The drawing room was as quiet as a tomb.

Sinclair couldn’t utter a single word recklessly, and could only wait for Elaina to part her lips and say something. As if he were a priest longing and yearning for God’s call. As if he were a prisoner awaiting execution.

Perhaps he was both.

And the moment she parted her lips was after a very long time had passed,

just as the lead-heavy silence was about to strangle Sinclair’s breath.

“…I waited for you.”

Elaina’s parched lips muttered weakly.

“Even after my legs were ruined, I went to that valley almost every day… to find you…”

That all too familiar path, falling and tumbling over and over again. In an even more disheveled state than usual.

“I… resented you, hated you, then believed there must have been a reason, that it couldn’t have been your fault, repeating that thousands, no, tens of thousands of times.”

[Help me, Ren!]

Elaina wasn’t the only one who endlessly repeated those days. Sinclair was the same. Until he reunited with Elaina, he had never escaped from that day. No, perhaps he still hasn’t even now.

What could I possibly say?

That there was an assassin sent by Yuria at that spot?

That I thought if I left alone, they would chase me and you would be safe.

No, that was just rationalization. The result didn’t change. In the end, I abandoned Elly who was screaming for help and ran away, not grasping the small white hand that was desperately reaching out to me.

So I couldn’t… even make such excuses.

How dare I?

“I lived my whole life like that, unable to escape from you even a little. And I met you again, Sinclair.”

With a face drenched in tears, Elaina spoke with an ambiguous expression, making it unclear whether she was crying or laughing.

“Sometimes, when you wouldn’t open up to me. When you were unusually cold to me alone, I hated it, but in the end, there was only one emotion left.”

Yes. Just as there was only one emotion left for Ren in the end.

“I like you a lot. And you… are someone I’m really grateful to.”

“…”

“Thanks to you, I… was able to escape from that day and move forward… So to me, your very existence is…”

…seemed like hope.

Elaina didn’t finish her words. Instead, she swallowed them as if holding back tears.

“In the end, I had never escaped from you, not even once.”

It was so miserable.

“I was just constantly mistaken without knowing anything. Without even knowing my place.”

Sinclair slowly moved his feet. Then he took a few steps closer to Elaina.

“You wouldn’t know how many times I wanted to die.”

Eventually, Sinclair knelt in front of Elaina and parted his lips with a broken voice, looking up at her.

“I was so disgusted with myself for abandoning you and running away alone like that. For being so despicably cowardly.”

The tightly closed corners of Elaina’s mouth trembled slightly.

“The palace or the battlefield… made no difference to me. Because you weren’t there. So I thought I could die at any time. But… I couldn’t.”

Sinclair spoke as if sobbing.

“I was the one who ruined your dream of one day escaping the Aswald family, stole your future where you could run freely… and extinguished all the light you had.”

[Lady Perin said so.]

A scene that had flashed through my mind for a moment.

[She said sometimes when you were badly injured and not in your right mind… you would say strange things.]

That’s right, someday.

It was the moment when Perin Ilaine had stopped by the prince’s palace and had a conversation with Sinclair.

“I thought I had to do it no matter what.”

[That there was something I had to do no matter what.]

“Even if I can’t turn your life back to how it was at the beginning, still… I thought I had to at least… fulfill your dream of escaping from there.”

[So I can’t die like this…] [What was it? Something so important to you… that you said you couldn’t even die like that?]

What did Sinclair say back then?

Did he say it was something he couldn’t just die before accomplishing?

What expression did I make when I heard those words?

I couldn’t remember well.

“That was the reason I had to keep living.”

“…”

“I was the one who made you, who used to smile saying your feet were really fast and no one could catch you… trapped in the Aswald family forever.”

Sinclair’s tears, which fell without a sound, quietly soaked Elaina’s thighs.

“I may not be able to make you run like before, but I thought I had to… at least pull you out of that terrible nightmare. I couldn’t just keep running away like a coward until the end, even if it meant dying…”

[So did you accomplish that thing?] […Yes. But I keep getting other desires.]

