“Ah, this… it’s a leather pouch filled with hot water, but it was too hot so the nanny covered it with cloth like this.”

It was pretty cloth embroidered with five white petals.

“She said she’d make a few more… no, that’s not it. Rosaline, come here. Lie down next to me.”

Juliet, who had set down the teacup again, squirmed and made space. When Rosaline didn’t move, perhaps thinking she was declining, she grabbed her arm and pulled her. Rosaline was pulled without resistance and lay down beside her.

“If you put this like this, on top of where it hurts, it’ll hurt less.”

Juliet placed the water pouch on her stomach and covered her with the blanket.

“Sleep here tonight. Okay?”

Rosaline gazed with trembling eyes at Juliet, who linked arms with her familiarly. Juliet quickly closed her eyes and pretended to sleep, afraid Rosaline might refuse. That appearance was fresh and pure.

Ah, lovely Juliet.

You are too beautiful and kind for me to dare be jealous.

Rosaline’s chest ached. She didn’t know why it hurt. Her heart just ached as if in pain, and though she wanted to say something, silence wouldn’t leave her mouth as if she’d lost her voice.

She kissed Miss’s forehead.

“Sleep well, Juliet.”

And that night, she left the house while Juliet slept.

Without knowing the clear reason, just unable to bear her heart full of love. She rushed out recklessly. So the place she arrived at randomly was right here. The sweltering summer wind brushed her sweat-soaked skin and brought the air just beginning to dawn.

It was simply peaceful,

And lonely.

* * *

“But Miss chased after me.”

Rosaline said while lowering her head and stroking the short grass with her hand. She felt Romeo’s gaze touching her cheek.

“Without even wearing shoes, in her nightgown as it was, she was a mess looking for me.”

She slowly moved her hand and held his hand lying carelessly on the ground. The hand much larger than hers was rougher and harder than her. Perhaps because of the tendons raised like steel cables, it was more like steel than a person’s hand.

Rosaline raised her trembling eyelids and looked at him. The setting sun had already colored his cheek crimson.

“Juliet held my hand and said.”

“…What?”

He asked in a pitch barely perceptible. Rosaline held his hand with both hands—a hand that could wrap both of hers at once, that could perhaps strangle her neck in one go. And she whispered while burying her cheek in the back of his hand.

“I need you.”

Juliet’s plea cruelly dug into Rosaline’s gaps. It was wine bestowed on the starving, sweet rain falling on one who had drunk only seawater.

She murmured while stroking the back of Romeo’s hand with her thumb.

“We’ve been together our whole lives. If I lose you, I’ll be submerged in loneliness and die.”

Romeo watched her with burning eyes. Meeting this squarely, Rosaline kissed the back of his hand and slowly stroked his chin.

At the distance that had grown close, breath that couldn’t be distinguished as whose shattered finely. Her hand that had been tracing his sharp jaw like a crossed cliff gradually rose upward as if embroidering. Rosaline, who had been caressing his cheek, eye area, and eyebrows, swept back his wavy blond hair.

“Don’t leave me.”

Following her touch, his straight forehead appeared. The sun just before death colored his forehead. She slowly kissed that place. Romeo was clenching his teeth and closing his eyes, as if enduring something.

Rosaline embraced his neck and leaned her cheek against the crown of his head. Just as Juliet had done to her.

“Please.”

Feeling his heated breath touching near her chest, Rosaline closed her eyes. He was so different from Juliet’s small body. So she tried to recall Juliet.

That dawn, everything changed.

Far from resentful, it pained her heart that Miss’s small, soft feet were scarred because of her. Pity was greater than jealousy.

Because Juliet was the only person who held onto Rosaline, she willingly tried to regard her as light. She decided to think only of Miss, not her own miscellaneous thoughts.

If that feeling where petty jealousy and resentment are eradicated isn’t love, then what is it?

“Romeo, I love Juliet with deep friendship and faith.”

