IDIBC Chapter 114

Proposal

“I tormented you because I wanted you to hurt for no reason, but every time I saw your face crumble even a little, I wanted to collapse first. I learned that such emotions even existed in this world only through you.”

I could no longer tell whether it was Ricardo trembling or me.

Was it because I had some idea of what he was trying to say now? My head was completely jumbled, so much so that I was grateful to Ricardo for telling me to close my eyes.

“Looking back, loving you was like a maze to me. It was like stepping into pitch-black smoke rising as if flames would burn all the way to the sky.”

Ricardo reached out his hand. Even with my eyes closed, his movements were transmitted to me clearly. When he stroked my cheek, I realized I was crying.

“And yet I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”

At his words, exhaled like a sigh, my heart plummeted with a thud.

Would I be able to handle the words that would follow?

Ricardo loving me was like being swept up in a fierce current. It was embracing sharp thorns with my whole body, walking barefoot on scorching hot stone paths.

“Even while loving you…”

He slowly lowered his arm, grasped my hand, and brought it to his chest. The heartbeat painfully striking my palm was beating as fast as my own.

“Even though seeing you feels like being submerged up to the top of my head in boiling hot water…”

“……”

“I wanted to turn away.”

“I’m not afraid of anything.”

My first words, spoken with my eyes closed, were impatient.

“I know.”

Ricardo’s answering voice was tinged with a faint smile.

“How brave you are, how much that bravery excites me.”

Ricardo’s lips, approaching suddenly, lightly circled the edge of my lips.

I squeezed my eyes tighter shut and gripped his stiff collar tightly with the hand pressed against his chest. Ricardo drew that hand to him and kissed it deeply before continuing to speak.

“Perhaps I knew. That if I met you again, I would become like this.”

He must have known well that loving me wouldn’t make him happy, that there would be far more painful and agonizing days.

Yet still, he turned back time and came to find me again.

“And I fell in love with you without fail.”

The hill where we faced each other, the wind that blew there, the slightly fishy smell of moist earth, the sunlight that day, his trivial words and smile that embarrassed me—as long as all of these remain in his painting as a beautiful backdrop, we will love each other.

Even if we regret again and again, even if we fear the unknown things that will strike suddenly, as long as we cannot forget that moment and retrace our memories, we will go toward each other again.

Perhaps in all those times, we had already melted toward each other.

The heart that beat irrationally when our eyes met was due to emotions engraved in all my senses.

Without permission, I slowly opened my eyes and faced him. The pupils in the eyes of this person who was overwhelmingly precious to me sparkled with a violet tint. When I reached out and caressed his cheek, he shook his head.

“No, don’t think that way. There’s nothing in this world that’s too good for you.”

He awakened emotions that even I hadn’t properly recognized and pressed his lips against mine again. The man who tilted his head and clung so pitifully whispered soothingly once more.

“Don’t think of running away with such thoughts.”

I laughed inappropriately for the situation, giggling out loud. Ricardo traced my cheek with his thumb and smiled a smile that resembled mine.

When our eyes met, he erased the smile from his face and slowly stroked my lips with his finger.

“I don’t know whether God is on my side now, or whether He’s doing this to mock me even more greatly… but that doesn’t matter to me anymore.”

I intertwined my hand with his fingers touching my cheek. Then I gently pressed my cheek against his palm and nestled in.

“I want to stop mocking myself now.”

When I looked up with my lips against his palm, the core of his eyes was no longer colored with fear.

Watching the man’s cheek tremble finely as he exhaled, I had a premonition of what his next words would be.

Even knowing that my eyes, honest enough to feel violent to him, would sparkle with some kind of expectation, I stared directly into his eyes without reserve, unable to hide anything.

The early evening primroses that had bloomed wide open toward the sky in the night garden of Rochester suddenly came to mind.

“Marry me. Lienne Rowe Fennel.”

