So, Did You Smile?
It was also the question I was most curious about at this very moment. Why on earth was he saying these things to me?
“Because you are to me…”
Walter stubbornly kept his mouth shut for a moment. His teal eyes, wanting his sincerity to be conveyed, looked almost desperate. Unbelievably so for someone who had barged into another family’s house to propose marriage to that family’s fiancée.
“Because you’re the only one.”
The only one?
I had expected this much of an answer from him—that he’d received a request from the Crown Princess. Though it would be a reason I couldn’t understand either, at least it would be better than what I just heard.
I could tell his words were sincere, but I couldn’t understand what they meant. How could I possibly be the only something to him? We’d only just met recently.
He continued speaking quickly before I could add anything.
“For now, this is the only reason I can give you, the only answer.”
The gentleman sent from heaven had suddenly burst into this house one day, proposed to me, and departed leisurely.
Maintaining perfect etiquette until the very moment he left.
****
I had fallen asleep waiting for Ricardo, who had said he’d return even if it was late at night.
Was it because I’d received that absurd proposal from Walter? That night, I had that dream again after a long time—the dream where my entire body burned black and turned to ash. Even knowing it was a dream, my limbs trembled uncontrollably.
And without fail, that man appeared. Along with that unsettling voice saying there was an opportunity.
Step by step, walking toward me without the slightest deviation, the man came a little closer than he had in the previous dream.
‘Don’t come, please.’
Words that couldn’t possibly be heard came out involuntarily. Why did my heart crumble like this over something that had already passed? Then, cutting through the flames, the man reached out his hand. With a face engulfed in fire, formless.
The moment the cool touch reached my cheek, my eyes snapped open. Before my eyes as I woke from the dream was Ricardo.
“Rica?”
“Mm.”
With the gentle hand stroking my forehead, the nightmare that had been shaking me until just moments ago disappeared without a trace.
“How did it go?”
As I mumbled without fully opening my eyes, he laughed softly.
“What?”
“The victory…”
“I won.”
“That’s amazing.”
I stretched out my arms to pull him into an embrace. But Ricardo didn’t comply readily. To my questioning “Why?”, he answered in a voice tinged with laughter.
“I haven’t washed properly yet. I smell like blood. You don’t like it when I do my swordwork.”
So it’s because of that reaction at the hunting festival. Heh, I let out a laugh that was too clear for someone half-asleep. It was quite amusing that he described his beautiful swordsmanship, said to be the finest in the Empire, as “swordwork.”
But it would be fine, I just wanted him to hold me now.
While I was thinking, he tilted his face and pressed it against my cheek. As he said, there was a faint smell of blood, but it soon changed to his own distinctive body scent.
I stretched out my arms and wrapped them around his neck. A sigh of relief escaped from him, clear enough for me to feel it definitely.
“Did you have a nightmare?”
I had wanted to tell him someday. That I’d been having dreams of burning to death, and that perhaps it wasn’t just a dream. As lightly as possible, so he wouldn’t be frightened again.
“No.”
But instead of telling the truth, I pulled back slightly and patted the bed, gesturing for him to lie down beside me. After hesitating for a moment, Ricardo slowly pulled back the covers and lay down next to me.
Judging by the moisture remaining in his hair, it seemed he had washed briefly, removed only his outer clothes, and hurried over. Still dressed in his shirt, he held me tightly in his arms, resting his chin on the crown of my head as he asked.
“Are you fearless?”
“……”
“To tell a man to lie in bed with you in the middle of the night. Knowing what might happen.”
Had Ricardo’s voice always been this gentle? His voice, which had constantly shifted between cool and warm, had become completely soft at some point. I liked that, so I kept acting spoiled. Using the excuse of being drowsy as my reason.
“Yes, I’m fearless.”
“I heard Walter visited today.”
Hearing Ricardo’s tense voice, I thought it was fortunate I was half-asleep.
If I had been fully awake, he would have figured out everything I had discussed with Walter. As I remained silent, he took a deep breath, filling his chest.
The dull sound of his heartbeat pounded at my ears, so desperate that I couldn’t tell if it was from frustration, displeasure, or anxiety—and that made it feel even more urgent.
“The hunt had just started when Freddy brought me that news.”
“……”
“Everything went dark before my eyes.”
