Chapter 118
His hand was so large that it easily encompassed Sasha’s chin and cheeks. He cupped her face and lifted it so that she could not avoid his eyes.
It was an action that seemed ingrained in him. Forcing eye contact, as though searching every word that slipped from her lips for traces of a lie. As though interrogating her. Sasha was struck anew by the fact that he was a soldier—a veteran soldier so accustomed to interrogations like this that they had become second nature.
His face was expressionless. Just as it had been when he confessed before, there was no flustered look that made one want to embrace him at once and soothe him.
Isaac kept looking back and forth between her green eyes and her lips, as though expecting the words that would follow what he had just said.
“……I’m truly sorry.”
But what slipped from her lips once again was an apology. It was not the words Isaac had been waiting for.
“……Sasha.”
Isaac called her name, drawing in a sharp breath from deep in his nose as if he were frustrated. The moment he let her name slip without thinking, he realized his mistake, but Sasha did not seem particularly bothered.
“I know saying it a hundred times wouldn’t be enough. I’m sorry. Truly…….”
“Not an apology.”
“…….”
Unable to endure it, he cut her off and snapped sharply.
“……I understand how betrayed you must feel.”
“…….”
“It was unfair, wasn’t it? I came to know a certain amount about you, while you still knew nothing about me. ……I did intend to confess it with my own mouth someday, but even that must sound like a lie to you.”
The woman’s face was terribly calm.
She was utterly composed, as if she had expected this moment to some extent. Looking at her, his strength drained away. When she placed her hand over his, Isaac’s grip slipped, and he let go.
“……Did you truly intend to tell me?”
Isaac rubbed his face with a hollow expression.
Seeing Sasha’s face, already resigned as though it were the most natural thing in the world, drained him all over again. As if it were only obvious that he would cast her aside.
As if she were not even surprised.
“Tell me. Were those words—that you would tell me ‘someday’—true? Or were you afraid that I, heartsick after having my confession rejected, might call off the marriage…….”
“No.”
Sasha could not hold back and cut him off, and Isaac did not respond.
The question—was everything you did just to make yourself look good to me?—hovered in his mouth. In truth, that was what she had done. The entire time she had stayed at Lance Field, she had continued trying to make a good impression on him. Whether he openly treated her coldly or not, she listened attentively to every curt word he said and behaved kindly and politely.
“……I thought we had become rather close.”
Isaac murmured as he looked at her.
Sasha understood what he meant. He meant that there had been plenty of chances to tell him.
“If I was the only one who thought that, then I apologize.”
“No. I told you before. We became closer than necessary.”
She spoke calmly, as though putting things in order.
“Closer than necessary,” she said dryly, as if speaking of someone else.
“I came to know far, far more about you than was necessary, Captain.”
“…….”
“Even if I had revealed my secret, I know very well that you are not the sort of person who would tell another soul, even by mistake.”
At last, she said it.
“But I didn’t want to ruin things. You may not be curious, but I lived in that mansion for over ten years pretending to be someone else. I wanted to receive the compensation I deserved. My goal was to inherit without any trouble and leave that mansion. That alone was my goal. Yes. ……I know very well that you are not the kind of person who would go around spreading my disgrace. But apart from that, I simply did not want to create any source of anxiety that might possibly ruin things.”
“…….”
“It has nothing to do with whether I trust you. It was simply because I was afraid something might go wrong.”
Isaac stared at her with a blank expression, as if he had lost the words to speak.
Silence fell, and for a while, the two of them only looked at each other without saying anything.
“……I’m truly sorry. I know very well how sensitive you are to betrayal.”
“……No. Sasha.”
Betrayal? Isaac rejected the word the moment he heard it.
It was not betrayal. Beyond whether the matter was grave or not, the emotion he felt now was far from a sense of betrayal.
This did not make his mind colder, the way betrayal would. It was the opposite.
……Rather.
“……Receiving the inheritance was more important to me than anything. That’s why I did it. ……What I said earlier about compensation was sincere. If I receive that money, I can compensate you however much you want. Right now, shamefully, all I can offer you is an apology.”
“……Sasha.”
“It must sound absurd for me to apologize like this when we’re already bound by a marriage license. But…….”
“I told you that isn’t what I want to hear.”
