Heiner couldn't tear his eyes away from the final sentence for a long while. He belatedly realized a faint smile had formed at his own lips. Heiner traced his lips with trembling hands.
Unable to contain himself, he opened a few more envelopes. Fragments of memories he had tried so hard to bury rose to the surface one by one.
A time when everything had been false, yet the happiest of his life. Moments when he had wanted to forget everything and simply be content as he was. Moments when he had rather hoped the future would never come…….
"I'm sorry."
Suddenly, her words flashed through his mind as if he had been struck on the back of the head.
"It's just that everything……"
Anette was not a woman accustomed to apologizing. Even after fights, she had been a woman unable to say it directly, delivering her apologies belatedly through letters like these.
"I'm sorry, Heiner."
Even then, the beginning was usually a rebuke toward him, and before the word sorry, she would attach qualifiers like, "I suppose I was partly at fault."
"Even for everything I don't know."
She was not a woman to apologize in such a manner, at the very least.
Heiner's face stiffened considerably as he found a rough draft among the pile of letters on the desk. The uneven handwriting and line spacing seemed to speak for her inner turmoil. As he traced the scattered strokes, the color gradually drained from his face.
Sleeping pills accumulated over months. Crooked, messy embroidery on a handkerchief. The sight of her walking into the cold sea. Her answer that there was no need to change doctors.
The traces he had buried while consoling himself that it couldn't be, that she wasn't the type of woman to do such a thing, came together piece by piece.
That she wasn't "that kind of woman"—
Ah.
Since when had she ceased to be the woman he knew?
A chilling premonition swept down his spine. Without the composure to retrace things rationally, Heiner shot up from his seat. The chair scraped backward with a loud noise.
He rushed into the corridor without even closing the office door. The sound of his heels echoed heavily across the spacious corridor.
He couldn't be sure. It could be a groundless fear. It could simply be hypersensitivity. Yet his steps did not stop, only growing faster.
Lieutenant Yugen, on his way home late, called out to him with a startled face.
"Your Excellency……?"
A question asking what was the matter followed, but Heiner passed him without so much as a glance.
His heart pounded frighteningly the entire way to Anette's room. He was the type of man who never acted rashly without certainty, yet he could scarcely quell his anxiety.
Heiner exited the eastern offices, passed through the garden, and entered the main building. At the Supreme Commander's unusual demeanor, the servants flinched and greeted him.
Going up the stairs, he saw her door inside. Heiner grabbed one of the servants passing by and asked,
"Where is Madam?"
"Excuse me? Ah, she is probably in her room. She said she was tired and would rest……"
Without pressing further, he turned toward the room. With every step closer, the ominous premonition grew clearer.
Standing before the door, Heiner knocked twice and called for her.
"Madam."
Without waiting for an answer, he couldn't help but knock again.
"Madam. Are you inside?"
Heiner waited to hear her thin voice as usual. He hoped for her uniquely weak, whisper-like response. Then he could sneer at himself for his foolishness, that she indeed wasn't the type of woman to do such a thing, and turn back.
But there was no sign of life from within. Heiner immediately flung the door open.
The room was terrifyingly silent. The belongings were neatly arranged, and the bed was tidy without the slightest trace of someone having lain in it. At that eerie silence, his heart sank for a moment.
"Anette!"
Heiner called her name, ransacking the room with blade-sharp eyes. A servant followed him in with anxious eyes at the commotion. He checked the dressing room and powder room without restraint, but there was no trace of her anywhere. Finally, he walked to the bathroom.
"Anette!"
He had no reason left in him to knock on the bathroom door. Heiner roughly grabbed the handle and yanked it open.
The moment the door cracked open, white steam and a pungent rose scent stabbed his nose. Amidst it, Heiner caught something faintly wafting. It was a smell so familiar it made him shudder. The nape of his neck grew cold.
Before his mind could even fully process that it was the smell of blood, the scene inside the bathroom crashed before his eyes.
Heiner stopped dead in his tracks. For a moment, time seemed to stop. After a brief interval, his pupils slowly dilated.
A sharp pain swept through him as if a massive needle had pierced through his head.
He tried to shout her name, but no voice came out. Heiner rushed over, pulling her wrist submerged in the water, and checked her condition. Her pale, bloodless face embedded itself painfully into his retina.
Fortunately, she was still breathing. But it was precarious, as if it would go out at any moment.
The servant who checked the bathroom after him gasped and covered his mouth. Without even looking back, Heiner shouted savagely.
"Fetch a doctor! Now!"