As if recalling that moment, Ricardo’s heart beat a little more irregularly. I must not have been in my right mind either, because I simply felt pleased that the man holding me in his arms had said everything went dark before his eyes.
“Maybe that’s why.”
“Why what?”
“I won.”
At the light joke thrown out while pretending to be serious, I laughed again, my shoulders shaking. Heh heh.
“But you know what’s funny?” The man’s chest, as he continued speaking softly in a voice mixed with laughter, was hotter than ever before.
“More than wondering what terrible thing Walter might have told you, more than what thoughts it might have planted in your mind…”
He stopped breathing for a moment and pulled me up. Then he bent down and buried his face in my neck. With each slowly exhaled breath that touched the nape of my neck, all the fine hairs from the crown of my head to the base of my spine stood on end.
“I was more curious about whether you smiled at Walter.”
This time, my chest involuntarily filled with breath. I couldn’t give any answer because what he was saying was completely unexpected.
So this is what she meant. Memories of loving and being loved.
Sabrina’s words were truly true. Such memories gather to become one’s life.
The sharp emotions of me desiring you and you desiring me like that remain vividly as memories—that was life itself.
One could live with just that. Love was such a magnificent and yet desperate thing.
“I hated it. Enough to want to sweep away everything in front of my eyes.”
“……”
“A complete lunatic right now. Even as I acknowledge it myself, I can’t stop.”
Everything went pitch black before my eyes. I urgently pulled back and removed his face from my neck.
“Aren’t you going to ask what we talked about?”
His eyes, which didn’t lose their light even in the pitch-black darkness, trembled finely.
“I want to know. But I won’t ask. Somehow it doesn’t seem like it would be to my benefit.”
I urgently caught and bit the lips of the man who was laughing softly. As if I couldn’t breathe otherwise.
As our lips touched, he closed his eyes tightly. The moonlight that entered through the slightly opened gap painted his cheek white. As he delved deeper, he soon kissed all over my face here and there, continuing to speak.
“Because I know that if I look you straight in the eyes and ask, I’ll learn everything, and that’s quite tempting to me. But right now I don’t want to know. Things like the truth you’d tell me while looking into my eyes.”
I couldn’t say anything and just quietly let him have my face.
“So…”
Ricardo exhaled a rough breath and, while holding my lower lip, whispered again.
“Did you smile?”
I shook my head and delved deeper into him. I could answer that one thing with certainty. Far from smiling, I was just glad I hadn’t cried.
“That’s enough.”
With those words, Ricardo gently stroked my hair again as if intending to put me back to sleep.
Let’s be together all day tomorrow, his whispered voice wrapped softly around my ear. After I told him I wanted to ride a boat on Kernels Lake when he asked what I wanted to do, my memory cut off.
In the night when I fell back asleep, the dream of burning to death didn’t continue. A happy dream continued of endlessly rowing across a lake filled with water reflections of the forest scenery.
****
Sabrina was spending a pleasant time with Julian at the racetrack. Even though it was the day right after the hunting festival ended, the racetrack was crowded with people.
While the horses, exhausted by the heat, took a brief rest, the two people also moved to find shade.
Sabrina knew that Julian quite enjoyed this tug-of-war he was having with her.
Men had the bad habit of choosing only mountains difficult to conquer, so she also knew full well that the longer she held out, the more her value increased.
Smiles never ceased between the two, but also that taut tension continued throughout the time they smiled.
“Sabrina, it’s almost time for the horse you bet heavily on to run.”
Sabrina spread her fan wide and deliberately fanned around her neck and fully exposed chest while smiling sweetly. Julian also sent an obvious gaze and laughed brilliantly.
“Please wish me luck.”
After Lienne held her engagement ceremony, the Rochester family provided maintenance funds to the Fennels going forward. She had been saving most of it in preparation for leaving Dermeier, but today she had placed a large bet on a horse she particularly liked.
Suddenly, a shadow fell over her head, and when she looked up at the sky, massive dark clouds were gathering. The summer in the capital of the Dermeier Empire was very fickle.
Having lived in a dry region, Sabrina found Dermeier’s humid summer unfamiliar yet pleasing.
As if it had rained a lot yesterday, muddy puddles had collected here and there in the unpaved, deeply rutted roads.
“I heard you used to go to the racetrack often in Resotia…”