“Why did you do that?”

I truly couldn’t understand it, I didn’t understand why this man would do something like that. He murdered all those gangsters for killing me? 

Seesaw was a monarchy. To put someone to death for harming nobles was something that was done freely. But in South Korea, in the time we lived in, something like that wasn’t allowed. That would be a crime. 

Besides, he was a cop. And it was not like he valued me much. 

He leaned back in his seat. He turned away and looked at the beautiful fields outside. The trees rustled. The green fields spanned and spread beyond what eyes could see. But I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I took a few sips of my cold tea. 

“When I identified your body, something broke inside me,” he said in a low voice.

“I always thought that I couldn’t quite grasp the idea of people killing others. We’re not animals who kill for the slightest inconvenience. But when I saw you there, brutally murdered, my world stopped. And I decided that there was no reason I couldn’t do the same to them.” His fingers fidgeted on the handle of the tea cup. 

“There was an audio file. They recorded what they did to you.”

What did they do to me? I frowned. “Stabbing me with a knife in the streets? Something like a confession recording?”

He stared at me for a few seconds. What? Did I say anything wrong?

The Great Duke leaned forward slightly with his elbows on the table, looking straight at me. “Do you remember how you died?” he asked.

“Yeah… I think I was stabbed in the alleyway. I lost a lot of blood. I fell… that’s all I remember.”

An expression flashed through his face that I couldn’t understand. I frowned, confused. “Is that not how I died?”

He shook his head slowly.

That was all I ever remembered. I remembered losing a lot of blood. There was so much blood. I was weak and everything was blurry. “Then how did I die? What did the recording say?”

He clamped his mouth shut and turned away to look over the terrace again. I tapped my fingers on the table. “Tell me. Just finish what you started. How did I die? How did you find me?”

As if taking in a deep breath, his shoulders rose and fell down. He looked at me again.

“They took you to a warehouse and tortured you.”

I rubbed the back of my neck. Torture? Thanks to the travel on the carriage, all the muscles on my neck and shoulders felt so stiff. I was supposed to go straight to the room that was assigned to me and take a long, warm bath. Then a nap and then dress up and go down to the dining room for some food. But here I was listening to this…

Torture? Why?

“Why did they torture me? I didn’t have anything to reveal to them. Weren’t they trying to get back at me for killing their leader?”

I thought they just killed me to avenge their leader. Their dead leader wouldn’t come back no matter how much they tortured me. Hell, I didn’t even have information to give them.  

“No. They thought you were a police informant. They tried to get out what you told the police.”

I frowned again. “What? But I don’t understand. How did they know? We were always so careful. I don’t think they had any reason to think that I was involved with the police.”

“It seems like someone saw you with me. And they remembered how their boss took you home that time.”  

“What? So, they killed me without even knowing if I did anything? Do these puny, stupid jerks have a brain? Wow, being killed by dumb trash really hurts my pride.”

He stared at me for a while and smiled faintly. 

“You know, you also laughed in that recording. You told them it really hurts your pride to be caught by such brainless scum. You just laughed at them no matter what they did to you. You said it was really cute of them to think that they could break you with a little pain.”  

Well, that did seem like something I would say. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel pain. But people are often more scared of the notion of pain than the pain itself. Once you get used to it and learn to not fear pain, it becomes easier to deal with. It doesn’t mean you won’t feel pain but you take it as a part of life and live through it. 

Maybe that had hurt their ego. Their pain tactics hadn’t worked on me so they eventually tortured me enough and killed me. It was very different from what I remembered. But hearing it now, I guess I was better off not being able to recall any of it.