The servant, belatedly coming to his senses, scrambled out to call for a doctor.
Heiner lifted her out of the water. Red-stained water plopped down. His clothes grew soaking wet. Her body, dangling in his arms like a broken jointed doll, was horrifying. An anxiety greater than when he had waited for the torturer in the interrogation room swept over him.
"No, no, Anette, no……"
Heiner muttered like a madman as he carried Anette to the bedroom. He tried to pull her body in his arms tightly, yet he couldn't, as if she might shatter.
After laying Anette on the bed, he took out a handkerchief from his inner pocket. He reached for the water pitcher to dampen the handkerchief with cold water. A glass cup he touched by mistake fell and shattered with a crash. He paid it no heed and poured water over the handkerchief. Because his hands shook like mad, the stream of water kept falling in strange places.
He wrapped the wet handkerchief around Anette's wrist and raised her arm higher than her heart. In an instant, the handkerchief was stained red. Heiner's pupils shook.
There was too much blood. It was too much blood to think it had come from her body.
Heiner had seen such wounds, no, even worse wounds many times before. But this felt completely different. Even when he had killed a person for the first time, he had never felt such terror.
"It's alright, you'll be alright…… Anette……"
Heiner repeated the mutters over and over, whether he was speaking to her or to himself.
Meanwhile, a doctor came rushing into the room. While the doctor was momentarily speechless at the situation in the room, Heiner spoke.
"Save her."
The doctor flinched involuntarily at the murmur that flowed out gloomily.
"Save her!"
Heiner shouted in a steely voice. His words sounded both like a threat and like the desperate plea of one driven to the edge of a cliff.
The doctor hurriedly examined Anette's condition and prepared treatment. Others helped with the treatment or covered Anette's body with blankets to maintain her body temperature.
While the emergency treatment was underway, Heiner stood motionless, keeping his place. His face was as deathly pale as Anette's.
It was hard to breathe, as if water had flooded up to his windpipe. Heiner gasped as if the air were thin. His eyeballs rolled slowly from left to right.
The thin body lying motionless, the sheets soaked in red water, the handkerchief stained with blood, the doctor's moving hands, the weakly drooping slender fingers…….
The entire sequence of scenes did not connect smoothly but appeared fragmented into pieces. Amidst that discord, Heiner moved his lips blankly.
'How could……'
How could this happen.
You can't do this to me.
You can't do this to me.
You have to despair as much as I did. You have to lose as much as I lost. You were always there in my unhappy moments, so I must be there in yours.
Just as my life has been dark for so long, your life too…….
Your life too…….
Something in his head snapped with a crack. The doctor shouted something to his assistant. Heiner listened vacantly to it, then unknowingly took a step back.
And for a long time, he could not move.
***
In his dream, Heiner stood in the middle of a rose garden. Beside him was Anette. A green jeweled pin was fastened in her wavy blonde hair. A sky-blue dress that fell in perfect lines and a deep emerald necklace shone under the sunlight.
Heiner remembered this moment clearly. It was the moment he had formally met her for the first time.
But Anette's face was crudely smeared with red crayon. Beneath it, only her smiling lips could be seen.
Anette asked him, holding a white parasol tilted slightly.
"Heiner. What are you thinking so deeply about?"
It was indeed a dream. Anette had not said such words at that time. Heiner looked down intently at her somewhat grotesque appearance and answered.
"I'm thinking of you."
"My thoughts? What sort of thoughts?"
"When I first met you……"
"It was here, wasn't it. The rose garden of the Valdemar mansion. Your father introduced you."
"No, before that."
"Before that?"
"Before that."
Anette tilted her head as if she had no idea.
From somewhere, the sound of a piano melody began to drift in with the wind. Anette's figure was swept away as if erased by the wind. Soon, she turned to dust and vanished completely.
Heiner slowly turned around toward the source of the sound. Through an open window, the piano sound was flowing from inside the mansion. He moved toward it as if entranced.
With each step closer, the piano sound grew clearer. Reaching the window, Heiner stood blankly, gazing inside.
A girl in a white dress was playing the piano inside the room. Her small hands moved across the keys like waves. A gentle melody rose and fell amid softly rippling sunlight.
It was a figure he had never been able to erase from his memory.
Heiner suddenly looked down. A lush bouquet woven of stachys and hydrangeas sat on the windowsill.
Swoosh—.
A wind blew again from afar. The petals of the bouquet swayed. Suddenly, the piano sound cut off. The girl turned her head toward the window.
He woke from his dream.