Lionel headed toward the bathroom almost as if running.
Barely any time had passed since Agnes vanished inside the door, yet his footsteps had already arrived in front of it.
At the very juncture when his hand was about to touch the doorknob.
From the inside, Agnes’s faint voice, which felt as if it would crumble away, was heard.
“Do not come in……!”
Rather than a request, it was a voice close to a barely squeezed-out deterrence.
Soon after,
“Ugh—. Ugh…….”
The sound of dry retching, which she had tried to suppress but failed, spread once again over the wall.
Sensations slowly cooled down from Lionel’s fingertips.
Exactly as if they had been taken out after being submerged in cold water for a long time, his hands felt as though they were not his own.
However, there was nothing he could do. Because Agnes had not permitted it.
A helplessness that could not be compared to any other time engulfed Lionel.
He felt as if he had become an even more useless human than back when Cedric and his comrades were dying.
Back then, he could at least try to struggle frantically.
But right now, the only thing permitted to Lionel was merely waiting for Agnes’s rapid and irregular breathing, heard from beyond the door, to subside.
Merely, that was all.
☆☆☆
“It is not a major problem.”
The old doctor, who was called today as well as if not a day went by without it, reassured Lionel.
The old doctor was in a state of having reclaimed the primary physician position of the Duke’s mansion, which Andrew had once occupied.
Thanks to that, he was residing within the mansion, and as soon as he received the summons, he could run here straight away.
Although he spoke outwardly as if it were no big deal, the old doctor’s eyes were meticulously scanning Agnes’s complexion and breathing.
It was a gaze containing worry toward the patient.
“Because you were essentially unable to eat while you were held captive, your digestive capacity has dropped, so your body has temporarily rejected food. You will gradually become alright.”
“Is that so. Skipping meals was not particularly just this time though.”
“Is there any food in particular that does not digest well?”
Agnes glanced toward Lionel for a moment, then spoke the truth just as it was.
Since Lionel would already know anyway that her meals had not been taken properly on time, there would be no need to hide it unnecessarily.
“……Meat. Because eating food was irregular, after eating it, my stomach is always bloated and burdened. Light foods are on the better side.”
At Agnes’s words, the gazes inside the room exchanged subtly.
Among those who knew how neglected Nora had made Agnes’s meals, a wordless understanding flashed.
Only, regarding the old doctor’s next question, it was a slightly different matter.
“Since when did you have irregular meals?”
“Uh…….”
“In order to grasp the exact bodily condition, you must speak honestly.”
At the old doctor’s somewhat stern words, Agnes rolled and bit her lips lightly for a moment.
If she had to say since when, she had to bring up matters of a very long time ago.
Since the fact that her digestive power was weak was by no means due to Nora alone.
She had thought that all her emotions had become numb, but a sense of wretchedness found its way in. If it were revealed that she had been neglected even by her family, how would everyone view her.
But the emotion that had briefly revived subsided quickly.
‘Forget it. Saving face at this late hour is ridiculous too.’
Was it because her stomach had been turned over once. Because she felt as if her strength had been completely drained, Agnes confessed as if resigning herself.
Still, so that she would not appear as if pretending to be pitiful, she tried to deliver only the facts as dryly as possible.
“……Since I was young. Because my family did not welcome me being noticeable during meal times, I missed the times to eat a lot.”
“……Ahem. So that was the case. If so, there is no need to forcefully increase the meal amount or consume meat in the future either.”
Even the old doctor lost his words, then cleared his throat awkwardly soon after.
Lionel inhaled a short breath.
That her stomach was bloated whenever she ate meat. If so, did that mean that every single one of those meal settings she had with him was a torment to Agnes?
Come to think of it, whenever they ate food, Agnes used to barely even touch the meat and ate only vegetables.
Despite having seen that plainly, he had made meat be placed upon the table regularly at every meal.
Having done so, he had acted in that kind of manner as if granting mercy. As if allocating time to one starved for affection.
Despite being an individual who failed to grasp even a single dietary habit of the person sitting face-to-face together.
‘Stupid bastard.’
It was truly a spectacle. There was simply no end to it.
Once he came to know one thing, another, and then the next after that, were revealed in succession. The deeds he had been committing.
The old doctor, sensing that Lionel’s air was not ordinary, gestured slightly.
Simon, noticing that signal, quietly vacated the room together with the servants.
Inside the room, only the two people remained once again.
Lionel slowly approached Agnes and proffered a cup filled with water.
“Drink. Your stomach will settle a little.”
While Agnes drank the water, Lionel could not take his eyes away.
