Chapter 26. Would It Have Been Different?
2023.09.26.
"Blair."
Heldin, who had been watching her with anxiety, grabbed her slender arm and pulled her closer. Startled by the intensity of his own voice, he bit his lip.
The arm he held looked so fragile it might break if he applied just a little more force, which made him anxious.
Heldin composed his stirred emotions and relaxed his grip on her arm as he spoke.
"……You are agitated right now. Calm down and stop—"
"No, I refuse."
Before his words could even finish, Blair pulled her captured arm free and resisted. At that, Heldin's eyes wavered.
Blair looked straight at him and continued.
"If I regain my memories and find out it was a false accusation, I will clear your name. And if it is the truth, I will resent you for the rest of my life."
She did not want to become a sinner trapped by a past she couldn't remember or know the truth of, nor did she want to suffer an unjust grievance.
"I was sad too."
"……."
"It was hard for me too."
"……."
"Doubting the person who loved me so much and my mother, having to confirm the truth... I was scared."
As she voiced the words she had swallowed out of fear of opposing him in her past life, her pent-up grief surged forth. The tears she had desperately held back streamed down her cheeks.
Blair swallowed her surging sobs and continued speaking, ensuring her tears wouldn't choke back her words.
"But now, because it's too hard and too scary, I don't want to bury the truth and live in ignorance for those reasons."
Even if their relationship was destined to end eventually, she didn't want to give up and run away in this life as she had in her past.
Heldin's fingertips flinched as he looked into Blair's tear-filled eyes. He clenched his hand tightly to keep it from moving on its own.
She had looked at him with eyes that seemed on the verge of tears, but this was the first time she had actually let them fall. Her confronting him head-on was also an unexpected sight.
Seeing her like that, he no longer wanted to fight with her. From the beginning, he couldn't anyway.
"……I was mistaken."
His low, suppressed voice echoed in the quiet room.
"I forgot that our contract is premised on cooperation. And that such cooperation requires trust."
"……."
"I will not doubt and interrogate you like I did today ever again."
Blair blankly stared at him as he calmly apologized to her.
She had confronted him head-on because she didn't want to repeat the same relationship as her past life, but she hadn't even imagined he would accept it so readily and apologize.
While she felt relieved, a sudden thought crossed her mind.
What if, back then, even though I was scared, I had confronted you?
If I had done that, would our ending have been different from back then? Would we not have had to take such a long detour?
It was a question whose answer could no longer be known.
"Please rest now. You are exhausted."
Blair lay down on the bed as he suggested. She had gone out for the first time in a while, met a stranger, and even collapsed. On top of that, she had fought with Heldin, so she was indeed tired.
Heldin, watching Blair cover herself with the blanket, stood up and approached the fireplace.
Just as Blair poked her eyes out over the blanket and watched his back with a questioning look, his inquiry came.
"Are you afraid when the fireplace is lit?"
Blair couldn't readily answer his sudden question.
Although she had become afraid of it because of the accident, she had never verbally admitted to being afraid of something others were fine with.
Also, because Katrina disliked bringing up that incident, she had wanted to hide it as much as possible.
"Just sleep for now."
Heldin used a lighter placed next to the fireplace to set fire to a piece of paper and threw it inside.
He kept his gaze on the bed, ready to put out the fire immediately in case Blair suffered another episode, but a moment later, contrary to his worries, her breathing evened out. An occasional dry cough was mixed in.
By the time the flames stably caught the firewood, Heldin tossed a few more logs into the fire and went to sit beside the sleeping Blair.
Perhaps due to the warmth already beginning to fill the room, a faint flush of color returned to Blair's pale cheeks. Her peaceful sleeping figure looked just like a young girl's.
Exactly like her appearance on the day he first met her.
Looking at her face, which still retained its childhood features, Esmeralda's voice from the past suddenly echoed in his mind.
'It's not that child's fault. Blair is a good child. Regardless of what kind of person her mother is. Don't you think so too?'
Suddenly, the day he first met Blair surfaced in his mind.
* * *
To be exact, it was a week after the day they first met.
A week after the New Year's Festival, Heldin visited the Empress's Palace again. Carrying the rabbit fur earmuffs Blair had lent him.
Heldin held out the rabbit fur earmuffs to Esmeralda. Esmeralda tilted her head.
"My, where did you get such a cute thing? Don't tell me you prepared this tiny thing as a gift for me."
"Her Highness the Princess lent them to me. I brought them hoping Your Majesty would pass them on."
"Blair did? When?"
"……Did you not hear about it?"
"What story? Blair didn't say anything."