“Ah…”

Wait, just for a moment, just a very brief moment, so that he wouldn’t know my emotions bursting forth before I did, I bit my lower lip hard and squeezed my eyes shut.

I could vividly picture Ricardo kneeling while holding my hand, even with my eyes closed.

When I couldn’t give any answer except a single exclamation, he kissed the back of my hand and whispered again.

“Please marry me, Lady Lienne Rowe Fennel. These aren’t words I’m saying just to keep up appearances. From now on, forever, no—even if I turn back time and turn it back again, I can’t help but… I will love only you.”

How did Ricardo and I meet and love each other before turning back time? That has become a secret that no one but God could know.

Even if those moments we loved have disappeared far away into another world, as long as he and I exist in the same world, I will walk toward him even with my eyes closed.

I still couldn’t open my eyes as I spoke.

“Why? Because I’m the woman who received the Empress’s oracle? Because I might be your companion chosen by God?”

Even knowing it was a proposal made because he already loved me, it was a mischievous question born from wanting to know Ricardo’s heart until the very last moment.

I waited for the answer that would come from him, but because Ricardo fell silent for a moment, I couldn’t endure that moment and opened my eyes with a flash.

When our gazes met, he smiled broadly. The core in his eyes was sparkling with a color I’d never seen before.

A vivid green. What could this mean?

I tilted my head and asked him with my eyes. What exactly is the emotion you’re feeling right now?

“No, it’s not because of that.”

“Then…?”

“You are the only warmth in my life.”

Ricardo kissed my fourth finger deeply. The sensation of my finger touching and leaving his lips was sharp.

“Because you are my every reason.”

Ricardo tore through even the last thin veil that remained and stepped boldly into my heart.

While I was entranced by his beautiful green eyes, he slipped a ring onto the fourth finger he had kissed.

The silver ring without any pattern reflected light with a sparkle in the sunlight. Only then did I discover that his finger not holding my hand also wore a ring of the same shape as mine.

Countless novels in this world strive to somehow insert a proposal scene into their works. They consider a man kneeling before a woman and putting a ring on her finger to be the completion of love and the beautiful ending of a novel.

Even while finding that formulaic ending boring and predictable, I always look forward to when that moment will arrive.

And now I suddenly realized anew why so many romantic writers in this world ultimately had no choice but to write that pledge of love at the end of their novels.

A confession of love that needed no grandeur and a ring expressing that heart shone brightly, whatever its form, whatever the moment.

“The Elmakeins exchange rings of the same design as a token of pledging their love.”

“Elmakeins?”

“Yes, it’s a ring I got in Daneger. Since it was during the war, I naturally couldn’t buy a good one.”

If he bought it in Daneger, it was when he didn’t know about the nameless oracle that came down to Judith Fan Monzania. At that fact, I had to bite my lips once more to hide the corners of my mouth that kept trying to rise.

When our eyes met, he laughed aloud.

His shoulders, which always felt enormously large, were below my line of sight. The feeling of looking down at a man I always had to look up at was very unfamiliar.

Seeing him kneeling on this beautiful path where no one passed, waiting for my answer, I felt an emotion difficult to describe.

Was I such a greedy person?

“So what’s your answer?”

“You don’t necessarily have to hear it to know.”

“But I want to hear it.”

Moreover, he was so nervous that he couldn’t even hide the slight trembling at the edge of his lips.

“Yes.”

So I could no longer hide it. This vivid and clear emotion.

“What? I can’t hear you well. Lienne.”

“I said yes. Yes. Enough that if you ask me a thousand times, I’ll answer the same a thousand times. I will gladly become Lienne Gardarelli Rochester.”

Ricardo slowly closed his eyes and then slowly lifted them. At that slow and profound gaze, fine tremors ran from the tips of my toes to the top of my head.

“Even if death should part us?”

“Even if death should part us.”

As soon as my words ended, he stood up abruptly and embraced me. The kiss that followed like a scene from a novel was vividly engraved in my life.