Chapter 124
“I don’t recall giving anyone permission to come in.”
A rough, unkempt voice came from inside the room.
Seeing Lionel, who lay almost motionless like a dead man, barely breathing, and overwhelmed by the suffocating atmosphere of despair filling the room, Kalt Russel quickly dropped to one knee and lowered his head.
“Forgive my rudeness. But it has already been several days since you’ve had anything to eat. You should at least have something—”
“I don’t need it, so leave.”
With those few words, Lionel’s consciousness sank once more into the prison he had built for himself.
It no longer seemed as though Kalt Russel kneeling by the door could even reach him.
Lionel slowly moved his body.
No, it would have been more accurate to say that he rolled across the floor, driven by agony.
The pain crushing his temples was so intense that he could not even let out a proper groan as his forehead struck the floor.
“…Haah.”
Every breath felt as though his head were splitting apart.
Guilt and regret crashed through his mind like relentless waves.
It felt as though someone were endlessly sounding a battle horn inside his skull.
Staggering unsteadily, Lionel picked up a bottle of medicine.
He then poured a handful of pills into his palm and swallowed them all together with liquor.
“…Agnes.”
Agnes’s name escaped through his disordered breathing.
It was as though it were the only word he knew.
Lionel turned over once more and crawled back onto the bed, pulling the blanket that still carried Agnes’s scent tightly around himself.
As though it were the last lifeline he had left.
He looked like a man who had fallen completely to the bottom.
The dignity of the Colonel who had once commanded the knight order.
His cold and rational judgment.
They had all been left to rot somewhere within this room.
Kalt Russel swallowed hard as he watched him.
When Agnes had been kidnapped by Rebelt, Lionel had once collapsed as well.
But now…
This could not even be compared to that time.
Back then, at least there had still been hope that she could be brought back.
But now that every last hope had vanished, Lionel looked like a man standing at the edge of a cliff.
He had not yet fallen.
Yet it seemed that the slightest push would make him throw himself over the edge.
Lionel was no longer living.
He was merely surviving one day at a time.
Clinging desperately to the traces Agnes had left behind.
And it seemed that the moment even those traces disappeared, no one could possibly predict how far Lionel would fall.
***
Lionel reached toward the small table beside him, feeling around for another bottle of liquor.
He simply could not endure being sober.
His vision was blurred.
His fingertips no longer obeyed him.
Only after fumbling several times did his hand finally touch the cold glass.
“…Taking medicine together with alcohol is dangerous, Colonel.”
“If you only came here to lecture me, then get out.”
Lionel’s already low voice now scraped against the very bottom.
Lionel knew.
He knew exactly how dangerous it was to mix medicine with alcohol.
Because he knew…
He kept drinking even more.
If he ended up dying because of such stupidity, perhaps Agnes would look at him with pity…
And perhaps she would accept, if only a little, the pathetic man who had shamelessly chased after her.
Watching Lionel anxiously, Kalt Russel quietly gathered the empty liquor bottles scattered across the floor one by one.
But removing the bottles could never remove the despair filling the room.
“Didn’t you hear me tell you to leave?”
There was only exhaustion in Lionel’s voice.
It was not anger.
It was simply the cry of someone who no longer even had the strength to drive another person away.
After a brief hesitation, Kalt Russel finally spoke.
“…While restoring the buildings destroyed during the terrorist attack, we recovered Adrian Bardo’s body from beneath the collapsed remains of the prison’s outer wall. Chloe Bardo was also severely injured and is currently receiving treatment.”
It was, in the end, a death that suited Adrian Bardo perfectly.
Blinded by money, he had transported weapons and explosives.
Only to be crushed to death by the very bombs he had sold.
Even calling it a miserable end felt too generous.
“……”
But just as when Nick had been captured, the news stirred no reaction within Lionel.
He merely hugged the bundle of Agnes’s letters he had brought from the annex and rubbed his face against them like a child.
The rough texture of the paper scraped against his cheek.
Yet Lionel never stopped.
