IDIBC Chapter 51

Even Knowing Life Would Be Hard Again

“What woman in the world, at a moment like this, could resist coveting a man like you?”

I raised the hand not holding the bouquet and traced his cheek. My fingertips were frozen cold from the desire that heated my heart.

The touch of his soft, warm face against my hand made my heart surge.

From the beginning, I… always you… entirely you…

“I like you.”

“…….”

“Though you must already feel this acutely.”

While appropriately revealing the truth he already knew.

“I’m telling you this now because it’s proper form.”

Mixing in appropriate jokes as Ricardo would do.

“For as long as I’m your fiancée, I will love you passionately.”

While cleverly hiding the real truth I wanted to conceal.

“Yes, so as someone who loves you, I will gladly be engaged to you.”

I decided to fully reveal my heart to you for all the time we can be together. Because that’s all I can do. With that thought, my trembling body stopped shaking.

Perhaps this was the reason—ten years ago, on that night of thunder and lightning, I grasped the hand of opportunity extended by some being, whether god or demon, and returned.

Even knowing life would be hard again, even knowing the sad fate of being unable to love him would repeat itself.

Without hesitation or fear before death.

Like Ricardo’s mother, to see him smile just one more time.

So I had no intention of backing away anymore during the time I could love him. If someone set fire to my body as payment for loving him, I would simply turn to ash.

Even if death separated him and me, I would leave no regrets.

I mustered courage and slowly wrapped my arms around his neck. Fortunately, he didn’t push me away either. My cheek gently touched his.

“Every woman in the world would surely do this at a moment like this. So this is just proper form, nothing particularly meaningful.”

“……Right.”

Ricardo also slowly extended his arms and wrapped them around my waist. I pulled his neck a little closer and whispered.

“I want to ask you something.”

“What……?”

Ricardo’s voice, scratching out coolly, lingered by my ear.

“You said that time. In the carriage. That just because you can’t touch me doesn’t mean another guy can.”

Ricardo burst into low chuckles. The small vibrations traveled from my cheek past my nape to his chest.

“I did. So what do you want to ask?”

“Well… are you sure you can’t touch me? Not that you won’t?”

“What?”

“That’s a very big difference.”

The difference between won’t because you don’t want to, and can’t even if you want to.

Ricardo grabbed my shoulders and separated me from himself. Though I clung on, shaking my head in embarrassment, he was merciless. When he looked straight into my eyes and smiled slightly, my hopeless heart made a fool of itself.

“Why are you asking that?”

“Obviously because I’m curious.”

His eyes darkened deeply, as if it wasn’t a light question. I waited a while for an answer, but none came. I shook my head and tried to back away from him.

“Never mind, just forget I—”

“You’re right, I can’t touch you.”

“…….”

“I don’t know why that’s important, though.”

Though I’d never once seen snow fall in my life, I thought that if it snowed on a dark night, it would surely look like his eyes.

“The reason it’s important is…”

I stole a peck from his lips with a smack. Quick enough to make even bees and butterflies cry.

While thinking I’d lost count of how many times I’d stolen kisses.

Like someone caught off guard by an attack, Ricardo’s brow briefly furrowed. With a smile still on his lips, he asked me with his eyes: What on earth are you doing? Countless stars sparkled and scattered in his jet-black eyes.

“Just because you can’t doesn’t mean I can’t either. As long as you don’t dislike it.”

Taking advantage of the moment his arms loosened, I sprang away from him. Backing away slowly, I captured the image of Ricardo’s dumbfounded, smiling face in my eyes.

He was a beautiful man, beautiful enough to feel cruel standing alone under the lamplight.

“As I said just now, a kiss of vow is proper form that must be observed in situations like this.”

“…….”

“But I can’t do something you’d dislike.”

To hide my cheeks that must have been blushing red like peaches, I kept backing into the darkness. When I was far enough that even the shadows of the long garden lamps couldn’t reach me, I waved the bouquet he’d given me.

