IBSBV Ch 10

Chapter 10

“Puwaht!”

Two soaked heads abruptly emerged through the bubbling surface. Without needing to signal each other, both shook their heads vigorously to rid themselves of the excess water.

Eddie, who had already climbed out of the tub, rubbed his sore jaw before retrieving a basket filled with shampoo and soap.

“…Where are you?”

By then, Louis seemed to have calmed down a little. Still, he lowered his shoulders and began searching the water with his hands.

“Eddie? Eddie!”

“I’m right here.”

Hearing the familiar voice coming from beside him, Louis’s face, which had been growing increasingly pale, finally regained some composure.

“Sit up straight. If you’re not careful, you’ll tip forward. It’s not deep, but you might end up swallowing more water.”

“A-Are you… okay? You didn’t get hurt?”

“Yes. I’m fine.”

Louis let out a deep sigh of relief, as if he had feared Eddie might have hit his head on the bottom of the tub and lost consciousness.

“I’m sorry.”

“…My bad.”

The two of them spoke at the same time, each apologizing to the other. Louis hadn’t expected Eddie to be the first to apologize, and for a moment, he turned toward the sound of his voice in a daze. His aim was off. 

Eddie let out a wry chuckle and ran his fingers through his dripping black hair.

“I had a rather unpleasant dream last night. I wanted to wash it off as soon as I woke up, so I got ahead of myself. What about you, Your Highness? Are you hurt anywhere?”

“…What kind of dream?”

Instead of answering the question, Louis responded with one of his own.

“Just… a nightmare.”

—A nightmare…

Shadows darkened the spaces between his water-drenched bangs.

“What kind of nightmare? Why? Why would you have a nightmare?”

“Because my past was miserable to the point of being unbearable.”

It felt ridiculous, as if he were putting on airs in front of someone who had suffered far worse. Worse still, he was the perpetrator, yet here he was, shamelessly claiming to be a victim in front of the very person he had victimized. Even so, Eddie chose to be honest.

He wanted to be.

Just yesterday, he had found it uncomfortable and difficult to put such complicated emotions into words, but now, simply regaining his memories had given him a strange, inexplicable courage.

“Why was it miserable?”

“I don’t know. I never really thought there had to be a reason for my misfortune. But the people who hit me always blamed me for bringing bad luck. So, I was miserable.”

“…You were beaten?”

“Yes. A lot. Since I was very young, I was beaten quite a lot.”

A cautious question, once asked, crossed a second boundary, then a third—but never a fourth.

Louis chewed his lip but failed to suppress the heavy topic from taking root. In a clumsy attempt to change the subject, he muttered awkwardly,

“…You’re not hurt, right?. Get back in. The water’s warm.”

It was an awkward attempt, but Eddie understood—it was Louis’s way of showing consideration.

Eddie stepped back into the tub and sat a little distance away. He tilted his head back and gazed up at the ceiling. After a while, a slow-moving shadow crept over him.

Louis’s hand, which had been hovering uncertainly in the air, finally landed on his forehead. It brushed over his eyelids, his nose, his cheeks, before lingering at his chin as if that was its final destination.

“I think I hit you pretty hard earlier…”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not… mad, are you?”

“Not at all. I may be shameless, but I do have a sense of propriety. There’s no way I’d get angry at Your Highness over something like that when you’ve been putting up with all my impudence.”

Thank goodness. Mumbling under his breath, Louis let his hand drop. Eddie raised an eyebrow at the way it hesitated, not quite withdrawing entirely.

Then, those dry fingers grazed his slender neck, traced the dip of his throat, and wandered over the delicate line of his collarbone before moving to his shoulder.

“Your Highness.”

The moment that hand started drifting downward, Eddie instinctively grabbed Louis’s wrist.

“…Do you have scars like mine on your body too?”

Ah. So that’s what he had wanted to check.

Rather than answering, Eddie turned his back to him. Louis’s hand, which had been trailing across his exposed skin, suddenly froze.

His fingertips brushed against rough, uneven flesh. Scars that had split open and healed, indentations left where the flesh had been torn away.

Unlike his smooth face and shoulders, his back was anything but flawless. A chill ran down Louis’s spine, as if someone had doused him in cold water.

It was only then that he realized what he had done. Staggering back, he swallowed hard.

He had thoughtlessly dug into a past so painful it still haunted the man’s dreams—and he was nothing more than an outsider.

At that moment, he understood something.

Sometimes, another person’s wounds hurt more than one’s own.

It was a foreign feeling. A realization he had never had before.

“…I’m sorry. That was… really out of line.”

