Chapter 99
The candies rolling in all directions did not even enter his sight.
The muffler he was holding in his hand also slipped down powerlessly.
Lionel advanced forward while stepping on the fallen muffler.
The soft fabric got pushed away between the shoe sole and the stairs.
Without even the leeway to catch his balance, the sole of his foot slipped as if stepping on empty air.
“—!”
Lionel’s body leaned forward and plunged roughly onto the ground.
A dull sound of his knees colliding against the stone floor resonated.
But there was not even time to feel the pain.
Lionel gritted his teeth and raised his body again.
If it were usual, he would have chosen the most efficient route.
He would have composed his breath, secured his field of vision, and then stepped each and every footstep precisely.
However, right now, he had no such mind to do so.
His vision, reaching here and there haphazardly, shook disorientedly.
His heart was running wild like crazy without being controlled.
Lionel ran up the stairs almost as if crawling up.
His palms were scraped against the rough stone stairs and burned hotly. Every time his combat boots caught on the edge of the stairs, his body staggered and leaned forward.
“Why, why……, for what reason.”
The voice leaking from his throat intermingled with his breath and broke indistinctly.
Certainly, today was a fairly decent day.
That Agnes was certainly getting better. He had believed so without a doubt.
But, ……is it truly so?
Is it correct that she is getting better?
Or else, could it be that she nodded her head to today’s outing with the intention of doing this from the very beginning.
*Gasp—.*
His breath was cut off at every segment.
Along with an extreme headache tightening his head, a sensation of his stomach turning upside down surged up.
Inside Lionel’s head, the worst scenes popped out arbitrarily.
The appearance of Agnes falling below. The appearance of her collapsed amidst the red camellias without even a slight movement.
The fear that that scene might not end as an imagination choked his breath.
“No.”
A hoarse sound burst out from Lionel’s mouth.
“Please…… no, Agnes.”
Lionel climbed the stairs on all fours as if he had become a beast and prayed for the first time.
He could not even know to whom the prayer was directed.
Merely, please, let that scene he imagined not become reality.
Lionel prayed.
And prayed again.
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In what kind of mind he climbed the stairs, Lionel himself could not know either.
Merely, when he came to his senses, he was already standing at the edge of the observatory.
Toward Agnes, who was sitting perched atop the ledge with her back shown, Lionel extended both hands without even the leeway to think.
And just like that, he hugged Agnes tightly.
“What……, what are you doing?”
Agnes’s body was lighter than thought, and also cold.
Lionel trembled all over his body like a madman while hugging her.
His heart was still running wild violently without finding its proper speed.
“Just what were you trying to do!”
An unintended shout burst out.
Only then did Lionel realize how sharply his voice resonated.
Agnes’s shoulders shook very minutely.
At that moment, Lionel suddenly became terrified that he might repeat his past behavior of driving Agnes into a corner arbitrarily.
Within that embrace of Lionel, Agnes opened her mouth calmly.
“I was watching the sky.”
Agnes paused her words for a moment, then added.
“……Because the wind is nice.”
Lionel could not press Agnes any further.
Because if he drove Agnes into a corner right now, it felt as though she would truly never look back at him ever again.
Lionel heaved his rib cage greatly, exerting effort to settle his gasping breath.
“……Damn it.”
A low curse leaked between his lips.
“I did not mean to shout.”
He was still holding Agnes in an embrace, but he could not dare to raise his face.
He tried to act as if nothing were wrong, as if he were fine, but his body was not listening to him at all.
“Why…… why did you come up alone.”
His voice trembled.
“I told you to wait. Why did you come alone laboriously.”
Agnes did not answer.
Her gaze was now directed not toward the sky, but down below.
That fact drove Lionel crazy.
The camellias he had wanted to show her were blooming red down below, but Lionel became terrified to an unendurable extent by the very fact that Agnes was looking down at that place.
“As expected, today will not do.”
Lionel urgently changed his words.
“The weather is too cold. Let us go down now.”
Lionel slowly, very carefully, turned Agnes to sit facing his side.
