ERTHMB Chapter 148

An Insignificant Farewell

“It certainly took a long time.”

Walter added softly. Even though she knew it couldn’t be true, Helena felt as if her faded life was being understood.

Walter kept his eyes fixed on the drifting clouds and spoke calmly.

“I first held a sword when I was ten years old. It took twenty years from then to understand the sword, but I never knew that sending someone away would require an even longer wait. Perhaps it’s because I’m a knight who swings his sword rigidly, but I came to treat longing like a habit.”

Helena thought her stomach was churning. Gradually, the tip of her nose began to tingle and her vision blurred.

“Like eating three meals a day, like training at set times. I thought of her faithfully. It naturally became a habit. Being bound to an affection that had already left my side—there was no stronger shackle than that.”

Bound affection. Shackles.

For a moment, Helena heard a resounding cry from somewhere. She rubbed her eyes, but the tears weren’t her own. She listened again. Finally, she heard it.

Inside her heart, a monster… an elephant was crying.

The shadow of the monster that had been devouring her was an elephant. An elephant that, despite already having become a large adult, couldn’t move forward because it was bound to the past.

“But it seems the time eventually comes. So if Madam feels that time has come for you, don’t hesitate and leap forward. Your life is far too much for that parting to be something to endlessly fear—the farewell is too insignificant compared to it.”

The elephant finally escaped. At last, it tore through the stake, cried out to its heart’s content, and ran off just like that. It left for a place it would never return to. And that was okay.

Helena felt a gentle tremor throughout her body. It felt as if the blood circulating inside her skin had stopped in an instant and then started flowing again. No matter how many times she swallowed her dry saliva, it couldn’t be suppressed.

Helena sniffled and murmured.

“If Eugene had heard what you just said, he might have dismissed you.”

“I think it will be fine as long as Madam keeps it a quiet secret.”

Walter smiled like someone who knew this moment would be their last farewell. Helena ended up smiling bashfully along with him. The tears that had pooled fell pattering down.

After gently wiping Helena’s cheeks, Walter put his hand into his bosom. When he extended his hand again, a bright yellow marigold lay there.

Wrapped carefully at the stem with cut newspaper, the marigold glowed with an especially vivid color.

“My daughter brought it last night. I forgot to close the window and fell asleep, and somehow it flew in—when I opened my eyes in the morning, it was by my bedside. In my dream, she said she was doing well, and that I should do well too. So… Madam.”

Walter paused briefly. Helena carefully accepted the marigold he offered.

With warm eyes filled with moisture, with just such a voice, Walter bid farewell.

“Please be happy. I will be happy too.”

****

The next morning, Helena entered her bedroom for the first time in a long while. She looked around the interior, but as expected, there was nothing to take. She no longer needed the charms on the bed that had chased away nightmares either.

However, the scenery that remained unchanged from when she left gave her a strange bitterness. Helena carefully took in every corner of the room with her eyes.

Strangely, the space evoked memories. Helena’s steps stopped before a large mirror decorated with elaborate cherry wood carvings. The mirror naturally reflected her image of always doing her hair at this hour.

The images of herself forcing open tired eyes, carefully combing out tangled hair, and finally pinning it up neatly—being cautious even in the slightest movement of looking back, lest it be ruined.

Helena blinked, letting out a faint smile. Then, in the mirror, a woman with the exact opposite appearance was looking at herself.

Hair hanging carelessly down to her waist, a comfortable dress not cinched tightly at the waist, corners of her mouth not forced upward.

It was an unrefined wildness. A carefree refreshment.

Helena decided to call it “freedom.”

It was a word that made her heart swell just thinking about it. Helena deflated her swelling chest with a long breath and lifted a handful of her red hair. She suddenly remembered Eugene’s laughter as he buried his fingers in it playfully.

He used to praise her smooth, glossy hair. When the sunlight hit it, he said it was so beautiful, as if a burning sunset had been melted into it.

But now.

“Who cares.”

Helena picked up scissors from the nightstand. An impulse that not only swelled her chest but fanned it hot was rising. She didn’t want to resist anymore. Helena grabbed her hair together and cut it without hesitation.

Snip. Snip.

The lush hair fell away handful by handful like dried leaves. The memories of Evergale that had been piled up layer by layer seemed to fall away with it. Her head felt much lighter.

Helena shook out the rough-lined ends and turned around. On the table in the room where everything remained the same, the divorce papers also lay as they were. Just like that, with only Eugene’s signature line empty.

Helena gathered the papers and headed to the greenhouse garden. Today would truly be the last teatime with Eugene.

Passing through the door fogged with condensation from the temperature difference between inside and outside, she saw Eugene already sitting in his seat. It was the sight of his back waiting for her, which had frequently caught her eye since returning to Evergale.

Helena approached the table with even footsteps. As soon as Eugene’s gaze, about to offer a perfunctory greeting, touched Helena’s shortened hair, it shook greatly.

“You…!”

Eugene’s eyes widened. Helena paid no heed and set the papers down on the table.