The Princess was anxious to win her aunt's favor. So he had assumed she would have talked about that day to earn praise.
Suddenly, he recalled the words Blair had said as she walked away from him that day.
'I'll keep what happened today a secret.'
She really hadn't told anyone. Not even Esmeralda. Even though it was a chance to receive the praise she so desperately wanted.
Heldin was stunned by that fact.
"Did something happen between you and Blair?"
Esmeralda asked with a highly curious face.
Heldin briefly explained what had happened that day. He told her that Blair had followed him when he stepped out to the garden for a breath of fresh air—he lied about that part, knowing Esmeralda would worry otherwise—and that she had handed him the earmuffs, telling him to cover his ears.
Throughout the story, a smile graced Esmeralda's face. She looked as though she found the two children irresistibly adorable.
Having heard the entire sequence of events of that day, Esmeralda held the earmuffs back out to Heldin.
"Then you should be the one to return them."
"Pardon……?"
"The one who received the favor should be the one to go and say thank you. Are you trying to pass that task on to me? Now that you've grown a bit older, you're trying to use me as your errand girl, are you?"
Esmeralda's voice was heavily tinged with playfulness, but he could tell her words weren't entirely a joke.
Even he thought that pushing the thank you onto his aunt was not proper etiquette toward the person who had helped him.
However, he didn't want to go looking for Blair himself.
Was the Princess not the daughter of that imperial concubine?
His aunt was a naturally benevolent person, able to embrace even that woman's daughter, but he was not. If possible, he wanted to avoid crossing paths with her as much as he could. He was afraid that the naive Princess might feel affectionate toward him.
"Anyway, did you actually wear these earmuffs? It must have been cute. Won't you put them on one more time in front of me?"
While he was pondering this seriously, Esmeralda suddenly approached Heldin, holding up the rabbit fur earmuffs. Her face was full of mischief.
Heldin recoiled in distaste.
"I didn't wear them! I just kept them with me."
Esmeralda giggled at Heldin's reaction, but eventually set the earmuffs down with a regretful expression. When she looked at Heldin again, her eyes were calm and settled, unlike a moment ago.
"Heldin. Do you dislike Blair?"
Heldin couldn't answer.
It wasn't that he disliked the child herself. He disliked her background. So if he had to choose, he leaned more toward disliking her.
However, saying he didn't would be a lie, and he was terrible at lying; but answering that he did made him reluctant, feeling like it would make him a narrow-minded person, unlike his aunt.
"Blair isn't noisy like the kids you dislike, and she doesn't blindly hate or insult you, right? And she helped you, didn't she?"
Heldin, who had been quietly listening to his aunt, opened his mouth.
"……But isn't she that woman's daughter?"
"You shouldn't think like that. It's not that child's fault."
"……."
"Blair is a good child. Regardless of what kind of person her mother is. Don't you think so too?"
Heldin couldn't refute those words. Treating Blair and Katrina as separate entities was an impossible task for him, but as Esmeralda said, the Princess was kind.
Because of his position, he had to dislike Blair, and so he had merely been trying desperately to deny that truth.
"I'm sorry for getting you caught up in the adults' narrow-minded affairs."
Esmeralda smiled bitterly, and Heldin looked at her and closed his mouth.
His aunt was a good person.
She was the one who had tenderly cared for him after he lost his parents early on. To him, she was like a mother.
And so, unable to disobey the words of such a person, he ended up taking the earmuffs and visiting the Princess's Palace himself.
The knights guarding the entrance to the Princess's Palace seemed quite flustered by the entirely unexpected visit from the Duke of Delmarch.
"I received Her Highness the Princess's grace during the New Year's Festival, so I have come to offer my thanks."
As Heldin was speaking to the knights of the Princess's Palace, a small shadow was cast from above.
Looking up reflexively, he saw Blair on the balcony, rubbing her sleepy eyes.
Blair, blinking her half-closed eyes, suddenly patted her cheeks with both hands. It seemed she was trying to wake herself up. Then, their eyes suddenly met.
Her tousled platinum hair sparkled in the morning sunlight, and above her cheeks, flushed red from the cold, her violet eyes widened.
As a gasp slipped through her small, opening and closing lips, her tiny face crumpled into a crying expression.
"Nanny!"
Blair's voice faintly echoed from inside the room as she ran back in. Words like, 'What do I do! Duke Delmarch is here! I haven't even washed my face yet...' It seemed she didn't realize the balcony door was still open.
Heldin let out a soft chuckle as he listened to her words.
Her widened eyes, her face crumpling into a crying expression.
Just witnessing that was enough to make him think it was a good thing he had listened to his aunt's words. It was such a winter morning.