Episode 70
Mongkam must have been in a terrible hurry, for he could not even endure the brief wait while the servant went to summon Ejekail. Ejekail, who had been straightening his military uniform before leaving for work, found himself face-to-face with Mongkam, who barged in out of nowhere behind the servant.
“You found her?”
“Yes.”
At present, there were two women Ejekail was desperately searching for with all the manpower at his disposal.
Rose and “that woman.”
If they had found Rose first, he would have been endlessly delighted by the relief that he could finally quench this dreadful longing. Yet his fury toward that woman, who had somehow managed to hide away without a trace for all this time, would remain. And if they had found that woman first, his heart would race with the joy of at last carrying out the revenge he had sharpened like a blade, but the aching pain of having to wait indefinitely for Rose would feel hopeless.
In the end, no matter whom they had found first, joy and disappointment were bound to coexist.
It was a contradictory feeling. He wanted to hear the answer quickly, and yet, on the other hand, he wanted to delay it.
“……Which one is it?”
Ejekail asked in a low voice. At the subtle tension stirred by that composed tone, Mongkam also regained his calm.
“It is that woman. The minion with chestnut hair and hazel eyes. While making inquiries, we met a relative who said she had entrusted herself to them. They said they helped her hide without properly hearing the circumstances and gave us the address of the inn where she is staying.”
Ejekail’s eyes instantly turned cold.
❖ ❖ ❖
She sat before the mirror and looked into her own face.
When had it begun? A faint sense of incongruity had started to cling to this face she had always seen.
It was probably because she had spent so long brainwashing herself into being “Rose,” with red hair and green eyes. In the mansion where almost no light entered, darkness had wrapped around her like a veil, and so she had not been suspected even while living under a false appearance.
But not now, after she had fled the mansion.
No matter how one looked at it, this was “that woman.”
That woman Ejekail had sent search parties to find, the very culprit who had blinded a war hero at the brothers’ instigation, was there in the mirror.
The hazel eyes reflected in the mirror quietly met her gaze. They were the eyes that man had tried not to forget, even with the aid of opium.
“Are these eyes a clear green like fresh leaves, or a deep green like dark woods?”
His gentle voice came vividly back to life. For an instant, her heart ached.
“……Stop thinking about it.”
With trembling hands, she combed down her long, disheveled chestnut hair. But the moment her hand touched her hair—
“Once, I caught a glimpse of your red hair in a dream.”
The voice that flowed out again shook her memories.
It was not only her eyes and hair.
Her forehead, the bridge of her nose, the corners of her eyes, her cheeks, lips, the tendons of her neck, collarbones, shoulders, arms, legs, the backs of her knees, even the tops of her feet—there was not a single part his lips and hands had not touched.
Her fingertips spasmed finely. In the end, unable to do anything, she let both arms fall limply.
In truth, she had imagined countless times covering this body with other colors. But imagination was only imagination; in reality, it was useless. No matter what she did, she could not become Rose with red hair and green eyes.
“……Nor should I.”
She shook her head.
Even now, the soldiers must be closing the encirclement by the minute.
“I have to kill them, but I imagine hundreds of different ways in my head, wondering how I should do it.”
Together with the man who would never forgive her.
As she left the De Rosa mansion, she had laid out a plan for what she had to do, and in what order.
First, she found her parents. By then, after reading the letter Mongkam had sent, she had grasped the search party’s route and operation. Moreover, since she knew the locations of relatives to whom they might entrust themselves, she reached her parents before the search party did.
Her parents could not easily understand their daughter, who had appeared after so long and, without even taking the time to enjoy their reunion, insisted that they had to flee at once. But she desperately persuaded them. Valdemaera was chasing them, she said; for the time being, they had to hide deep in the countryside; they were paying particular attention to families who looked like travelers, so the three of them had to scatter separately; and they must not enter the capital or any large city where there were many people and rumors spread easily.
Thanks to her frantic excuses, woven with truth and exaggeration, she finally succeeded in making her parents flee. As for herself, she deliberately took a room at an inn in a nearby city with a fair amount of foot traffic.
There was no way to hide from Valdemaera forever anyway. She herself was living proof, having witnessed firsthand just how tenaciously that man achieved whatever goal he set his mind to.
