Episode 55
“You have worked hard all this time.”
Merlo bowed with perfect courtesy. With the elegant, refined manners rarely seen in such a rural place—the kind that, on the day they first met, had vaguely hinted at his origins.
“His Excellency is too occupied with official affairs to leave Cleris, but he is grateful for your devotion and efforts, my lady. Though I am unworthy, I offer you his thanks on his behalf.”
What had she meant to do when a day like this came?
She wanted to respond calmly, but her breath hurt, and all she could do was barely steady it. Though her eyes were certainly open, she could not see. The colors of the world vanished. Every sound around her tangled together in chaos. She felt lost and dizzy.
An early chill came pressing in.
It was a warning that winter was drawing near.
Winter. The season in which she had first met him, and the season in which she would have to part from him again.
When had time passed like this?
It felt like only yesterday that she had huddled in a cramped stagecoach, jolting along through the biting cold, and yet she had already spent spring, summer, and autumn with him. And before she knew it, they stood on the threshold of a second winter.
Rose cast her gaze toward the laundry room in the distance. The sensation of hot, damp steam wetting her face came alive again. On the day she had knocked on the mansion’s door, entered, and been assigned to the laundry room, she had been swollen with the hope that she would atone to him by doing any odd job at all. Looking back, the person she had been that day had simply been an ignorant fool.
Again and again, she found herself suddenly stopping and looking around every place where she stood.
When she had first entered the mansion, every part of it had been unfamiliar. When was it? She remembered hugging a basket full of laundry to her chest and carefully passing along the edge of a dark corridor, glancing toward the direction of his bedroom. Back then, beyond the tightly shut bedroom door had seemed terribly far away, as if it were another world. But now she had grown used to the daily life of falling asleep and waking beside him in that room.
On a night when thunder and lightning had struck down, the man who had held down Rose’s arms and legs and bound her fearfully while suspecting her identity had changed into a man who covered Rose’s ears whenever it rained at night. Not long ago, when she stirred in her sleep at the sound of rain tapping against the window, a firm, warm hand had fumbled up to her ear and covered it. With the noise shut out, Rose had fallen quietly asleep again.
Only after she opened her eyes in the morning did she properly recognize Ezekiel’s hand covering the side of her face. To a man whose ears were exceptionally sensitive, the sound of rain must have been far louder, and yet even then, he had tried to protect her peaceful sleep.
The power of time was frightening.
She had merely lived day by day, yet there was nowhere untouched by memories. It scared her. Wherever she set her eyes, there were too many Roses from some day gone by, too many Ezekiels from some day gone by.
But the past versions of them, too, were now goodbye.
Because when Dr. Bremen arrived tomorrow morning, the two doctors would begin preparing for the surgery.
Standing at the entrance of the mansion, Rose looked at the walking path they had made together one night when both rain and moon had vanished, when the two of them had walked through the garden alone. The tightly tied cord had sometimes been soaked by rain and battered by wind, yet it still held its place. But after tomorrow, it would no longer be needed.
That was right. It was the proper thing. She knew it in her head, and yet as her traces disappeared one by one—and as she faced the fact that she was someone who should not leave traces behind at all—an emptiness surged over her.
“You have a lot on your mind today, Rose.”
Ezekiel’s presence, having drawn close at some point, woke Rose from her thoughts.
“You’ve hardly said a few words all day. Why?”
“Ah……”
Had she? She hadn’t realized.
Rose forced her voice up.
“I was thinking about what it must have felt like for you to walk this path, Major. Do you remember that day?”
“I remember. How could I forget?”
Behind Rose, Ezekiel gazed into the deep darkness.
“There wasn’t a single day when being unable to see didn’t feel despairing, but that time was the one exception. The wind I felt after so long was refreshing. The air was clear, you were holding my hand, and I felt strangely excited and at peace.”
He smiled faintly.
“The shape I probably drew in my mind as I walked that day was more beautiful than the garden you saw with your own eyes.”
“What did you imagine?”
“You.”
It was an unexpected answer.
Rose looked up at Ezekiel in silence.
“I imagined your story. It was a rare day when you told me a great deal about yourself. You, who must have been a prim little schoolgirl, occasionally causing adorable trouble at school, and……”
Rose remembered it as well. That night, she had rambled incoherently about the relatively safe topic of school so Ezekiel would not suspect her identity.
“The many more seasons we would spend together from then on.”
