this family. Klein knew the moment he woke up in this world that this would be their retribution for everything they’d done.
The thing that made him grow cold as ice was the knowledge that he too was part of the headcount of the dead. No matter how much he struggled, he could not turn his head or move his legs to move.
“Sir?” A soulless laugh echoed in the corpse-decorated dining room, like a tingling sound of bells on a gloomy night, dooming its listeners to feel unsettled.
“I’ve never heard that word used before for as long as I’ve lived in this mansion!” The madman chuckled, a refreshing smile was graced on his twisted face.
“You were beating and calling me a bastard just yesterday, I wonder what changed?”
This man wore a black formal suit with black pants and leather shoes. He had a pair of black eyes and a thin face. He had a mysteriously handsome face with a monocle that was dripping with blood on his eye.
Klein’s eyes stayed rooted on the same spot, his body was slightly shaking as he contemplated on escape routes he could do and countermeasures to put into action. If nothing was done — He. was. going. to. die.
“It’s a mansion, there are many pests to deal with.”
Walking lightly towards Klein, the monocle-wearing man smiled refreshingly at him as he stiffened. Then he tapped his cheek with bloody fingers, his other hand tapping his monocle in the same way. “Don’t you agree, My dear, Klein?”
Klein felt cold as goosebumps arised on his skin. He wanted to wipe his cheek but his body did not move.
“I’m getting tired of dealing with unnecessary ants, there’s something much more exciting to enjoy.” Amon said, as his eyes unnervingly slid up and down Klein’s trembling person.
At that moment the servants who were not completely dead screeched and yelled out pleas,
“Sir..!! Sir! I—I was wrong, please…!”
“Help! Please…please..!”
Amon tilted his head at an angle and smiled with his eyes closed, “I’ll kill you all in one go, so we’re all happy hm?”
He snapped his fingers and all the wailing and crying came to a stop.
As blood and the deafening silence of death drowned the massacred room, Klein lampooned from the bottom of his heart.
I should have gotten rid of Amon when I had the chance! Now, it’s as if I raised a tiger to adulthood just so it could make me its coming-of-age meal!!
When light footsteps sounded from behind him, Klein instinctively shut his eyes closed, fearing the worst. But instead of the excruciating pain he anticipated— he felt an arm wrap around his waist, the thin tunic he wore couldn’t separate the coldness of the arm sticking to his skin.
Amon had embraced him from behind.
“Master, why are you closing your eyes?”
Klein replied with silence.
“Are you scared of me?”
Klein took a deep breath, “Kill me.”
The cold body behind him shook uncontrollably. The smaller man felt a chin resting on his shoulder and a hearty voice chuckling beside his ear. “My master has always had a cute sense of humor.”
Amon turned his head to look at the bloodbath he created and asked, “What else should I do to these insignificant ants that dared to abuse you, Master?”
Amon’s tone was playful and light, somewhat like an innocent young student joking with his peers, but there were no happy smiles and sunshine to bask in a good mood. There was only dead body after dead body littered like fallen leaves around the two left standing men.
“They hurt you the most.” Klein couldn’t help how small his voice sounded, memories he suppressed of painful and dreadful days and nights spent in the mansion surfaced like molten lava.
Amon’s light laughter had ceased when he felt Klein’s body start to tremble after speaking. No more words were exchanged as Amon held Klein in his arms in silence.
After a while Amon bent down and held Klein below his legs and on his back, the latter was sound asleep with his head leaning on the larger man’s chest. His body was breathing intermittently, sound asleep.
“They dared to hurt what belongs to me.”
Amon hummed a light tune as he walked out of the double doors leading to the exit with Klein sleeping soundly in his arms.
The mess of blood and mutilated corpses was left to the darkness.
-
Ten years ago.
It was about a decade before the massacre that Klein and Amon first met. Unlike a usual meet-up between regular people, Klein met Amon when his father gifted him a slave.
One day after a business trip to the Southern continent, his father threw a dirty, scrawny boy in front of Klein.
