Chapter 100
“Do not…… make an effort.”
The moment those words dropped.
Lionel’s vision blinked briefly, sinking into blackness, and then spread white again.
He could not even discern whether he was breathing right now.
He had been foolish.
To think he believed Agnes was getting a little better merely because she did not push away his touch.
It was not like that.
Agnes continued her words in a still quiet voice.
“It is just…… because it is burdensome. Ah.”
Pausing for a moment to compose her breath, she made a short sound from her throat as if fumbling through an old memory.
“It is not a complaint made without even trying to endure. You said so in the past, right. If it is truly difficult enough to die, speak up then.”
“…….”
“It is difficult. Duke.”
Watching you.
It was not certain whether the last words actually came out of Agnes’s mouth.
Lionel gasped roughly as if someone had blocked his mouth and nose simultaneously from behind.
If he could, he wanted to pluck out his own tongue.
He wanted to erase his voice.
He wanted to twist and tear apart his mouth from which all those words—words that had been spat out as if slicing Agnes up, words thrown as if they were nothing—had burst out.
Every time the deeds he had committed returned one by one through Agnes’s mouth, Lionel felt like he would rather die.
The arrogant and stupid Lionel Edmund Valheim.
The dim-witted bastard who got caught in the trap he himself had set.
If he could, he wanted to devote everything to turn back time.
To the Bardo trading company of that day when he met Agnes again.
Holding past himself—who blabbered about the marriage with you being a dog-like reward—by the scruff of the neck. He wanted to shout into his ear.
That she is a person someone like you must not treat carelessly.
However, right now, the only thing he could do was merely the deed of removing his presence for a short while before Agnes’s eyes.
“If you do not want to see me, I will not catch your eye. I will not even make a sign of presence, as if dead.”
The wedding day. Lionel was saying to himself the exact words he had spoken to Agnes.
“…….”
“If even that is insufficient, I would rather move my residence. Therefore…… please stay in the mansion.”
The corners of Agnes’s mouth, which had beautifully drawn an arc, gradually stiffened into a straight line. Like a falling bird.
“In any case, casting me out will be of help to the Duke as well. Even if I was not directly involved, as long as my family has been doing weapon smuggling, I too cannot escape from that responsibility.”
Agnes knew.
Since in any case, it was herself who drafted the ledgers from one to ten and managed the weapons, she could not become completely innocent with the words that she did not know.
Because guilt by association was still applied regarding the allegation of communicating with the enemy committed in a state of war.
Even if she did not directly participate, a charge named dereliction of duty might be overlaid.
“No. Even if it is so, I will not let you get entangled and drawn in. No matter what means I use.”
“There is no need to take upon yourself the infamy of my family.”
Agnes quietly added.
“I do not wish to be in a feeling of owing a debt to the Duke anymore.”
Along with those words, Agnes’s cold hand gently swept down the back of Lionel’s head.
The fine-textured black hair slipped away between her fingers.
Agnes, feeling that sensation, raised her head and looked at the sky.
“Therefore, please abandon me.”
“To the house…….”
Lionel pretended not to hear those words until the end.
“Stop, let us go to the house. Your feet are too cold.”
He urgently blew his breath onto his hands to warm his frozen hands.
And cradling Agnes’s foot, he blew an unskillful breath over it as well. As if wishing it would become even a little warmer.
Agnes looked down at that appearance without any word.
Lionel, hugging Agnes tightly within his embrace as if she would disappear if he let go of her, began to go down below the observatory.
While doing so, Lionel clung to Agnes’s ear with a voice that seemed about to break.
“You may inflict any punishment upon me for the price of my sin, so please just do not abandon me. Agnes. Please just do not say the words that you will leave.”
Those words were a request, and at the same time, a clinging.
It also sounded like a declaration that he would not let go.
Agnes quietly ruminated over his words while held in Lionel’s embrace.
It was strange.
She had merely told him to abandon her.
