The first thing Hadrian could remember was pain. Pain and pleasure, always mixed together—two sides of the same coin, one leading to the other or delaying its arrival. More often than not, whenever he did something that brought happiness, it was short-lived, inevitably followed by pain.

Likewise, whenever he did something that should have caused pain, it often brought pleasure as well.The lines were blurred, shifting unpredictably, terrifyingly unstable—just like the one who had set them.

The one who was the child’s worst fear and his greatest source of comfort, the monster lurking under his bed and his knight in shining armor. The man’s facial features were as distorted as the child’s understanding of the world.

The child had a faint concept of good and evil, but it seemed meaningless compared to the boundary between pleasure and pain. More often than not, they merged—so why couldn’t good and evil do the same?

He had asked the man of the house that once, and it had earned him a hard glare. But after a moment, the man’s expression softened into something almost appreciative, further proving the child’s point.

The man of the house—as the child had first called him in his mind—or the Lord, as everyone else did, was the first person he remembered. He was the one who had taught him the difference between pain and pleasure, and the one who had shattered it entirely, proving they were no different at all.

He was the only one worth knowing.