Episode 79
At the preface dropped so casually, Rizan stared at the man with eyes full of questions.
She did not know what he meant.
Nor did she know what he intended.
“I’ll say this first. You cannot be released with a warning. Your crime is far too clear, miss.”
She did not deny the crime Merlo had pointed out. She did not look wronged, nor did she seem inclined to make excuses. Whatever she heard, she merely accepted it as her due.
Merlo watched her reaction, which showed no great agitation, then mussed up his own hair in frustration.
“……Why did it have to be me who came on that errand that day?”
He lamented to himself. It would have been better if the errand boy who had caught the butler’s eye that day had not been him. For no good reason, he had set foot in the camp and ended up learning, against his will, a secret he could have gone to his grave without knowing.
“I don’t know what kind of person you are at all, miss.”
He had come in secret intending to calmly and methodically have a conversation with her, but the gulf between the woman he had witnessed in Derosa and the woman he had found in the camp was so vast that his confusion would not settle. If only they could at least converse, exchange questions and answers, it might be easier to organize his thoughts, but even that was impossible, so the subject kept leaping about without order.
“You seem like an extremely frightening person, and also like someone whose thoughts are utterly impossible to read, and from another angle, like someone who could not quite bring herself to turn away from her last shred of conscience. Honestly, if I had been in your position, miss, I wouldn’t even have dared to appear before him. I would have run away, far, far away. With the intention of hiding from Valdemaera for the rest of my life.”
And yet the woman before him had gone to find Ejekail. Beside the man she had blinded, she had lived through winter, spring, summer, and autumn near to winter.
“Do you understand? That was a tremendous deception.”
Even at Merlo’s reproach, the woman only nodded silently. She stubbornly insisted she was healthy, but after blankly staring at her face, which to anyone’s eyes showed the pallor of a serious illness, Merlo let out a long sigh.
“But…… I also know how hard you tried to help him in Derosa.”
A promising officer had lost his sight and plunged into a state worse than death, so in a way, she had murdered Ejekail once in society’s eyes.
However, the woman had tried to make up for the sin she had committed. She must surely have expected how dangerous her situation would become once Ejekail opened his eyes. Moreover, given that she had received the man’s love and trust, she could have secretly manipulated things from the middle and remained a good person to the end beside the blind man, enjoying a life of wealth, yet she faithfully did her part as an assistant.
Ejekail’s recovery of sight was not merely a restoration, but a rebirth of his life. Could anyone say the woman had made no contribution to that process?
“……Madam Serva, too, and the people of the Derosa estate think you saved him, miss. They say that if you had not appeared at the right time to help, he would not have been able to return to the main house so quickly. This contradiction is giving me quite the headache.”
After clinging to him for nearly a year and ultimately saving him, the woman had abruptly left empty-handed. And then she was imprisoned in the camp, paying for her sins anew.
“So I was thinking of speaking to His Excellency.”
After that long preamble, he finally reached the main point.
Tension entered Rizan’s eyes.
“Of course, you are a criminal proclaimed by Valdemaera, miss, but since you helped him recover, one cannot say you have no merit at all. If I reveal the whole story, His Excellency might reduce your sentence to lifelong labor instead of execution.”
It was an offer to at least save her life. Rizan was a little surprised by Merlo’s unexpected kindness.
While she could not easily answer, Merlo’s quiet whisper continued to fill the silence.
“Even so, isn’t it better to live somehow than to die? Not for your sake, miss, but for his. If by any chance he learns whose hand you died by…… I don’t even want to imagine it. Who on earth would handle the aftermath?”
At the dangerous possibility Merlo hinted at, her mind suddenly snapped clear. It was as if she had been doused with cold water. Rizan froze, pale.
There was no certainty that the head of Valdemaera would show her favor, and even if he did, there was no guarantee he could safely persuade Ejekail, who did not hide his grudge against her. If, in the process, her secret were to slip to him in the wrong way……
“It would be troublesome if you made a convenient choice on your own when I haven’t agreed to it. We still have a score left to settle, don’t we?”