“Father?”
“I picked him up from the trash. He has a pretty face and you’re at the age where you need a pet.”
“But he’s human—“
“Are you trying to question your father?”
Klein fell silent.
Everything his father said was an order. Klein was well aware of this pitiful fact about his life, yet resistance was always part of human nature. He was born and raised in this world, but a part of him was still bound by his past memories and anchors. His moral values could not bend to submit to such cruelty.
More than anything, Klein felt a chilling fear deep inside his heart as he met eyes with the gaunt child staring back at him. He had black hair and black eyes, a thin face and a gorgeous disposition ..just like Amon from the original story.
Klein was aware that he couldn’t resist the flow of the original novel’s plot—but…but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try. Death was his only ending if he follows the original storyline, and only a childhood of pain and torment awaited Amon as well.
Both of them needing saving, how laughable.
Klein’s father spoke again. “Take this. It’s a sealed artifact that’s linked to his heart. I’ve put a proper leash on him so he won’t disobey.”
“Thank you, Father.” Klein broke eye contact with the slave and looked down. He received a crystal chain necklace with a ruby bead. The moment his small hands clasped around the bead, he felt the vitality and despair buried inside such a tiny piece of jewelry. How cruel.
The slave boy who was mesmerized by Klein’s eyes, looked around in curiosity when Klein looked away. Klein’s father glanced at him and continued his monotonous voice as if he were explaining to Klein how to use a toy.
“If he doesn’t listen, you squeeze the necklace.”
“…”
“Are you ignoring me after I gave you such a valuable present?”
Klein balled his hands onto a fist at his sides and smiled superficially, “I would never dare, My Lord. Thank you very much for your generosity.”
Klein’s father gave him a sharp look. He didn’t want to offend him. He often inflicted physical violence on him, when in a bad mood, he indulged in mental torture. Things like killing his pets, locking him in the basement with no food or water for days on end.
His father was an abnormal in the aristocracy. He was diagnosed with being impotent after his second failed marriage with no heir. All his wives and mistresses failed to sire him a child. The man almost went insane with the humiliation and ridicule from the other noble families.
But at the peak of his ridicule in high society, he met the whore he slept with when he was young on a trip to the capital. That very same street girl was dragging a gaunt boy with wounds and bruises all over his body. His hair was shabby and dirty, yet his eyes were crystal clear and if he were any cleaner he would have the perfect face for a little gentleman.
Klein’s father recognized the child to be his immediately. On the brink of insanity from humiliation and despair he held onto the bastard child he had with a commoner like a lifeline.
But the worst had already been inflicted and his father’s image had been ruined to oblivion in the eyes of officials and other aristocracy. Even though Klein was taken away from his abusive mother and even saw her be cut down by the soldiers who took him away, his father was hell on earth. He took his anger for his ruined life onto his only son, the biggest reminder for the largest stain in his life as a noble.
Klein could only lampoon that at the tender age of ten, he escaped hell only to end up at a place worse than the fires and tortures of the devils in the abyss.
-
When Klein brought “Amon” back to his room, the injured and barely standing child could hardly keep his head bowed to his “master” with how weak his body was.
Klein sighed and screamed internally to the void for landing him in this predicament.
“Go to the bed, you can hardly even stand. That bastard isn’t watching anymore so no need to keep up the act.” He walked to his beside table and waited for the kid to follow. After a few seconds of waiting, he turned to look back and the boy was still prostrating himself on the floor.
As much as Klein feared looking at the cause of his future death, his heart was too weak and his consciousness betrayed his fear. He sighed and went up to “Amon” and dragged him (gently) to his bed. Although he was a little bothered to see blood drenching his quilt, the child’s pitiful state weighed out his instinctive habits.
“What’s your name?”
Klein tried to get the boy to speak. He already had a plan after all!
Plan A. Treat Amon like a decent human being.
It only sounds ridiculous on paper. The original Klein Moretti was tormented and abused by his father to the point that he developed several mental illnesses and took out all his frustrations and sick-minded fantasies onto his poor slave.
