Chapter 105

Episode 105

His heartbeat lurched with a thud. Memories of Lizan, who had willingly endured all manner of hardships to save him when he was addicted to laudanum, passed through his mind one after another.

Without realizing it, Ezekiel tried to hide the bottle of laudanum in his hand. But soon, he stopped.

Lizan—she saw the bottle of laudanum in his grasp, and yet her expression did not change. She did not turn her head as though she had seen something she should not have, nor did she leave even the edge of a reproachful glance, as if to ask whether he was touching opium again. She simply carried on with a natural indifference, as if thinking, He must be taking medicine.

Ezekiel laughed bitterly at himself.

I would do the same. A pathetic man like this—if I were you, I’d look away too. You’re right, Lizan.

You won’t look at me anymore, and even if I become addicted to opium again, you won’t worry about me.

In truth, all of that was fine. Lizan had no need to concern herself with him. She had done more than enough for him. The fact that he had reached again for the drug he had quit was entirely because his own will was weak.

Only, just—

Ezekiel looked at Lizan.

Before him were eyes without emotion, eyes so utterly exhausted that they had become like an inanimate thing.

Those eyes had loved him, had striven to save him while remaining right beside him, yet when he was blind, he had not seen them even once. And the realization that he would no longer be able to see them now choked the breath from him.

The revelation struck like a bolt of lightning.

Lizan, I have never once seen your smiling face.

Not when I couldn’t see, and not even now that I can.

Even so, around the time we walked through the night garden together at the winter manor, you were someone who could at least smile softly. I searched for you, believing I would let you live while smiling more brightly from then on. I wanted to see that smile with these eyes you returned to me. And now that I have regained my sight and can see you, you can neither smile nor speak.

And the person who made you that way was me……

He found himself unbearably detestable.

Ezekiel shoved the laudanum into his pocket. Hiding the expression that threatened to twist across his face, he pulled a chair over and sat down, feigning composure as if nothing had happened.

“Did I wake you?”

Lizan, her face buried in the edge of the blanket, let her head fall to the opposite side. It seemed she was trying to sleep again. As if she did not want to show him her face with her eyes closed in sleep, she turned away from him.

Just as he thought her posture looked terribly uncomfortable, Lizan soon broke into a fit of coughing. The unnatural twist of her neck had irritated her throat.

“Wait a moment. I’ll bring you water.”

Because her injured throat made her cough often, a water bottle was always prepared in the bedroom so she could drink whenever she needed.

Ezekiel walked over and brought the water. As he helped Lizan sit up and held the cup to her lips, Lizan did not move her lowered eyes in the slightest.

Their gazes simply would not meet.

Ezekiel looked at Lizan’s long, lowered eyelashes.

“Are you all right? How about some tea? I heard there’s a tea that’s good for the throat.”

Lizan shook her head.

He made an effort not to sigh.

I don’t know what I should do to make you look at me.

He had yet to do anything for Lizan, and already he felt as though he had lost his way from the very first step. It was difficult to force treatment on Lizan when she refused the doctor, but leaving her alone was even harder. If only she would open that mouth once, just once—but he had never imagined it would become such a painful, impossible task.

“Lizan.”

There was no way to cope with this desolation. Though he knew it was foolish to dwell on what had already happened, Ezekiel imagined other possibilities.

If only I had recognized you a little sooner.

If only I had paid a little more attention to your desperate pleas, to your appeal to spare at least your family.

If only I had been a little more broad-minded and brought a doctor sooner, as Mongkam advised.

In other words……

“……If only I had been even a little kind to you.”

What would have happened?

Would you not have lost at least a little less?

Among your child, your voice, your family, your hope and will for the future, your love, your laughter, your expectations—could you not have protected at least one?

Then they would not have had to take such a long and treacherous detour. Even if they had needed some time to lay bare and untangle the past knotted like a skein of thread, perhaps in the end, after overcoming it all, they might have been waiting with fluttering hearts for the child who would be born.

It was then that Lizan, who had been keeping her eyes lowered all along, suddenly lifted her head straight. With the sleep gone from her gaze, she looked at Ezekiel. Captured by gladness and surprise, Ezekiel hurriedly asked,

“What is it?”