Now Elaina felt like she knew.

[Even though I know it’s utterly cowardly…]

That the new desire, which was utterly cowardly, was the feeling of wanting to keep her by his side even if it meant hiding the whole truth.

“I kept enduring it. I kept bearing it. Knowing that keeping you by my side was my selfish desire. Knowing that it was deceiving you.”

Yes, I don’t know how long he fought that war alone. That desperate fight where there was no joy in victory or defeat.

“…You said you couldn’t escape my grasp for a lifetime?”

Sinclair said with a weak smile.

“I was no different. It’s the same even now. And also… it will probably be like that until I die. No, maybe even after I die. But that’s okay.”

“…”

“You can resent me until you die. You can hate me. Ceaselessly mock and blame me. That’s something I’m used to. I can live apologizing and apologizing to you for the rest of my life. So please…”

“Ren.”

At the sound of Elaina’s voice softly interrupting his words, Sinclair desperately faced her black eyes.

He couldn’t even dare to ask for forgiveness first. He couldn’t even beg her to accept his belated apology.

But nevertheless, there was a wretched selfishness that still occupied his heart.

Still, I hoped you would choose to stay by my side.

“If you don’t leave me like that, and you won’t be as miserable as I was back then… what meaning would that have to me?”

…But the words that returned from Elaina were no different from a sharply honed dagger.

“You say you love me?”

“…Elaina.”

“Could you deceive someone you love like that? If I were you, I… would never have done that.”

You might be right. Unlike me, who is always anxious about losing you and unable to properly look even an inch ahead, you can freely leave me at any time and even now, you shine like the sun unchanged.

Because you’re not a coward like me.

“Yes, because you’re not me… maybe your feelings were really sincere. But now, every moment with you…”

Elaina made a pained expression as if catching her breath, then spoke words that seemed to stab herself. Or perhaps stab Sinclair.

“…will be nothing more or less than agony to me.”

Sinclair looked at Elaina as if he had been completely broken, forgetting to even breathe.

Elaina’s tear-stained face looking down at him, the portrait on the table, and her dress soaked with his tears, nothing had changed from before, but…

It felt as if the world had ended forever.

The sky was collapsing, the ground was splitting.

And without any end, it felt like he was just endlessly, recklessly plummeting downward. Continuously only downward.

Sinclair’s large hand gripping the hem of Elaina’s dress trembled slightly.

“I said I wanted you to be unable to do anything without me.”

[…I wish you couldn’t do anything without me.]

“So I said I wanted you to be unable to even run away.”

[So I wish you couldn’t even run away.]

Then… would I be less anxious than now?

Despair settled heavily on Sinclair’s face as he mulled over his own words he had once uttered to Elaina.

“Even if I become like what you said. Even if I end up staying by your side until the end because of that… Ren. You will constantly be anxious and in pain.”

Why?

Why is that?

It’s just a matter of you staying by my side.

It’s just a matter of you not abandoning me.

From the beginning until now, the only one I ever needed was you alone. Dazzling Elly. Dazzling Elaina.

“Because you were the one who betrayed trust first. And you’re not shameless enough to pretend you don’t know that.”

The scream he couldn’t bring himself to utter reverberated through Sinclair’s body like an echo.

“Broken trust is just like a cracked teacup, no matter how preciously you treat it, it’s bound to shatter someday. Yes, like a castle built of sand. Like something that completely collapses without a trace from a single light wave…”

“…”

“You should have abandoned me forever instead.”

Transparent tears of unknown ownership continuously soaked Elaina’s dress.

“Then at least I wouldn’t have lost even Ren.”

Even if I had been sold off as an old duke’s second wife whose face I didn’t even know properly, even if I had ended up trapped like an animal until the end of my life.

Still, I could have held onto someone to long for in the end.

But such assumptions were now meaningless and pointless. So Elaina stood up from her seat, staggering. Pushing away Sinclair, Ren, who had been hugging her legs as if clinging to them.

Then, without even looking back, she began to leave the drawing room with a limping gait.

As if her tear-blurred vision was no obstacle at all.