Episode 106
It felt as if his mind had stopped. Opium—this was surely because of the opium.
Ezekiel blamed the innocent laudanum. Otherwise, there was no way he would be this unable to come up with the right words to persuade Rizan. His head must have gone stupid. Against his father, all manner of words had poured out without restraint before he had time to weigh or calculate them, yet with Rizan, even a single sentence made him agonize dozens of times.
Instead of his stalled mind, Ezekiel drew out the most honest feeling lodged in his chest.
“……Rizan, I want to live my whole life atoning to you.”
Only now did he fully understand why Rizan had had to appear before him as Rose. Even if the sin she had committed had terrified her to the point of madness, she could never have endured it without atoning for it as far as her strength allowed.
“I want to take responsibility for you. Give me the right to take responsibility for you until the end.”
He wanted to keep Rizan where his eyes and hands could reach her and bear all her pain in her stead. Just as she had tried to bear him as much as she could.
But the answer Rizan gave him was a calm refusal.
You don’t need to do that.
“Why don’t I need to? You gave back to me what I had lost. I want to give back the things you lost, too. Just as you did for me.”
No. I lost them only because I had no right to have them.
“Right? What right is it that you don’t have?”
Rizan’s hand flinched to a stop.
“See? You don’t know either. I’m the one who got you pregnant without a thought, the one who drove you into deciding to take poison, the one who stole your hopes away one by one and slowly broke you down. In all of that, was there even one thing that happened by your will? So why would you—what right could you possibly lack?”
If she had demanded he kneel and beg, he would gladly have knelt as many times as she wished. He wanted to apologize to her. He wanted to regret it. But Rizan would not give him the chance to apologize, nor the chance to regret. She would not allow him the thing he desperately needed most.
“Stop excluding me from yourself. You hate me, don’t you? You resent me. Then you should live hating and resenting me. You should take revenge on me, too. Shouldn’t you?”
More than anything, the denial that the people they had loved back then no longer existed gripped his heart with bone-deep pain. Ezekiel took Rose’s hand and laid it over the left side of his chest, where his heart was pounding.
“Even now, can you say the person I love isn’t you? If I didn’t love you, there’s no way my heart would be beating like this. Rizan, it’s all right if you no longer love me. You can do that. You’re allowed to. But not me. I can’t.”
He needed a chance to set his wrongs right.
A chance to hold on to even a little of Rizan’s heart.
A chance that would make Rizan have to remain in this mansion.
His mouth opened on impulse.
“I found your parents, Rizan. They’re alive and safe.”
Their illness was not yet certain, so he had intended to watch them a little longer before telling her, but this was not the time to weigh the order of things. If he had any cards in hand, he had to lay them all down.
Rizan’s eyes widened.
“They’re in this mansion. They need to recover their health for now, so you can’t visit them yet, but later, let’s go meet them together. So you need to get well quickly, too. Don’t think about anything else.”
Anything was fine, so long as it became a means to keep her with him.
Ezekiel watched Rizan’s reaction closely.
Fortunately, his last resort worked.
Rizan quietly closed the book and went to sleep.
❖ ❖ ❖
Polina left Claris. It was to bring her husband back.
At first, Ezekiel had intended to send errand boys and a carriage to Polina’s house. But if a crowd of unfamiliar errand boys descended upon a man who could not even see and asked him to accompany them all the long way to Valdemaera, there would be room for suspicion. Polina was also worried whether the servants of the Valdemaera main house, who had never attended a blind master, would be able to properly look after her husband during the long journey.
After repeated discussion, he decided to have her pack for travel once more and send her along with Polina. He could only hope that Polina and her husband would arrive at Valdemaera even a day sooner.
Meanwhile, the traces of Akenaus and Levion, who had vanished, were still utterly obscure. Ezekiel issued wanted orders throughout the country. Within the Valdemaera mansion, the name Akenaus became forbidden.
On the other hand, there was good news as well. Rizan’s parents, who had been isolated in the annex and treated there, showed no signs of consumption.
Not long after being quarantined, both husband and wife developed severe coughs, fevers, and even a little blood in their phlegm, making the doctor tense. But after observing them closely, the doctor soon stated his opinion that it was different from consumption.
“The symptoms appeared early, and in addition, the prescribed medicine is having an effect. It appears to be pneumonia.”
Of course, pneumonia was a dangerous illness as well. Even so, it was far better than consumption, which developed slowly and usually left one to die a lingering death with little that could be done.