The abused becomes the abuser. The classic.
No wonder he suffered the worst death in the novel. The bastard deserved every bit of it.
Klein can only curse his fate for transmigrating into such a troublesome body.
The boy on the bed blinked his black eyes at him like a cat. A whole minute of awkward silence passed until Klein suddenly had a jolt of realization, shit, is he waiting for me to order him?
“You may speak.”
The boy on the bed visibly brightened. He smiled, and oddly enough it looked innocent and even cute. Not unless you don’t think about how this boy was going to grow up to become a mass murderer.
“I am Amon, Master.”
“From now on, you will speak whenever you want, okay? No more waiting to speak unless ordered to.”
The child on the bed widened his eyes and seemed stumped by the weird order from another child. But in just a second the confusion disappeared and Amon nodded.
“As Master commands, this slave will follow.”
-
Klein personally tended to clean and bandage his wounds. No matter how much he tried to ask the servants for help or to call a doctor, no one listened.
He couldn’t leave a child on the brink of death from abuse unattended. Even if said child grows up to become a psychopath.
-
“Klein Moretti!”
The screaming voice of his father boomed across the entire mansion and loud footsteps were nearing his front door.
Klein knew what was coming. He had slept on the couch and tended to Amon almost the whole night.
Amom similarly jolted awake from the loud commotion. He tilted his head and habitually tapped the air near his eye as if he was used to wearing some form of glasses. “What’s happening, Master?”
Klein closed his eyes and sighed, weary and tired. “Some servants will take you to a new room. Just follow them. I’ll be going out to meet my father.”
“Okay.”
Amon watched Klein’s figure walk towards the door. Even if Klein believed he was an impeccable actor in the face of hiding his emotions, only Amon who was close enough could see the minute trembling of his palms as he reached to open the door.
-
That night his father had him hung upside down until he threw up for having dared to let a slave lay on his bed. In his father’s words, he was “humiliating” him further.
As rumors about his one and only son being just as inferior as slaves began to spread around the mension’s servants and no sooner would it spread to other households.
He was whipped and slapped. At some point he dissociated and only really woke up when he was shoved back into his room by a servant who couldn’t care less about him.
Klein couldn’t sleep well that night.
-
The first time Klein tried to kick Amon out, he failed miserably.
“I told you to escape. I already gave you a map and a route to escape, and the necklace that’s tying you down to this place.”
Amon looked down at Klein’s hands reaching out to give him the essentials to escape . He kept his hands behind his back and smiled innocently at the dumbfounded expression on his Master’s face.
“I don’t want to.”
Klein almost choked.
You’re supposed to agree! Sooner than later you’re going to awaken as a powerful magician and I don’t want to be any part of it!
“Why not? You’re miserable here. The servants don’t listen to me and only hurt you worse than yesterday. You don’t have a reason to stay…!”
Amon tapped his monocle—a gift from Klein that his father greatly disapproved of—and smiled at his cute young master who always had a poker face on.
“Of course I do. I have you, master.”
“That’s all?”
“You’re the only reason I need.”
It was impossible to argue with madmen, even more so for Amon.
-
“What’s this?” Amon peered into the little box in his hand. It barely covered the span of his palm, it was tiny.
Klein said tersely, “A gift. It’s your birthday today.”
When Amon opened the little box, in it was a crystal monocle with a crystal chain. He looked up at his Master and saw him looking away, his face was passive but his ears were slightly red.
Amon smirked and skillfully put it on his eye. “My Master spoils this slave too much.”
-
“Master, would you like me to help you eat your breakfast?”
Klein’s mouth twitched, but he held back the words threatening to leave his lips. He only sighed and shook his head.
Amon had grown taller than him for the past five years. He stood beside Klein and pouted like a child, “You never let me do anything for you, Master. What good am I as a slave if I can’t even serve my Master well?”
“I told you, I’m not your Master.” Klein cut out a piece of steak and bit onto it. It was overcooked and of inferior quality. The smaller man could hardly conceal his grimace at the poor quality of food.