And just like that, kneeling down, he cradled Agnes’s right foot, from which the shoe had been stripped, with both hands.
The small foot was covered by the large hands in an instant.
Lionel whispered lowly while massaging Agnes’s foot, which had frozen stiff from facing the cold wind.
“If it is something you want, I will do anything for you.”
His words became tangled, and strength entered his hands.
“Because I will grant anything, anything.”
His words kept breaking off.
“Therefore, please.”
It was not even such long stairs. His breath kept getting choked up again and again.
“Never disappear suddenly again.”
The low tone that had always been only cold was by now crying out close to a plea.
At Lionel’s words that he would grant anything, Agnes quietly raised her eyes.
Already, this relationship had been twisted once.
Just because a torn place is sewn again did not mean it could return to its past form.
Agnes knew that fact all too well.
“You know, Duke.”
Even at the words calling him, Lionel could not easily raise his head and swallowed a low breath.
“…….”
“You said so before, right. That you are sorry to me.”
Still cradling Agnes’s foot, Lionel barely raised his head and looked up at her.
Even at that single short motion, his heart fluctuated unstably.
“Were you sincere?”
Was he sincere, indeed.
Was it alright for someone like me to shamelessly seek words of apology, forgiveness, from you.
Lionel closed his mouth for a moment, then nodded his head laboriously.
“……I am sincere.”
Only then did Agnes nod her head in return.
“If so, then.”
Agnes composed her breath for a very brief moment.
“Could you please grant just one more request of mine?”
At that moment, Lionel’s inside sank chillingly.
A conviction arose that that request would not be something trivial like wanting to eat candy as before.
No.
Stop talking.
Words he could not bring out past his mouth hovered inside his throat.
He wished that Agnes’s words would please stop here.
That she would say nothing more.
However, Agnes’s voice flowed out without hesitation.
“By any chance, if there is no more usefulness left in me…….”
Agnes spoke while looking down at Lionel. Cruelly softly.
“Could you not just abandon me right now?”
*Gasp.*
In an instant, Lionel felt a sensation as if he had become an idiot.
Even the method of inhaling and exhaling breath was completely erased from his head.
His breathing stops.
Lionel’s pupils shook greatly.
The endlessly clear blue light of the beautiful irises that everyone used to praise distorted without filtration.
Abandon? Who, whom. Me, you? How. For what reason?
Words failed to become sentences and floated around.
Lionel’s head shook from side to side regardless of his will.
Exactly as if denying the reality before his eyes.
“Agnes. The words that I would abandon you were not sincere. Jerome Winterbolt was targeting you, so it was a word I concocted to turn his gaze away,”
Lionel, who was laying out miserable excuses uncharacteristically, desperately held onto Agnes’s foot.
The head that had always stood upright dropped downward.
What Agnes was demanding was not a sound that comes out at the end of a light squabble of any ordinary lovers, like let us take some time.
What Agnes desired was the termination of this relationship itself.
The words he had to say right now were not this kind of excuse.
The solid body of Lionel, who used to plant fear into the Sercadia army by his mere existence, gradually collapsed down.
Lionel gathered his both hands that were cradling Agnes’s foot. As if begging.
“……I was wrong.”
His voice trembled wretchedly.
“I, I was wrong about everything.”
Laying down both his pride and dignity. Lionel wanted to crawl scrape-scrape on the floor just like this.
If only the words Agnes had just put forth could disappear by that. He wanted to do so a hundred times, a thousand times.
“I will wait until your wound heals. No, I will make an effort. Somehow, I—”
However, though he tried begging with his cast-away pride, Agnes merely raised the corners of her mouth softly.
That she had learned from Nora at some point.
It was a flawless, perfect smile learned from Nora. Nothing short of elegant to an uncomfortable degree.
Exactly like a photograph embedded in a gossip magazine.
The slowly rising red corners of Agnes’s mouth and the corners of her eyes curving bitterly as if resigned became embedded one by one onto Lionel’s retina, onto his mind.
The single word of Agnes that followed as well.
Like a brand that would absolutely never be erased.
“No. Do not do that.”
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