You Said You Wanted Us to Break Up - Chapter 78

 

“Was it so difficult to just listen to me once?”

“……”

“I’m not talking about the incidents where evidence emerged. I’m talking about the words I spoke right here, in this very room.”

I looked around his study, which hadn’t changed much from years ago.

Just because what happened here can no longer wound me doesn’t mean the memory of experiencing it disappears.

“Even if you couldn’t believe anything else, couldn’t you have believed those words?”

Sioden had distrusted me when I confessed my family matters, scraping together what little courage I had.

After leaving me with nowhere to confide, he even took Apple away from me. I understood that it was the only thing he could do. I didn’t resent Sioden for that alone. But if Sioden demanded a new chance, the story changed.

Every time he wanted to build a new future with me, a burning emotion surged within me.

Unaware of how I felt, Sioden confessed.

“I was afraid.”

His voice was trembling. That was understandable. It was the first time I had ever heard him admit his own fear.

Up until now, Sioden had never shown any sign of weakness in front of me.

So, even this admission must be a considerable concession from his perspective.

“I was afraid that if I believed you, I would lose everything I had been responsible for.”

The man reached for me again.

“I have never regretted anything more in my life. So, please…”

When our fingertips touched again, I felt something snap inside my head.

Without waiting for Sioden to finish his sentence, I said forcefully,

“No.”

I pulled my hand out of his grip and stood up. I felt the fur wrapped around my shoulders slide off. My body was cold, suddenly exposed to the chill air, but I didn’t care.

I yelled at Sioden, who was looking up at me with a pale face.

“I don’t want to! I don’t want any of it!”

I didn’t want to ask him for what I needed, and I didn’t want to attempt to improve our relationship by digging up old wounds just because I finally had a chance to speak now.

Suddenly, a thought struck me: I shouldn’t be like this. At least for what happened in the past, doesn’t it seem fitting to say that he did his best, but the situation didn’t support him?

Whenever I had that thought, the question that had always followed from way back when would suddenly surface.

But just because Sioden did his best from his perspective, do I have to unconditionally endure it and get along with him? Do I have to give him another chance?

Don’t I have my own perspective?

The past me ignored the answer to this question even though I knew it.

However, realizing that the trip to Emerta might have been foiled, I resigned myself to shedding all pretense.

I don’t want to understand Sioden. I don’t want to get along with him.

…I don’t want to envision a future with him.

I collected my ragged breath and told him my thoughts.

“…The time for compromise was with the past you.”

What was the point of clinging to me now?

I wasn’t the one who decided to throw both love and trust into the mud.

I asked Sioden, who was staring at me blankly,

“You say you love me?”

“……”

“If that’s true, you’ll know that I once loved you, too.”

It was true.

It was too pathetic and embarrassing to utter, so I had never spoken the words directly, but I, too, had felt that emotion Sioden spoke of.

Because I had as many reasons to love him as I did not to.

The recklessness of placing me on the railing and pulling me into his arms. The warmth of our hands clasped beneath the keyboard. The haste with which he kissed me so hotly that a fleeting passion looked like affection.

And above all else.

Even the tenderness glimpsed beneath his cold gaze.

I staked so much hope on his tenderness, and I lost everything.

The man who had plucked all my hope was now trying to drag me back into the gambling ring.

…What would he make me bet this time?

No. I didn’t want any of it. Let him gamble to his heart’s content with things like love and affection. The thought had barely formed when my mouth moved on its own.

“Why that look on your face? Surely you know?”

“……”

“Then you never loved me.”

When you love someone, you wish for them to feel the same way.

A wish so strong that you believe a lie even when the ending is obvious.

…Just as I mistook Sioden’s caprice for love.

Love is what makes you believe that even an obviously brief impulse is affection, if only given the slightest pretext. But Sioden—could he truly not have known my feelings, which I was leaking everywhere because it was my first time and I didn’t know any better?

I don’t believe it.

Sioden must have read the distrust on my face. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been so desperate to explain himself.

“I, truly…”

“It’s too late.”

If Sioden truly wanted love with me, he should have said so sooner than this.

He called my name in a hoarse voice.

“Iella.”

It was a voice full of pain, as if I had just made him swallow poison.

However, I no longer wanted to dwell on his pain.

“You said that an investigation that would only clarify the evidence of a crime was unnecessary.”

Sioden must have said that to persuade me. He probably thought that my repeatedly demanding an investigation was bad for me.

So, this time, I would use the same excuse.

“I think the same applies to explanations; I don’t want to understand the more I hear them.”

“……”

“So, from now on, don’t tell me you’re sorry, and don’t tell me you can explain. Because no matter how much I listen, I don’t want to understand.”

With those final words, I walked past him. Sioden couldn’t take his eyes off me until the very end, but he did not try to stop me again.

I closed the study door loudly and walked quickly down the hallway.

Even after pouring out everything I had been tightly suppressing in my heart, I didn’t feel relieved.