A glass of water appeared in front of his face, and a thin wrist was visible through his peripheral. The same wrist had the shadow of bruises and small cuts hidden beneath a long sleeve.
Klein’s eyes paused for a second before graciously taking the water. He could hear Amon’s mocking laugh from beside him as he drank the water.
“Your servants dared to serve you rotten food again?”
“Don’t pick fights.”
Amon smiled maliciously and asked, “Why not? They’re displeasing my Master.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt. You’re outnumbered.” Klein only stated the obvious. But at the next second he was startled when two hands slammed onto the table and beamed up at him, Amon’s handsome face looked charmingly attractive when he wasn’t scheming.
“Does my Master care about this lowly slave that much?” His smile was sickly sweet, Klein could swear he’d throw up if he looked at it a second longer.
Is this really the future murderer of my whole household?!
Klein looked away and grumbled, “Forget I ever said anything. Treat it as if I never spoke.”
Amon’s jubilant laughter resounded in Klein’s bedroom.
-
Klein sat down with his back to his door, his knees hugged to his chest. Blood was trickling down his forehead and his lips were bruised and bleeding. There wasn’t one part of his body that wasn’t covered in injuries.
His eyes stared emptily ahead of him as he tried to get over the excruciating pain lingering in every part of his limbs.
Klein has always been afraid of pain. Yet, since being born and raised in this new world, pain has become second nature. He was always in pain. It hurt so much he wanted to scream and bleed till he was numb every time.
But even when he was hurt, he couldn’t inflict pain to himself to the point of numbness— he was still scared.
“Master?”
Amon’s voice went passed the door and jostled Klein awake from his reverie.
“How are you feeling?”
Klein raised his head and leaned it against the door, “I’m fine.”
“That’s good to hear, this lowly servant was terribly worried about you.”
“Pfft.” Klein snickered dryly and knocked his head on the door to signal that he was just in front of the door.
Amon’s next words sounded like he was smiling, “Did you hear, Master? The servants who accused you of molesting the noble girl who visited yesterday and had you punished, suddenly died in their sleep?”
“Ha.. I heard it was gruesome. One had a seizure and broke the vase beside his bedside, his skull cracked open when he fell on the ground directly onto a shattered fragment. The woman…”
Amon explained in detail how each of the servants died in a “coincidental” manner which perplexed the guards who investigated. Klein could only sigh in a self deprecating manner as Amon droned on and on about his coincidences.
A monster was right outside his door.
Klein stood up and opened the door. “Come in.”
When the door opened, Klein first saw the bandages wrapped around Amon’s ankles and the blood that seeped onto the white cloth. His arms had bruises scattered intermittently and his cheek was swollen. Klein’s cold expression couldn’t help but twitch.
“You..
What happened to your body?”
Amon ignored his question. His eyes were staring at his body intensely, as if his very lifeline was Klein itself. The uncomfortable feeling stifled Klein to sigh loudly, getting Amon’s attention on his face.
When Amon looked up, Klein almost flinched. There was no smile on his face but his eyes were dilated and crazed. He unconsciously shivered from the instinctive fear he felt upon facing face-to-face with a cold blooded killer.
“They’ve broken you.” Amon’s voice was rarely quiet.
Klein let Amon walk him to his bed. Amon sat him down and kneeled on the floor, his face burrowed on Klein’s lap.
I know that I’m a fool for this.
But I don’t turn him away when he acts like this.
Just as Amon never complained,
I never offered comfort,
Silence was our only comfort for each other.
-
When Klein woke up, his hand felt warm. The bed below him was soft. He’s never slept so peacefully since waking up in this new world.
As his eyes fluttered open, he saw the familiar crystal monocle on Amon’s face accompanied by sunlight.
“Hi.” Amon smiled down at him. Klein closed his eyes again and burrowed into the chest in front of him.
Amon brought his other hand that wasn’t entangling Klein’s hand to stroke his hair.
“It’s over, Master.
We’re free.”