Episode 72
“Looks like you’ve finally come to your senses.”
It was around the time the evening light seeped in bluishly through the narrow window, no bigger than a palm.
She forgot even to breathe and stared up at him blankly. In that moment, she did not even feel the pain in her stomach.
Inside the filthy detention camp, he stood out with an alien clarity, dressed perfectly in an officer’s uniform. It was as if he alone belonged to a different painting.
“Thanks to the useless stunt you pulled, it seems the interrogation will take even more time.”
His cold voice stabbed at the entrance to her heart. She flinched, her shoulders trembling.
He looked genuinely displeased.
“You may know me well, but I know nothing about you. So there are a few things I need to confirm.”
Her heart dropped with a thud. Afraid he might read some suspicious sign in her wavering eyes, she quickly lowered her gaze.
He knew her. He knew her very well. So well that they had once been close and intimate enough to share a bed.
“Name.”
At the tone that suddenly shook her memories, her breathing grew ragged.
“Name.”
“……Rose. It’s Rose.”
On the night the rain poured down, when they first faced each other in the bedroom of the mansion, he had asked her name in a tone much like today’s. That day, she had given him the false name Akenaus had assigned her.
Thinking back on it now, she regretted it terribly. If only she could have left him even one thing that was truly hers. But back then, anxiety over the possibility of her identity being exposed had made her frantic to hide herself behind lies.
She had loved him in a false guise, and been loved in return.
“Why aren’t you answering?”
And only now, today, with the bars of the detention camp between them, had she finally come to show him her true face and reveal her real name.
“…….”
She opened her mouth.
She had wondered if it might happen, and this time as well, the sensation that came from inside her throat was chilling. The newly drawn-in cold air scraped painfully against her throat, and a fit of coughing burst out. The bitter, salty stench of blood rose from deep within her throat.
She hurriedly covered her mouth. After the harsh coughing had somewhat subsided, she glanced sideways at the inside of her palm and saw tiny red spots scattered across it.
Flustered, she hastily rubbed her palm against the hem of her clothes.
“Have you gone mute or something?”
His warmthless mockery immediately followed.
The hand that had been wiping away the bloodstains to keep them from his eyes suddenly felt awkward.
Ah, what was I thinking…….
The man who had handed her ointment, telling her to treat her own injuries first after they had struggled in a fight that was not quite a fight because of her withdrawal symptoms, had already parted from her in the land of winter.
The good memories of a time gone by had thoughtlessly thrown her into confusion.
“Letters.”
Even while she was briefly swept away by the aftereffects of memory and lost her bearings, Ejekail merely looked down at her without blinking an eye.
He asked again.
“Do you know how to write?”
When she nodded, Ejekail kicked a stone, one side of it sharpened to a point, with his foot. The stone passed through the gap in the narrow bars, rolled along, and struck her forehead.
“Your name. Write it on the floor.”
With trembling hands, she barely managed to grasp the stone and slowly began to draw strokes on the floor of the detention camp.
Screech, scrape. At the grating sound that scratched at the nerves, the other prisoners glared at her with murderous eyes, then shrank back when they became conscious of Ejekail’s expressionless face.
Because of the pain stirring up her throat and the inside of her stomach, strength left her grip again and again. Each time, the lines went awry. She scraped the floor again and added more strokes, but the result looked less like writing than like drawing.
At last, her name was completed in a dreadful scrawl. She dropped the stone as she was.
As if he found it hard to make out the name scratched so clumsily, he narrowed his eyes and slowly traced the strokes.
“Rizan. Is that right?”
Rizan.
It was the first time she had heard her real name in his voice. The man who had once called her false name, Rose, so tenderly that it made her heart flutter now spat out her real name full of contempt.
“That’s the name of a former royal.”
Commoners often named their children after the nicknames of princesses or princes born in the same era. Since they were names used by the royal family, they were beautiful to speak and to hear, and the intention was to wish that, by giving a child a good name, the child might live an elegant life like the original owners of that name.
Rizan’s parents had been the same. However, because taking the names of living members of the royal family would result in too many people with the same name, her parents had deliberately given her the name of a princess from the previous generation. So that she might be called something special and precious.
Looking back, it had been a name beyond her station.
After all, her life had ultimately flowed in a way that was neither special, nor precious, nor proud.
“I suppose I’ll have to add insulting the royal family to your charges.”
