Episode 96
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Some dreams were better never woken from.
Rijan suddenly opened her eyes. She blinked her stinging eyelids once, then, startled by the bewilderment that rushed over her, quickly shut them again. It was strange. Everything was so strange that fear jolted through her.
She was someone who could no longer open her eyes and look upon the world. Someone who must not. Unless there was another new world after death, that was surely how it ought to be.
She had to fall asleep again.
She had to sleep forever.
She closed her eyes and urged unconsciousness to take her, but the ominous pounding of her heart thudded in her ears. Rijan could not endure it for long and slowly opened her eyes again.
Her vision was faintly bright. It was not sunlight. The only light was a gentle glow from somewhere, soft enough not to sting her eyes, so she could not tell whether it was day or night.
With her dim sight, Rijan gauged her surroundings.
She was used to a body in pain.
She was used to filthy surroundings.
She was used to cramped spaces without so much as a proper place to lay one body down, to noise where curses and orders and quarrels tangled together, to the smell of all manner of unclean things stagnating in one place as they rotted or festered, and to cold that seemed to slice into the flesh.
But she was not used to a clean room with a high ceiling.
She was not used to warm, soft bedding.
She was not used to a silence that soothed the ears.
She was not used to the peace felt in the warmth of embers crackling with steady rhythm. Even if she had once been more or less used to it, she was no longer used to it now.
Had she perhaps been dreaming a long dream?
But the memory of being carried out of the camp by the guards was so vivid, and the ridicule and malice of the citizens who cursed at her, tore at her hair, struck her, and kicked her were so clear. To think all of that had been a dream...
Rijan lifted her wrist near her face and checked it. The rope that had bound her wrists had been full of fine barbs. Sure enough, reddish scratches had bloomed there as if she had been scraped by thornbushes. When she groped around her neck, the marks of the noose that had strangled her were unmistakable as well.
Then all of it had happened to her.
Creeeak...
All of a sudden, she heard the very faint sound of a door opening and closing. She could infer it somewhat from the high ceiling, but the sense of distance in the sound of the door made her grasp just how vast the bedroom was.
Was there perhaps a little baby asleep somewhere in this room?
The presence was so cautious that such a thought occurred to her. The soft, careful footsteps greatly resembled the prudence of someone trying not to wake a baby they had put to sleep with difficulty.
Following the sound, Rijan let her head drop to the side. Now, when she did not have enough strength to hold up her head, even such a trivial movement exhausted her.
Abruptly, the footsteps approaching the bed stopped. As the steady sound vanished, a strange tension settled over the room.
The change happened in an instant. The strides grew long and hurriedly crossed the room.
Rijan only blinked as she met, one after another, the movement of the two legs rushing toward her, the frame that stretched so high it was hard to take in at a glance, the uniform tailored perfectly to that frame, the chest that had begun to heave with rough breaths, and then the dark-blue gaze sweeping over every inch of her face.
At that moment, she was certain.
This was not reality.
It could not be reality.
There was no way it was reality.
It was an extension of a hallucination.
Ezekail Valdemaera... There was no way that man would be looking at her with a haggard, gaunt face as if he had stayed awake for several nights, wearing an impatient expression.
“...Rose.”
Rijan doubted her ears. She had heard the name she had abandoned, the name that should have died.
Her airway tightened painfully.
She herself did not know where such strength came from. Rijan propped up her upper body on her elbows and sprang upright. A boundless terror lashed at limbs that would not move properly.
As she lost her balance and was about to tumble down from the bed, Ezekail caught her and held her.
“Rose!”
No.
She was not Rose.
He must not call her Rose.
With what feelings had she abandoned that name and run away?
So Rose was no more.
She shook her head wildly. Her tilted vision made her dizzy, so she closed her eyes altogether and denied it with all her might.
She was not Rose. He had mistaken her for someone else.
Though she did not know where this was, though she had nowhere else to go, she blindly struggled to escape his arms.
“Breathe. Breathe slowly.”
Until she heard his words, Rijan had not even realized she was panting. The pressure in her heart, unable to keep up with the speed of her breathing, was severe. Dizziness spun through her.
The man’s hand stroked down her back at regular intervals, guiding her into slow breaths.
“Don’t think of anything else right now. Slowly.”
Don’t think of anything else?
Was that even possible?