I didn’t want to be in a shouting match with Sioden, digging up the past.

What I had wanted to do was board the ship to Emerta with Apple. Just the two of us, in a night known to no one else.

Now, that task felt endlessly distant.

Thinking that made me so upset I couldn’t bear it.

It was then that Apple appeared before I had fully turned the corner of the hallway.

“My Lady.”

The moment I saw her face, tears began to flow—tears I hadn’t realized I was holding back.

Apple hugged me. As I sobbed helplessly in her arms, Apple gently caressed my cheek. She whispered very softly, in a voice so low that even I, the closest person, could barely hear.

“My lady, our plan might not have been exposed.”

* * *

Several weeks had passed since Sezna was first imprisoned in the dungeon.

Since there was no one in the dungeon to tell the time, Sezna did not know exactly how long she had been confined.

The only sure thing was that she had been isolated with extreme intention.

Having stayed in the Northern castle for quite some time, Sezna knew how they interrogated criminals in this land. They completely cut them off from the outside and locked them in a place without light. She heard that then, even the most heinous criminals would eventually confess their crimes.

Less than a week after being locked in the dungeon, Sezna resolved to confess whatever the Lord wanted.

As if mocking her, no one came to the prison.

Until today.

“Y-Your Excellency.”

Sezna rubbed her eyes, seeing the man who appeared before her. That face, which felt colder than it was handsome, belonged to the Lord, but she also felt like she was seeing things.

It was then that the man standing before her commanded.

“Fifteen years ago, when Merwen Ethel first entered the castle, tell me everything you remember.”

Realizing then that she wasn’t dreaming, Sezna quickly opened her mouth.

“Ah, the young lady was…”

With trembling lips, Sezna rambled whatever came to mind out of fear.

“She was a quiet child. She smiled easily; she was clever…”

She knew how to impress adults.

It was so much so that she even captivated the attention of Evelyn, who was deeply saddened after her husband’s infidelity and had no interest in her surroundings.

Sezna still remembered what Evelyn said when she saw Merwen.

‘She must have grown up loved by her parents.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘It shows that she was loved.’

Evelyn replied as if it were obvious and then narrowed her eyes.

‘She reminds me of my own childhood.’

Evelyn was indeed the youngest daughter who grew up loved.

Although her birth family had moved their roots to the neighboring country of Emerta after her engagement with the Crown Prince was broken.

This was possible because Evelyn’s birth family was a lineage split from Emerta’s royal family.

Evelyn, who initially had no interest in Merwen, believing her to be the child her husband brought in, called the child to her side after that day. She then began teaching her things she had learned in her own childhood, such as the organ, Southern songs, and romantic fairy tales.

Young Merwen quickly absorbed everything, and even when something arose she didn’t know, she unhesitatingly asked Evelyn.

Just as Evelyn had done when she was learning things in her own childhood.

After raising the daughter of a Northern noble to be completely like a Southern girl, Evelyn had exclaimed with admiration several times.

‘So this is what a child is like when they are this lovely.’

It was a sentiment she had never expressed about the son she bore herself.

However, Sezna could only agree with Evelyn. The daughter of the deceased Count Ethel was truly a cute, lovely child, the kind that might appear in a fairy tale.

Evelyn quickly became captivated by the fantastically charming child.

One day, she even went so far as to say,

‘Perhaps I wished for a child like that.’

Evelyn had murmured that, lying prone on the sofa in the room decorated in Southern style.

‘He… though it’s a bit much for me to say it, he’s not very child-like.’

Sezna knew Evelyn was distant from her own son, but she was surprised and looked back at her, not expecting her to say such a thing out loud.

She awkwardly tried to defend the family heir.

‘It might be because he’s a boy.’

‘No. I had older brothers, didn’t I?’

Evelyn lay prone on the sofa, resting her chin on her hands. In the posture she often took in her girlhood, she concluded.

‘It’s just that he takes after his father.’

Before her recollection was finished, the Lord’s voice fell.

“Merwen was not the daughter of Count Ethel; she was the bastard child of the former Duke.”

“W-what?”

“…It seems you are hearing this for the first time.”

Of course, she was hearing it for the first time.

While Sezna was confused as to whether she had heard correctly, the Lord dropped an even more shocking statement.

“The former Duke said that my mother knew that fact but overlooked it.”

“That’s, that can’t be true!”

Merwen Ethel was Lerox Raslet’s bastard child?

Sezna had never once considered such a thing in her life.

She didn’t think Evelyn would have been any different.

“If she knew, she would have told me right away. How close the mistress and I were, and yet…”

“My mother was not in her right mind around the time she passed away.”

Sezna quickly searched her memory. She then recalled a potentially useful piece of information and said,

“Th-that autumn, the former Duke of Raslet visited the Mistress. Before Your Excellency returned…”

That statement brought back a memory. Sioden mentally replayed a conversation from years ago.

“One day, the Lord came to visit.”

“……”

“She seemed to be looking for alcohol from that night onward.”

