IDIBC Chapter 19

Late Spring at Ten Years Old

Because I knew that the child who calmly accepted his fate was burning black inside.

Because I also knew all too well that he had built the highest wall to protect himself.

Who could the child who was born with the divine mandate to kill his own father and become emperor possibly resent?

And so Ricardo never once made eye contact with Paula and Gerald.

He refused to hear a single warm word from the father he might have to kill with his own hands. If he were to hear even one such word, how could he live the rest of his life?

So the couple didn’t approach the child rashly either.

Making excuses that the child didn’t want them to.

“Still, we’re his parents… We can’t give up.”

“Do you think you, the daughter of the Fennel family, can do that?”

“Well, I can’t be certain. But.”

That Ricardo showed emotion for the first time.

In front of red and white blooming flowers.

Because of a certain woman whose cheeks flushed redder than those flowers.

Because of that woman he had painted thousands of times despite having no memory of her.

Upon his return, Ricardo cried through his paintings instead. He only smiled, grew angry, and frowned in his paintings. As if he saw the world only through that child.

Without his memories, Ricardo barely survived that way.

Until he wore the perfect and beautiful mask he has now.

****

I examined every corner of the room, which was as large as our house in Resotia.

The single room was like a massive exhibition hall.

In the framed pictures on the walls, in the paintings on the easels scattered on the floor—I was in all of them.

Or more precisely, young Lienne Rowe Fennel was in them.

I recalled the image of Ricardo walking toward me without hesitation from afar on the day he came to find me in Resotia.

As I stared blankly at the paintings, Ricardo’s low voice rang out like a warning.

“Don’t get any strange ideas.”

I answered as I stepped into the room.

“What strange ideas am I having?”

He didn’t even try to stop me from entering freely.

“Are you trying to say I shouldn’t attach any meaning to this since you have no memory of it?”

In the paintings, I was mostly smiling. Most of those moments that existed only in my memory and not in Ricardo’s were actually like that.

After I died and woke up again on that night of lightning, I wasn’t particularly sad. When I opened my eyes, Ricardo was there, facing me with an uninjured, unhurt face.

So this is how I looked smiling through his eyes. Truly with a consistently foolish expression.

On some days I was smiling with my face full of wounds, and in some paintings I was smiling with my forehead deeply furrowed.

There were also some where I was crying, but I didn’t look particularly sad.

As I passed the easels lined up in front, there were paintings of the room Ricardo had stayed in. It felt as if that time was unfolding before my eyes, and I traced the empty air above the painting with my hand.

I was lying on the bed in the room. But Ricardo, who had shared warmth with me, wasn’t there.

Just as he said, he had erased himself even from the fragments that remained only as scenes.

How petty.

“Yes.”

“Who… said what?”

Looking straight ahead, I saw the largest frame covered with a curtain. It was a painting hanging in the center of the wall directly facing the door.

“I can look at this, right? Since it has no meaning.”

He was silent for a moment but soon answered curtly, almost spitting it out.

“Whatever.”

Ignoring the breath touching my nape in small bursts, I reached out to draw back the curtain. But no matter how high I stood on tiptoe, my hand couldn’t reach the top.

At that moment, his large body suddenly approached and pressed fully against my back. I froze in an awkward position. His long arm passed by my ear and grasped the painting’s curtain. Ricardo’s body heat was much hotter than I remembered.

“Just… certain scenes kept popping up. There has never been a single case in Dermeier history of a Rochester remembering even fragments of their past lives.”

As his careful hand continued to draw back the curtain, my heart beat uncontrollably. I couldn’t move a finger.

“I was just curious about it.”

It was a silent space where even my breathing felt intrusive.

The brief coolness when his skin touched and separated from my back was dizzying enough to be unbearable.

For a moment, I wondered if I should ask him not to draw back this curtain. I thought that after seeing it, I might look even more pitiful.

He was like a calm lake where no ripples formed no matter how many stones you threw.

Impulsively, I grabbed his hand holding the curtain. Why did I feel so wronged?