Lizan looked around, then picked up the book he had set aside on the table near the bed. She flipped through the pages and began pointing with her finger at suitable words, one by one. Ezekiel was about to ask if he should bring her writing tools so she could communicate in writing, but he quickly swallowed the unnecessary suggestion.

Written communication would end too quickly. He wanted to look at Lizan as she focused on finding words for a long time, a little longer. If this process, too, counted as a kind of conversation, then he wanted to prolong this time with Lizan, who was expressing her own will for the first time in so long.

Above all, because the word major was not in the book, Lizan chose the word you instead.

It was like a dream, that way of referring to him. She had always addressed him carefully and respectfully as Major. He had asked her to call him by his name, casually and intimately, but Lizan, burdened by the difference in their status, had refused to the end. Though it was a word she had chosen because she had no other choice, his heart raced at an address that lowered the distance between them by a degree.

But that thrill lasted only a moment.

Don’t…… say you’re sorry.

She was answering his self-reproach.

Ezekiel assembled the words Lizan had pointed to one by one in his mind. Because he had lived with her in Derosa and grown accustomed to the way she spoke, he could hear what Lizan wanted to say transformed into her manner of speech and her voice.

― Please don’t say you’re sorry.

At the first words, delivered firmly, Ezekiel parted his heavy lips.

“……How could I possibly not say I’m sorry?”

He was sorry. Dizziness, desperation, fear, anxiety. Among the countless emotions that were difficult to describe in any defined language, the emotion that occupied the greatest place was, without question, regretful apology.

Tell me I paid the price for the sin I committed. That way, I won’t cling to the things I lost. You took the revenge you had every right to take against your enemy. That’s what you wanted to do, wasn’t it?

He wished she would rather resent him. He wished she would say she had become this broken because of him—whether she cried, grew angry, or struck him, anything would be fine, if only she would burst open the knot that had built up in her chest.

But Lizan did not. Though there was a hint that this moment was somewhat uncomfortable for her, she remained calm from beginning to end. In one sense, it seemed like resignation; in another, like transcendence.

In the situation I was given, I made the best choice I could. Whether it was right or wrong, wise or foolish, it doesn’t matter. So I don’t regret it. You shouldn’t regret it either. At every moment, you must have made the choice you yourself thought was best.

As if she had pondered it again and again all this time, she did not hesitate even as she poured out thoughts that were quite long. Though her pace was a little slow because she had to point to each word, that was only the time it took to select a more fitting expression.

You are simply someone who could not have done otherwise, and I, too, am simply someone who could not have done otherwise. As you said, ours is an ill-fated bond.

At last, Lizan reached her conclusion. Their connection was an ill-fated one. Ezekiel remembered it too. The words ill-fated bond had come from his mouth first.

“You may be sick of me, but I’m thoroughly sick of you too. It’s time we finally put an end to this ill-fated bond of ours.”

Ezekiel wanted to beat his past self with all his might for having so recklessly spat out words that wounded her. From the beginning, Lizan had been a woman who listened carefully to every word that came from his mouth. In that cold detention camp, with her body covered in blood, how many wounds had Lizan suffered as she turned his sharp mockery over and over in her mind each day? What had she felt as she buried the pain inside herself and settled her heart, all the way until she silently placed her neck in the noose?

He could not bear to fathom it.

Lizan, who had stopped her hand for a moment, looked up at him quietly. Meeting, unfamiliar, the movement of his eyes as they followed her precisely, she lowered her head again, grabbed a handful of her chestnut hair, and stared at it.

Ezekiel understood the meaning at once.

That was what she was saying. He had loved “Rose,” with red hair and green eyes, and she had loved the blind man of the northern manor.

The people we loved then no longer exist in this world. So there is no reason for me to be here either.

All at once, it felt as though the ground beneath his feet had caved deep into the earth.

It felt as though he had been struck by a blunt weapon. His mind reeled. He would have believed it if someone had told him the world had swayed for a moment. That was how great the shock was.

“Why would there be no reason for you to be here?”

Ezekiel planted his weight on both legs and stood upright. At the very least, he could not show Lizan an unsightly side of himself.

“You……”

You need to receive treatment quickly and get better.

You need to enjoy the things you rightfully should have enjoyed.

You need to stay by my side.

To him, all of them were obvious reasons. They were so valid that he had never even thought to ask “why.” But to Lizan, they were not obvious.