28.
Though his tears had stopped, the rims of his eyes were still red.
With that face, Prien smiled as if he were truly happy.
I gave a weak snort.
……So when Prien Izanar held someone in his heart, this was the sort of person he became.
With that faithful, wondrously beautiful face, he was a man honest to the point of persistence.
“……Still, I did think something similar. Fate……. Perhaps it really is something like that…….”
When our eyes met, Prien suddenly lowered his gaze as if he had grown nervous.
“But……. That does not mean I am hoping for anything. I have things I must do.”
“…….”
I’d forgotten, but this man was in the middle of putting up a wall after confessing to me.
I couldn’t even be bothered to answer, so I simply lay there on the bed.
This man is subtly irritating.
He was like a puppy that wagged its tail around my feet as if begging to be petted, only to panic and bolt the moment I so much as pretended to reach out.
If he were really a puppy, I could at least grab him and pet him to my heart’s content. But this was just… what even was this?
Exhaustion washed over me, and I closed my eyes.
I wanted to bask in a little more divine power. It already felt like the effects had worn off……. Was there nothing he could do?
Even then, as if he had been waiting for it, the gaze that fixed on me the moment I closed my eyes was painfully obvious.
Honestly, I had no idea what he wanted me to do.
Then a thought suddenly occurred to me.
Hadn’t I barely gotten to express my own opinion all this time because I kept getting dumped the instant someone confessed to me?
The moment I opened my eyes, my gaze collided squarely with Prien’s.
His cool, sunken eyes brightened at once with a single blink, curving softly.
As he gazed at me with eyes full of shy yearning, I tugged up one corner of my mouth and smiled.
“Listen, Sir Izanar.”
“……Yes.”
“I don’t like you.”
“…….”
“And I won’t like you in the future, either.”
“…….”
“So don’t fret over it. I, for one, have not the slightest intention of doing so.”
His eyelashes trembled, and then he asked,
“……You do not like me?”
At the tremor in his voice, as if he had been wounded, I forced myself to steady my weakening heart and nodded.
“Why?”
“That’s just how I feel.”
“……I see.”
He accepted it more calmly than I had expected, so I almost failed to notice.
Large teardrops were falling, plop, plop, onto the back of Prien’s hand.
……He’s crying again?
With that vague thought, I lifted my gaze, and for an instant I felt as if my breath had stopped.
They were not the tears I had seen a moment ago.
Not those auspicious tears that had fallen with joy and worry, anxiety and relief all mingled together.
It was as though something somewhere had cracked.
As if the words I had hurled had stabbed somewhere deep in his lungs and made the private feelings he had kept tightly sealed pour out.
Bottomless grief.
Despair, gloomy self-contempt, disgust, and a long loneliness.
He did not even know he was crying.
Only after a little while did he seem to feel the tears running down his chin, and he quietly raised a hand to wipe his chin with the back of it.
I had nothing to say.
But my thought that this was something we had to go through at least once had not changed.
Of course I had not wanted to hurt him, but that did not mean we could become anything to each other.
Even now, after drinking the potion, he did not want to become lovers. What would he feel after drinking the antidote?
It could not be easy to control emotions caused by a potion.
I knew at least that much.
Looking back, even I had sometimes found Rohwinas’s love burdensome.
I had certainly loved him too, but not as much as he had loved me.
Perhaps that had been the difference between someone who had drunk the potion and someone who had not.
“…….”
“…….”
But had he really not imagined at all that I might reject him?
It was not exactly the sort of thought one should have in a situation like this, but honestly, his tearful face was so pitiful that even someone who had felt nothing for him might suddenly change their mind after seeing it.
Still, what could I do?
I was absolutely not a woman who was swayed by beauty…….
“In any case, what I’m saying is that you don’t need to worry.”
The voice slipping out of my slightly parted lips had become noticeably softer. Damn it.
“You’ve been worried all this time, haven’t you? That I might respond to your feelings.”
He obediently nodded.
“If the Baron were to come to want me, then in the end…… you would be hurt because of me.”
“…….”
“So I was afraid.”
It was something I had not thought of at all.
Then again, hadn’t I also worried that they would be hurt unjustly because of the potion?
I had simply realized anew that I was not the only one who could worry about that; the other party could worry about it too.
