Wine and Poison Chapter 41 - Consolation

Athena, the guardian of Athens, who always knew exactly what she was doing, had no idea what madness truly was.

 

She knew nothing of the primal terror of having to wander forever, nor the crushing despair that came from the emptiness of knowing that nothing would remain in the end.

 

“…Sion. Langsion.”

 

“…”

 

“Langsion!”

 

His cheek stung. 

 

Who would dare slap the cheek of a god?

 

 He who would become a lion. He who would tear apart and devour the son given to him through blood and flesh as if he were a deer.

 

The god, drunk on pleasure, had been whispering in the divine tongue when a sense of wrongness, like wearing ill-fitting clothes, brought him back to his senses.

 

“Langsion!”

 

When his eyes slowly opened, he saw a woman with deep wrinkles between her brows. 

 

Even with those wrinkles, her pearl-white skin and star-like shining eyes and features were still breathtakingly beautiful. 

 

His heart trembled violently. Relief washed over him. 

 

Strangely, tears welled up.

 

The god slowly recalled that this beautiful woman’s name was Scylla.

 

Drinking to the point of intoxication was for the sake of forgetting. The moment he remembered her, the god gradually returned to reality and became the human he was pretending to be, Langsion.

 

“Master.”

 

The mouth that had, just a moment ago, harbored cruel fantasies now belonged to an obedient disciple. 

 

Langsion blinked his pitch-black eyes.

 

“Why are you so angry?”

 

His tongue was heavy, and his slurred words came out mumbled and unclear.

 

Scylla looked down at him with an expression of utter disbelief.

 

“Do you know how terrified I was when I woke up at dawn, and you weren’t there?”

 

“…”

 

“I waited and waited, but you didn’t come back, so I went looking for you and found you about to fall into the well. How could I not be angry?”

 

“…”

 

“How could I not be angry when a pathetic fool who can’t even control his own body because he’s so drunk claims to be my disciple?”

 

Beneath her calm sarcasm, suppressed rage simmered. 

 

Only then did Langsion realize he had been caught by Scylla right in front of the well.

 

Whenever he tried to forget, the madness that pierced his heart would surge. 

 

The horrific agony from the time his body had been torn apart by the Titans at Hera’s command. When the endless void rose within him, he unconsciously sought death. 

 

There had even been a time when he woke up naked on a charred wooden altar.

 

Fortunately or unfortunately, because he possessed the power of immortality, he could not die from such things.

 

So this was nothing special to him. 

 

However, Scylla looked extremely tense, as if she had been quite shocked.

 

“Why did you drink so much? To the point where you couldn’t even control yourself.”

 

“…”

 

“Do you remember me telling you that I hate alcohol?”

 

Langsion nodded slowly.

 

“It’s because of people who act like you. I hate people who get so drunk that they don’t even know what they’re doing.”

 

Her voice grew increasingly intense. The emotional scolding, so unlike the usual Scylla, made Langsion’s eyes widen. 

 

Moonlight shone on her, revealing the fury and anger filling her golden eyes. But that wasn’t all. Beneath it lay a deep, inexplicable fear… and worry. 

 

Something he had never received before.

 

The moment he recognized it, Langsion spoke as if entranced.

 

“Master, I was wrong.”

 

“…”

 

“Your disciple has done wrong. So please don’t be angry.”

 

Langsion took hold of both her hands that were gripping him and steadied his wobbling legs. 

 

He had poured enough wine into his body to fill all his organs, yet the moment he looked into Scylla’s eyes, it felt as though all the intoxication had vanished. 

 

Scylla’s hands trembled faintly. Unable to simply hold them, Langsion pulled her into his arms.

 

“I won’t drink like this again.”

 

“…Never do it again. Never.”

 

“…”

 

“I hate people who lose themselves. They scare me.”

 

Her dazed, flowing voice sounded so unfamiliar that Langsion, like a child being scolded for the first time, didn’t know what to do and hugged her even tighter.

 

The memory of her pacing anxiously outside the hut, waiting for him when he had returned late after dawdling, surfaced in his mind. 

 

A wave of regret for drinking so much washed over him.

 

“Yes… I won’t drink this much again…”

 

When madness surged, he lost all control over himself. But in front of Scylla, who said she hated such people, what could he possibly say?

 

“If something like today happens again, I will go back to the time when I didn’t know you.”

 

Scylla spoke coldly. Unlike when her voice had trembled earlier, it was now extremely icy. 

 

But because it meant she had regained her composure, Langsion felt relieved instead.

 

He knew she was alright now, yet he didn’t want to let her go and kept holding her. Though the difference between her daytime and nighttime appearances was extreme, the warmth that radiated from her was the same. 

 

Even her scent was identical.

