ERTHMB Chapter 68

Empty Promises

 

“Please go inside now, my lady.”

 

The elderly maid urged Helena with a voice full of concern. However, Helena’s gaze, fixed on the distant path, showed no sign of being withdrawn.

 

The forest connected to the mansion’s back gate kept holding her captive.

 

More precisely, the person that forest might be sheltering. Or them.

 

“He said… he would come today.”

 

Unlike her resolve, her uncertain voice fell. It was covered by the steadily falling rain, looking nothing but miserable.

 

Helena tightly closed and opened her blue eyes that had grown cold from hours of exposure. Eugene’s figure was still nowhere to be seen.

 

Yet she stubbornly stood guard in that spot until darkness filled her toes.

 

As if he couldn’t be seen because the day had grown dark, as if he was already standing before her but merely hidden by the darkness. Though she knew better than anyone that it was a pointless act, she persisted with such stubbornness.

 

‘I’m fine. It doesn’t matter.’

 

Because she didn’t want to admit her wretchedness.

 

If living or dying would only bring loneliness. If both here and there would be nothing but hell for her.

 

She could harbor the vain hope that he would return someday. She could become a foolish woman waiting endlessly. At least the hell with him by her side was bearable.

 

“My lady.”

 

Eventually, Madam Tara, unable to break Helena’s stubbornness, came with a thick fur coat.

 

Helena reluctantly nodded. Madam Tara moved behind her and hesitantly spoke again with care.

 

“My lady, His Grace is…”

 

“I know.”

 

Helena quietly dismissed the madam’s concern. It was a plain voice containing no trace of anger, impatience, or irritation.

 

Accepting the hands that wrapped the fur around her like a paper doll, she closed and opened her eyes even more slowly.

 

Soft fur brushed against her fingertips. An expensive fur woven from the white deer fur of the Altaria Mountains. The luxury item, of which only a limited quantity was released annually, felt only damp and heavy.

 

As if even this weight was too much for her to bear, as if she had no right to be in Evergale.

 

Helena repeated with a slightly more impatient tone, as if trying to erase him from her mind.

 

“I know too.”

 

Meanwhile, the last traces of sunset disappeared. The rain grew heavier, and night fell completely.

 

Though she stubbornly waited until the end, no one returned until the end.

 

Finally, Helena turned her steps toward the grand mansion. Thus, she spent the night alone as always. It was a night as cold as her aching heart.

 

“Cough, cough!”

 

She felt pathetic toward herself for doubting whether he would even care to listen to her increasingly rough coughing.

 

In the middle of the vast mansion, Helena found herself increasingly doubting even her own existence.

 

It was four days after the day Eugene had promised to come that she could finally see his face.

 

“If you were sick, you should have contacted me.”

 

The shadow she had waited for so long finally fell over her bedside.

 

Then what would have changed?

 

Helena swallowed her self-deprecating question and lay on her side, facing away from him.

 

The clear sky shone through the straight window. The rain that had poured while she waited endlessly for him had evaporated without a trace. Helena thought blankly.

 

‘How long does it take to get from the villa to the mansion.’

 

And when will you come to me before that woman.

 

‘It’s only four days now, but soon it will become a month, then a year.’

 

Eugene, who seemed to have rushed over immediately upon arriving at the Grand Duke’s residence, carried a strange scent. The sweet and bitter amber fragrance that had begun to waft from him occasionally.

 

Helena hated that scent. It felt exactly like something was stealing him away from her.

 

Though she had never possessed him from the beginning. That made it even more ridiculous.

 

“…Eugene.”

 

When she opened her parched lips, only a hoarse voice barely came out.

 

Eugene hesitated for a moment, then leaned his upper body down slightly.

 

“I’m here.”

 

The intangible fragrance grew stronger. Despite his words that he was here, Helena didn’t feel like he was in the same space.

 

Still, she wanted to confirm. Helena turned her head from the window with difficulty to face Eugene.

 

“…Eugene.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“If I die, will you be sad?”

 

At that thin voice, the golden eyes that had always been firm wavered.

 

Eugene placed his hand on her neck, damp with sweat, as if to soothe her cracked throat. Then he gently enveloped it and stroked with his thumb while murmuring.

 

“Why do you ask such things.”

 

“It seems like you don’t love me.”

 

The hand stroking her neck hesitated. Eugene opened his mouth as if to answer immediately, then closed it again.

 

At his lukewarm reaction, Helena’s face crumbled slightly. She resented herself for expecting something like a natural course after promising countless times not to be hurt.

 

She let out a breath like thin mist and turned her head back to the window.

 

Then Eugene, who had stopped, moved again. He moved his hand to Helena’s forehead to check. It was burning hot.

 

Eugene slowly swept away the hair stuck to her forehead with the back of his fingers. Even though she had turned her head away, he could see her long eyelashes blinking slowly.

 

Watching that butterfly-wing-like fluttering, Eugene gave his answer in a low voice.

 

“I won’t be able to be sad. I’ll have too much to do.”

