ERTHMB Chapter 17

The Woman Who Returns

“If you’re not interested, why do you keep staring?”

This time Ian raised his head. His narrowed eyes of a pale color caught her gaze.

Helena, startled for a moment, dropped her fork.

Clack, clang.

The fork hit the table once before falling to the floor with a loud noise. Although it was actually quiet enough to be drowned out by the surrounding noise, to her ears it sounded much louder.

Like hundreds of plates shattering simultaneously, crash.

As each plate shattered, black spots appeared in her vision. They grew gradually larger until they suddenly engulfed her surroundings.

[And you think you can act like a Grand Duchess this way.]

In the complete darkness, a stern voice shot past her ear like an arrow. The spot where it grazed seemed to bleed.

Her tightly clenched fist trembled and a chill ran down her spine. She couldn’t bring herself to look around and merely rolled her eyes.

‘Huh.’

Her breath suddenly caught.

Everyone eating in the restaurant was staring at her.

All of them, like black shadows, had grown unnaturally tall, and their reddened eyes looked down at her as if they would devour her.

The shadows began to rise from their seats and approach.

[Pick it up again, Helena!]

They shouted with the same voice, the same lip movements, at the same timing.

[Straighten your back. Again.]

The black voices pecked at her from all directions.

[Do it again, again.]

The sound of shattering plates grew louder and louder.

[Again. Again.]

They broke and shattered mercilessly. Rumbling like thunder.

[Again!]

“Shut up!”

“…len? Helen?”

Suddenly, a gentle human voice was heard.

A living voice. A voice that didn’t choke her.

At the same time, she felt something warm rubbing the back of her hand. The breath she had been holding burst out all at once.

The black space went out like a candle in the wind.

Helena opened her tightly closed eyes while breathing roughly. The coarse wooden table gradually came into view.

She finally realized that the warmth spreading across the back of her hand was someone’s body heat.

“Are you alright? As I thought, it’s still too much for you—”

“I’m fine.”

Helena quickly pulled her hand away from Ian’s grasp. And before he could say more, she hastily called over a waiter.

“Th…”

Her voice cracked slightly while asking for a new fork. She frantically looked around the table.

Then Ian poured water into a cup and handed it to her, while relaying her request to the waiter. After she gulped down the water, he softly spoke her name.

“Helena.”

His tone was slightly firmer than before. There was a nuance as if urging her to look at him, but Helena stubbornly kept her eyes downcast.

If she looked at him now, he would find out.

He would discover the imperfect monster she carried within herself at every moment.

He was already skilled at reading people. Having already exposed her true self, Helena didn’t want to reveal her weakness as well. She couldn’t give him any more opportunity.

After taking a deep breath, she furrowed her brow, pretending to be angry to hide her anxiety.

“I was bothered by the noise. You know, you have quite a talent? You can irritate people with just your voice.”

“…”

Strangely, he remained silent. He just stared at her intensely. Her skin tingled where his gaze touched, as if she had been stripped bare.

She had expected him to make a light joke or argue back or say something. Why was there no reaction? Or was he truly angry with her this time?

Helena found this feeling of instinctively gauging someone’s reaction unsettling. As she bit the inner flesh of her lip, the waiter brought a new fork.

As soon as the metallic clatter of the fork hitting the wooden surface sounded, Ian spoke.

“I’m glad you noticed. I do have that tendency.”

He said it in the most matter-of-fact tone possible. Helena found his words more dry than the cold, cheap piece of meat in front of her.

Despite all her efforts, it seemed he had once again read her. But she didn’t show it. She just sensed his intention to shift this uncomfortable atmosphere as he wished.

Whether he was playing along or had other motives.

She couldn’t tell, but if she wanted him to find her annoying, she had succeeded.

Helena met his gaze with her brow still furrowed. This time it wasn’t an act; she was genuinely displeased.

“What exactly makes you so happy?”

“That you’re angry like this. And even better that it’s because of me.”

“I don’t particularly want to understand, but you really are an incomprehensible person.”

He clearly had strange tastes. Otherwise, he couldn’t maintain that smile while she was only reproaching him.

“There’s no need to understand. Don’t try to read my expressions either. It’s difficult, isn’t it? Just see what you see and be angry.”

“Then will you be happy again? What a nasty hobby.”

“Yes.”

“But why?”

Her voice grew increasingly louder. Patrons at neighboring tables began to look at her one by one.

This time it wasn’t a hallucination but reality, yet Helena didn’t care at all.

She was so irritated that she could only see the man in front of her.

The deeper the crease between her brows became, the deeper his smile grew.

“Because you seem alive. That makes me happy.”

At that moment, something snapped inside Helena’s chest. The tensely drawn air evaporated in an instant.

Only then did she begin to notice the stares around her. Her awareness, which had been focused solely on him, scattered.

The feeling of déjà vu from last night rose again. The feeling of having stepped onto a path of no return.