 

Langsion hugged her slender body, which fit perfectly in his arms, tighter than during the day, and buried his face in her shoulder. 

 

If her daytime self gave him a sense of full, stable comfort, her current self felt so delicate that he felt he needed to hold her even more. 

 

The bitter scent of medicinal herbs mixed with the sweet fragrance of a woman’s body was more intoxicating than any wine.

 

“If you want to get drunk, you can just do this. It seems I can get drunk this way, too.”

 

“Seeing you wag your tongue like that, it looks like you’ve sobered up.”

 

At her sharp remark, Langsion chuckled and let out a languid sigh. 

 

Somehow, even though she was scolding him, Scylla remained obediently nestled in his arms.

 

A moment later, she whispered softly.

 

“Langsion.”

 

“…”

 

“If it’s that hard for you, let’s leave again.”

 

Langsion was bewildered. He couldn’t understand what she meant.

 

“I know how difficult it is just to endure being among people who hate me.”

 

Ah. She thought his strange behavior was because he had entered the Theban royal palace.

 

Langsion felt a strange mix of emotions at her innocent misunderstanding. He had used the excuse of pretending to be Langsion for amusement, but parts of it did align with his actual situation.

 

For a moment, an impulse surged through him to confess his real circumstances. 

 

To tell her that his father’s wife had hated him even before he was born, that after he was born from his father’s thigh, she had used countless eyes to search for him, and when she finally found him, she had killed those around him and even summoned Titans to tear him to pieces. 

 

That after being reborn around his undying heart, he had taken a seat on Olympus’s throne to escape his mother’s direct grasp, yet she still wanted to torment him. 

 

In this situation, what should I do? He wanted to ask for Scylla’s opinion. 

 

Since Langsion was a god who indulged his desires, suppressing the impulse was extremely difficult.

 

“But if we do that, it will be hard for you to obtain what you want, Master.”

 

Langsion spoke with a cunning tongue. 

 

While his only real desire was to let her rest properly in a real bed and roll around with her on clean sheets, he whispered the lie that they needed the Theban royal family’s help to obtain the Hydra’s poison.

 

“People who don’t even invite you to their banquet and don’t comfort their youngest son who returned after suffering, do you think they would help me? I don’t think so. Besides, I have no intention of achieving my goal by stepping on your pain. You have no reason to endure that.”

 

“…”

 

“This place is destroying you. Don’t be foolish—look at the situation properly. Why should someone as capable as you suffer here? And because of me, no less. You’re not someone who should be treated this way just because your blood is different.”

 

Her cold voice scolded him sharply, like a strict parent. 

 

No one liked being scolded, yet Langsion’s fingers curled. He suppressed the urge to scratch the itchy feeling around his chest.

 

What a strange experience. Being scolded by a human. 

 

The sensation felt unfamiliar, and of course, it would; he had never been scolded before. 

 

His father had protected him out of duty, and his mother, who had burned to death for sleeping with another man and later became a god through her son’s efforts, took pride in her son, who had claimed a throne on Olympus but had no interest in his inner self.

 

Could it really feel good to be scolded?

 

“Then… just until I recover my mother’s coffer.”

 

“…”

 

“Because I need money to sway the merchant guild leader’s heart.”

 

“You mustn’t stay long. You never acted like this on the mountain, but ever since we came here, you’ve been behaving strangely. It bothers me.”

 

The madness that had always churned deep inside him lost its fierce momentum and quietly subsided.

 

Since Scylla was still in his arms, she couldn’t see his expression, but she seemed to sense something odd and shifted her body. 

 

Langsion pretended not to notice and buried his nose in the nape of her neck. When the startled Scylla tried to push him away, he slowly opened his mouth.

 

“What should I do, Master? I can’t hold back.”

 

“Lang…”

 

“I want to hold you so badly I can’t endure it.”

 

The ignorant master’s lovely sincerity turned into a delightfully naughty disciple. 

 

Langsion opened his mouth and bit the back of Scylla’s neck.

 

The sweet and bitter scent of wine spread. 

 

Finding her twitching reaction unbearably cute, he sucked hard on the smooth skin with a soft shh sound. With one hand, he skillfully unbuttoned the front of her dress. 

 

He only undid the three middle buttons, but it happened in the blink of an eye. 

 

His hand slipped expertly into the dress, which was now a little looser than when she had worn it as an old woman.

 

“Langsion!”

 

Scylla called out to him urgently.

 

“Shh. Be careful, Master. Sounds travel farther at night.”

 

“Is that something you should be saying?”

 

Langsion laughed and ignored his master’s accurate point. 

 

Then he sealed the mouth of his nagging teacher, who was about to say something old-fashioned, with his own, which was still thick with the smell of wine. 

 

No matter how sweet her scolding was, right now he wanted to focus only on devouring her.