But she was prepared to bear the price of sin alone.
She would carry both her parents’ sins and her own by herself.
She had committed enough deception. There was no need for any more transgression. Since she had abandoned “Rose” when she left his side, it was now time to pay the price in her true form.
“I intend to return exactly what I suffered. I plan to make them taste that poison themselves. Only then will they realize whom they tried to kill, and how.”
Yes. The day that would one day arrive had simply come at last.
Without even knocking, someone kicked the door roughly. They must have expected it to be locked.
But she had not locked the door. Now that she was already trapped in the room, fastening a mere latch would not change her situation.
Beyond the door that had swung wide open, a group of soldiers poured in and blocked every escape route. The soldiers, who had nearly lost a trusted commander to her poison, glared at her with vicious eyes. Some even aimed their rifles at her without a word.
The hostility the soldiers displayed choked her. She slipped her hand into her pocket and curled her palm tight.
“At last, I see the face I’ve been wanting to see.”
Suddenly, a familiar tone brushed against her ears. Startled, she slowly turned her head.
Pushing through his subordinates, he—Ejekail—was striding toward her.
He was the man she had longed for all this time. Though she had no right to miss him, her uncontrollable emotions had kept circling around him.
Had he opened his eyes safely?
Was he doing well?
Had he been angry at her disappearance, disappointed, or had he reminded himself of Valdemaera’s duty and decided to erase “Rose”?
Even after leaving, she had continued to worry and linger on him like that.
She was so glad to see him that, without realizing it, she nearly sprang up from her chair. If she had not endlessly impressed upon herself that neither her voice nor her footsteps could be exposed, she might have made a careless mistake.
After barely gathering her reason, she opened her eyes wide and faced him. Since she had been forced to flee the mansion before Ejekail removed his bandages, this was the first time she had seen him with his sight fully restored.
Ah…….
Suddenly, her breath caught.
Even in the midst of this, her heart trembled. Truly, shamelessly.
The man who had been compared to a beast and mocked for a time had vanished before she knew it. In his place, the silhouette of the war hero who had just returned from a triumphal ceremony was cast before her eyes.
He had returned completely to how he had been before.
……Thank goodness.
It was truly a relief.
Because that effort had not been in vain. And because perhaps, just a little…… perhaps just a little, this wrongdoing had been atoned for.
She did her utmost to take in Ejekail’s appearance with her eyes.
After today, it was a face she would never see again. So she had to carve it into her mind as thoroughly and carefully as possible.
So that an afterimage would remain in her memory. So that she could draw it even with her eyes closed.
He gave a faint sneer.
“Is it strange that the eyes you ruined with your own hands are fine now? You’re staring quite openly.”
The most magnificent man in the world looked down at her with the coldest eyes in the world. It was an expression he had never once shown to “Rose.”
Her heart throbbed.
She forced herself to look away.
The human heart was this cunning. She was buried in a longing she had no right to feel and dragging things out.
I mustn’t do this…….
She pushed open the cap of the glass bottle she had hidden in her pocket and was gripping with all her strength.
It happened in an instant.
Drinking down, in one swallow, the poison that remained half-full in the bottle.
It was as though she had swallowed a ball of fire. At the searing heat that traveled down her esophagus, she could not even scream.
So this was what it felt like.
Only now did she understand a little how much pain he must have been in. It was a pain so unfamiliar that it made her ashamed of her own greed in daring to dream of atonement.
That was when it happened. Ejekail, who had approached before she knew it, struck her hard in the solar plexus. Under that merciless, powerful blow, the poison surged right back up.
She hurriedly clapped both hands over her mouth. The poison she retched up had already been dyed bright red with blood.
“Ugh!”
Together with the salty taste of blood, the heat of the burn that had scorched her throat constricted her breathing. She hastily parted her lips, but what came out instead of a voice was only a horribly cracked groan.
“It would be troublesome if you made such a convenient choice on your own when I haven’t agreed to it. We still have calculations left to settle, don’t we?”
Hatred, honed to a chilling edge, poured into her ear.
Through her blurred vision, she looked at Ejekail.
Her consciousness wavered hazily, then flickered out.