She stood still for a while, seeming to have lost her words. Then, without warning, the faint trace of a smile vanished entirely from Kailen’s face as he stood before her.

“……”

The whole room fell so quiet that even the ticking of the clock felt intrusive, and then Adeline finally spoke.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all of it.”

She wanted to give him whatever he wanted, if she could. She had done so for years now, and for a moment she wondered what could possibly be so difficult about doing the same this time.

It no longer mattered to her either way.

But the man before her wore an expression she had never seen on him before. Just moments ago he had been pouring it all out without restraint, telling her she was the root of it all, and now his face had changed without any warning. She could not understand him at all.

For some reason, he looked neither indifferent, nor weary, nor displeased. He simply looked deeply confused.

She had thought that the resentment she had built up toward him ran just as deep as the love. And yet the love still weighed heavier. She must be out of her mind. She felt anew the weight she now needed to let go of.

What a fool…… an absolute fool.

She had been gazing up at the shifting light in Kailen’s eyes when she slowly sank down to the floor at his feet. But the moment her knees touched the carpet, Kailen bent down.

His large hands wrapped around her hunched shoulders. Adeline reached out, catching the unfamiliar scent of tobacco on his shirt, and gripped his forearm.

“What should I do? What do you really want from me? What would make your pain lighter?”

She murmured as she watched him try to take hold of her shoulders and pull her up.

Because she truly wanted to give him everything.

She was even prepared to die, if that was what he wanted.

“No matter how much I think about it, only one thing comes to mind. Just disappearing from your sight forever. I think that would be best……”

Kailen looked at the long shadow falling beneath her pale eyelids and downcast lashes, and pressed his lips to her white neck. The hot breath that broke from his lips felt, somehow, like a groan.

“I too……”

He drew breath with difficulty, the way she had when she could not bear the shock and had fallen into a panic, breathing in shallow, unsteady gasps.

“……I thought the same. There were moments, clearly…… There was a time when I did……”

He slowly raised his head and met her eyes. She was the one who had been holding back tears the whole time, and yet he was the one behaving like someone with a lump in his throat, and Adeline felt bewildered.

“……”

Why is he like this? Surely this isn’t the end of it.

She wondered if there was still more he had left unresolved with her, and was about to tell him to go ahead and let it all out, but he began to ramble incoherently and she had no choice but to swallow the words.

“Honestly, even now, a little. Why do I still have to feel this way. There is no reason for me to spend my time like this, thinking about you in everything, clinging to this. I didn’t come looking for you for this. Why should I be the one getting swept away?”

It did not seem like something a man could say, a man who had done far worse than sweep her around, who had never once treated her like a person.

“You were swept away by me?”

The waiting, the anxiety, had always been hers to bear. He was a man she had called her husband, shared a bed with, and still never been able to reach. She was always the one whose vision blurred at a sigh from the man before her, whose chest tightened at the slightest lift of his brow.

Is he mocking me?

“Yes. Every time……”

Well, he is someone who smiles pleasantly while driving a blade into you.

Adeline released his forearm, and the knuckles stood out sharply against the pale back of her hand. She barely managed to hold back the surge rising in her chest.

“This is truly absurd. Stop toying with me.”

“Toying with you. I was always the one being played. Not that it was your intention, of course…… but regardless, now whenever I think of you, it feels like my head is being torn apart.”

Kailen said it had been that way throughout their entire marriage.

Some days he wanted to be good to her, and other days he wanted to torment her. Perhaps because of that, he said, there had not been a single moment of peace.

“So this time, I wanted to cast you aside and be done with it.”

He said that from the very first time they met, she had unsettled him, hovering around him like that. So he had thought that if he took her through marriage and then discarded her, perhaps that stifling feeling would ease.

Back then, when they first met. The two of them had parted without ever properly beginning, and so this foul, unresolved feeling had dragged on. So he would be the one to bring this marriage to its end. Whatever form it took, he felt he needed to be the one to close it, or he would be left with regret. Kailen said he had come back to her having reached that conclusion.

Did I torment you back then?

No, not particularly…… I don’t think anything like that happened. Did I really? Adeline kept questioning herself inwardly and searched her memory, but nothing came to her.

“I had already made a fool of myself once before. This time I was sure I could do it. But every time I see you, my head keeps breaking apart.”