As Agnes set down the cup, he carefully received it and placed it upon the nightstand.
And then, the moment he reached out his hand to check if there was a fever upon Agnes’s forehead, her small face turned aside.
As if to signify she would not permit his hand to touch.
At that single small movement, Lionel froze just as he was.
Dry saliva passed down with difficulty inside his throat.
A headache surged instantaneously, and his vision shook from time to time before returning again.
Lionel swept down his shirt collar once.
Unable to endure the stuffiness, he undid his cravat hurriedly and composed his breath.
And, after hesitating for a long time, he opened his mouth.
“Do you…… hate me?”
Though it was a word spoken while pretending to be unconcerned, Lionel had to squeeze out his entire nerves until bringing out that question.
Lionel, without blinking his eyes even once, was staring only at Agnes’s lips.
Even after blurting out the words, he found himself absurd.
Having treated Agnes so cruelly, did he nevertheless wish for her not to hate him.
If he had a sense of shame, he should not do so.
He did not have the right to ask.
However, Lionel was in a state of mind where he wanted to fling away things like a sense of shame.
He wished it were not so.
Even though the mistake he committed against Agnes was so clear, he, himself, was hoping that at least the words ‘I hate you’ would not come out by forcing through those lips.
‘……I do not want to be hated.’
It was not that he merely wanted to compensate for the mistake, patch it up, and end it there.
With that degree, it was insufficient.
He wanted to revert it completely.
He wished Agnes would look at him with warm eyes like before and form a smile containing a soft energy.
He wished she would call his name with a pleasing voice, without any hesitation.
He wanted to reclaim it.
Agnes’s affection, which had been directed toward him.
‘So what is it that I gain by that.’
Lionel threw a question to himself as if digging into the movement of his emotion.
For what reason was he desiring so tenaciously.
He wondered if it was a desire for possession. He wondered if it was guilt. But it was neither side.
‘More than those kinds of things…….’
The conclusion arrived at after agonizing was simpler than he thought.
It was merely because it had been good.
Agnes’s smile directed toward him was lovely. And because of him, not anyone else, that Agnes smiled was thoroughly pleasing.
It was so.
He had liked it. The moments he spent together with Agnes.
Even that moment when he deemed that he hated her, that time had been pleasing.
Only now did the behavior of squeezing his schedule unreasonably to enter the mansion every single day make sense.
The emotion that had been covered with hatred peeled off, revealing its original color.
Though he had been suppressing it while appending all sorts of reasons because he did not want to admit it, this emotion he was feeling right now was something beyond a mere desire for possession.
Even if it were incomplete, clumsy, and selfish, it was that kind of emotion that could by no means be sorted out by compensation.
There was a word hovering inside his mouth, but Lionel swallowed it into his throat in the end.
This was the minimum conscience remaining to him.
Perhaps from the very beginning, he might have been looking at Agnes with these kinds of eyes.
The depth of his emotion toward Agnes was deep enough to be perplexing even to Lionel.
And by the amount of that depth, he was terrified as if his breath were choking.
Lest Agnes would never look at him like before for good.
Lest like right now, she would be looking only somewhere beyond the window, not at him.
The body of Lionel, who realized the emotion he was harboring toward Agnes, collapsed slowly.
His straightly extended legs bending and his gaze lowering, he was finally sitting on his knees beside Agnes.
“……Answer me, Agnes. Do you hate me? Me, who hacked at your heart without knowing anything, have you become unable to bear the sight of me now?”
When Agnes did not answer, Lionel carefully reached out his hand. Toward Agnes’s small hand.
However, lest she would avoid it yet again, without dare touching it, Lionel gripped the blanket placed beneath Agnes’s hand.
And bowing his head, he buried his forehead deeply upon that blanket.
Agnes still did not get angry.
She did not resent him, nor did she vent her resentment.
She merely brought out her answer a beat late with a tranquil voice.
“No. Who am I to hate the Duke. How dare I.”
“……Please do not speak that way.”
Lionel’s voice cracked miserably.
“Rather, blame me. Rather……”
But Agnes did not pour out her emotions in the end.
Instead, she quietly moved her hand a little further away from Lionel.
Before that small sense of distance, Lionel had to realize finally.
That in the world, there are also regrets that have become too late.
That there are mistakes that cannot be filled by any kind of thing.
That even the determination he believed could be reverted was, in the end, his own arrogant and foolish hubris.
The intuition that he would not be able to return Agnes’s smile by any kind of compensation— weighed down his entire body.
There was no sin he could revert.
Nothing.
☆▪︎▪︎▪︎☆
