111.
Ten years ago, late at night.
Bella, still bent over her embroidery by the light of the lamp, spoke without turning around.
“Karl, one of these days the people next door are going to mistake you for a thief and beat you with a club.”
Karl, who had been quietly opening the window and sneaking into the room, flinched.
“How did you know?”
Without a word, Bella rose and strode over to the window, then began smacking Karl across the back.
“Shall I be the one to beat you today? How dare you climb through the window like this?”
“Ow, ow, that hurts, Bella! Didn’t you see me wink at you during the day? I was telling you I’d come tonight, huh? I winked like this. I’m sure I saw you smile when you saw it……”
Bella stared at Karl as if he were hopeless, then took off her glasses and pressed at the space between her brows.
“What’s wrong? If you’re tired, do you want to rest?”
“This is all because of you!”
She had not even raised her hand to hit him, but when Karl startled and hunched his shoulders, Bella finally let out a laugh of disbelief.
“But Bella, didn’t you miss me?”
Karl trailed after Bella as she returned to her seat.
“You really didn’t miss……”
When Bella suddenly turned around and quietly wound her arms around his neck, Karl’s ears flushed bright red.
Unable to hide the violent bob of his Adam’s apple, or the redness that had already spread down to the nape of his neck.
Karl lowered his head to Bella as if drawn to her.
A little while later.
Lying at an angle with his arms wrapped around Bella’s waist, Karl murmured.
“Isn’t it dull, living alone?”
“Not really. Not particularly? I’m used to it now.”
“I’m lonely……”
“The lord is at the mansion, and there are so many live-in servants besides. How can you say that, Young Master?”
“Young Master? Why are you suddenly calling me that? I’m hurt.”
Before Bella could even open her mouth, Karl pulled her into his arms and acted spoiled.
For someone so big, he held her so tightly she could not move an inch, while pretending to be weak with his words.
It was a trick obvious to the eye, but Bella knew she would end up letting him get away with it.
The sole heir of one of the foremost noble families in the area, and a commoner orphan who had even lost her grandmother, her only family.
He knew, and Bella knew as well, that theirs was a relationship tilted absolutely to one side.
But from the day they had first met when they were very young, they had treated each other as if they did not know that fact.
Avoiding people’s eyes, they joked in valleys, in fields, and in alleyways; they chased each other and ran, then lay side by side watching the setting sun.
Even after whiskers began to grow on the boy’s chin, and curves began to show on the young girl’s body, the two of them still held each other’s hands tightly and looked only at one another, as if they were still children from the days when they knew nothing.
Even when the boy, at last unable to hide his feverish face, kissed the girl on the cheek.
The two of them seemed as though they would never change.
But by the time their clumsy feelings had become whispered words between lovers, and they had begun to picture their future without even realizing it, an unfamiliar reality thrust its head before them.
“It seems the young master of the Paraton family is going to have a fiancée.”
“Goodness, is he already that age? It’s not a bad thing to decide early.”
“The lord’s illness must be more serious than we thought. Seeing as they’ve chosen a marriage partner so quickly.”
“I hear she’s a very pretty and kind young lady.”
“Now we only need wait for the day a new member joins the Paraton family.”
Something struck the feet of the people who were chatting among themselves.
When they looked down, several tomatoes had rolled over.
“Oh, Bella? What’s wrong?”
It was Bella who had dropped the tomatoes she had brought in her basket, one after another, onto the road.
With a face gone white, Bella backed away from them like a child caught doing something wrong, then fled.
“Don’t come anymore.”
“What’s wrong, Bella?”
When Bella’s attitude changed overnight, Karl forced a smile and tried hard to turn the mood around.
But in the end, standing before the locked window and tightly drawn curtains, Karl was seized for the first time in his life by the fear that he might lose someone.
From that day on, the Karl who had always smiled affably, kind to everyone and cheerful, disappeared.
At his cold and sharp demeanor, a chill wind blew through the Paraton mansion day after day.
At the end of those storm-like ten days, Karl, having completely torn out by the roots the marriage talk that had only ever amounted to exchanged words, prepared a large bouquet and went to see Bella.
Bella could not accept Karl, who clung to her in tears, as she once had.
The moment she tasted reality, Bella felt as though she had awakened from a dream.
This matter had somehow been resolved, but what about next time? And the time after that?
When that order came, where would Bella’s turn be? She would not even be able to stand in line.
Karl took something from his breast and held it out before Bella.
“What is this?”