If he wavered, it would be false, but if I wavered, it would be real.
On top of that, Prien seemed to have circumstances of his own. Circumstances that made it difficult for him to date someone and readily be together.
Above all, would he not know that once he took the antidote, all of this would become as if it had never happened?
There could be no fruition between him and me anyway.
If so, I agreed entirely with his belief that such a relationship should not even begin.
Then I remembered what I had once…….
What I had gone to this man and said.
‘Congratulations, Sir Izanar.’
‘All of your feelings are fabricated. So there’s no need for you to worry about anything.’
‘And let me offer my condolences. You’ve now become entangled in a very filthy mess with me, someone you could have lived your whole life having nothing to do with.’
Unable to handle my despairing heart, I had poured it out on him however I pleased.
What had he thought as he listened to those thorny words?
I reached out and tapped the back of his hand, which lay near the blanket, with my fingertips.
“I promise. I will never hold you in my heart.”
He quietly gazed at me.
“So you can love me without worry.”
Like someone who had heard words he had longed for, yet could never welcome.
But what could be done? He was not loving me because he wanted to, either.
He lowered his head.
So all I could see were his trembling eyelashes, soaked through with tears, and the reddened bridge of his nose.
But I felt the fear that had tormented his heart all this time gradually disappear, carried away in his tears.
In any case, the problem was that he was far too good-looking, and on top of that, he was someone who knew perfectly well that he was good-looking.
He must have expected that if he confessed his love to me, my heart would certainly be moved.
Even though he knew that perfectly well, he could not endure his own feelings, could not hold them back, and so he had been tormented because of himself.
Feeling relieved, I smiled, then remembered that his eyes were still wet and worked hard to manage my expression.
Then again, if he looked like that and didn’t know it, that would be the bigger problem.
In any case, I had done my best.
He could deal with his hurt feelings over being rejected on his own.
As I heard the door open, I drifted back to sleep.
* * *
When I opened my eyes again, it was the middle of the night.
It seemed I had woken because I was hungry.
When I had been wrapped in divine power, it had felt so dreamlike and warm that I hadn’t noticed, but reality was cold and merciless.
My whole body ached as though I had been beaten, and I had no strength at all.
My headache was worse than when I’d suffered through a hangover after drinking too much.
On top of that, I was terribly thirsty.
I was about to part my lips with a faint frown when a glass of water was brought to my mouth.
As I tilted my head, a hand gently supported the nape of my neck.
Then I drank a couple of sips of water. Only then did I feel like I might live.
My head was laid back down on the pillow. The touch was careful.
I moved my gaze after the glass of water as it drew away from my eyes.
The hand that set the glass on the bedside table drew back the bed curtain and secured it.
Moonlight filtered into the dim bed, revealing his outline.
“What are you doing here in the middle of the night?”
When I opened my mouth, a voice hoarse beyond belief came out.
Startled by my own voice, I stopped speaking, then said again in a small voice.
“When did Sir Ijanar come and go?”
“Today, during the day.”
Jaka, who had touched my forehead as if to check, withdrew his hand and whispered quietly.
“It seems your fever has completely gone down now. Don’t worry about anything, Baron, and get plenty of rest.”
I didn’t remember suffering any wound that would threaten my life, so I wasn’t particularly worried.
But the way Jaka spoke was as if……
“The physician said you’ll be fine as long as you rest properly for a few days. Like in the past…… something like that won’t happen.”
“Ah……. Did you hear from Julie?”
“……Yes.”
Then I supposed he might have been frightened.
When I was young, every physician who examined me had said in unison that it was an incurable illness of unknown cause.
Back then, my body had been so weak that I couldn’t even leave my bed.
Sometimes I would fall asleep as if dead and fail to wake for days…….
Even now, my memories of that time were only scattered fragments.
When I had miraculously shaken it off and gotten back on my feet, everyone had said in one voice that it was the will of God.
The truth was, no one knew how I had recovered, so the problem was that no one could say for certain when I might fall ill again.
Since this was the first time I had been this seriously ill since then, Julie must certainly have been beside herself with worry.
“Julie?”
“She was here until a little while ago, then went to get a bit of sleep.”
I blinked my dry, gritty eyes and chose my words.
“Why are you worrying when even I’m not worried?”
I had meant to say it gently enough, but Jaka said nothing.