169. The Crimson Sea

2024.03.17.

Seeing Eddie speechless at the cruel and tragic sight, Clade spoke again.

“…We have to go.”

Have to go. Must leave. Let me go. Please, let me go. Words like a madman’s muttering forced their way out of his parched mouth.

His unfocused eyes held nothing, wandering blankly through the air.

“Go.”

In place of Eddie, who stood dumbfounded by the utterly broken state of Clade, Lancelot answered.

“Promise me you’ll return. Just promise me you won’t walk out and die.”

The blood-soaked man staggered to his feet.

Eddie did not reach out to stop Clade as he unsteadily swayed away, but instead stared only at the pool of blood left behind where he had stood.

As if the terror of possibly losing Clade had finally reached him from Lancelot.

Eddie dropped to his knees, collapsed onto the floor, and began sobbing.

Ariesta had no choice but to grant Clade’s request to release the horse.

Suddenly realizing that the place he was heading was where Yuan Pelliese was, she stood silently, watching his retreating back for a long time.

***

The tragic news from Mount San Marquis Rev quieted even the atmosphere within Count Kimfri’s estate.

Eugene, thanks to Clade’s disappearance along with the grim news, found Yuan’s room unusually empty. After searching fruitlessly through the garden where she often walked to clear her mind, then the Empress’s room where she lay recovering in shock upon hearing of Federico’s injury, and finally Noel’s room, he eventually arrived at the open-air corridor.

Compared to the entire day he had spent searching, Yuan’s figure visible through the window was absurdly obvious.

Mounting his horse at once, Eugene Kimfri turned his gaze toward the Kimfri family carriage parked not far from the manor, and then slightly farther beyond, toward the wheat field.

At the moment his blurred focus snapped into clarity,

he stood frozen, unable to move even for a brief instant.

The eastern sky, unfurling sunset like spilled pigment.

Beneath it, Yuan stood in the center of an endless expanse of golden wheat.

As the breeze swayed the field into dance, Yuan’s black hair, gazing blankly at the boundary between golden waves and sky, spread like ink across the heavens.

When the gently rippling strands—like the tender touch of a goddess—obscured her vision, Yuan stood still for a while before tucking a loose strand behind her small ear.

It was the most peaceful and beautiful sight Eugene had ever seen in his life.

He forgot the anxiety he had felt while searching for her, and quietly savored the moment.

Long enough to recall it vividly whenever he closed his eyes.

By the time the sun began to dip lower, burning even more fiercely.

After imprinting the magnificent scene deeply into his heart, Eugene finally spoke.

“How are you feeling? I heard you collapsed for several days after receiving the tragic news.”

Yuan’s eyes, which had been fixed on the horizon, turned slowly toward Eugene. She answered with a faint, weary smile.

“It was Tasha’s exaggeration. My vision just spun for a moment. I’ve always been unwell, and this is bearable too.”

For a long while, the wind caressed them—carrying the scent of rough tree bark, knee-high wild grass, and the raw, unripe fragrance of wheat.

Gazing at the fading sun, they shared a long, warm, and peaceful silence.

Perhaps intoxicated by the mood, a memory slipped unbidden from Eugene Kimfri’s lips.

“I saw you on that pirate island’s shore.”

His voice flowed low, not resisting the wind, and Yuan quietly waited for him to continue.

“Before boarding the ship. You kept picking up seashells, only to abandon them and pile them in one corner instead.”

The thought that Eugene Kimfri had seen her acting like a child playing made Yuan’s cheeks slightly flush.

But Eugene, showing no such thought, continued with a solemn expression.

“It was an impulse when I asked the Empress to stop here.”

“…….”

“Even if the circumstances are difficult now, the East is a remarkably beautiful place.”

Yuan nodded in agreement.

Indeed. The East was even more peaceful and beautiful than Yuan had imagined.

Her gaze gently followed the swaying wheat, drifting toward the distant horizon.

“Looking back, perhaps I wanted to show you this wheat field—called the golden sea—after all the hardship you endured in the southern seas.”

Eugene Kimfri spoke as if walking through a dream, watching her black hair flutter in the soft breeze.

Yuan smiled faintly, as if intoxicated by the warm wind.

“It’s beautiful.”

In response to his gentle gesture, Yuan closed her eyes and slightly spread her arms, embracing the breeze of the East.

Eugene stared blankly for a moment at her, then answered.

“Yes. It is beautiful.”

