At the end of the damp and bitterly cold corridor, a thick iron door appeared. It was the entrance to the special management ward that Oscar had mentioned. Oscar exchanged a nod with the guard standing before the rust-edged iron door, and the guard unlocked it.

Creak……

The rusted iron door groaned and gave way with a thud, forced open, and a stench beyond description hit them head-on.

“Go on in.”

Oscar gave her a light pat on the shoulder, apologizing that she would need to be back out within fifteen minutes, and with that send-off, Adeline stepped into the darkness.

Skitter, skitter.

Inside the dark and damp prison, which held only those under special management, there were more rats than inmates. Adeline dodged the rats boldly scurrying underfoot and made her way toward the faint sounds of groaning and dry coughing coming from deeper inside.

Even a few days in a place like this would be enough to rot a person to the bone. It lived up to its notorious reputation as a prison where even a healthy person would be carried out dead within two weeks.

Her chest tightened at the thought of Leopold staying in a place like this. She let out a sharp, shallow breath and made her way past puddles of old blood and stagnant filth, and before she knew it, she had reached the innermost section.

“……”

Adeline’s green eyes trembled when she spotted the shape of a blond man slumped against the wall in a tattered prison uniform.

That wretched-looking man is my brother? That’s really Leopold?

The last time the two of them had seen each other, he had not looked like that. He had been a young man with a steady gaze, strong and full of life, and she did not want to believe that the gaunt man before her, with nothing left but skin and bone, was Leopold.

No……

This can’t be……

If not for that hair, rough and faded but still golden, Adeline might have kept denying it to the end.

“…… L, Leopold.”

〈I’ll come back for you without fail.〉

The day she left for Grofen. Leopold kneeling before nine-year-old Adeline as she climbed into the carriage, meeting her eyes at her level, felt like a vision.

Her legs gave out beneath her. Certain she would collapse right there, Adeline grabbed the iron bars with trembling hands and tried to hold back the tears surging up.

But it was all useless. Below the torn hem of his trousers, his ankles and calves were in such a state that the white of bone nearly showed through, and her throat closed up completely.

“…… Leopold…… Leopold.”

He didn’t move. So still she almost thought he was dead.

Leopold, Leopold, Leopold. She called out desperately three or four more times, and only then did Leopold’s head slowly lift.

“…… Adeline?”

“Leopold!”

Adeline couldn’t do anything about the ache collapsing inside her chest at not being able to reach him, and she stretched her arm desperately through the iron bars, but Leopold didn’t move from where he sat.

“Leopold!”

Only Adeline’s desperate hand flailed through empty air, trying to close even a little of the distance.

“Adeline, how did you get in here, how did you get in……”

Leopold’s voice, coming from his parched lips, was completely broken.

What did it matter how she got in? The resentment burst from Adeline’s lips.

“…… Hh, you fool. Why…… why…… why did you come b, back here.”

If it was going to come to this, you should have just not come. You should have just kept hiding. Why did you come back. Just forget everything and……

She had been looking over his body, where the marks of t*rture she could not deny remained, and when she looked back at Leopold’s face, which was at least still intact, a sob tore out of her like a scream.

“…… Why did you come? You, you shouldn’t have come. …… If it was going to be like this, it would have been b, better never to see you again. I truly didn’t want to see you.”

There was a photograph her mother had left behind…… she had thought that as long as he was safe, she could go the rest of her life without seeing him and it would be alright.

Every time she felt lonely, she would take out the photograph and hold it, thinking, thank goodness, at least my brother is living well. Even if he had to live in hiding, her brother would be safe, and being a warm person, he would probably have a fairly happy family of his own, she had thought.

And yet……

She had not wanted to meet him like this, in such a miserable state, in such a terrible place.

“Why did you come! Why! Why did you come back! What is that position worth! What is it worth!”

Honor and all that, there are things more precious than any of that now……

Leopold, unable to bring himself to answer Adeline’s scream-like shout, was slowly closing his eyes, turning away, when it happened.

Thud, a dull noise came from somewhere far off, along with small voices that cut off abruptly.