Strangely, her heart felt at ease. Even a smile came naturally. It seemed that being prepared to cut everything away finally gave her emotions some room to breathe.

Helena leaned back in her chair and said.

“Surely you don’t mean that even my hairstyle requires your permission. What are we to each other now, anyway.”

“…So you’re determined to see this through.”

“I can no longer see a future with you. Not then, not now. If only I could divorce you, it would be a perfectly happy day.”

“……”

Eugene, who had seemed ready to immediately refute, surprisingly stubbornly kept his mouth shut. It was because Helena’s words were circling in his head with violent vividness.

The day she left the estate, it was the declaration he had let slip in a moment of childish impulse.

It was being repeated as if it were the only ending for the Grand Duke and Duchess of Evergale. In the same place, at the same time, with the same but completely transformed person.

‘No, no. Helena. Such a day cannot exist. Must not exist.’

Unwilling to acknowledge it, Eugene shot a sharply unfiltered gaze. It was a tension like forcibly painting blue over a gloomy dark sky.

Anger at an unknown target—whether himself or Helena—was tangled up in chaos. It began to tingle sharply over his skin.

After piercing and gouging at his skin like that, he finally collapsed first himself.

‘I can no longer see my place with you.’

Unlike himself, desperately agitated, Helena seemed utterly serene. As if this very moment was nothing more than one of many ordinary days.

He had desperately fled to get here, but in the end, he realized it. Eugene’s fine face gradually contorted. It was an expression nakedly containing loss.

Unable to kick away from his seat and flee, unable to hide his expression, Eugene briefly lowered his head.

Eventually, Eugene asked in a dampened voice.

“Do you know what it means to tame someone?”

Eugene raised his head again.

“It means needing each other. It also means having to take responsibility for each other.”

“…I see.”

“You tamed me.”

“…Is that so.”

Helena’s image was reflected in his blurred golden eyes. It was an answer that sounded monotonous and even indifferent.

Nevertheless, Eugene clung on. He had no choice but to cling on. Her voice was the last lamp remaining in hell. He grasped it without realizing his hands were burning.

“I need you. Take responsibility for me. I can’t live without you.”

Without any physical contact, he spoke looking only into Helena’s eyes. It was a declaration he had to drive home with all his might, staking his entire life on it.

However, it was also an extremely clingy and unseemly declaration. It even created the illusion of clinging to his earlobes with each syllable. It felt as if forcibly tearing it away would rip off the attached skin along with it, causing bleeding.

But Helena ultimately did just that. It was easier than cutting her hair.

She answered, pulling the corners of her mouth into a gentle arc.

“No, you can live.”

“Helena.”

“At least during the 15 years I endured, you did just fine. Don’t act despicably at this point.”

“Fifteen years? Why again…”

Eugene’s face contorted with a different emotion than before.

This was the second time Helena had brought up the 15 years. Eugene suddenly recalled his nightmares. That damn dream where Helena died by his hand, died, died endlessly.

At the same time, an even more damnably horrific hypothesis came to mind.

What if that dream wasn’t really a dream? What if she really experienced all that time and came back? What if that’s why she’s suddenly bidding him farewell?

Even knowing it was absurd, one corner of his heart froze with chilling fear. The instinct that had never once betrayed him in his life defied reason and clearly ran wild.

“That’s enough, there’s no need to go that far anyway.”

At that moment, Helena’s voice cut off the train of thoughts following one after another. She erased her smile along with a short sigh.

“You wavered.”

Eugene refocused on Helena and moved his lips.

“That was… that was just once. You’d be free from the pressure about a child too. Natasha was solely for that purpose—”

“No. Even if it was just once, you wavered. That one trivial time for you, that one time you would have passed off as a simple mistake. For me, it became over ten years.”

“What on earth have you been saying since earlier. Even if it’s absurd nonsense, please explain it so I can understand, Helen.”

“Don’t call my name. I need to at least detach my affection. Nothing can be undone.”

Helena stood up, pushing the divorce papers toward Eugene.

Eugene’s eyes fell upon them. One signed name stood out particularly clearly in the middle of the white paper. Helena Evergale.

{Helena Evergale has agreed to divorce Eugene Evergale of her own accord.}

For a while, Eugene breathed in and out deeply, his gaze fixed blankly on that name.

No matter how much he mulled it over, no matter how much he tried to accept it.

He couldn’t end it like this. Eugene wasn’t accustomed to facing a one-sided ending, and he had no intention of doing so in the future.

Perhaps, flustered by Helena’s changed attitude, he had acted too softly all this time. There was no need to beg and plead pathetically.

—He simply shouldn’t accept it in the first place.

‘If you’re determined to break away from me, I have no choice but to hold on to the end.’

Eugene also rose from his seat following Helena. The shadow of a man more than a hand’s width taller loomed over Helena’s head. His eyes, which had changed in an instant, were threatening.

Before Helena could hesitate, Eugene reached out.

“Even if it can’t be undone, it can be maintained.”

Eugene pulled Helena’s nape and kissed her.