Their health had been weakened by the harsh conditions of the camp, so their recovery was slow, but Rizan’s parents gradually regained their strength. Though they suffered from frostbite, their condition was not grave enough to require their limbs to be amputated, and by heavenly fortune, they also avoided the consumption he had feared. By telling Rizan news of her family, Ezekiel succeeded in pushing medicine and food into her mouth without fail.
And at last, the doctor gave permission for her to visit them.
Rizan’s condition was far better than that of her parents, who still found it difficult to move outside their beds. She left the bedroom wearing an even thicker winter coat over a thick dress, armed to the teeth with a shawl, gloves, and a hat. They were all clothes Ezekiel had prepared for her. Not a single thing was her own.
“The annex is warm inside, but the way there is cold, so you have to dress warmly. You’re still not completely recovered, so don’t go too close.”
Her body had recovered enough for light walks, and in fact, following the doctor’s advice that it was not good for her to lie down all the time, she was walking a couple of laps around the bedroom every day. Even so, Ezekiel held her hand and escorted her as if making her lean her full weight on him.
As Rizan went down toward the mansion entrance, she glanced at her own appearance reflected in a window polished smooth like a mirror.
It was strange. Draped in all these luxurious clothes she had never even touched in her life, she felt…… burdened and unfamiliar. No matter how she looked, it did not seem like her. Nothing inside had changed at all, yet it felt awkward that a person could be altered so much by clothing alone.
“I did tell them about your health in advance. Otherwise, both sides would be startled.”
It seemed he had told them that her voice would not come out. Rizan silently nodded.
“There’s a greenhouse in that garden across from us, and if you go straight back from here, there’s a lake. Let’s go there together later.”
Perhaps intending to ease the tension of her simply walking down an unfamiliar path with her lips pressed tightly shut, Ezekiel pointed out a few directions around the mansion with his hand. They were not particularly important. Rizan only thought about how she would face her mother and father.
When she lied and parted from them, prepared to pay for her sins, she had thought she did not want to show them what she had become. When she was imprisoned in the camp, she had also thought it would be better if news never reached them, because she did not want them to discover her ruined state. But when she heard that her mother and father had been dragged to the northern camp, she had wanted, rather, to meet them. She had wanted to confirm with her own eyes that they were safe.
And now…….
“Why is your complexion so pale? Are you nervous?”
She did not really know what this feeling was.
It seemed like trembling, and like worry, and like excitement, and like sorrow.
Before she had even sorted out her heart, her steps had already brought her to the annex.
Ezekiel opened the annex door and led Rizan inside. Rizan had no difficulty finding the room where her parents were quarantined. There was only one room from which such warm air, as if the fire had been stoked fiercely, flowed out into the corridor.
Rizan stood before the door. A waiting servant knocked and announced the two visitors.
“Ri……zan?”
“Are you Rizan?”
In the aftermath of their terrible coughs, both of Rizan’s parents had voices that were dreadfully ruined. Seeing Rizan appear dressed like a precious young lady, her parents were greatly startled and looked over their daughter with wide eyes. All three of them had changed in many ways since the day they parted. Sickliness that had not been there before had appeared, their bodies had grown gaunt, and their clothes had changed.
Even so, they recognized one another at a glance.
They were her mother and her father.
She was their daughter.
In an instant, the conflict from moments ago vanished without a trace. She hesitated only briefly before, without realizing it, Rizan approached the sickbed with quick steps. It was her family, whom she had not seen in so long. Ezekiel’s warning that she had to visit from afar because their pneumonia had not completely healed had already been utterly forgotten.
“You can’t go any closer than this.”
But Ezekiel had been watching carefully, and the moment she crossed the safe distance, he immediately pulled her into his arms and stopped her.
“Yes, cough, you’ll suffer if you catch it too. Cough, stay there.”
Her mother waved her hand along with a small cough.
“How have you been…….”
“They said she, she can’t speak…….”
“……Is that true?”
Because of the coughing, the conversation could not continue properly. Trapped in Ezekiel’s arms, Rizan only took in her family’s haggard faces, again and again.
Her mother and father were the same. Though the joy of reunion was great, they seemed extremely confused, unable to understand how to accept this situation in which their daughter, who had surely been taken away as a criminal, was being treated generously by House Valdemaera and held in Ezekiel’s arms.