Through the scattering tears, I saw a perfectly fine man smirking.

He… hadn’t changed at all.

‘That can’t be possible…’

Count Alton’s words flashed through my mind.

This poison is made of deadly toxins, leaving no trace, and kills the target faster than anything else.

Then why is the man before me so perfectly fine?

The man who should have been dying, gasping for breath and coughing blood, was as healthy as could be.

A sense of déjà vu shook my mind.

The man who asked me questions as if he knew everything from the start.

The man who drank it with a smirk even though I told him not to.

And…

The man who observed my reaction as if watching something interesting.

‘No way…’

I try to push away the strange assumption that comes to mind, again and again.

But how is it that these premonitions are never wrong and always fit?

The man who put down the glass on the table with a clank slowly bent down and approached my ear.

I felt his breath at a dizzying distance, almost touching.

“If you’re going to kill, you should have done it properly.”

What does that…

Could it be that this man knew everything all along?

Even that I tried to kill him.

“At this rate, won’t you be unable to get what you want from either side?”

My body stiffened at the chilling voice.

So you knew everything all along. My mind, frozen in shock, couldn’t process it.

As if my thought circuits had been cut off.

“H-How did you…”

The woman, pale as death, backed away while sitting.

As if trying to escape from me.

I grabbed her to keep her from moving, and she struggled with all her might as if about to break into a run.

Yes. Your heart is always this pitch black.

You would have always struggled to break free from my grasp.

Words of love and such, of course, must have been lies.

And after all that, why did you stop now? This way, I can’t let you go.

“Why are you alive?”

What am I supposed to do when you look up at me with such an innocent face now?

“Is that what you want to ask?”

The pale face trembled.

Above the cold emerald eyes within, a deep fear flickered like a burning sunset.

Like the sun disappearing in an eclipse, I filled the fear hidden by the shadows that covered it.

So painfully beautiful.

I released the woman, who could no longer speak and only grew paler.

The retreating woman looks pale and delicate.

Like a thin crescent moon shining in the darkness.

“Do you regret it now?”

I pour water into the empty glass.

As if it were a terrifying crashing sound, the woman covers her ears and glares at me.

“You should have died right away, but you’re alive.”

Throughout drinking the water, the woman’s gaze doesn’t leave me.

“Knowing everything, you should have died even more so.”

As I bend down, the woman’s body flinches.

Yet even now, the fierceness of her glaring gaze doesn’t subside.

Yes. This is how it should be.

This is how it feels alive.

Back in distant Alphonse, you always struggled to break the iron chains that bound you to me.

Instead of muttering dispirited words like “Yes” or “I’ll do that,” this woman always resisted and glared at me with lively eyes.

Those ridiculous scenes were rather full of vitality, like a freshly bloomed flower.

Now that I face this again.

You don’t know. How much I welcome such a you.

“H-How could you… when you knew…”

Her breath, wet with moisture, soaks the space.

The woman who was trying to kill me until just now is asking me such a thing.

How ridiculous.

Does this woman, whose liver seems to have jumped out of her body, know?

If you were someone else, you would have been a being dying to die.

You wouldn’t have been able to escape this area alive.

“How could I do that when I knew, you ask.”

“……”

“I wanted to see what you would do.”

“……”

“Yes. Originally, I shouldn’t have watched. When I met uncle, I should have abandoned you then. But I was curious.”

Eyes full of moisture look up at me.

“Whether you would kill me or save me.”

With the blatant lie that there was a month left until the engagement, and my fabricated lie about a wedding in four months, you said nothing.

When I falsely realized your lies, you don’t know how filthy I felt then.

And after all that, meeting uncle, meeting Piocel, and hiding it all.

How do you think it feels to face you who put poison in my glass and did all that?

The woman, standing on the ambiguous boundary of neither killing nor saving me, finally dropped tears.

I’m not unaware of what those tears are for.

They’re certainly not tears of relief that I survived.

Because you’re that kind of woman.

By now, in that pitch-black heart of yours, you might be regretting that you should have killed me, that you shouldn’t have done the ridiculous act of stopping.

Nevertheless… my smirking reflection ripples on the surface of the water glass.

Crazy bastard.

The curse naturally comes to mind.

What’s there to laugh about for someone who’s been poisoned?

My visibly pleased appearance was nothing more or less than that of a madman.

With the woman’s gaze looking at me as if I were truly mad in the background, I move forward slowly.

Even after the woman was removed from my sight, her afterimage disturbed my mind for quite a while.

That appearance of her biting her lips, trying hard not to let her tears be seen in front of me.

That pale face.

With each step, my fairly good mood deteriorates.

That woman’s tears surely aren’t shed out of joy that I survived.

Is she regretting saving me by now?

But I decide to bury such things lightly.

If I don’t, this joy of mine, like a delusion, will be cut off.

The intention to set her free has disappeared.

This woman who has caught me might regret today for quite a long time.

Saying that she should have killed someone like me today.

But when you regret, it’s already too late.

Like all regrets.

I picked up the medicine bottle the man had left behind.

He must have forgotten and left it behind.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t have left medicine for someone who tried to poison him.

With trembling hands, I finally picked up the bottle that had slipped several times and headed outside.

In the center of the deserted corridor, I became short of breath.

As I emerged from the darkness of the enclosed space, the chilly wind struck my face.

I barely managed to hold my staggering body, but even that failed, and I collapsed on the spot.

I don’t know how long I stayed in the same place like that.

When I got up, the light from lanterns illuminated the street that had grown dark.

Heading aimlessly towards the carriage waiting area out of habit, my terrible face was reflected in the glass window.

My appearance, a mess with tear stains, was in an unbearable state.

‘From where did the man know everything?’

The more I recall, his calm expression tells me.

He must have known from the beginning.

Of course, otherwise, he couldn’t have been fine after drinking the poison.

So that man… had set a trap and waited from the beginning, knowing I would put poison in it.

Why. For what reason.

What did I do so wrong for him to be so cruel?

If he knew from the start, wouldn’t it have been normal not to let someone like me in?

How did he know what choice I would make, to make such a dangerous choice?

Knowing everything… couldn’t Blanchet have shown mercy and given me mother’s medicine?

If he had done just that, he would have known I would collapse and never appear before him again.

Even though I had promised and vowed to do so, why did he…

Knowing everything, he tested and toyed with me.

Until the end, he was that kind of man.

Of course, there’s no reason why he should help me, and no reason why he should show mercy.

Knowing this, an even greater misery washed over me like a wave.

The reality of having to rely on his mercy, and no matter how I package it, the image of me trying to kill him and even failing to do so, mix and ripple.

All of this suddenly turned into resentment and hatred towards him, taking on a new light.

If I had properly killed him as he said, would this not have happened?

Would I have felt relieved instead?

With one moment’s mistake, I lost the sponsor’s funding and ruined that project.

Not only that, now mother’s medicine… this in my bosom will be the last.

No sane person would give medicine to someone who tried to kill them.

Everything choked me breathlessly.

Through closed eyes, the man’s last face appears like a vision.

The man with a colder face than ever was looking at me with a smirk, as if mocking.

Ah, I think I understand now.

There was never a way for me to kill him from the start.

The man who wasn’t even slightly shocked by the fact that he had been attempted to be poisoned must have known everything from the beginning.

Yet he had only put me on a test stand.

I was just the fool who moved without knowing that.

In reality, it was a miracle that I came out of that room alive.

For I am the culprit who dared to try to poison Blanchet’s heir.

I know well what fate befell those who tried to poison that man long ago in the news.

Were they killed miserably and put on display?

Yet this time, he let me live.

Why.