“……”
“Sometimes I feel regret. If I had met you sooner, I wouldn’t have fallen into drink and opium, and I would have reached today a little more smoothly.”
“……Do you think it’s fortunate that you met me, Major?”
“Fortunate isn’t enough. Meeting you is the greatest luck of my life.”
What should I do?
What in the world should I do?
Her throat kept tightening. It was a day when she must not cry, when she did not even have the right to cry, and yet she wanted to. Rose soothed her stinging eyes and aching throat with a short, hollow cough.
Will I be able to endure it?
That moment when this man learns that the woman he called “the greatest luck of my life” is, in truth, the same person who brought him the greatest misfortune of his life……
Will I be able to withstand it?
“And soon, I will become the greatest happiness of your life as well.”
Ezekiel whispered.
He had just received the diamond ring, whose setting had finally been completed, through Mrs. Serva. For the surprise proposal, he had hidden the ring in secret. After that, time seemed to pass far too slowly, and it frustrated him. Once the surgery was over and his eyes recovered, he did not intend to endure even one more day.
“Next time, we’ll both have our eyes open when we walk this path together.”
Next……
Rose moved her lips and silently formed the word.
Next.
Will there be a next for us?
Every moment of today was more precious than a vague and even uneasy next time. Rose tried to look at his face as much as she possibly could. She tried to remember every part of it. Today might be the last day she faced Ezekiel’s whole face. While he underwent surgery and recovered, both his eyes would be wrapped in bandages, so she had to look at those dark, deep, blue-black eyes as much as she could now.
“Major. It’s all right for you to see light now, isn’t it?”
“It is. Why?”
“Then let’s sleep with the curtains open tonight.”
If moonlight poured in through the open window…… she would be able to look at his face longer. She would be able to look, and look again, all night long.
“Let’s do that.”
Her heart crumbled even more because of the man who nodded without knowing anything. Rose opened her eyes wide and held back her tears.
Bluish moonlight soaked the bed.
Rose cupped Ezekiel’s face in both hands. Ezekiel’s arms were already pulling Rose’s waist tightly toward him.
The lovers urgently sought each other’s lips. They pushed in their tongues, swept, and tangled. The sound of their soft inner lips clinging and parting was wet and cloying.
Rose tried to focus on the delicate sensations he gave her. Because whenever she thought this time would never come again, a vast fear kept surging in. If it was going to be like this, she would rather fall apart in utter disarray as quickly as possible.
The man’s lips, leaving marks on her collarbone, were warm. Rose pressed her shoulder closer so that the bruise would be stamped more clearly on her body.
Marks engraved by lips were as easy to make as they were to vanish. That sometimes made her sad. She wished they would truly remain for a very, very long time, and it felt wasteful and heartbreaking that they faded so quickly, like dreams erased from memory soon after waking.
Ezekiel’s lips, which had lingered for a while near her collarbone, slid lower. When the front of her garment, tightly knotted with cords, blocked his entry, he deftly untied the knots of her clothes. In the most efficient manner, with utter boldness. It was the result of having joined their bodies countless times.
The man who had devoured and studied every corner of her body over and over now knew Rose’s body better than she did herself. Where to touch, with what force and how much, so that she would not hurt—and also that she was especially ticklish in the area leading from her side to her breast, and near her waist.
Today, Rose also touched every corner of Ezekiel’s body. Just as he did to her, she caressed him, breathed in his scent, and stamped seals with her lips, engraving the memory of sensations into his body and into her own mind.
As she wove her fingers between his long, firm ones, she even counted the pulse beating at his wrist. Even with the surgery he had long awaited right before him, his bold heart beat steadily.
The reason she had counted his pulse was because of her own heart, so loud that she could feel the thudding vibration coursing through her blood vessels. If she could hear the surging beat herself, there was no way his ears would fail to detect it.
“I’m the one actually undergoing surgery, so why is your heart beating this hard?”
The man, who had buried his face against her raised breast and was licking up her soft skin, let out a soft laugh and gently patted the place over her heart.
Rose took strength from the excuse he had made for her and kept her mouth shut.
……Ah, no. Even so, there was one thing she wanted him to know.
She trembled because of the outcome of the surgery he had to undergo,
and she trembled because she was afraid of tomorrow drawing closer with every passing moment, but……
“I…… My heart always beat like this whenever I was with you, Major.”
Even the very existence of this man made her tremble beyond all help.