The moment I caught his hand, many words swirled in my mouth. I wanted to say that I had actually missed him very much, that I had needed confirmation he was doing well. But I held it in tightly. Because there was no meaning between us.

When I released the hand I’d been holding, he moved again. Each time he moved, something hot surged up in my throat.

“So I wanted to record it. That is…”

“It has no particular meaning, right.”

Unable to bear the low voice continuing gently by my ear, I twisted my body slightly to escape from him. For a moment—was it my imagination?—his hand lowering the curtain flinched, but his subsequent actions flowed naturally like water.

Soon the painting was fully revealed before my eyes.

“Ah…”

I couldn’t help but let out an exclamation. Ricardo was still a genius painter.

[You… like me, don’t you?]

I heard young Ricardo’s voice.

A windy hill, the very brief desert spring when the whole world turns green.

There was a massive tree lush with leaves drooping downward. And I stood in its shade. My skirt rippling in the direction the leaves leaned.

[Why, why do you think that?]

[Isn’t it true?]

It was the day he first smiled at me seeing my face turn red. Even if it was a mischievous smile resembling mockery.

It was an open hill with a clear view of Count Fennel’s estate below. The day after torrential rain, a day so blindingly bright you couldn’t look at the sky when you opened your eyes.

Ricardo had set out with his brush and paper to paint, and I followed him to find the hilltop.

Without a doubt, it was the only childhood memory I longed for.

On days it appeared even in dreams, I felt like I was walking on clouds all day long.

The late spring of being ten years old, more beautiful for being so fleeting.

[Then, is it not okay for me to like you?]

I eventually covered my face with both hands and crouched down beneath it. I didn’t want my pride hurt any more before this man who said it had no meaning since he had no memory… but…

[Whatever.]

What was I supposed to do about Ricardo’s words from that time burrowing back into my ear? Back then, I was grinning just from being allowed to have a one-sided crush.

“Lady Fennel.”

Ricardo called me gently but mercilessly. I didn’t want any comfort from him as he was now.

“We shouldn’t have met again.”

“What…?”

I forced strength into my legs to stand up and brushed off my skirt with short pats.

“I said it loudly, but you didn’t hear well? I said we shouldn’t have met again.”

It was a ridiculous thing to say. I hadn’t wanted to meet again, nor had he wanted to meet me. So such regret was only appropriate for someone who had had a choice.

Yet I easily imagined.

What if I hadn’t met you again?

Before Ricardo came to find me, I had imagined such things. That perhaps by chance we might pass by each other at least once in our lives.

I thought that if I met him again, I’d feel glad, happy, and perhaps a little disappointed. But nowhere in my imagination was there such a miserable feeling.

“If I had known that I—I mean, the me who only remains as certain scenes in Your Grace’s head—would look this pretty, it would have been much better not to meet at all.”

Ricardo didn’t respond at all to my tone and behavior that could be felt as rude. I carefully tucked away the emotion that fleetingly resembled shame and stood firmly with strength in my legs.

Then I turned toward him with that large painting as my backdrop. Somehow I felt as if I was standing on soft earth rather than cold marble floor. Perhaps that’s why I felt an inexplicable surge of courage.

“Give me this painting.”

“What?”

“You don’t need it anyway, Your Grace.”

Besides, you don’t even appear in that painting, and I’m looking longingly at empty air.

“Give it to me. After everything is finished and you’ve achieved whatever you desire.”

“…….”

“I’ll take that painting and return to where I used to live.”

He stared at me on the hill for a long time. His eyes were so completely empty that I could hide my heart a little too. It would have been useless to try to hide anything before eyes that measured truth, but I had to try. In any moment.

Then the sound of someone knocking on a door came from far away. It was the sound from Ricardo’s bedroom door, not the room we were in.

Thanks to that, the cold atmosphere flowing between the two of us scattered away. Ricardo bit his lip hard once before releasing it and turned around. After walking a few steps, when I didn’t follow, he stopped abruptly in place.