“You must be a child of Akenaus, then?”
She had already hurt him deeply, and she had received hurt in return. Was there any need to increase the wounds further here? Even Merlo, who had come to find her in his own way out of consideration for the brief connection they had in Derosa, recognized the deception she had committed, so Ejekail himself would naturally be plunged into an even greater confusion.
She had already tormented him enough. She also had no confidence that she could endure the fallout that would come crashing down beyond what had already happened.
It was better for him not to know who she was. For that to happen, she had to remain, to the end, the criminal who had harmed Ejekail Valdemaera.
Rizan looked up at Merlo. Holding his gaze, she calmly shook her head.
“Are you telling me not to?”
Merlo doubted his own eyes. Unable to believe the answer he had seen, he asked again.
“Do you not want to live?”
If one spoke simply of life and death, who would not want to live?
But this matter had already gone beyond the question of living or dying.
The memory she had left behind, hoping only that it would remain wholly beautiful, would fade and be damaged the moment the truth was revealed, and he would tremble with a sense of betrayal. There was no reason to pointlessly drop him into the abyss again by revealing to the man who had been grinding his teeth with vengeance that he had whispered love and shared warmth with the woman who had made him that way.
Moreover, if Rizan did not shoulder as much as she could, her parents would have to pay the price with their older, more worn-out bodies.
Rizan glanced sideways at the prisoners who were of an age with her parents. When she superimposed her family’s faces onto theirs, the conclusion became clear.
It was a hundred times better for her to be the only one in the camp.
She hid her faintly trembling body beneath the blanket. Calmly quieting the clamor in her heart, she shook her head once more.
She did not want her life spared.
Ejekail must never know her to the very end.
“Truly?”
Even when Merlo asked twice, three times, the woman’s eyes did not waver. It was clear she had already made a firm decision.
She would simply remain in the camp and pay for her sins.
“……Very well. I understand.”
Merlo accepted it and rose.
At this point, he had done all he could.
They had exchanged a few conversations in Derosa, and he also remembered receiving her help, so he had meddled beyond his place; in his own way, he had done what courtesy required.
“Ha, this is, truly. How should I put it?”
But when the moment of parting actually came, Merlo found himself stammering before he knew it.
“I’ve been through many farewells, but this is the first time one has left me as speechless as today. Telling you to be well doesn’t suit, and saying I’ll see you again later……”
was something only possible if she were alive. Knowing all too well the ending that awaited her, saying it aloud would sound far too cruel, so Merlo cut off the end of his sentence and swallowed it down.
“It would have been truly nice if the farewell we exchanged at the Derosa estate had been the end. I thought that even after you left that place, miss, you would live an ordinary, diligent, good life. I truly did.”
Ordinary, diligent, good.
Not a single one was a word that suited her. Rizan bit her lip. From the moment she faced her sin, she had long since abandoned every expectation for the future.
“But there is one thing I’m curious about.”
Just before he left without even managing a proper farewell, Merlo turned slightly and looked back at Rizan.
“Do you not regret it, miss?”
Regret? Did he mean whether she regretted refusing his offer to save her life?
The meaning of the question was vague. Seeing Rizan’s expression, which showed she did not understand, Merlo added an explanation.
“Ah…… I mean, saving him. It’s not the sort of thought I should have as someone belonging to that place, but since in the end you were captured and brought here like this, I wondered if perhaps you regretted the choice you made in the past. It makes me wonder whether, if you could turn back time and return to the past, you might make a different choice than you did then.”
Rizan stood there looking down at her shadow.
Well, if she could turn back time and return to the past…… would she turn away from him then? Would she hide from Valdemaera, hoping her sin would never be discovered?
The answer came surprisingly easily.
She did not think so. Even if a chance came to change her past choice while keeping the memory of this day, she would once again take that old stagecoach and head for Derosa.
And by an irresistible force, she would love him.
Even knowing it was the path to ruin in the end.