Episode 1. I Wish You Would Die in Spring
2023.08.01.
At times, the body’s memory is clearer than reason. Perhaps that is why the memories one wishes to forget remain like scars. If memories of the past are called scars, should what is newly carved over them be called bleeding wounds?
The fingertips of the woman lying upon the bed twitched and curled inward. Each time the man’s lips, which had climbed atop her body, touched and then parted, fiery flowers were engraved upon her skin. The woman’s nails, trembling and flinching as if convulsing, left long marks on the man’s arms and the backs of his hands, yet the man paid no heed and devoted himself solely to undoing her garments.
His lips reached her cheeks, the nape of her neck, her deeply hollowed collarbones, and her bosom rising and falling rapidly beneath. As the act deepened, a sigh escaped the woman’s lips.
It felt as though heat bloomed everywhere he touched. The skin he had just kissed, her captive wrist, the gaze that devoured her as if wallowing in her—all of it set her aflame. After disheveling her so utterly, he looked down at her as though all of this were none of his affair. Yet she knew. She knew that what was etched in those deep blue eyes looking down at her was unmistakable thirst.
Her swollen lips exchanging fevered breaths, her heaving chest, and her flushed, heated skin all stimulated the desire at the base of his dantian. If not for the reins of patience, his grip would surely have parted her legs immediately. He would probe her most intimate place, press his lips to skin no one had ever touched. Unable to be satisfied with merely leaving marks through kisses as trivial as child’s play, he would caress her as if to swallow her whole, engulfing her in shudders.
Even with such vivid desire, the man’s reason for enduring was simple.
“Your Majesty. Do I still look like her to you?”
“….”
The man’s brow, submerged in lust, faintly furrowed.
“You must know. She is dead. And what lies in Your Majesty’s hands is only me.”
Only I am by your side, and only I can quench your thirst.
At the serpent-like woman’s whisper, the man’s firmly closed lips parted.
“…Try calling the name.”
“Peter.”
She could feel the man’s patience wearing thin. This was the moment she liked best.
The moment she could trap in the folds of her skirt a man who seemed unshakable by anything at all, with a mere name.
The moment the madness and desire he had suppressed with such effort swept over him like a tidal wave.
“Peter.”
She whispered once more and traced the man’s skin. The hand caressing his fevered cheek resembled a serpent’s temptation. The man’s pupils wavered, and the moment she tried to open her mouth again.
“…Enough.”
The man fiercely shook off her hand. His face was smooth and unmarred, yet she knew well that this was the limit of his patience.
The man’s low voice scraped past his throat and flowed out savagely.
“Do not act impudent. Remember why you are here. What your reason for existence is.”
“Of course I know. I am Your Majesty’s doll, after all.”
A doll to replace the man’s dead lover. A plaything thrown to him to quell his madness.
She existed solely to whisper sweet words.
And so today as well she whispered honeyed words into the man’s ear, but the words that returned were cold.
“There will never come a day when I truly want you.”
Because he desired her, yet loathed that fact terribly.
Kissing the man amid that contradiction, the woman, Lowell, smiled inwardly.
No, you will come to love me.
And I will leave the moment you love me most.
‘Remember this well, Peter.’
For I shall become your most brilliant madness. A sleepless white night.
* * *
There are things that invariably come to mind when one stands at the abyss of life. They are commonly called the flashing before one’s eyes, or so they say. Society called the attachments to life that one cannot let go of even just before death by such a name.
Lowell’s life flashing before her eyes was a boy. A boy with a face more beautiful than anyone she had ever seen. Peter, her childhood friend who had loved Lowell more than anyone else, and whom Lowell had loved.
Whenever she prepared for death, the same voice always rang in her mind.
[I wish you would die in spring.]
A voice as clear as the wind wandering through wheat fields. A memory replayed every time her eyelids fell.
[That way, I could place many flowers upon your grave.]
The boy in her memories always wore the same face.
Deep blue eyes nailed firmly upon her. A face without a hint of laughter, like a voice without inflection.
Even the corners of his mouth that, when their eyes met, he would force upward to show her faintly.
Lowell quietly looked at such a boy, smiled, and answered.
[I wish I could die in winter.]
[Why?]
[Snowflakes are flowers too.]