He said he still found it horrifying and unbearable, the way he crumbled so helplessly. That it all felt like her fault. A dry smile spread across his face as he said it.

Adeline studied that brittle smile closely and blinked. At this point she was genuinely uncertain. Whether she had gone so far gone over him that her own mind had become unreliable, or whether his way of thinking was simply strange.

Even now, and back then too, theirs had been a plain sort of relationship, almost entirely her one-sided devotion.

Why would someone who had acted like he was only humoring her out of inconvenience feel this way?

She could not understand why he alone seemed to carry a distorted version of their shared memory. Questions kept springing up faster than she could follow, and both her head and her body felt sluggish.

“Earlier, you asked what I wanted from you.”

“……”

“Now I no longer want you to disappear from my sight. So, just live.”

* * *

A drop of ink fell onto the white paper and spread. The black stain left on the page looked, somehow, like Kailen’s hollow, vacant eyes. Adeline let out a sigh and crumpled the paper in front of her.

That day, already two days past. He had spoken such nonsense with such a desperate expression and voice that she had not been able to respond properly. So she had let him go without managing to say a single word in reply.

Even crumpling the paper did not make the thoughts go away. Like ink soaking into a blank page, Kailen spread through her.

His hot breath pouring against her ear had felt, for just a moment, pitifully moving, enough to make her forget all those years, the marriage riddled with deception.

Hopeless.

Adeline set down her fountain pen, her chest unsettled, and pressed a hand to it.

Showing up out of nowhere…… why does he do this?

Stirring up nothing but needless suspicion, piling on useless worry without end.

In truth, when Kailen had poured out his resentment over his unhappy family history, she had been deeply confused. Quite flustered, a little sorry for him, and at the same time rather indignant. So she had only stood there stupidly in front of him, face flushed, mumbling to herself.

Still, she had thought that their conversation on the subject of his family had involved some genuine back-and-forth, a fairly normal exchange. But everything he said and did after that had been so strange. So she had simply stared at him blankly, and let him go blankly.

What gave her some small comfort now, looking back, was this: separate from the flustered feeling of that day, the look in his eyes, which had seemed almost desperate, had not struck her heart with the same overwhelming force it once would have. Just……

What is this? Why is he suddenly acting like this, so out of character……

Rather than heartache, what she felt more strongly was bewilderment and unfamiliarity, a sense of wondering what he was trying to do now, after all this time.

What scheme does he still have left?

But then again, she herself was no longer someone worth scheming over. Not quite the right word for harmful, more like useless. That was the word that suited her.

And really, what did it matter now whether he still had some scheme left or not.

She just had to give him what he wanted.

She herself had said she would accommodate whatever he wished.

〈The only thing I want from you is this. Just live. Don’t say such nonsense about dying in front of me, just live.〉

To her, who had said she could die if that was what he wanted, Kailen’s wish had been clear. However she chose to live from here on, he no longer cared, as long as she remained alive before his eyes.

She could not take back the words she had spoken herself. It was somewhat of a nuisance, but for now, pretending to follow his wishes was the path that would make things easier in every way.

I should repay him somehow. The losses he has suffered on my account are considerable. Surely I can hold this place for him a little while longer.

Adeline rose from her chair and began pulling back every curtain hanging over the drawing room windows, one after another, in quick, sweeping motions. The curtains billowed under her rough hands, and the dust that had gathered on the window frames rose into the air, drawing a dry cough from her.

“……Ugh.”

The maids had not been able to clean thoroughly because of the mistress’s long spell of sensitivity, and it showed. When the coughing stopped, Adeline held the edge of a curtain and drew one finger slowly across the dusty window. Then she looked at the window with her fingerprint left on it.

Right, resentment or whatever else, even he will grow tired of it once he has let it all out.

He is a clever man, so the day of realization will come soon enough. The realization that all this obsession had been a meaningless waste.

Hoping his uncomfortable attention and interest in her would fade as quickly as possible. Hoping he would tire of her soon. Until that day came, Adeline decided to remain here as he wished, like this dull dust, still and present. Quietly. Uselessly.

Adeline wiped her dusty finger with a handkerchief and rang the silver bell. Jingle jingle, the clear and bright sound of the bell, which she had not heard in so very long, rang out clean and pure.