As though the papers themselves had become Agnes.
Lionel still could not accept what he had lost.
And perhaps…
He never would.
Knowing that all too well, Kalt Russel found it painful to continue his report.
But it was not something that could be avoided forever.
Closing his eyes tightly, he finally forced himself to speak about the true reason he had come.
“…There is also someone outside whom you must receive personally, Colonel.”
Kalt Russel’s voice slowed noticeably.
It was as though his duty to continue speaking was colliding with every instinct telling him not to say the words aloud.
“I clearly ordered that no one be allowed into the Duke’s residence.”
“It isn’t just anyone.”
Only after swallowing several times did Kalt Russel finally manage to utter a single name.
The very name Lionel had been desperately calling only moments ago.
“…Lady Agnes.”
For the first time in what felt like an eternity, reason returned to Lionel’s blue eyes.
Like someone suddenly dragged to the surface after sinking beneath deep water, Lionel shot to his feet with unbelievable speed.
He rushed toward Kalt Russel and seized him by the collar.
“Who came?”
His grip tightened until the fabric wrinkled.
Unable to endure even the brief moment before Kalt Russel could answer, Lionel shoved open the bedroom door and ran into the hallway.
Agnes had come?
His mind clearly knew such a thing was impossible.
She was already dead.
And yet…
His body had already begun moving.
He had no time to wait.
As Lionel sprinted forward until he could barely breathe, he suddenly caught sight of his own reflection in the corridor window and came to an abrupt stop.
No one could honestly call the figure staring back at him human.
His hair was disheveled.
His clothes were soaked with alcohol and hopelessly untidy.
He would be seeing Agnes in just a moment.
If she saw him looking like this, it felt as though she would open her large eyes wide and gently ask—
“Why do you look like such a mess, Lionel?”
Kind-hearted Agnes would probably worry about him even in such a state.
Hurriedly, Lionel ran his fingers through his hair and brushed the wrinkles from his clothes.
“…This should be good enough.”
Having somehow made himself look presentable again, Lionel forced an awkward smile onto his lips.
So that Agnes, returning home after such a long time, would not be frightened or startled by him.
Clinging to the hope of seeing Agnes again, Lionel hurried onward.
But the moment he stepped outside the entrance of the Duke’s residence, he stopped in his tracks.
A cold winter rain was falling.
Standing beneath the rain was not Agnes.
Instead, members of the Black Iron Knight Order stood in orderly formation, dressed in black uniforms and wearing white gloves.
As Lionel slowly stepped forward, the cold raindrops struck his brow and the bridge of his nose.
The knight standing at the very front held a small wooden box with both hands.
Lionel’s gaze remained fixed upon that box, as though the gears in his mind had failed to align.
It did not take him long to understand what it contained.
But it felt as though accepting it would require the rest of his life.
Inside the wooden box was Agnes’s urn.
However, because so little of her remains had been recovered, burned personal belongings had been placed inside instead of ashes.
The smile he had so awkwardly forced onto his lips froze into a stiff, lifeless line.
The cold, heavy rain poured mercilessly over his body.
As Lionel reached out, the trembling that began at his fingertips spread up his arm until it consumed his entire body.
…Agnes really had come back.
Back to him.
In a form he had never imagined.
Wordlessly, Lionel wrapped both hands around the wooden box.
The hard wooden edges pressed against the calluses on his palms.
Lionel pulled his sleeve over the box and carefully wiped away the rain.
But the moment his sleeve passed over it, fresh raindrops immediately began falling once more.
Tap.
Tap.
They soaked the wooden box again.
The instant Lionel realized it, he hurriedly hugged the box to his chest like someone who had committed an unforgivable mistake.
As though trying to keep even the slightest bit of cold from reaching it.
“You must be cold…
Let’
s go inside, Agnes.”
Without letting go of the wooden box, Lionel walked back toward the mansion.
As though it truly were Agnes herself.
Not a single member of the Black Iron Knight Order dared to speak.
They could only stand silently and watch his retreating figure.
