77.
Rohwinas frowned at my question and set a condition.
“Tell me first why you want to know that.”
Since his attitude was hardly surprising, I handed him the paper I had been holding instead of answering.
“Did you check the date?”
After confirming that Rohwinas’s eyes had narrowed, I asked again.
“Is it true that the Peregrines knew about your condition first and approached you?”
“What on earth is this?”
“I said I’d ask first.”
Rohwinas furrowed his brow as if displeased, but in the end, he nodded.
“……Yes, that’s right.”
I thought of Margaret.
“Then, what about the antidote?”
“…….”
“I know your family wasn’t the one who prepared the antidote. Did the Peregrine family hand it over to you?”
“……That day.”
As though recalling an old memory, Rohwinas’s gaze lowered.
“That day, my family urgently called me in, using your safety as an issue.”
“…….”
“So I thought that since news of our engagement had spread openly, I should go at least once and bring things to a close.”
“…….”
“And so, in that place I returned to thinking it would be the last time, I…… drank the tea that had been served to me, and lost consciousness just like that.”
He said that when he opened his eyes again, it was already dawn the next day.
He had already taken the antidote, and only belatedly was he told that he had lost consciousness under the effects of a powerful sleeping drug.
In other words, everything had already ended.
As I listened, I was finally able to erase an old question.
‘I wondered how on earth they’d managed to make Rohwinas take the antidote…….’
Indeed, if someone under the effects of the potion could knowingly drink the antidote on their own, none of this tragedy would ever have happened.
A strange bitterness lingered in my mouth.
Fortunately, Rohwinas had escaped, but there were still people trapped in these shackles.
‘Somehow, I have to get the antidote…….’
I quickly composed myself and asked.
“Were there any people from the Peregrine side there that day?”
“Of course there were. Meriana Peregrine. And her elder brother.”
“Then?”
“Yes. The antidote, too, was most likely prepared by the Peregrines. Considering we had to hand over several of our family’s businesses to them.”
On the surface, it would have looked like an agreement between two families brought about by an engagement, so it likely hadn’t been a particularly difficult matter.
As though he had suddenly sensed something dubious, Rohwinas closed his mouth.
I did wonder why he had let all of this pass vaguely at the time, but…….
Well, to be honest, he must not have been in his right mind either.
Besides, he wasn’t the type to foolishly cling to something that was already over.
“Then do you know exactly whose hands the antidote came from?”
“I understand that it was led by the duke’s daughter.”
Meriana Peregrine?
“Don’t tell me you got engaged to repay a favor.”
When he turned to look at me, I quickly waved my hand.
“Ah, never mind. I’m not curious.”
“…….”
“You’re not the sort of person who would do that anyway.”
I moved straight on to the next question.
“The duke’s daughter couldn’t have made it herself. Did you hear anything at all about how it happened?”
“…….”
“How the Peregrine family came to know about it, how they just happened to have the antidote in their possession, and also…….”
The more I spoke, the more suspicious points came to light one after another.
‘The antidote.’
A clue I had missed for a long time because I had focused only on the potion,
and a connecting link I never would have noticed if I hadn’t tried to make an antidote.
When I dug into it, what emerged was none other than the Peregrine duchy.
‘I never wanted it to be someone this powerful…….’
Just as I felt like clutching my head, Rohwinas’s voice rang out.
“They said they confirmed it using a reagent. And that was how they knew I had fallen victim to the potion.”
“How did they come to think of checking that?”
“According to their explanation, they had found my sudden change in attitude suspicious all along. Then, when they happened to learn about something called a ‘love potion,’ they immediately sought my father’s opinion and…….”
Rohwinas abruptly stopped speaking.
“Are you suspecting the Peregrine family right now? That they were involved in the incident?”
I knew he’d be displeased.
It was within my expectations, so I answered without much agitation.
“There must be a reason why that person chose to carry it out through the Peregrine family, of all houses.”
“…….”
“Either because they were the ones who stood to benefit from putting Canesion in their debt, or because they held a position that made it easier to hide their identity that way…….”
I suddenly stopped speaking.
All of this was a judgment I could only make under the assumption that a third party, not I, had administered the potion.
Rohwinas, who must have been aware of that all along, quietly moved his throat.
“It really wasn’t you?”
I couldn’t help it.
I remembered that night when I had desperately explained myself, hoping he would understand.