“Today was truly wonderful. I won’t forget it.”

Noble and pitiful Ricardo.

That beautiful man bloomed and withered repeatedly among the lavishly flowering spring bouquet.

****

On the day of the engagement ceremony, though I woke early, a very long and strange dream continued.

Forcing down food that wouldn’t go down, being led here and there by people’s hands to be dressed up, even in the moment I put on the beautiful dress for the engagement ceremony—the terribly surreal dream didn’t stop.

So when I wake from this dream, I’ll probably open my eyes in my bedroom back in Resotia.

“Hah…”

No matter how much I tried to accept it, this lacked reality far too much.

Like that night when I received a proposal in the garden.

What were the odds that one day, the daughter of a fallen noble family from a principality would suddenly become engaged to the heir of the great Dermeier Empire of Rochester? And a bastard daughter who possessed not a single quality of nobility at that.

Wouldn’t it be right to run away even now?

By the time my knuckles, which I hadn’t realized I’d been clenching, began to ache, the carriage carrying me entered the autumn district of the ducal estate.

The carriage slowed before massive buildings that were more appropriately called castles than estates, and stopped in front of the building with the sharpest spire.

Where so many people had been hiding, I couldn’t imagine—from when we entered the autumn district until here where the carriage stopped, the Duke’s servants lined up watching us.

It was a scene you could believe was a procession through the city streets rather than at Duke Rochester’s estate.

People whispered among themselves with eyes full of curiosity. Watching them, hallucinations began to sound in my ears, soaked in victimization.

That because of that insignificant woman, God’s wrath would surely descend upon the Rochester family. That it made no sense to betray the saintess and accept such a woman as a fiancée.

Those whispers resembled the voice of my own inner self, hidden deep in my heart.

Then a low voice broke through and interrupted the voice of my heart.

“It’s truly unbelievable. I always notice it, but you really are… well.”

Only then did I remember that the other protagonist of today’s engagement was riding across from me.

“Wh-what about me?”

“It’s only been a little over ten days.”

“So what?”

“The desire for me that filled your eyes has already vanished without a trace.”

Ah, so this is what it means to have nothing to say even with ten mouths.

“I can’t believe that woman who looked at me with greedy eyes and the woman before me now are the same person.”

“Gr-greedy? You’ve misunderstood my gaze too much. How can you say such things about what I’m—”

“You have the expression of someone pushed off a cliff. You said I was desirable. That you’d love me passionately the whole time you’re by my side, didn’t you?”

I don’t think I said ‘passionately’… did I? Even though I clearly said it myself, why did it sound like a lie when heard through Ricardo’s mouth—it was something I understood yet didn’t.

“I told you that day too. At such a moment, when a man like you is smiling with a bouquet, what woman wouldn’t be greedy? Even a woman lying in a coffin would probably spring right up.”

At the inappropriate metaphor, cracks appeared on Ricardo’s face. He raised one eyebrow and leaned back against the carriage.

“Anyway, it’s too late for regrets now.”

He’d been staring intently at my eyes the whole time, and expressed the complex feelings I was experiencing right now in just one word. Hearing it put that way, it was exactly right, but it wasn’t quite such a simple emotion either.

“No. What I’m feeling now isn’t regret, but…”

Instead of asking what it was, he responded with a low laugh.

“It’s resolve. Like a determination. I’ll make sure to make you happy.”

Whether the feelings in my eyes were sincere again, Ricardo closed his eyes and laughed with his chest heaving. He seemed to laugh rather freely, but could this really be why the Duchess was trying to elevate me to the rank of saintess?

When his laughter subsided, he extended his hand to me.

“My fiancée, who alternates between regret and resolve, it’s time to get out of the carriage.”

I stepped out of the carriage with a determined heart, but was quickly humbled before the magnificent building. What greeted me was a massive door whose end I could only see by craning my neck back.

The temple located within the estate was a place that opened its lofty doors only for engagements, weddings, or funerals of the family’s direct line.