“It’s fine.”

Eddie’s voice was flat, unaffected. But to Louis, it felt like a wall being put up between them. He bit his lip and scooted back.

There was no way it was fine. The countless scars beneath his fingertips weren’t something a simple apology could erase.

He knew because he had experienced it himself. How it hurts like death when being hit, how it drives you mad while healing, and how the remaining scars make a person feel miserable.

He understood better than anyone. And that made it all the more complicated.

He wasn’t an idiot. He didn’t want to feel sympathy for an assassin who had come to kill him. He didn’t want to relate to his suffering. But every time Eddie closed the distance between them so effortlessly, it was becoming harder and harder to push him away.

It felt like he was stepping into a swamp he shouldn’t sink into. And the worst part was—the other man hadn’t even invited him in.

“I’ll wash your hair for you.”

The way Eddie easily closed the gap between them again irritated Louis for some reason.

“You—”

Before he knew it, an absurd thought slipped out.

“SMALLER. A lot smaller.”

As soon as he said it, he regretted it. With a feeling that he had made a terrible mistake that shouldn’t have been made, his body trembled once. Lewis hurriedly tried to take back his words.

“No, that, that wasn’t intentional earlier, no. I didn’t touch to touch… I mean, when you suddenly fell in the water earlier, it just happened to touch. I didn’t squeeze because I wanted to squeeze…”

“Your Highness.”

“…What?”

“Close your eyes and shut your mouth. If shampoo gets in, it stings like hell and tastes even worse. You might actually die.”

“…Oh. Okay.”

Louis shut his eyes tight and clamped his mouth shut.

His scalp burned. A lot.

 

***

 

“For the thirty-fifth time, I am not small. I am, by all standards, of average size.”

Though… whether that standard applied to his past life or this world was a little unclear.

“I am absolutely not small. I’m just a tiny bit—just a very tiny bit—smaller than Your Highness.”

“Mm-hmm.”

But that’s not true. Louis swallowed down the words he dared not say aloud and quietly hummed in response.

He had no desire to be abandoned in the hallway over a careless remark. Besides, his scalp was still sore.

“Please be more careful next time. Your Highness has seriously insulted me today.”

“…I was wrong.”

Everyone had physical insecurities. Knowing that, Louis had no excuse for letting his emotions get the best of him and making such a slip of the tongue.

Admitting his mistake without protest, he endured Eddie’s relentless scolding all the way back to the bedroom.

By the time he was thoroughly brainwashed into believing that Eddie was, in fact, not small—

“You’ve bathed, I see.”

A voice, both familiar and unfamiliar, suddenly intruded between them.

Louis’s brow furrowed instantly. For some reason, it felt like an intrusion. An unwelcome trespass. A surge of irritation flared up before he could stop it.

Completely oblivious to Louis’s shift in mood, the servant, Bell, blushed at the sight of Eddie’s damp black hair, still heavy with moisture. Perhaps it was the contrast against his snowy-white skin, but he looked picturesque.

“You smell nice.” 

Bell mumbled, fumbling for an excuse. Eddie didn’t bother responding. Instead, he simply gestured toward the door with his chin. Bell got the message immediately and quickly wheeled the trolley inside.

A feast of mouthwatering dishes spread across the table.

Eddie guided Louis to a chair and had him sit.

Even after finishing his task, Bell hesitated. 

“Um, I—”

Muttering as if hoping to catch Eddie’s attention, he lingered awkwardly.

The invisible yet palpable tension made Louis uneasy.

“…Have this later.” 

Bell finally managed, handing over a half-filled glass jar of candy. Scratching the back of his head, he hastily wrapped up with a quick ‘Well then’ and practically fled the room.

Eddie followed his retreating figure with a blank stare before exhaling a quiet sigh and carelessly placing the jar on the table.

“What does he mean, have it later?”

“It’s nothing.”

“What exactly is ‘nothing’?”

One of Louis’s eyebrows arched sharply. He had seen Eddie annoyed and grumbling before, but never like this. There was an edge in his voice.

“It’s candy. I’ll give it to you as a snack later.”

Eddie answered indifferently as he tied a napkin around Louis’s neck.

“Don’t concern yourself with nonsense and just eat.”

Placing a piece of bread in Louis’s hand, he scooped up a spoonful of soup, cooled it, and fed it to him. Only then did the displeased expression on Louis’s face begin to soften.

By now, there was no need to instruct him on what to do. Taking a big bite of bread on his own, Louis opened his mouth again for another spoonful of soup.

But just before the spoon reached his lips, a sudden thought made him lean his head back instead.