Then even if Peter did not come to visit, Lowell’s grave would be entirely a field of white flowers.
If one considered that the two were merely fifteen at the time, it was quite a funny conversation. Children barely fifteen discussing death.
But to Lowell and the boy, this conversation was not particularly unusual.
Because Lowell was terminally ill.
The youngest daughter of the Hessen family, who held the fief famous for being the warmest in the Belfga Empire—Lowell Hessen.
She had been frail since birth. Frequent minor illnesses were part of daily life, and falling ill every time the seasons changed was an annual event, but only up until then, Lowell was merely somewhat weaker than ordinary children.
But in the winter of her tenth year.
After suffering from a severe fever, everything changed.
It was the memory of death existing at the very bottom of Lowell’s memories. She could still vividly recall babbling deliriously from the fever and her entire body throbbing with pain. Lowell, who had not shed a single tear and returned home bravely even when she rolled down a slope and scraped both her legs, had sobbed loudly then because her whole body hurt and she was afraid.
Several times she walked the tightrope at the boundary between life and death. Fortunately, Lowell barely overcame the crisis.
But the problem lay elsewhere.
[You will not live more than five years or so, my lady.]
The reason was that her body’s major organs were damaged by the high fever and could not perform their proper functions.
Everyone in the Hessen family shook their heads, saying it could not be, that the physician must be a quack, but those words soon became reality. Lowell could no longer return to her previous life. Even a gentle breeze would cause her fever to spike frequently, and if she moved even slightly, her stamina would bottom out and she would often nod off.
The family’s wealth, any knowledge she had learned to become an excellent person when she grew up—none of it could help Lowell. Because her already ruined organs could not be fixed by anything.
Lowell’s parents inquired after physicians in every possible way and used all kinds of medicines, but the words that came back were similar.
[We are sorry, but there is nothing we can do. Honestly… even if you were to collapse tomorrow and never regain consciousness, it would not be strange.]
Each day, merely prolonging her life was the best that could be done, the physicians said. One could only hope to open one’s eyes tomorrow as well, and if one could not open them again tomorrow, it could not be helped.
The family eventually accepted Lowell’s fate.
From then on, Lowell grew distant from her family. Even living in the same mansion, the moments Lowell could see her parents and other family members were only when they occasionally came to visit her.
[Your brothers are entering boarding school now. We are busy because of that, so we do not have much time to visit.]
Lowell’s parents filled her side with expensive and fine things as they spoke this way, but Lowell could intuit the truth. That her parents did not visit was not because of her other brothers, but because it was painful to watch a daughter they would someday have to send away.
But Lowell was fine. Because she was not alone.
A noble boy from the capital who, like Lowell, was in poor health and had come alone to convalesce in the Hessen estate—Peter.
Though she did not know the full circumstances, Lowell felt a sense of kinship with Peter. What it meant for a child to come alone to convalesce without a single family member was obvious.
‘That child is being neglected too.’
A plight of being sick like herself, and being cast aside by family like herself.
It was hardly surprising that two children in similar circumstances became close friends.
But as the seasons passed, a gap formed between Lowell and Peter. Lowell gradually withered as time went on, but Peter’s condition showed steady improvement.
In the end, by the fourth year, Peter had become healthy enough to finish his convalescence and return. Unlike Lowell, who was visibly emaciated, her sickly pallor so evident.
Thus, this conversation too took place just before Peter left.
[…But Lowell, even so, I wish you would die in spring.]
At Peter’s words, Lowell tilted her head as if asking what he meant. When their gazes met, Peter took Lowell’s hand. The boy’s hand slid up her palm and gripped her wrist as if to bind it.
[Because after I return to the capital, I will come back to find you before spring arrives.]
[…I’ll be dead by then.]
[I’ll find a way to save you.]
At those words, Lowell’s eyes widened slightly. But the girl’s face quickly returned to normal. Lowell was far too exhausted to harbor hope in a single word. It was also hard to trust the words of a child as young as herself. How could a mere child find what her parents had searched for everywhere and failed to find?
Lowell spoke as if sighing.
[My parents sought out many doctors too. But they all said no one could save me. You know that too.]
[There is a way, Lowell.]
But Peter was firm.
[I cannot tell you the details, but… there is definitely a way.]
A way to extend one’s lifespan.