At his words, Sasha stopped what she had been saying and looked up at him with an unreadable expression.
“Yes. I was going to tell you. Of course, under the assumption that there would be no hindrance to receiving the inheritance. Because if I at least had that money…….”
In the end, Isaac could not hold back and cut her off once more.
“……That damned money, money. ……Can’t you set aside talk of money for a moment?”
At the words that burst from him like anger, Sasha’s lips pressed tightly shut.
Soon, she looked up at him with a rigid face and said,
“I’m sorry that it all comes down to money in the end. But having been born and raised with nothing to my name, that money was my only safeguard.”
Isaac looked down at her, his expression complicated in more ways than one, as she repeated the same words like a machine.
In the end, it was “money.” No matter what they talked about, she would say that she had done it because that money was important.
In a sense, the interrogation had been a success. Had he not discovered what she valued above all else?
“……I see.”
There was nothing more to say.
Isaac let out a low sigh, as if in resignation.
“I understand.”
With a hollow laugh, he walked toward the door.
Sasha watched blankly as he opened the door and left.
To her, money truly was the most important thing. It was a truth that would not change no matter what happened.
It was an age in which even status could be bought with money. As she had once told that madman, Sasha firmly believed that happiness came from material abundance. She had lived that way. Yes. It was an unchanging truth.
She had believed it was the right path all along and had lived her entire life that way. But before she knew it, when she came to her senses, the ground beneath her feet had entirely collapsed. She was on the verge of falling.
No, perhaps she had already fallen. Perhaps she had been living under the illusion that she was walking without issue, while already fallen, endlessly staring upward.
Sasha rubbed her cheek as she stared into the air with a cold, sharpened expression. Her hesitation lasted only a moment.
Clack—.
The sound of a door opening came from behind him. Isaac kept walking regardless. But before he turned the corner, his sleeve was caught from behind and pulled back.
It was a paltry strength. Yet Isaac stopped walking and turned around.
Isaac was led by her hand, as if reluctantly, back toward the bedroom.
“I did intend to confess to you. That was sincere. As I’ve said several times. I wanted to tell you everything. Of course, after I had received all the money, or after it was more or less certain. It must sound ridiculous, doesn’t it? But to me, that was more important than anything. A fraud with money is still better than a penniless fraud, isn’t it?”
Sasha murmured as she spoke. Isaac stared blankly down at the back of the woman’s head as she walked ahead, leading him.
“Because compared to you, I really have nothing. My status, everything about me is pitiful beyond measure compared to yours. In any case, I really did intend to confess to you. I wanted to tell you everything and say that I loved you. I wanted to ask whether you would be all right with someone like me.”
“…….”
“I would have to live my whole life as though I had never existed, and perhaps I might even have to leave this country, but even so, I wanted to ask whether someone like me was still all right. Originally, I would never even have thought of such a thing. Does that make sense? This was not in my plan.”
The confession poured out as though a dam had burst.
For a confession, there was something gloomy about it. But neither Isaac nor Sasha particularly cared.
“Yes. The only thing important to me is money. I have no noble status, no family, so only money mattered to me. Not you.”
Click. The door closed.
Sasha put force into her words once more.
“……It wasn’t you. My plan was…… I…….”
“…….”
“……I was never originally this kind of person.”
In just a few minutes, the room had grown much darker than before.
And yet he could see her face all too clearly as she looked up at him, tears filling her eyes as though driven by desperation.
“……I love you.”
“…….”
“Of course, this must not be what you want to hear either. You, more than anything, want a sincere apology for how I deceived you…….”
The tears brimming in her eyes streamed endlessly down her cheeks.
By any measure, it was different from a romantic confession. Just like Isaac’s clumsy and awkward confession, Sasha’s confession, too, had nothing polished about it.
Both had been confessions that were never part of the plan.
“……I know it must sound absurd. I didn’t mean to say it like this, as if I were blaming you.”
Once again, Isaac’s large hand cupped her cheek. With the tip of her nose reddened, she still looked up at him almost as if glaring, stubbornly continuing her words.
Somehow, somehow, she tried to keep speaking.
“……I didn’t.”
And whether his face came closer or not, she kept speaking.
……Only when he pressed his lips down over hers did she finally close her eyes.