Chapter 121
“Were you out here?”
Kalt looked at Lionel’s back as he stood alone in front of the knights, where the wreckage of the carriage had already been cleared away.
The rumors had spread incredibly fast.
The entire Empire was already in an uproar over the news that Rebelt had been captured.
People were saying they could finally sleep peacefully at night.
However, Lionel, the man who had brought peace to the Empire, was walking into hell all alone.
Lionel’s blue irises, reminiscent of winter, sank into darkness.
“Wouldn’t it be better if you went inside and got at least a little rest? I’m worried you’ll ruin your health at this rate.”
“…What about Raul?”
“He is still in the same condition.”
Raul, who had poured all his resentment onto Lionel, was now clutching the drawer while calling Agnes’s name and weeping.
Lionel slowly clenched his fist tightly before opening it again.
He could still vividly feel the touch of the shoulder Raul had grabbed.
The resentment that clung to him like damp moisture refused to leave his skin.
There had once been a time when Lionel wished Agnes would stop swallowing all her resentment toward him and pour it all out instead.
He believed that, even if he were crushed beneath the weight of his sins, at least he would still be able to breathe.
It seemed far better than doing nothing while watching Agnes slowly wither away.
Looking back now, what an absurd thought that had been.
Even after enduring Raul’s deep resentment, not only had breathing failed to become easier, but it instead felt as though he had been submerged completely beneath freezing water.
No matter how deeply he tried to inhale, nothing passed down his airway.
Unconsciously, Lionel dug his fingernails hard into the back of his neck.
Fresh scratches were added over the bruised handprint on his neck, which had already turned a dark reddish-purple from Nick’s grip.
Before he drowned in this suffocating sensation, Lionel desperately tried to force his thoughts elsewhere.
“…Did Nick willingly confess about the secret letter?”
“We haven’t gained much yet. But he won’t hold out for much longer.”
Sigh.
A cloudy breath escaped from Lionel’s lips.
Like cigar smoke, it lingered in the air for a long line before gradually dispersing.
Even after finishing his report, Kalt did not leave.
Instead, he stood one step behind Lionel as though guarding him.
“…Is there still something left to report?”
“I regret having to tell you this… but they say part of some human remains has been recovered from the wreckage.”
Lionel’s fingertips, which had been digging into his neck, froze.
Like a dead man himself, Lionel stared at Kalt without the slightest movement.
Despair rapidly spread across his terrifyingly beautiful face.
“…Say that again.
What did you just say?”
Lionel still could not accept that something had happened to Agnes.
No matter how many times he thought about it, Agnes being dead simply made no sense.
That was why Lionel could not abandon his foolish hope.
No one had even confirmed whose remains they were yet.
If so, then there was nowhere that definitively proved Agnes’s death.
This was all nonsense.
It was simply so cold that everyone had clearly lost their minds.
He himself had merely been swept away by the atmosphere because he had not been in his right mind earlier.
Surely, if he returned to the Duke’s residence now, Agnes would be asleep beneath a warm blanket beside the fireplace just as she always was.
“However, only one person’s remains have been found, so they say the identity still needs to be confirmed.”
See?
They said it was only one person.
According to Simon, Kain had been riding inside the carriage as well.
Then couldn’t those remains belong to either the coachman or Kain?
An irrational light filled Lionel’s eyes.
“I knew it. Why would Agnes die?”
The words he had just spoken.
This absurd hope that dominated his thoughts every passing moment.
Lionel knew better than anyone that it was nothing more than desperate self-deception.
“They also say Kain and the coachman’s whereabouts remain unknown. Even if they escaped the carriage, there’s a high possibility they were caught in the explosion…”
“It’s only a possibility.
Nothing has been confirmed yet.”
“…Colonel.”
What Kalt truly meant was that although only one set of remains had been found, everyone was most likely dead.
But even knowing this fleeting paradise was nothing but an illusion, Lionel wanted to shut both his eyes and ears to reality.
“I have to go to the Duke’s residence.
Agnes will be waiting for me.”
“Colonel.”
“…Don’t say anything.
Don’t say a word.”
As Lionel staggered, Kalt hurried over and caught him before he could collapse.