He finished the brief recollection and looked down at the woman kneeling before him. Sezna was still confused, unable to accept the truth.

“That, that can’t be true. The Young Lady was a bastard child… Does the Young Lady know that fact?”

“She knows it very well.”

She knew even more than that.

Sioden felt a renewed impulse to kill the already dead Lerox. It was annoying that if he was going to conceal the matter, he should have kept quiet, but he had gone around dropping hints everywhere, yet acted as if he had been tongue-tied around Sioden.

How could he complicate things like this and still claim he put the family first? If Lerox truly cared about the family, he shouldn’t have hidden anything, at least from Sioden.

Why should he protect a family that the former duke even manipulated for his own benefit?

A question that offered no help in the current situation rose to his throat. Sioden deliberately ignored it. There were more important things than pondering the essence of the matter.

Sezna muttered, looking clearly shocked.

“But if the young lady knew about her birth, why would she do such a thing…”

Sezna’s voice trailed off. Sioden demanded of her, whose gaze was wavering downwards,

“Explain properly.”

Sezna finally collected herself and raised her head. If she said something useful, the Lord might spare her. Yes, he hadn’t executed her yet. Perhaps the Lord didn’t want to execute her.

Sezna stumbled through her explanation.

“D-Do you remember the last year Your Excellency stayed in the border region, when the Mistress taught the organ?”

Sioden assented.

“It was so.”

Evelyn’s change at the time was quite dramatic, so most people who stayed in the castle then remembered the event.

And most people in the castle would also know that Evelyn changed abruptly less than half a year later.

Sezna lowered her voice as if sharing a secret.

“Actually, the young lady suggested that.”

Sezna still vividly remembered the events of that time.

One day, before the New Year’s festival, Evelyn had said,

‘I think it’s time to close the distance with him.’

Since it was an unexpected statement considering Evelyn’s usual demeanor, Sezna asked her for the reason. Evelyn, who never hid anything from her maid, who was like a friend, answered immediately.

‘Merwen says that everything that happened in childhood is remembered even after growing up. So, I thought it wouldn’t be bad to leave him one or two good memories before he grows up too much.’

‘If you really want to, teach him the organ or something.’

‘Merwen isn’t wrong. He’s going to inherit this family anyway.’

And Evelyn had added with a voice full of bitterness.

‘And I’m stuck here until I die.’

As Sezna briefly recalled the memories of that time, a cold voice fell over her head.

“Let’s return to the main point. Do you remember anything else about Merwen? Did she ever mention her life before she entered the castle?”

“No.”

He thought as much.

Even when growing up with him, Merwen never spoke of her past.

Sioden had never thought to look into that part separately, as he wasn’t interested enough to pry into what she didn’t mention.

Merwen had only mentioned her past once.

At Evelyn’s funeral.

“You don’t have to hold it in.”

“I was really sad too when my mother passed away.”

Even then, Merwen only mentioned her mother.

It was a fact he hadn’t thought about carefully at the time. But now he saw that she had deliberately excluded her father.

Because her biological father was Lerox.

Did she expect me to notice? Sioden instinctively speculated, then realized he was thinking useless thoughts. What did that matter now?

Sioden let out a small sigh. What Sezna was saying was adding nothing but fatigue, let alone being meaningful.

Evelyn taught him the organ after listening to Merwen’s words?

It would have been shocking had he known a few years ago, but not now.

Evelyn was dead. Lerox, the source of her unhappiness, was also dead; Merwen would soon die, and Sezna would likely not survive this night either.

The past would remain as the past. The dead don’t speak, and he had too many things to deal with besides listening to silent corpses.

Digging up the coffin where the past was buried was something only to be attempted when he himself wanted to be buried with it.

Sioden had no intention of escaping into death yet.

Even if he had the intention to send all those who displeased him beyond it.

It was then that Sezna, who had been observing the Lord’s mood, desperately cried out.

“Ah, the young lady has a connection outside the castle!”

“With whom?”

“I don’t know the details, but just once, she went out to meet that connection when she was twenty… if you look up the records from that time, something will come up.”

That was enough. If the information she offered after weeks of isolation was only that, it wouldn’t be much different in the future. Sioden, having concluded this, turned his back. Behind him, Sezna wailed loudly.

“Your Excellency, please show leniency! Your Excellency!”

Sioden commanded the jailer standing guard at the end of the corridor.

“Interrogate her until tonight, and if nothing more comes out, execute her.”

The North is not a land where leniency exists.

Winter was the season where only those who seek revenge survive.

Climbing the stairs leading to the surface, Sioden recalled Merwen and his own twentieth year.

He had also been staying at the castle then. Of course, he didn’t hold actual power, as Lerox was still alive, but… If Merwen had committed some act, it should have remained in his memory.

It was just that he hadn’t linked it because he didn’t think she would be the culprit.

Carefully reviewing his memory, Sioden realized what the biggest event of that year had been.

His twentieth year was the year Lerox was poisoned.