CHAPTER 24: WANTS AND LACK THEREOF

Vale stared listlessly at his Champion’s naked body.

A body that had seen so much, yet showed so little. After all, if what she said rang true, then one injury was tantamount to death.

Vale guessed that not many beings from Salome’s world had scars, well, the ones still alive, anyway.

Pity and sympathy were not the only things he was feeling right now. In a sort of twisted way, he was jealous. Not that he was allowed to experience true jealousy — that was Envy’s jurisdiction. However, Salome had some claim in this world — a reason for being here.

Vale didn’t.

While Vale wasn’t making light of her situation, nor was he truly envious of someone who lost everything but hope, he was currently looking upon a manifestation of the passion he’d always been chasing after...

Back on his home world, when he lived in Aleyrac, he’d had nothing, but never aspired for anything.

Why would he want something in a world that was just going to take it?

He’d wanted a father. But that man disappeared when he was just ten.

He’d wanted a mother. But that woman couldn’t stand the sight of her own son, a copy of the man who left.

He’d wanted a friend. But the world wouldn’t stand for that either, so it took her.

So, he stopped wanting altogether.

Vale didn’t remember much of his early life, as he’d always been moving from place to place with his dad while he solved cases. But he did remember life after his father’s disappearance.

It sucked.

But it was also fine.

But it still sucked.

He was adopted by a brothel and raised by the courtesans there. Apparently, his father was quite close to the owner and had entrusted him to her. Anyways, it wasn’t the intent, but his worldly innocence didn’t last long.

While he did discover sex relatively young, it was not that he did anything sexual with those women, no. Most were more than a decade older than him, and the lot all acted like mothers to him.

The innocence he lost was the possibility of love...

Love for the world that is.

Vale hadn’t received a formal education growing up, nor was he taught proper etiquette, but what he did learn and experience on his own was cruelty — cruelty that the courtesans suffered at the hands of their patrons.

Women he viewed as his mothers were being used for pleasure and tossed aside. If they ever refused pleasure, then sometimes the patrons would get what they wanted by force. And, sadly, nothing was ever done about it.

By the time Vale turned sixteen, the only thing he had learned was to hate the world and the people it created. Cherishing only those he held closest, but not daring to let anyone come close.

Of course, life is full of changes and challenges. Something, or someone, was bound to come along and change his view. And such a thing happened on his seventeenth birthday.

’Fleur’

He remembered her well.

Her fair skin. Delicate body. She was a year older than he, but had yet to lose her childish luster. Always carrying herself with an effervescent glee as if the nation around her wasn’t rotten and crumbling from the inside.

They’d met one day when Vale saved her from some back alley thugs who were hanging out behind the brothel. Then, after that day, the girl continued to return to visit him, despite the dangers of the area.

At first, he thought her an idiot. Then, as he and she met more often, he continued to see her as an idiot, but also a lunatic — but it was through her he learned the liberation of idiocy. Or more so, the beauty of a desperate, naive want.

In a world where the only thing he wanted was food for tomorrow and a good bed, there was a girl who wanted his world.

At first, he kept his world gated. Eventually, though, the idiot forced those gates open and entered. Hesitant, though he was, he accepted what she offered.

It was when he’d let her in that he saw the world through a different lens. He discovered a passion that extended far beyond himself — he experienced a passion for another.

It was through his experiences with Fleur that the gray world of his mind was affixed with a vibrant sun, which slowly bestowed color to the dreary landscape of his battered mind.

But of course, all good things end, and a sun cannot rise forever. That vibrant sun would eventually set...

Yet it set much sooner than it should have...

’Tch...’

With the sun gone, Vale’s world had become darker than ever before, consumed by grief; however, now having glimpsed paradise, he longed to experience it once again. Yet, he lost the will to yearn altogether out of fear that his goal would be realized. While he wanted connection, losing that connection again would mean falling further into his muted reality.

Falling so far, it was clear a sunrise would become a distant memory instead of a marching dream...

Maybe that’s why he was brought here, why he was made the Incarnation of Lust.

It wasn’t that he was passionate.

It was that he wished to be passionate but was simultaneously scared of such passion.

He knew he couldn’t bring Fleur back. Nor would he let himself forget the memory of her; however, he had made a promise not to give up on life and was intent on keeping it.

The first step was wanting something other than seeing the next day.

Now, his wish had come true. Or was at least in the process.

Whether his own desires or another’s, he lusted after those around him. He’d taken the first step into passion, one with no path back.

Maybe this lust will one day lead him to the worldly love he’s strived so hard to reach.

Or maybe this lust will be the very thing keeping him from ever achieving his goal.

However, there is one thing he knew for sure at the moment: he wasn’t ready to die. So, he’d try his best to survive in this world.

’Well, there is another thing now...’

He wanted to help Salome in her revenge.