You Said You Wanted Us to Break Up - Chapter 90

It was a lie planned from the start.

“If you want, you can come back to listen again.”

When the woman looked up at him through the crack in the door, from which the organ music flowed, Sioden solidified a thought he had held once before. A lie.

The setting, metaphorically prepared to allude to a time when they were closest, the green eyes awkwardly looking up at him, the upturned corners of her mouth symbolizing a conscious kindness.

An innocent culprit, obvious evidence.

Not even a teenager blinded by passion would be fooled by such a thing.

He did not step into the offer. He endured, knowing it was a trap he could easily spring if he set his mind to it.

It was bearable. The impulse to just believe all the lies and ignore reality, and the fear that he would soon lose the other person, were ultimately just emotions. If he suppressed them well, they would sink down.

Was it because he had failed to foresee that he himself would appear to be sinking down as well?

Later, when he came out of the castle to execute a criminal, Luke asked him.

“Your Grace, is something wrong lately?”

Something wrong. At the man’s expression, Sioden awkwardly curled the corner of his mouth.

“Nothing.”

If there was an incident, it was only his own incompetence in managing an invisible emotion.

Even afterward, Iella tried to deceive him several times.

“I waited for you.”

Sioden didn’t believe the words, but he hugged the woman.

“I don’t dislike you.”

Just as he nodded as if he completely believed her when she said that.

“I want to continue living here.”

He had known long ago that every word she uttered was a trick meant to momentarily blind him.

But even a completely broken relationship, if only they had each other, couldn’t it eventually be fixed?

He didn’t even want to imagine that their relationship was beyond repair.

So, he took the woman to the villa. It was his last attempt.

Iella, as if mocking his disgusting wish, did not break her resolve until the end.

If the woman’s decision was firm, all that remained was to accept it, so Sioden let her have her way.

Though he hadn’t expected a variable to arise.

“Mr. Ailac went to the dock.”

Despite riding his horse to the harbor immediately after hearing those words, he was already too late.

Iella glared at him with watery eyes, at him who didn’t even know what expression he was making.

“You… you knew everything?”

Her question, tinged with betrayal, instantly choked him. How could he not know?

Iella was a terrible liar.

She was a woman so inept at deceiving people that he wondered why he hadn’t realized it sooner.

Yet, he felt guilty for having found out what she was trying to hide. It felt as if his face was buried in the snow. He couldn’t breathe properly.

That day, Sioden pleaded with the woman who was crying with a shocked expression in front of him. To the South, to Emerta, or anywhere she wanted, he would gladly send her.

With every word he uttered, he wished he could just step into a coffin. It was the cowardice of wanting to avoid a future where loss was inevitable, even in that way.

Iella didn’t even listen to the end of his words and screamed.

“I don’t want to!”

Squeezing her eyes shut, pouring all her sincerity into it.

“I hate that I can only leave if you send me!”

But what could he do if he didn’t send her away? Sioden blinked. He couldn’t quite tell if his head wasn’t working properly due to the drug or if Iella was saying something difficult to understand.

“Why don’t you understand that I don’t want to go anywhere as your wife?”

He felt like he had been hit over the head by those words.

He was the problem.

He had known before that his actions, mistakes, and wrong choices were the starting point of the breakdown. So he had attempted to make amends. Because a problem originating from him should be fixed by his own hands.

All those attempts were meaningless.

Sioden realized the reason belatedly.

A problem stemming from his very existence could not possibly be solved by his own hands.

* * *

Later, returning to the castle, Sioden tried to imagine what the woman’s life must have been like. A life born as one man’s daughter, becoming another man’s wife by that man’s will. A life where she couldn’t meet a single person without her father’s permission, and after marriage, her outings were determined by her husband’s single word.

He had never experienced it, so he couldn’t even properly imagine it.

But one thing was certain. Raslet was not her home.

The rights granted to her as his wife were not Iella’s own power.

Thus, while he thought it was natural for Iella to hate him, Sioden didn’t know what to do.

The Iella he knew had been his wife from the start. If not for the marriage, she would not have come to Raslet. They would not have become entangled to this extent.

“But your feet are tied to this land, and as long as there is warmth left in your body, you cannot escape your bloodline.”

Just as those words suggested, he had been a person whose collar was tied to the walls of Raslet from beginning to end.