Yet for what reason was Lionel speaking to please not abandon him.
The words were discrepant.
In this Empire, just who on earth is a person who can abandon the Duke of Valheim.
The side that always makes the choice would be Lionel, after all.
Agnes knew that fact all too well.
Agnes, whose comfort within Lionel’s embrace gradually became uncomfortable, twisted her body slightly. However, the solid embrace did not loosen easily.
‘As expected…… I spoke in vain.’
Agnes regretted that she should not have brought up the words as she had originally resolved.
However, it was late now.
To freedom, a promise disappeared.
Perchance, a assumption that Lionel might not get tired of her slowly encroached inside Agnes’s head.
Even if she no longer has any worth. Even if Lionel’s guilt becomes blurred. A premonition arose that he might not abandon her.
If so, would she be unable to leave that chilly room of the Duke’s mansion forever.
Agnes’s transparent pupils directed once again toward the observatory that looked like a dot far away.
“…….”
☆☆☆
Returning back to the place where the carriage was in that manner, Lionel seated Agnes inside the carriage first.
“Please wait for just a moment. It takes just a brief moment.”
As if the appearance of kneeling down and pleading atop the observatory were a lie.
Lionel’s manner of speech was excessively calm, and was organized without a single dishevelment.
Features neatly trimmed and an unwavering gaze.
It was a face not a bit different from his usual self.
It could not be helped but be so.
Because right now, Lionel was forcefully gathering all his remaining willpower in order not to get the things collapsing inside him discovered.
Lionel shortly commanded the attendant to guard Agnes well.
To make sure she does not come outside the carriage, by any chance.
Lionel knew better than anyone the fact that Agnes could not go anywhere by herself. Because he had come down leaving the wheelchair abandoned as it was atop the observatory.
Yet despite knowing it, he did so.
No sooner had the door of the carriage closed and his appearance could no longer be seen by Agnes than Lionel urgently blocked his mouth.
With a complexion that turned pale in an instant, he began to walk rapidly toward the alleyway.
To the footsteps turning the corner, speed was gradually attached.
No sooner had he reached a place where the carriage would not be visible than Lionel staggered and leaned his hand against the wall.
An extreme headache pressed down on his temples.
Simultaneously, guilt and loathing toward himself surged up from below his throat like rotten water.
Lionel urgently fumbled through his inner pocket.
His fingertips trembled, so the medicine bottle was not easily grasped.
The cold sweat forming on his forehead trickled down along his temples.
‘……Was she trying to die.’
Agnes did not put such words into her mouth in the end.
However, the appearance of her sitting perched precariously atop the ledge as if she would fall at any moment revived vividly before his eyes.
If truly, she was thinking of death at that moment…….
Was he that dreadful.
Did she want to escape from his side even by doing up to that extent.
Because the wound he gave was utterly unendurable?
Even before he could take out the medicine, a sensation of his stomach turning upside down rose up to his neck.
“Ugh—!”
Lionel, with his head bowed, retched out everything that was inside.
However, the feeling of nausea did not settle down easily.
No matter how much he emptied and emptied, there was no end.
His entire body trembled shake-shake.
His legs standing above the cold stone floor could not support his body properly.
It cannot be.
Only now have I barely become able to attach a name to my emotion toward you. To tell me to let you go just like this.
He could not do that.
He detested his selfish self to the point of shuddering.
Despite that, Lionel could not let go of that selfishness in the end.
Even if she resents him, even if he fails to be forgiven until the very end.
He wished for Agnes to do all those things by his side.
Even while knowing that that is a path that will leave another wound on her.
Lionel leaned his back against the wall, and with his head deeply bowed, caught his breath roughly.
Even though he had resolved countless times that he would never inflict a wound again.
In the end, he found himself so pathetic for being able to conclude only in this manner.
From the beginning until now, he had never changed even once.
Invariably, he was a bastard.
Nothing short of utterly selfish.
☆▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎☆
He was a damnable son of a bitch.