Whether you’re a trial sent by god or my adversity, please, recognize my feelings toward Juliet. Reach even a little and understand,

Please don’t harm my light.

Rosaline loosened the strength in the arms holding him and tried to meet Romeo’s gaze. It was to know if he understood her.

But he was controlling himself with his eyes closed, tendons standing out on his jaw.

Rosaline wanted his reaction right away. She carefully cupped both his cheeks and touched his eye area with her thumbs.

At the same moment an earthworm cried loudly, he opened his eyes. In the instant the sunset disappeared, tears fell from his black irises that seemed to hold embers. Following the quiet, indifferent tears, lines were drawn on his cheeks.

“If someone had cherished me so desperately.”

He said while pressing his cheek into her hand.

“If I too had cherished someone so achingly.”

Romeo’s voice was so low and so wet that it seemed to be heard through the chest rather than the ears.

“I wouldn’t have even brought out cigars in front of you coughing.”

“……”

“I wouldn’t have let you go alone to buy such cheap wine.”

Whether he’d already set down his glass, both his hands grasped Rosaline’s thighs not strongly. It was a gesture closer to clinging than embracing. In the scenery changing to night, Romeo whispered.

“Never.”

Rosaline thought he was insulting her. That’s why strength left her fingertips, her breathing roughened, and the blood flow in her body churned as if going backward. But far from getting angry, it was harder to keep looking at him.

Rosaline pulled her hands from his grasp and turned to sit. When she pushed him away, as if magic time had ended, the intense tension dissipated. However, her whole body was still red and itchy, and her chest felt like it would burst.

She stared into the distance if only to calm this. When had the sunset burned so red—night left only solitude.

“I……”

She moistened her dry lips and barely opened her mouth.

“I’ve done enough, and there’s nothing more to tell you.”

Rosaline packaged generosity as if this was the only point, as if she’d let the earlier insult pass. His long sigh was heard from beside her. After a brief silence, he said.

“Yes, now I understand well.”

Romeo’s gaze also touched the air like hers.

“That your heart is not much different from what I know.”

Which meant her heart was only devotion and longing without response.

But as if under some spell, she couldn’t deny it aloud as usual. The best she could do was stay silent to avoid digging deeper. She looked at the endless darkness and suddenly realized.

If Juliet was light to Rosaline, Romeo was another light. Someone who dug up the reality she’d turned away from, hidden deep in shadows, and deliberately showed it to her. If that wasn’t light, then what was it?

But that light was intense rather than warm, and cruel rather than gentle.

She was grateful for the night that hid her endlessly crying self.

For the first time in a very long while, Rosaline hoped morning wouldn’t come.

She was afraid of light.

* * *

They didn’t converse during the return home. Romeo just stayed by her side a few steps back like when they went to the old town, without any words, until she went inside.

In front of the door leading to the back garden, Rosaline collected her breath. As if it had been an absurd deal from the start, nothing was easily settled when she was with him. This state similar to elation caused reckless impulses like when she first left home.

Instinctively sensing danger, Rosaline felt the need to settle the situation.

“Is this enough now?”

She turned around with the door right before her. As expected, he was a few steps away. However, thanks to the faint crescent moon, only his silhouette showed black in the darkness. She couldn’t even see his face, let alone his mouth moving.

He asked back.

“What?”

“…That there’s no need to uselessly prattle about Juliet and me anymore.”

“Then all that’s left is for you to give your pretty heart.”

She couldn’t finish speaking because he approached at once and grabbed her chin. At a distance where breaths intertwined, he kissed her forehead instead of her lips.

As if it meant the same as what Juliet had done to Rosaline.

“Go in, Rosaline.”

Rosaline ultimately left him with nothing settled in her heart. Though exhaustion rushed in and she wanted to sleep right away, light leaked through the door gap. When she carefully opened the door, a familiar back greeted her.

“Where have you been?”