Lionel shoved Kalt away and gritted his teeth as he struggled to steady himself alone.
During that struggle, something slipped out from Lionel’s inner pocket.
It was the palm-sized note Agnes had left behind.
Carried by the wind, the note circled once through the air like a butterfly before gently landing on the ground.
A sheet of paper resting upon the white snow.
The black ink written upon it stood out in especially sharp contrast.
Lionel’s gaze instinctively locked onto it.
Fearing even the slightest chance that the note might become wet, Lionel hurriedly picked it up and brushed the snow away.
“…!”
Then his hand froze at the end of a character whose final stroke curved upward in a distinctive way.
Because only then did he realize that the handwriting on the note was not the same handwriting Agnes had used when she wrote him her daily reports.
Yet despite not being Agnes’s familiar handwriting, the fact that it was painfully familiar struck Lionel squarely in the chest.
It carried the strange familiarity of handwriting he had looked at every single day for well over a decade.
At that moment, the letter box sitting atop the piano in the annex flashed through his mind.
The letters piled inside it.
Once they had been as precious to him as his own life, yet ever since Agnes had completely filled his thoughts, it had been a long time since he had looked at them.
The handwriting in those letters was identical to the handwriting on the note Agnes had left behind.
At first, his mind failed to comprehend what his eyes were seeing.
Or perhaps it was refusing to comprehend it.
Fear and instinct, unwilling to accept that even more of his sins remained, rejected the truth.
The thought that he absolutely had to confirm whether this handwriting truly belonged to the one he knew consumed every corner of his mind.
He had to confirm it.
Right now.
Lionel violently shook off Kalt’s hand and staggered forward as though he might collapse.
***
Without even knowing how he had made it back to the Duke’s residence, Lionel passed through the entrance and headed straight for the annex.
Bursting into the empty annex, Lionel hurriedly reached for the letter box atop the piano.
However, his trembling, sweat-soaked hands caused the box to slip from his grasp and fall to the floor.
Thud.
With the dull sound, everything inside the opened letter box spilled across the floor.
Lionel dropped to his knees and grabbed the letters.
He placed the note on the floor, laid one letter over it, removed it, then placed another sheet on top, repeating the process over and over.
He prayed they would not match.
He prayed that even a single stroke would differ.
But the hurried handwriting scribbled across the back of a torn receipt and the handwriting on the note in his hand…
Every single stroke was identical.
Not the slightest difference.
“…This too.”
His voice would not come out properly.
“This too…
Was it you?”
It was handwriting he had read countless times on the battlefield.
It had been the only refuge that allowed him to remain human amid that horrific place.
And now he learned that every one of those letters had been sent by Agnes.
Yet he had never once realized the truth.
Instead, he had insulted Agnes simply because she had touched those letters.
Even that had not satisfied him.
He had gone so far as to cruelly declare that he wished the owner of those letters were not Agnes.
Despite never recognizing her handwriting.
Mistakenly believing he had treasured her traces while clinging only to these sheets of paper, he found himself unbearably foolish and pathetic.
If he truly deserved to be called human, then surely there should have been at least one thing he had done like a human being.
Yet there was not a single one.
It felt as though every sin he had committed was tightening around his throat one by one.
Lionel’s upper body slowly collapsed.
The cold floor of the annex pressed harshly against his side and shoulder, yet he could scarcely even register the sensation.
Lionel’s body came to rest atop the scattered traces of Agnes spread across the floor.
“…I know. I know I’m only forcing myself to believe this.”
If someone had been trapped inside the carriage that was consumed by the explosion, then it could only have been Agnes.
Because she could no longer walk due to him, Lionel knew better than anyone that she could never have escaped the death closing in on her.
Even so, he desperately tried to deny it.
Because he had no confidence that he could endure this reality.
But beneath the unbearable weight of his guilt, he no longer even had the strength to flee into that false paradise.
The fleeting paradise he had forced himself to believe melted away.
Even hi
s desperate attempt to cover the sky with the palm of his hand and look away from reality finally shattered into countless pieces.
“…It was me.”
Lionel reached out and pulled the nearest letter into his arms.
“I killed you. It was because of me. All of it.”
