Episode 148
Isaac followed Sasha inside, his face awkward now as he tried to gauge her mood. Amid the shattered furnishings, only a small brazier and the kettle sitting atop it remained more or less intact. Sasha lifted the kettle, its bottom charred black, and checked inside.
The tea leaves, which had likely been left there for a full day at least, were scorched to the bottom and gave off a sour smell. Isaac stared blankly as Sasha emptied the kettle without hesitation, then coughed. “Ahem.” As if trying, in his own way, to announce that he had followed her in.
Still with her back to him, Sasha said,
“There’s no water.”
“……Ah, here.”
Isaac quickly took a canteen, half-full of water, from inside his coat and handed it to her. Sasha accepted it, opened the cap, and poured it straight into the kettle in a steady stream.
“Sasha.”
“Would you light the fire for me?”
Isaac flinched like a nervous recruit, then took out a match and began striking it. Sasha, who had not even looked at him all this time, finally walked over. Isaac watched her set the kettle filled with water on the brazier.
“I’ll do it.”
“Oh, no. I’ll do it.”
Sasha refused rather firmly. Isaac was now openly restless, glancing at her as if trying to read her face. To anyone who knew him well, it was a rare sight enough to make them click their tongue. Now of all times. It was hard to believe this was the same man who, only moments ago, had acted as though she was the one being frustrating.
Sasha did not spare Isaac a glance, keeping her eyes fixed only on the flickering flames.
She was angry.
It was an unmistakable signal, one that anyone who was not a complete idiot could understand. When Sasha reached toward the boiling kettle, Isaac quickly stretched out his hand as if to grab it for her, then when she picked up a chipped teacup, he waved his hand through the air again as though he meant to help with that too. In the end, he became nothing more than a person who had waved his hand in the air twice and helped with absolutely nothing.
“Would you bring Mr. Wilson here?”
Sasha said as she brought over another teacup for the agent.
It was her roundabout way of saying that she did not want to be alone with him right now. Of course, there was no way Isaac, who had been utterly oblivious since earlier, could have realized that.
Isaac did not go to find Wilson, his expression reluctant.
“……About earlier…….”
Sasha looked at her husband, who, as always, wore that stubborn set to his eyes and mouth.
“I hope you won’t feel hurt. You were already busy enough because of the trial.”
“……Even if I hadn’t been accused, you wouldn’t have told me the details, would you? Am I wrong?”
At last, she responded properly, engaging in the conversation.
Should he say that was not true, if only to appease her? Some men might have done so, at least with the intention of placating their wife. But Isaac did not.
“It was a confidential operation. Even discussing the level of danger involved could have constituted an information leak.”
“I suppose so. Since you threw yourself into it to the point that a nationwide wanted order was issued for you.”
Even in the midst of this, he continued saying things better left unsaid because he believed there was nothing wrong with his words, and Sasha replied as if she understood him, without so much as blinking. But just as Wilson had said earlier, that was absolutely not a positive sign that she understood.
Isaac shut his mouth, and Sasha quietly sipped the freshly brewed tea. Isaac knew all too well how hopeless he was at this sort of thing. As always, every word he spoke would ruin it. No, the more he spoke, the worse he would make it. A familiar sense of self-loathing washed over him, but he still did not offer Sasha an apology that was merely a hollow shell.
It was a stubbornness born entirely of his convictions, and Sasha knew that as well.
Sitting in the old chair where he had been seated just moments before, Sasha looked up at him.
“After that happened to you, the first person I sent a letter to was the Count. I sent it because I wondered if he might have been greatly shocked by what had happened to you. But when I received his reply, it seemed he already knew. Instead of blaming me or anything of the sort, he comforted me and told me to focus on the trial.”
“…….”
“The Count already knew how dangerous a direction this matter might take.”
“I only told him very briefly, in case something went wrong. If need be, Philip could…….”
Even though he had been planning something so mad it reached that level.
Instead of scoffing, Sasha opened her mouth with a calm face and cut off the words he was about to continue.
“You could have at least given me that much of a hint in advance.”
A smiling face. Isaac knew perfectly well that it was not a smile in any positive sense.