Adeline spun around in shock, and even the tears pooled in her wide eyes stopped. It wasn’t simply the fear of her identity being discovered.

The people who had stepped forward to help her. Oscar in particular, the fear that he might be implicated was what frightened her most. This involved a prisoner held on charges of treason. The fact that he was a foreigner would not simply let him escape the consequences.

Creak, the thick iron door she had passed through earlier opened again, and the sound of steady footsteps came slowly, but growing clearer with each step.

Her heart dropped to the floor in terror. Adeline froze, her body going rigid, and couldn’t even reach for her handkerchief. She simply wiped her face in a hurry with her sleeve, a mess of tears and saliva. Then she pulled her hat down low, hunched her body like the maid Pauline, and took three or four steps toward the narrow corridor.

“……”

The presence and scent of the man who had cut through the darkness and drawn close before she knew it were strikingly familiar.

No. It can’t be.

An impossible fragrance drifted through the prison, thick with the stale smell of mold and a sharp, foul stench.

Cool and faintly bitter, impossible to forget.

It was Kailen’s scent.

Adeline stared at the pitch-black shoes visible at her feet, and her lashes trembled finely. She couldn’t tell whether being caught by him was the better outcome, or an even greater misfortune.

Just as she was about to slowly raise her downcast eyes, the man’s hand pulled off her hat, and shimmering golden hair cascaded down like a waterfall. Adeline couldn’t even push back her own hair, which resembled rippling golden waves, and slowly lifted her chin.

Even in a prison without a single ray of light, those eyes were vivid, gazing down at her like a winter sea, blue enough to make her eyes ache.

“I knew it.”

Kailen held the worn bonnet she had been wearing loosely in his hand and twisted his lips.

“You really…… never fail to exceed my expectations.”

“……”

He whispered, the way one lets out a long sigh.

“Truly, you are enough to make me sick to death of it all.”

* * *

She had been seized by his hand and forcibly dragged out of Leopold’s prison.

It was true that she had been grabbed and pulled out like a prisoner, but Adeline hadn’t said a single word the entire time her wrist was held.

She was worried about Leopold.

And as she passed through the iron door, she looked around anxiously wondering what had become of Oscar, but she couldn’t spot even a shadow of a person.

In the end, she was forced into the car by him, like a prisoner.

〈Go on back ahead. I’ll be in soon too.〉

How absurd that line was, having heard it so many times it was burned into her ears.

And yet the most absurd thing of all was herself. She had been waiting for him, just as he had said.

If she asked herself whether she still loved him, the thought of being able to answer ‘yes’ was horrifying.

What a leech.

That was why she had resolved to part ways. Because she was like a leech. A leech sucking his blood. Ah, no, she had already sucked quite a lot.

Living with her would be of no use to Kailen whatsoever. It would only pile on more losses.

There was no longer a child to hold him back either.

So she had to let him go. Let him fly free.

The day they had drawn up the marriage contract suddenly came to mind. She should not have held onto him from that very moment.

Yes, if she still thought this lingering feeling was love, then she had to let him go now.

She had to love him by letting him go.

If they were only going to make each other miserable, she had to end it now, even now. By her own hand.

Having made that decision, Adeline looked up at him as he removed his shirt, her expression calm, as though she had forgotten the whole incident at the prison, and said,

“Let’s stop, the two of us.”

* * *

Leopold endured brutal t*rture disguised as interrogation and refused to the end to admit to the charge of leaking state secrets. In the end, the National Security Special Interrogation Unit, which had handled the first and second rounds of questioning, shifted its interrogation targets to those close to Leopold.

Joint compression, sleep deprivation, relentless waterboarding. It was not the kind of t*rture that drew blood, but the witnesses did not hold out for long. 

In the end, the interrogators secured several documents admitting Leopold’s treason and five or six witnesses who would testify in person at the trial, all before the proceedings began.

And on the day of the formality that was the trial.

The courtroom was in an uproar. Shouts erupted from the assembly seats, jeers from the gallery demanding Leopold be hanged in the plaza, and camera flashes burst from every direction without pause. Each time the judge brought down the gavel demanding order, a brief silence would appear and then vanish again.

Leopold stood in the defendant’s dock.