His sun-like eyes lingered on Yuan, swaying like the wind of the East, shimmering for a long while.

“I don’t know you.”

Only when the gentle breeze between them gradually began to still did he finally break the long silence.

“To confess, I am not someone loyal to the Imperial family.”

Yuan’s eyes snapped open, having been softly closed. Eugene continued calmly, even though he had just spoken such words to the Empress’s lady-in-waiting.

“Once I’ve obtained what I desire, I might spend my remaining years here, tending to this place no one else cares for, living a dull life. Sometimes going to war as a knight, sometimes helping as a farmer. Just as the previous Counts did, treasuring this golden sea as the most important scene of my life.”

Yuan quietly held her breath, unsettled by Eugene’s uncharacteristic words and demeanor.

“The East is vast.”

“…….”

“I don’t know you well. But I know Bollonico well. He is not someone who can keep another by his side for life. Not the Empress, not Lord Federico, and not even Harol Companni in the future, and perhaps… someday…”

The implication was clear—Yuan too would be abandoned.

Only then did Yuan slowly turn her stiff body to face Eugene.

Unable to decipher his intention, she needed to look him in the face.

“When that time comes.”

His sunlit eyes, glowing brightly in the sunset, reflected her.

“Or if you wish it…”

His thick Adam’s apple bobbed, then his tightly closed lips, heavy with resolve, released a low voice.

“You may stay in the East.”

As if determined to stain even Eugene Kimfri’s face with the crimson of the setting sun,

his straight, slightly reddened face continued to hold Yuan in those sun-like eyes, as if to affirm the sincerity of his words.

Yuan gazed with trembling eyes at Eugene Kimfri’s flushed face. Was it the sunset? Or the picture-perfect sky?

Was it her imagination that his expression carried not just pure kindness, but something deeper?

Yet Eugene did not seem to expect an answer.

After standing face to face for a long while, Eugene Kimfri let out a short sigh and pulled something from his coat.

Yuan, unable to hide her confusion, fixed her gaze on his hand.

What he held was a wreath of unusual hue.

Made from dried red flowers that remain fresh for over half a year even when cut, and Tibo-china Grandiflora, known as the flower of glory.

It was the champion’s wreath awarded in the South—to achieve glory, one must display swordsmanship that blooms eternally like an undying flower. He had won it by defeating Bollonico.

***

Pale golden hair fluttered, scattered and stilled by the wind in turns.

Clade could not tear his eyes away from the distant, beautiful pair before him.

A healthy, unbroken man. The beautiful wreath he offered.

A woman lifting her head in response, gazing up at him. Her face, no longer pale, glowed with vitality in the sunset.

Though he had never coveted gemstones in his life, if there were one he desired, would it not be this?

If treasure existed in the world, would it not be this?

Clade longingly etched their image into his desolate, wasteland-like eyes—as the sole light in his darkness.

At the very moment the golden wheat field, embracing sunset and wind, transformed into a crimson sea.

At the small figure of Yuan Pelliese standing in the heart of those red waves. Her pale, composed face. The ordinary face of a woman touched with peace and longing.

The painfully poignant scene of something so ordinary. And even the wish within him that it might continue forever.

It was not too late.

Yuan might yet be the only person in Clade’s life who had spoken love to him and not died.

He had never spoken love aloud. He had never uttered that terrible, curse-like word—even as empty words—to a woman.

He rubbed the blood-stained ring case with his firm thumb.

Opposite to the beautiful, fragrant wreath worthy of the name “glory,” this ring was a shackle filled with sorrow, obsession, and regret.

Clumsy, selfish desires—to say sorry, to beg forgiveness, to speak of endless waiting—were swept away and vanished instantly in the crimson waves.

At last, he gained the courage to sever, from his soul rather than his heart, that obsession and regret which had grotesquely twisted within him, and to let go of everything.

The velvet case remained deeply buried in his blood-soaked trouser pocket.

He knew, the moment he appeared covered in blood, the softened woman would come to him and kiss him.

He knew she would walk steadily back from that peaceful, beautiful crimson sea, toward this desolate fortress where only darkness and emptiness remained.

He knew all too well whose peace and rest he would gain by trampling over someone else’s suffering.

He moved his lips, but no words came—like a man whose tongue had been severed.

Words he could not say and words he must say swirled chaotically in his mouth before fading away.

That when one is too sorry, even “I’m sorry” cannot be spoken—this truth, which he had recently learned, he now felt with his entire being.