“Information leaks, or whatever else. I wasn’t hoping for that kind of information. But shouldn’t you at least have let me prepare myself? I waited for days, worrying because you didn’t come back, and then I had to hear that you were wanted not from you, but from some military policeman…….”
The words pouring out of her suddenly stopped. Sasha’s chest rose deeply, as if she were trying to steady her breath, and soon she buried her face in her palms.
Damn it. This was why she had tried to leave.
“Continue.”
Isaac, who had been listening to her with a foolish expression all this time, said as if encouraging her. Sasha let out a hollow laugh, dumbfounded.
“I don’t want to. This isn’t the time to be having this kind of argument, so I’m just going to endure it and let it pass for now. Once everything is over, there will be more than enough time to talk about this properly.”
That was terrifying in its own way.
At any rate, after kindly forewarning him that she would properly take him to task over this later, she drank her tea again.
Isaac looked down at her as she returned to her calm demeanor, as if confused. Then he bent down to meet her eye level.
“No, Sasha. I did it because it was you. Because it was you.”
He brought his body level with hers and leaned his face forward to a burdensome degree, but he did not seem particularly threatening. Perhaps it was because his large hands were plainly trembling. Isaac knelt on the floor, straightened his posture, and took hold of one armrest of her chair.
“I think it would be better to address this than to let it be buried like this. Until this subject comes up again, you’ll continue misunderstanding me as some indifferent bastard, won’t you?”
It felt as if his brain were getting tangled. The original part of him, the part that had lived as a soldier for so long and valued only efficiency, quietly urged him to end this conversation as she wanted. But another side, the part he had awakened to only now, firmly warned him not to leave her misunderstanding him.
Without hesitation, Isaac followed the side his heart leaned toward more.
“As Wilson said, you are already deeply involved in this matter. If, by any chance, things went wrong, you would be taken away and interrogated. The first thing they would ask you is whether you knew even a little about this operation, and the moment you answered that you had known about the existence of the operation itself, they would have arrested you as though they had been waiting for it.”
“…….”
“That is why I thought I had to keep it from you all the more. So that, in the event things went wrong, you would at least avoid the worst of the ordeal.”
Sasha looked at Isaac in silence. She recalled what he had said to Wilson just earlier.
“My wife knew nothing. She was merely used by that old man.”
Isaac had emphasized that. Again and again.
“Not knowing” could, in and of itself, become grounds for exemption from responsibility. Having personally conducted interrogations before, he would have known that better than anyone. That was why he had deliberately told Sasha nothing. He had kept her thoroughly in a state of ignorance, so that it could later protect her.
Sasha could not refute Isaac’s logic. After all, one of the reasons she had been able to survive the trial that had fallen upon her was precisely because she “knew nothing.”
Her mind accepted it, but her hurt did not melt away like snow. Still, only now did she understand him.
Without a word, Sasha reached out and stroked Isaac’s cheek.
“……You really are terrible with words.”
Touching without hesitation the scar near his lips, the one he was most sensitive about, Sasha spoke in a whisper.
“……I’m trying.”
After flinching for a brief moment as if shaken, Isaac replied with a somewhat sour expression.
He distorted those stubborn-looking eyes of his, the eyes that never seemed to yield, and muttered.
“But even though you had prepared an heir in case things went wrong, the fact that you truly gave me no warning at all is far too hateful.”
“It was only to account for an unlikely possibility. If it had truly been a matter with a high risk of failure…….”
Even now, he went so far as to flaunt his pride, as if to say he had not expected to fail.
Sasha let out another hollow laugh, as though she could hardly believe him.
“Be quiet.”
Tightening the hand cupping his cheek, Sasha gave the order in a whisper.
Isaac reflexively pressed his lips into a straight line, then looked up at her with a somewhat bewildered expression.
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
“…….”
Her green eyes swept beneath his chin. It was an utterly uninhibited gaze, as if she were handling something that quite naturally belonged to her.
“Sasha. Not here.”
Isaac’s eyes darted in fluster, and before he knew it, he had said those words.
“What are you talking about? I just asked if you were hurt anywhere.”
She asked back, sounding dumbfounded. Only belatedly did Isaac’s face flush bright red.
No, then why did you look at me with those eyes?
Unable to say that aloud, he became the pervert all by himself.