At first, it was hard to tell whether he was joking or serious. But he was not a man who would bother making jokes with her, so he was probably sincere. In any case, since she had harmed the son of the mighty House Valdemaera, one more charge added or not would make little difference to her imprisoned state.
“Shall I tell you an unfortunate piece of news?”
“…….”
“Akenaus will never return to Valdemaera again. You’d best give up early on any hope that he’ll save you.”
Rizan silently lowered her gaze.
So Akenaus has been expelled from the family.
Of course, she had expected that the moment he regained his sight, he would return to the main house and punish that man, but hearing it from Ejekail’s own mouth made it feel far clearer. For him to speak with such certainty meant he was confident there was no longer any danger to his person from his brother.
But her own future, tied together with Akenaus, was just as distant and hopeless.
She had long since accepted the fact that it would be difficult for her to survive. Before the pursuit unit captured her, she had prepared herself in her own way. But she had never crossed the line between life and death morning and night like a soldier, so there was no way she had the courage to face death with that much composure.
She had been a little—no, in truth, very frightened, and so she had tried to drink the poison she possessed and pay the price he wanted. If it was an end she had to meet anyway, it would be better to finish it quickly, in an instant, while she still had a little courage left. Ejekail, too, had gnashed his teeth and said he would bestow the same pain upon her, so inwardly she had guessed that it might be a way to satisfy him in its own fashion.
But her attempt to choose death, to at least make it easy, had failed. Her end had fallen entirely into Ejekail’s hands, and now, no matter what kind of final moment awaited her, she had no right to refuse.
Once, she had loved him more than anyone, but now they had become strangers more than anyone. That indifferent expression and those cruel words hurt her heart so terribly.
She needed to practice erasing her feelings, yet the task felt so dizzying that it only left her distressed. With her mind and body constantly crumbling, it was difficult even to stay conscious for the moment.
Rizan silently pressed her lips shut.
In the past, she had found Ejekail’s unusual ability to distinguish people by the sound of their footsteps alone truly fascinating. Of course, depending on the other person’s build, Rizan could also sense a certain difference with her ears, but Ejekail had been especially good at detecting her. It was not as though there had been no maids of similar physique in the mansion if one looked, yet when it came to Rizan alone, he had perceived her with peculiar delicacy.
But now, Rizan felt as though she, too, could recognize his footsteps. As she watched Ejekail stride out of the detention camp, the orderly, unruffled rhythm of his steps and the weight that called forth a strange tension struck her ears with particular clarity.
As if he had no reason to hurry and nothing to regret, he left without looking back even once. With no strength to raise herself, Rizan curled on the floor and watched the man’s retreating back. Not only she, but all the prisoners followed Ejekail’s steps with their eyes.
So that is what presence means.
It was an overwhelming pressure that left her no choice but to think so. Rizan listened until his footsteps grew distant and could no longer be heard at all. Then, the moment she turned her head without thinking—
The prisoners’ gazes had grown fiercer than before.
Someone spat first, right in Rizan’s face.
“I wondered who on earth had blinded the war hero, and it was this bitch?”
“No matter how blinded by a man she was, there are people you just don’t harm. If you’re a citizen of Astrie, you owe your life to Major Valdemaera…….”
“No wonder she was dragged in looking like that.”
“Isn’t that thing a madwoman? A madwoman.”
Hostility flew at her from every direction. With Ejekail’s unexpected appearance, Rizan had become the public enemy in an instant. Unlike the other prisoners, whose crimes were hard to know unless they revealed them directly and who could easily cover them with lies, her wrongdoing had been made public before the whole world, leaving no room for doubt.
“A bitch who deserves to die.”
“Ah, why doesn’t she just crawl into a corner? What’s she doing sprawled out in the most comfortable spot?”
She had only remained lying where she had first been thrown because the pain made it impossible for her to move carelessly, but several prisoners deliberately stepped on her as they passed or threatened her with kicks.
It was a fear she had not thought of before entering the detention camp. Aside from Akenaus, who had seized upon the weakness caused by her parents’ theft and used it to control her, she had never experienced being one-sidedly tormented by anyone else. At school and at the mansion alike, she had gotten along with people without much trouble. Though she had not been lively enough to be close with everyone, she had served as the elder sister upon whom the younger girls in the dormitory leaned, knowingly or not. Even at the mansion, she had often heard that thanks to her, Ejekail’s sharp wariness had softened considerably.
There had certainly been such ordinary days in her life, too, and now those days felt like a previous life.
Still holding her throbbing stomach, Rizan crawled away on all fours and took refuge in a corner.