“The Heart of Merinis.”
“That’s part of the Viscount’s collection! Why did you bring it to me? Put it back at once.”
“Father gave it to me. He told me to give it as a gift if I ever found a woman I loved.”
“……”
“And there’s a legend tied to it. They say that if you offer it to the one you love, that love can continue forever, even after death.”
Karl opened the wooden box and took out the Heart of Merinis.
The mysterious mineral said to be found only rarely beneath the roots of the rare plant Merinis, and therefore called the “Heart of Merinis,” was a smooth black stone drawn from atop a velvet cloth.
Karl quietly placed it in Bella’s hand, then knelt down at her feet.
“Bella, I swear.”
“……”
“I, Karl Paraton, will not forget you, even in death.”
Just then, they sensed someone in the alley. It seemed to be the people next door. Startled, Bella tried to pull Karl to his feet, but Karl did not budge.
And he said,
“Bella. Will you marry me?”
Fortunately, the neighbor did not see them and went inside the house, and the sound of the door closing followed.
Bella hesitated for a long time, but Karl did not waver, remaining there to the end as he waited for her.
He was someone who had always stayed by her side since they were very young.
She had been sitting alone on a rock, eating lunch, when a boy she had never seen before approached her before she knew it, stared at her, and smiled brightly.
‘Hello?’
The moment she faced that white, radiant smile, her heart had strangely begun to race.
And perhaps she might continue to see that smile from now on, too.
At last, Bella nodded.
Karl sprang to his feet and embraced Bella.
“But this is too precious. I can’t accept it.”
“Father knows you, too. And now you’re my wife, so what can’t be done?”
Held in Karl’s arms, Bella replied with flushed cheeks.
“Not yet.”
“……Right. Not yet.”
Karl grinned, then took Bella by the hand and tugged her along.
“Then how about this? We’ll hide it somewhere only the two of us know. On the day we hold our wedding, let’s go find it together. What do you think?”
Hand in hand, the two of them ran down the dark alley.
But at dawn the next day.
Viscount Paraton passed away.
It was a sudden misfortune.
Bella could still remember vividly what the weather and even the air had been like that day.
With a gentle gaze but a firm expression, Karl held Bella’s hand and said,
“It’ll be all right.”
At the door, they parted for a short while like that.
And one day became two, two days became three, and in that way, a year passed.
Karl did not return.
He had disappeared.
One day, at last, distant relatives of the Paraton family began gathering one by one, and they decided to hold Carl’s funeral.
It was winter, yet strangely, rain fell that day.
Bella stood quietly at the very end of the mourners, letting the rain soak her as she looked up at the platform.
There was an empty coffin there.
Bella had no right to stop this funeral.
No one even knew that she was entitled to stand in the front row.
On the way back after the funeral ended, Bella suddenly broke into a fit of coughing.
Dropping her umbrella and sinking to the ground, Bella saw bright red blood amid the raindrops running over the pavement.
The ringing in her ears and dizziness began, along with a cutting pain in her chest, breath that fell far too short, her vision narrowing as her limbs stiffened rigidly.
Bella trembled all over in shock.
These were symptoms Bella knew all too well. She knew, too, that it was an illness that slowly ate away at a person.
Because her own grandmother had closed her eyes to this disease.
Bella burst into sobs, unable to tell whether she was crying because of her own death that had been foretold, or because of her lover’s death, pronounced as of today.
Passersby helped Bella up and brought her home, but not one of them had any idea what she was crying for.
And so the years passed in vain, like water flowing down a river.
Early in the morning, Bella placed the finished embroidery pieces from the work she had been given into a basket and left the house as usual.
After locking the door and turning around, she saw an unfamiliar carriage standing outside the wall.
The moment she saw it, for some reason—
Bella’s heart suddenly began to race.
As though she had sensed some kind of premonition.
A horse snorting softly, and a coachman leaning a little distance away.
The carriage door opened.
Bella forgot to breathe.
The man who stepped down from the carriage removed his hat and greeted Bella.
“A pleasure to meet you, my lady.”
He introduced himself as Gary Yus.
“I hear your embroidery is exceptional. Might you be in need of a patron?”
“……”
The unfamiliar man looked far older than she was, with wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, a rather lean build, and above all, a voice utterly different.
Even so, Bella found that her heart was still pounding violently.
‘Have I gone mad?’
Bella stood as if rooted to the spot, gazing at the man for what felt like forever.
As though trying to measure the loss of those long years, simply like that.