Chapter 58
“It’s already this late.”
After returning from the Bel-Air townhouse.
She felt as though she had only closed her eyes for a moment, but darkness was already settling in.
Even though it was dinner time, no one had woken her, and she had almost missed the meal entirely.
During dinner, Lionel was always out in the dining room first.
So, in order not to keep Lionel waiting, she had to hurry to the dining room.
As she hurriedly rolled the wheels of her wheelchair, the corners of Agnes’s mouth lifted.
“Rael allowed me to call him by his name.”
Why did that one thing make her heart flutter so much?
Laughter kept leaking out, making her feel foolish.
She felt significantly closer to Lionel.
For some reason, Lionel’s mood seemed a bit subdued when they returned to the estate, but she couldn’t hide her elation.
She wanted to see Lionel’s face as soon as possible and call him by his name for the first time in a long while.
However, Agnes could not find Lionel in the dining room.
“The Duke has left on urgent business.”
The calm voice of a servant fell into the air.
The empty chair and the cold dishes vividly revealed the void of the empty seat.
“Do you happen to know when he will return?”
“Well. He didn’t say anything specifically. Perhaps he will return soon.”
“I see.”
Unconcealed disappointment leaked out.
In the end, Agnes, having lost her appetite, managed only a spoonful or two before leaving her seat.
When she returned to her room, Andrew visited.
The treatment time, which she had forgotten in her excitement toward Lionel, had arrived.
“As I mentioned, from today, we will also be performing trauma therapy in parallel.”
Andrew entered the room carrying his medical bag.
The rehabilitation treatment continued as usual.
The problem came after that.
“As I explained this morning, sensitivity decreases when repeatedly exposed to fear stimuli. The principle is that it is naturally overcome once you become accustomed to it.”
With those words, Andrew lit a small metal canister.
Instantly, the pungent smell of gunpowder swept through the room.
“……!”
Agnes’s shoulders flinched and trembled.
She reflexively tried to block her nose, but Andrew caught her hand.
“You mustn’t.”
He picked up a radio and added.
“Did I not say that you must face the problem rather than avoid it?”
Agnes’s fingertips trembled uncontrollably.
This, this wasn’t right.
Not in this way.
However, without a moment to stop him, the second the black transmission button of the radio was pressed, a familiar yet cursed noise echoed in the room.
Static—.
As soon as the radio static spread, her entire body stiffened.
A suffocating tightness squeezed her lungs.
Agnes reflexively covered her ears.
“Wait, please turn it off for just a moment.”
Her voice trembled.
But Andrew did not even pretend to listen.
Instead, he turned the volume up a bit more.
“You must adapt. You can endure this much.”
“Then at least the window—!”
“Endure that as well. You will be fine soon.”
The fragments of the voice coming from the radio sounded like explosions.
Instantly, afterimages of the battlefield flashed before her eyes.
The dirt ground, the shellfire, and the collapsing bridge.
Agnes’s heart began to beat frantically.
“Stop…… turn it off, please……!”
Agnes curled her body while blocking her ears with her hands.
Her throat was tightly blocked, and air would not enter.
Her breathing quickened instantly.
Andrew’s voice remained calm.
As if looking at a laboratory rat, he was merely taking notes continuously while watching Agnes struggle as if it were interesting.
“If hyperventilation occurs, curl your hands and place them to your mouth. Just breathe in and breathe out. It’s okay. You will calm down soon.”
It wasn’t okay.
Her breath grew short, and her field of vision gradually narrowed.
The world before her flashed in black and white.
“……Stop, I beg you…… please……!”
“Just a little more. We’re almost there.”
Tears blurred Agnes’s eyes.
At that moment, her body reached its limit.
Agnes gripped the armrest of the wheelchair with her fingertips, but her arms would not obey.
The wheelchair tipped backward with a loud noise.
“Ah!”
Agnes’s body fell to the floor.
With her reason blurred by terror, Agnes pushed Andrew away and grabbed the railing.
She couldn’t do it.
There was no way she could overcome this kind of treatment.
She had to go to Lionel right now and tell him.
That she wouldn’t receive the treatment.
And with movements that she didn’t know if they were walking, crawling, or being dragged, she desperately approached the room door.
And as she turned the handle, clatter! Her body was thrown miserably out of the room.
