The Villain's Sister - Chapter 75

“Look at me.”

Both of Johan’s eyes were filled with Giselle.

Beneath her naturally falling hair, her elegant face was revealed.

If asked what was most captivating about her, he would have to answer her alluring gaze and her plump lips.

Her lively expression and confident attitude were beautiful.

Though the dress emphasized her figure, it was, unexpectedly, a neat purple dress.

It suited her so well that he couldn’t understand why she had worn clothes earlier that didn’t even look like clothes.

“Pretty, isn’t it?”

Johan watched as Giselle subtly raised the corners of her lips, eager for the answer she wanted.

Each time her gently curved eyes blinked, her thick lashes cast long shadows.

The moment their gazes met and the light illuminated her, he didn’t even realize how foolish he looked, staring and staring again as if swallowing her with his eyes.

Thirst rose in him. No, was this what it meant to be breathless?

If only this person had appeared earlier in his life.

Unable to take his eyes off Giselle, Johan thought without meaning to.

“I’ll give you five seconds. Hurry and say I’m pretty.”

When Giselle pressed down on his foot with the tip of her heel, he spoke his true feelings without thinking.

“It suits you very well.”

Giselle’s face brightened. She laughed in satisfaction and lifted her heel, freeing his foot.

If he hadn’t entered her inner world, he might never have known that Giselle was someone who could smile like this.

The mood that seemed to carry a story, the sparkling brilliance she couldn’t show in the fog-covered city… Was waking her from this dream really not an act of violence? His heart grew heavy.

“You are always beautiful in a purple dress.”

“Then I must have worn this kind of dress before. It must have suited me then too?”

“Yes.”

Johan, who couldn’t take his eyes off her, only snapped out of it when he heard her pleasant laughter.

Embarrassment flushed through him, and he turned his head slightly to hide his heated face.

Before the department store attack, he had once caught a glimpse of her reflected in a mirror, wearing a purple one-piece dress, and thought absentmindedly.

“If we had met in another way, I’m sure I would have given you my heart.”

The heat bursting from deep inside his chest turned his face red.

Not just his face, but his neck and ears grew hot.

Tilting his head down, he stared at the floor, his mouth going dry.

His throat burned. With his head still turned to the side, he dropped his gaze.

On the polished marble floor reflecting the lights lay the hem of her purple dress.

And a pale hand fidgeting nervously, unsure of what to do.

“Another way, what do you mean? Aren’t we already in another way?”

Her slightly trembling voice pierced deep inside him.

When he lifted his head, he saw Giselle blushing.

Meeting his gaze, she asked in a voice thick with tension, “Are you really sure we were nothing? Because it doesn’t feel that way to me.”

“What?”

“When I look at you, I keep…”

The distance between them was only a single step.

Just one step closer, and they would be able to feel each other’s breath.

Johan thought of the reality within that single step.

A life where he had all but abandoned his true identity, his vanished self.

All that remained was the mask of Red Shadow, obsessed with hunting villains.

Common sense and morality had long since withered away.

He was no hero. A man who stained his hands with blood without hesitation was nothing more than a villain.

A villain who hunted other villains.

The name Villain Hunter suited him best.

To someone like him, driven to madness, Giselle Moltke was…

“Tell me. What were we to each other?”

Unknowing of anything, Giselle stepped closer.

Johan’s eyelids twitched.

Instead of an answer, he wanted to press his lips to hers. He had never imagined there would come a day when he would feel such desire for someone.

Slowly, he opened his mouth.

“Our relationship was one that felt like a dream.”

“What does that…”

Giselle had always doubted him and provoked him. Johan had never treated her kindly either.

If he had known he would want her like this, he would never have dared approach her.

He wouldn’t have been so rude.

Even knowing this was a world of consciousness that would disappear once he woke, greed consumed him.

Today would be the first and last day Giselle ever showed him interest.

Yes.

Common sense, morality—they had withered away long ago.

In a hellish world, what was so strange about living like a beast?

“Giselle.”

Heat coiled in his gut, his nerves wholly fixed on her.

Even his breathing seemed conscious.

The trembling in his heart was unbearable.

It was a feeling he had never experienced in his life, an emotion he had never once known.

And now, for the first time, he felt it.

“Sometimes… no.”

Johan’s serious face softened, his voice unusually gentle as he confessed.

“I often thought. If you were a villain, what choice would I make?”

The cold, sunken eyes were Johan’s, but also Red Shadow’s.

Identity, daily life, love, friendship… he had abandoned everything.

Because nothing had ever truly been his, he believed his own life held no value.

He considered worthlessness to be Red Shadow’s greatest weapon.

He believed the path he had chosen could become a requiem for a dead girl, that it could, in some small way, redeem the dignity of people who had lost meaning in their corrupted sense of justice.

But at this very moment, standing before Giselle Moltke, everything he revered had lost its value.

“I don’t understand what you mean. Are you saying you believed a day would come when I’d become a criminal?”

“If you think such a day could never come, that’s just a lazy belief and blind optimism.”

Even in the worst of situations, there was always a deeper abyss beckoning.

At least, that was the life he knew. So he believed the worst would come for Giselle one day too.

And if, when that time came, she made a terrible choice—

“I am someone who spends nights fueled more by hatred than by love. Cynicism toward the world was my beginning.”

So if the day came when he had to eliminate the villain she became, what choice should he make?

‘No. What choice would I even allow myself to make?’

Johan gave a sorrowful smile at the sight of Giselle holding her breath.

“But my hatred could never be directed at you.”

Life betrays belief and pushes forward.

But he was a sinner without faith. Even if he made an exception while punishing evil, he would only be swallowed by deeper darkness, not cry out in pain.

“I cannot kill you. That is all I want to tell you.”

The sinner’s confession was calm, yet heavy.

Even though she remembered nothing, it was impossible not to know what Johan’s heart was showing.

And then—

“You… you were Red Shadow.”

The villain’s sister took a step back from him.

***

Johan.

She didn’t know his surname.

She knew the name he had given was false.

And she was certain.

That he was Red Shadow.

After the fitting, Giselle drove with her lips tightly sealed, eyes fixed ahead.

It wasn’t a mood for music or radio.

As the faint salty smell grew stronger and the sea breeze brushed her cheeks, they arrived at a secluded seaside.

“Get out.”

Giselle got out first and walked toward the lighthouse.

Of course, Johan followed her.

The damp, salty wind dug into their clothes.

At the foot of the lighthouse, Giselle checked the horizon. It was low tide, and the waves were receding.

“Raphael once said this. It’s easier to throw into the sea than to bury in the ground. The body swells up and it’s hard to identify later.”

Giselle raised her arm. The gun, loaded with bullets, didn’t tremble in the slightest.

Black hair, blue eyes, the way he had fervently defended Red Shadow, the words about punishing villains.

Anyone could see he was Red Shadow.

“So you planned to toy with me, but I’m not someone so easy.”

“Are you going to shoot?”

“I have too many grudges against you.”

Johan stared straight at the gun aimed at him.

His sunken eyes hid beneath his trembling eyelids, sinking like the depths of his sorrow.

“Even as Red Shadow, how dare you, how dare you eat and sleep in my house…”

The emotion on her face was undeniable shame.

Toward Johan, she had felt compassion. She had thought of him as a friend, and sometimes, seeing his cold eyes…

‘Toward Red Shadow, no less.’

Giselle clenched her teeth. Her slender fingers tightened.

In the moment she slowly pulled the trigger—

“Giselle.”

His voice, heavy with tangled emotions, caught the hand pulling the trigger.