Before he could finish evaluating whether they ever had a possibility, Iella came to find him.

“I want to send my maid back.”

Won’t you be lonely then? The words rose to the root of his tongue.

The red-haired woman was the only person Iella spoke to in this castle.

Yet, Sioden couldn’t voice his thoughts.

Because the woman who lived with a husband who didn’t understand her must have already been lonely enough for three years.

Iella eventually sent her maid back. Sioden looked down at the woman’s farewell from atop the castle wall. Iella was enduring an unwanted sacrifice due to her distrust of him.

Before he could figure out how to compensate for that sacrifice, Iswen Rowen arrived at the castle.

* * *

“I won’t say much.”

The new Duke of Rowen, who came to his study, presented him with a document.

“Notarize this.”

The certificate, composed of a few sheets of paper, contained one thing: the transfer of a noble title.

To him, who was blankly looking down at the paper that foretold a certain farewell, Iswen said:

“She needs a home, a home that is neither Rowen nor Raslet.”

Upon hearing those words, Sioden conceded.

Even the family he so detested had a guaranteed advantage as long as he was the Duke of Raslet.

The apologies and regrets, which were attempts at improvement for him, must have felt like an unavoidable trap for the woman.

The hand he extended to someone cornered was not salvation, but violence.

Because he had never been in the same situation, Sioden didn’t know exactly how his actions came across.

And Iella would not ask for his understanding. She would not even want him to attempt to understand.

Opening a path for her that did not require her to take his hand was the only thing he could do for her.

That day, Sioden drafted the document for the annulment of the marriage.

As he annotated every legal term that he had begun learning before he was a teenager and which now felt more natural than breathing, he once again pictured the life he would never fully empathize with. Naturally, he failed again.

Iella later came to find him to confirm if the notarization was real.

Sioden handed her the document he had prepared.

“Submit it to the Imperial Palace when you feel safe making the choice you desire. Then, I will go to the capital.”

This would be enough.

Because Iella was different from him. Because she was different from him… Because she didn’t give up and hated him even in unavoidable situations.

Sioden was perhaps thankful that she hated him. Since she hadn’t surrendered even in moments where she had no choice, she would be able to make wise decisions about her own future.

He just needed to disappear.

Because Iella’s true happiness and relief could only exist if he was absent.

As if to prove his thought was correct, the woman decided that very day to leave the North.

* * *

It was the right choice. It was the document he gave her for that purpose and the apology he made for that purpose.

The best gift for her was for him to disappear forever. And so, he remained still, like a dead man, so that she would not be entangled any further.

Despite knowing this fact, Sioden could not suppress his anxiety.

It was the reason he stubbornly went out to see the woman off for the last time.

“I will do anything I can.”

The world would not become easy just by acquiring a family title and a noble rank. There would certainly be moments when it was difficult to persevere alone.

Because he had passed through countless such moments himself, Sioden knew how desperate support was at those times.

“You do not need to worry that I will demand payment. I will ask for nothing in return…”

Iella did not listen to the end of his words.

“No.”

“…”

“I am not coming back.”

It would be a lie to say his chest didn’t feel pierced by that firm answer.

It was a statement that concluded he held no utility value for her whatsoever, so of course, the syllables alone brought despair.

However, by the time the carriage carrying her was rolling away, leaving tracks behind, a certain relief welled up.

Iella would manage perfectly well.

Hadn’t he survived alone too?

To believe that she wouldn’t manage was, in fact, arrogance.

The carriage, driven by the coachman at top speed, soon left his sight.

Realizing that all he could see was the white field, Sioden turned back. The walls of Raslet were looking down at him. A castle that had been his since birth.

The only thing remaining in his hands had no color. Neither the spring that had become concrete due to the presence of a woman who existed only in abstraction nor the pair of eyes that resembled the color of plants that could not grow in a winter land were by his side anymore.

Only the land where the gray blizzard raged was his.

Since it was a land that weighed too heavily on him to use the word ‘owned,’ Sioden had once been confused about whether he was what remained to the family, or if the family was what remained to him.

Looking back now, there was no need to distinguish between them from the start.

He would eventually be buried in Raslet, unable to escape this land even after death.

His deep blue eyes habitually scanned the high-stacked stones.