That day when the rain poured down in torrents.
The night I had run after him as he left, taking the belongings he had kept at the mansion.
‘Do you really believe that story?’
‘…….’
The face that looked down in irritation to check the hem of his clothes I had grabbed was so cold.
With all my strength, I squeezed out a voice that trembled like an aspen leaf.
‘I didn’t make you take it. It’s the truth.’
But that desperation was rendered meaningless at once.
‘What meaning does that have?’
‘…….’
‘I never loved you, not even for a single moment.’
My heart lurched, but I endured it.
They said ordinary lovers broke up when their feelings cooled, too.
It was common. So it was all right.
Even as I struggled to gather up my wounded heart, I couldn’t help asking, almost pleading.
‘……Even if your feelings are gone, your memories are still there.’
‘…….’
‘I don’t understand. You know and remember exactly what kind of person I am. Then why…… if no one else, shouldn’t you have believed me?’
I tried to hold it back, but the last question was shaking miserably.
My voice was wet with tears.
‘I believe I have already said this, Baron Roxan.’
‘…….’
‘Even if I believe you, what meaning would that have?’
‘…….’
‘Do not follow me anymore,’
‘…….’
‘and do not wait for me.’
He coldly pulled free the hem I had caught hold of.
Then he turned his back.
‘Rohwinas!’
He did not look back.
I had the instinctive feeling that this was the end.
‘I really did like you! It’s true, I’m not lying, I really did…….’
I stood there blankly in the rain, watching the carriage that carried him recede into the distance.
There was nothing else I could do.
And so it ended.
Without being given any explanation, any chance to clarify things, or even the opportunity to sort out my own heart.
Even afterward, when I began to be battered from all sides by the nobles’ horrific condemnation and mockery.
Even when, under Duke Kanesion’s schemes, I found myself buried beneath an enormous mountain of debt.
Even when those intoxicated by the realization of justice climbed over the mansion walls and thrust blades at me.
Even when I, who had insisted on my innocence, finally had my every ounce of will broken and came to spend most of each day drunk.
He did not look back.
“…….”
I quietly looked into Rohwinas’s eyes.
“Yes, I wasn’t the one who fed you the potion.”
He would probably never know.
How many countless times I had shouted those words at the top of my lungs,
or how wretched I felt, even now, having to spit them out once again.
Rohwinas murmured quietly.
“……So, you’re doing all this because you intend to find the culprit?”
I remained still.
As if confused, Rohwinas looked around the room and swept his hair back.
“But what reason would the Peregrine family have to take part in something like that?”
A laugh escaped me.
“And I had reason to?”
Our gazes met just like that.
Slowly, the smile vanished from my lips.
“Yes, you’d have no reason to be desperate. But I’m different.”
“…….”
“No matter what it takes, I’ll find them, catch them this time for sure, and bring them right before my eyes.”
“…….”
“So if you find it hard to believe, then just forget it, Rohwinas.”
“Forget it?”
“It’s what you’re best at, isn’t it? Losing interest and forgetting.”
Rohwinas strode one step toward me.
No sooner had I frowned and stepped back than he pressed in close again.
The study desk touched the backs of my legs.
I let out a sigh.
“You know I’m not wrong.”
Perhaps the reason he reacted so strongly to every word I said was because, to him, I was his one and only stain.
Like a hangnail beneath the fingernail.
A stain that grated on him from beginning to end, that he wanted to tear away, yet that never completely disappeared.
Rohwinas planted his palm on the desk.
When he tilted his head, his hair slid down over his forehead.
Instead of sweeping it back, he stared at me through the disheveled strands.
“Why are you provoking me?”
“……You should work on cultivating your mind, Rohwinas. Should a great count like yourself really be provoked by something this trivial?”
As he put strength into his hand, the surface of the desk beneath it creaked as if it might break.
His roughened breath brushed against my shoulder little by little.
I furrowed my brow and leaned back slightly.
“Approaching Gladineer, too……. Was that some tactic to provoke me? Why don’t you tell the truth at this point?”
“…….”
“And what’s with that holy knight, Roxan? You really shouldn’t be luring in an innocent man who knows nothing, should you?”
At some point, Rohwinas’s hand had come close to my face.
“Just say it. Say that you feel this wronged, that you still need my attention—if only you’d say it honestly like that.”
“…….”
“I’ll find the culprit for you.”