 

Helena tried to dismiss the moisture beginning to gather in her eyes as sweat.

 

Since he was a cold man, it was natural that a cold answer would come. Yet she couldn’t help the throbbing pain in her chest.

 

“What kind of things to do?”

 

When strength gradually entered her grip on the blanket, Eugene continued.

 

“I’ll turn back time.”

 

It was rather fanciful content for Eugene’s usual self. But Helena felt an ambiguous certainty.

 

It was a certainty that came to her for the first time in a while, someone who had come to doubt even her own existence in the vast mansion. It was both a strange attraction and repulsion.

 

Strangely, it wasn’t entirely welcome. It was because of the certainty that he would always hold the initiative of opportunity.

 

The first Helena already knew that she would be the one dragged along like clock hands.

 

Knowing this yet willing to accept it, it was truly a foolish and mad love.

 

Feeling blocked up inside as if suffering from indigestion, Helena barely asked back.

 

“You will?”

 

“…….”

 

Instead of answering, Eugene moved his hand. Several strokes followed. His hand left the cold temperature of the outside on Helena’s forehead and departed. Now he gently stroked her cheek.

 

Helena maintained silence for a moment, then muttered quietly.

 

“Don’t.”

 

Pause. After another moment of silence passed, Helena slowly removed his hand from her cheek.

 

“Don’t.”

 

A louder voice than before squeezed through her dry lips again, gasping as it emerged.

 

“…….”

 

And the room became completely quiet.

 

Eugene didn’t answer this time either. He simply swept back all her hair to reveal her round forehead completely, briefly kissed it, and stood up.

 

“Go to sleep now.”

 

The heavy blanket pressed down on Helena’s heaving chest. She kept her eyes open until she heard the sound of the door closing, then closed them while inhaling the scent he had left behind.

 

As if trying to find Eugene’s original body scent within the amber fragrance, she concentrated only on breathing in and out for a while.

 

Naturally, his afterimage flickered behind her eyelids. At the same time, a futile imagination arose.

 

‘If I don’t wake up like this… what kind of face will you make.’

 

She became a little curious.

 

====

 

Did I want to see you even in dreams, or did you not want to let me go even in dreams?

 

Since it’s my dream anyway, let me think whatever I want, Helena thought as she shifted her body slightly.

 

“Huh……”

 

The fever that had been gradually rising had now reached its peak and was burning all her nerves. Even though she hated sleeping like the dead and wanted to stay awake as much as possible, it was beyond her strength.

 

Unable to properly swallow even a sip of water, she could only pant and repeatedly fall unconscious and wake up again.

 

Even when she barely managed to lift her eyelids, her vision just floated hazily. Tinnitus rang constantly in her ears.

 

It felt like her body was floating in the air. She was completely covered in muggy, pale heat. She couldn’t even distinguish between dream and reality.

 

‘Hot. Too hot.’

 

She opened her mouth and exhaled to release the heat boiling inside her body, but nothing changed. Only her throat hurt terribly. The pain was like scattering sand and roughly stirring it up, making her afraid to even swallow saliva.

 

Surely her exhaled breath must be mixed with dry ash. With that conviction, Helena prepared to escape into sleep once again.

 

That was the only way to endure the heavy sensation pressing down on her entire body. She habitually thought of Eugene and waited for drowsiness to push away the pain, even briefly.

 

However, what pushed away the pain shortly after wasn’t drowsiness but a new sensation. The sensation that slipped in smoothly instantly turned her mind upside down.

 

‘What is this?’

 

A chill that came clearly even amid the chaotic tinnitus, even in the vision that wouldn’t clear at all, even in the fluctuating pain.

 

Cool, soft, squishy, yet something that made her want to keep pulling it closer…

 

‘It feels good.’

 

It felt like the air that couldn’t reach her lungs no matter how much she inhaled had finally found its way.

 

It was like jumping into a cold stone lake on the hottest day of the year and pouring out all the humidity accumulated in her body.

 

If only she could, she wanted to throw her entire body into it. Helena clung even more to that chill, craving the salvation-like coolness.

 

Even in her hazy state of mind, she desired it madly. She wanted that pleasant sensation to devour her entirely from head to toe.

 

‘I have to catch it. Don’t go. Keep staying with me.’

 

Now her body trembled with cold instead of heat. The chill that seemed like it would only stay around her stuffy heart spread throughout her body as she had wished.

 

Helena lifted her arms with all her might, as if she wouldn’t let it go. Without even knowing what the energy pervading every corner of her body was, she gathered it up with her fingers as if she could catch it.

 

And she caught it.

 

‘Cool.’

 

Though it was only for an instant.

 

‘Hot.’

 

The chill that had been swimming around like the ocean circled her lips one last time before disappearing completely. At that moment, along with a small sound of water, she tasted mint.

 

Heat settled again in the place where it had escaped. However, it wasn’t the sickly heat that choked her breath, but a comfortable warmth that made her entire body drowsy.

 

For the first time since collapsing, Helena fell asleep without thinking of Eugene.