The memory just before she lost consciousness was the gallows. The shock of her entire weight hanging from a single noose around her neck as the chair beneath her feet was taken away was still vivid. Before being hung from the gallows, she had heard the last news of her parents, who had been dragged to the northern prison camp, their lives or deaths unknown. At that moment, she had realized anew how formidable this man’s family was. The process of destroying one family had been as easy as pressing down on an ant and killing it.
And was that all?
At the prison camp, she had been starving all along, yet could barely swallow food because of the burns that scorched her throat, and around the time she was first imprisoned, the child in her womb had died and come out of her, spilling bowl after bowl of blood.
The scenes that occupied her mind the moment she came to her senses were so full of the stench of blood. How could she possibly think of nothing?
That was what it meant to still be breathing.
There was no way to be free from thought, from memory. Because today had come only after passing through those times, every minute and every second.
Because she knew nothing of what had happened after her breath was cut off and she lost consciousness, she needed some time to grasp reality. But as the scenery of the room she had thought unfamiliar gradually came into view, Rijan revived a fragment of dim memory.
It was not a place she did not know. She had once entered this room before. And if her guess was right, this was not a place where she belonged.
How could it make sense for her to be lying in the Valdemaera mansion, and in his bedroom at that?
Her heartbeat climbed steeper and steeper. At the unusual sign, Ezekail hurriedly tugged the bellpull. The doctor who had been summoned came running.
“It seems she opened her eyes while I was away for a moment, but she can’t breathe properly.”
“One moment, young lady. Look at me.”
Having grasped Rijan’s symptoms, the doctor drew a large handkerchief from his breast. The instant that handkerchief came to cover her mouth and nose, she remembered the black cloth the executioner had placed over her face. The mere sight of it brought on a sense of suffocation. After that cloth had covered her, she had already experienced firsthand what it felt like to die.
“Get that handkerchief away from her, now!”
Noticing Rijan’s face turning pallid, Ezekail covered her nose and mouth with his own large hand instead of the handkerchief.
“Come to your senses, Rose.”
Her resistance intensified at the wrongly called name.
“Rijan.”
Ezekail quickly called her by another name.
“...Rijan, don’t let go of consciousness. You were unconscious for two days.”
The makeshift measure he had taken worked, and Rijan’s breathing slowly returned.
As soon as she barely steadied her hazy mind, Rijan pushed at Ezekail’s chest. Only after supporting the back of her head and laying her back down on the bed did he allow himself to be pushed away by that pitiful strength. But the moment his hand left her, Rijan rolled over again and tried to get out of bed.
Even though he had changed his mind and saved her life, there was no particular relief at having survived. Rather, her anxiety and guilt were even greater.
“I heard your neck was injured. May I examine your neck, young lady?”
The doctor tactlessly interjected. Of course, if there was an opportunity, Ezekail did intend to have him treat Rijan, but now was not the time. Holding the motionless Rijan together in his arms, Ezekail ordered the doctor out with a glance. The doctor withdrew.
Ezekail firmly supported her body, which was half-leaning out of the bed, then looked down at her back. Fearing that the cold from life in the prison camp had seeped into her very bones, he had warmed the room and also found thick, cozy winter clothes for her to wear. They had belonged to his mother. The Valdemaera family had always been one where daughters were exceedingly rare, so there were no women’s clothes except the ones his mother had left behind.
The mother Ezekail remembered was always someone who ate little, lacked much enthusiasm for anything, and was languid. She had been so slender that people wondered how she had ever conceived and given birth with such a figure, and yet even that mother’s clothes hung loose and excessive on Rijan.
Rijan’s struggling body, like a winter tree, abruptly went still. Following Rijan, who had suddenly quieted, Ezekail shifted his gaze. She was staring blankly at the rifle leaning sideways beside the bed.
“I didn’t leave it there to hurt you. It’s just a habit of mine.”
He explained himself, feeling a bitter aftertaste.
Perhaps she had recalled the memory of him raiding the inn with rifle-bearing subordinates at the fore. Or perhaps she had been crushed by the nightmare of the past, when Akenaus’s coercion had forced her to set foot in this bedroom against her will. Ezekail soothed Rijan so she would not be frightened.
But suddenly, another possibility occurred to him.
He stroked a long hand down Rijan’s dry, wasted back and asked,
“Do you want to shoot?”
After asking, Ezekail added calmly,
“Then shoot. It’s all right.”