Helena pretended to be unaffected as she picked up her knife and cut a bean stalk. She focused only on that, as if cutting the bean stalk would reveal an answer.

“I, I…”

The sound of the knife hitting the plate was quite loud. She tried to maintain her composure, but it was difficult.

“I’m not angry.”

She was.

Because for a moment, she had felt painfully alive.

****

The Grand Duke’s reception garden was always in full bloom regardless of the season.

An elderly lady was walking through the East mansion’s garden, which was decorated most splendidly of all.

She was admiring the colorful hydrangeas when she heard footsteps approaching from afar and turned around.

Soon Eugene appeared.

“What brings you all the way here?”

Perhaps he had come during training, as he was dressed rather casually instead of his usual crisp formal attire.

Through his loosely opened shirt, a long, torn scar was briefly visible. Beads of sweat slid over it, then flowed down along his chest muscle.

A servant following behind hastily offered a towel. However, Eugene dismissed everyone, saying he would return before the sweat dried.

The elderly lady sat down on an ivory-colored round stool with a displeased expression.

“Are you saying that time spent talking with your mother is a waste?”

“What do you want?”

Eugene replied without moving from where he stood. Christine frowned even more and nodded toward the seat opposite her.

A light sigh escaped through Eugene’s teeth. Reluctantly, he sat down with his back against the chair. Only then did the wrinkles around Christine’s eyes relax a little.

“We don’t have to have a purpose to see each other. If someone leaves, someone must also return.”

“…Did you threaten Gordon again?”

“What other choice did I have when you wouldn’t talk to me?”

Despite Eugene’s momentarily sunken expression, Christine laughed refreshingly as if relieved of a toothache.

“She’s finally gone. Looking so docile yet enduring for five years, she was quite stubborn.”

Christine’s head turned slowly, taking in the surroundings. She gazed satisfactorily at the mansion visible behind the garden.

“Now it finally feels like Evergale.”

Her tone suggested utter relief. It almost sounded as if she had finally driven out a bug that shouldn’t have been in the house.

Eugene’s lips hardened. Suddenly, he remembered that Helena had met his mother a few days before she left.

Eugene asked without hiding his fierce demeanor:

“What did you say to Helena? What have you been doing to that woman all this time, Mother?”

His naturally low voice growled even more roughly.

Christine opened her eyes wide in surprise. Rather than anger, her face showed complete incomprehension that this was something worth arguing about.

She soon sneered coldly.

“You’re the one who entrusted her to me all this time, Eugene.”

“I was at war, and you kept threatening me about etiquette and adapting to social circles.”

“It was convenient to pretend not to know, wasn’t it?”

“I will never send Helena to you again, Mother.”

Eugene’s yellow pupils glinted fiercely. Christine, who had maintained her coldness, spread wrinkles across her fine brow.

“Again? That sounds as if there will be a next time.”

“We are still married. We never divorced.”

“Is that why you’re holding out and not signing? How much did she ask for in alimony? She acted as if she couldn’t even think of such a strategy, but she was quite cunning until the end.”

At Christine’s words, Eugene’s voice grew increasingly louder.

“I didn’t do it. And I won’t. Helena will be the only woman who can bear the Evergale name in the future.”

“You…!”

Christine opened her mouth as if to retort immediately, then closed it again.

After a moment, showing her displeasure by audibly closing her fan with a snap, she admonished him.

“I don’t understand why you’re suddenly acting this way. You’ve been dissatisfied with her lately too.”

“When did I—”

“Don’t try to deny it. I’m ultimately a woman like her. I can tell just by looking at your face.”

“I am that woman’s husband.”

Eugene declared firmly. In name and reality, she was his wife.

Therefore, he should be the one who knew Helena. No one else should know her better than himself.

But, somehow, why.

Why are you so blurry to me?

Meanwhile, Christine continued to counter Eugene’s fierce attitude without concern.

“And you are my son. You resemble him a lot, Eugene. You easily achieve everything, easily obtain everything, and easily grow tired of everything.”

“…”

Eugene unconsciously placed his hand on his scar and lightly stroked it. Christine continued speaking as if she hadn’t noticed.

“She was a child who would smile immediately even while crying with just one word from you, no matter how harshly I treated her. But now she had no expression. I felt I wouldn’t need to call her anymore even without your threats. And that’s what happened.”

Christine rose from her seat.

“Even if you haven’t ended it, she has.”

As soon as she finished speaking, she promptly turned around as if her business was concluded. The pink hat decorated with glossy swan feathers left the garden and faded into the distance.

Eugene sat alone, quietly swallowing his saliva. His body was cold. His sweat had cooled long ago.

So, as if to heat his cold insides, he repeated incessantly:

‘No. You will return.’

She was Helena Evergale. She was that kind of woman.

Even if he himself forgot.

The woman who always returns.