A servant standing in the hallway looked at Agnes with a startled face.
But no one helped her.
In an instant, the air of the hallway poured into her lungs.
As the smell of gunpowder faded, she felt she could finally breathe, so
Agnes greedily gulped down the air.
Then, seized with terror, she grabbed the railing installed in the hallway and headed to the office right next door.
Heading to Lionel’s office, Agnes pulled the handle.
But that was as far as it went.
“Duke!”
The door did not open. The handle only rattled and spun in vain.
Lionel wasn’t there.
Agnes only then remembered the servant’s words that Lionel had left.
However, her mind, frozen in terror, could not function properly.
Agnes knocked on the thick door frantically.
“Lionel……!”
The sound of knocking on the door gradually turned violent.
“Lionel, I won’t take the treatment. I want to stop. Please tell him to stop……!”
However, the door to the empty office never opened.
Only the knocks mixed with sobs echoing in the hallway rang out hollowly.
Agnes eventually slumped down in front of the door.
She hugged her knees and blocked her ears.
The afterimage of the radio was still hitting her ears.
Where did you go.
You were always here. You told me to come find you every night.
So why are you not here exactly when I need you.
A voice close to a sob burst out of Agnes.
“Rael, please help me. Rael, please…….”
Hiss—.
The moment the second hand of the clock pointed to nine o’clock sharp, the southern-bound train slid into the platform.
A whistle-like steam sound stirred the night air.
Lionel was about to board the train but stopped and looked back for a moment.
“Colonel, is there a problem?”
“No. Nothing.”
Groping toward the direction where the Duke’s estate would be, Lionel slightly knitted his brows.
It must be an auditory hallucination.
But he felt as if he had heard Agnes’s voice calling him.
‘Come to think of it, I didn’t tell Agnes not to come to the office today.’
It shouldn’t matter since he would return to the estate in less than a day anyway.
Regarding it as trivial, Lionel soon boarded the train.
When the conductor in a black uniform raised his hand in a salute-like greeting, the door soon closed and the wheels scraped the tracks.
The stationary train slowly gained speed and began to run, cutting through the night air.
Chug, chug-chug—.
As the southern-bound train cleared the platform, the rhythmic pulse of the iron wheels continued in the darkness.
Lionel moved slowly forward from the last carriage.
His emotionless blue eyes scrutinized the faces of the passengers in every car.
Even until he passed the dining car between the standard and first-class sections, the Minister of Internal Affairs of Sercadia was nowhere to be seen.
After looking through all the standard class seats.
Just as he was entering the dining car that comes before moving into first class.
Clatter—, the vibration of the swaying train caused the space between the carriages to shift and shake.
And at that moment. Beyond the window of the carriage in the direction of first class, he saw a man of a similar build to the Minister of Internal Affairs standing there.
“Colonel.”
“Yes.”
Kalt seemed to have seen the same thing.
As the two were about to head toward the first-class section, the conversation of the flight attendants caught Lionel.
“George, isn’t your return to work a bit too fast? I heard you were seriously injured during the train accident.”
“My body is fine now, but my heart still flutters just thinking about that time. I hear that sound even in my dreams.”
“Well, the shock must have been great. They say the damage to the first-class side was the most severe, right?”
“It had to be. On that day, the first class was entirely elderly people and young children.”
Lionel’s pace came to a dead stop.
Lionel signaled with his head to Kalt, meaning for him to go first.
“Check it. I will follow shortly.”
And immediately, Lionel turned his direction.
Toward the galley where the attendants were talking.
As he roughly pulled back the curtain separating the space, they looked at Lionel in great surprise along with the smell of food.
“I’d like to hear the story you just told again.”
The two attendants inside raised their heads with puzzled expressions.
Then, recognizing Lionel, they gasped and swallowed their breath.
“D-Duke……!”
“You said that only the elderly and children were on board the first class of the train that had the accident?”
At the question that flew in without context, the attendants exchanged glances.
As if asking what this situation was.
Even so, the attendant wearing a nametag that said George answered faithfully based on what he knew.
“Yes, Your Grace. That is correct.”
“Are you certain? That there were no young women?”
“Yes. I remember clearly because I was in charge of the first-class section that day.”
George nodded repeatedly with certainty.
“On the first class of the southern-bound train that had the accident, there was not a single young female passenger.”
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