Thus Began Your Regret - Chapter 37

Inside the returning car.

Paul glanced back occasionally, watching the expressions of the master and mistress.

No matter how he looked at it, it wasn’t the atmosphere of a couple who had just finished an enjoyable date.

Edward, who had been sitting with his arms crossed and eyes closed, let out a shallow sigh. He slowly opened his eyes and looked at his wife sitting beside him.

Feeling his hands grow cold, he clenched his fists a few times. The tips of his fingers wrapped in his palms were chilly. He soon clasped his hands together, interlocking his fingers.

Whether or not she was aware of the gaze resting on her, Louisa just sat staring blankly out the window.

Edward couldn’t help but worry about his wife’s appearance.

It was a sight he had seen often lately.

Whether she was interested in this place or not, she would stare blankly at something. With a listless expression as if about to collapse and unfocused eyes, she would just sit quietly.

His wife’s appearance like that continued to evoke unpleasant thoughts in him.

Feeling as if his wife might disappear at any moment, Edward’s heart sank to the bottom, and he became anxious.

It felt like standing on the edge of a cliff every time, every moment.

The extreme fatigue and anxiety that overcame him moment by moment gnawed at his mind and threatened his reason.

Nevertheless, he pondered endlessly.

How can we be happy again?

Since his wife only thought about leaving him and pushing him away, he had to be the one to consider ways for them to be together.

But how on earth could he find an answer to such a thing?

Machines keep trying and eventually find an answer. All that was needed was the patience to make infinite attempts until that answer was found.

But people were different.

People couldn’t be replaced like machines when they failed. The traces of failure remained intact, leaving scars, and that soon returned as a result of the deprivation of opportunities.

‘What will happen to me if even the opportunity I’ve forcibly held onto disappears?’

He bit his lip tightly.

What he gained by holding on was pain, but what he would lose by letting go was the meaning of his life. To live without his wife, it meant the same as telling him not to live.

So he had to do his best to find a way.

Edward struggled to raise his voice in the silence to catch his wife’s attention.

“Louisa.”

Usually, when her name was called, his wife would meet his eyes. But today, she was still only looking out the window.

Edward cleared his throat once to smooth out his voice, which seemed about to crack from being so tightly suppressed.

“How are you feeling? We haven’t had dinner yet.”

“Ah…”

Louisa belatedly reacted to his question with a short exclamation. After thinking for a while, she asked slowly.

“I’m sorry. What did you say?”

“Dinner. We haven’t had it yet. Are you alright?”

To his words, Louisa replied listlessly.

“I’m fine. I don’t really have any thoughts about it.”

“If you’re not feeling unwell, it would be good to eat even a little. Are you still feeling sick by any chance?”

To her husband’s question, Louisa slowly shook her head.

“Then why don’t you have even a little bit of dinner?”

He spoke desperately. But Louisa kept shaking her head as if mocking his intentions.

He stared at his wife for a while, then slowly closed his eyes. After taking a deep breath, he brought up a different topic this time.

“Did you like the opera? It seemed like Miss Ernst was enjoying various aspects of it, from what I could tell.”

But this time, upon hearing his words, Louisa showed a flash of emotion for a moment.

Eyebrows drawn together as if forcibly holding something back. Cheeks tense as if about to burst into tears at any moment.

Seeing his wife like this, Edward felt as if his heart was truly crumbling.

Is it now painful for her to even hear my words, no, my voice?

Have I become someone who shouldn’t even hope for such trivial conversations with my wife?

The wound he received was so painful that he pressed his wife.

“Hm? You were talking earlier. Emily Ernst seemed to have some knowledge about opera.”

Louisa bit her lip once and then took a deep breath. Her lips trembled for a moment, then she turned her head away from him and said.

“I suppose so.”

“You seemed to have quite a long conversation. Did you like it? Come to think of it, did you discuss that composer you were curious about? Is that right?”

“Well, I’m not sure.”

At her continued responses, Edward truly felt like grabbing his wife’s sleeve and falling to his knees.

Please look at me, Louisa.

He spoke with a trembling voice.

“…Could it be that I’m not suitable as a conversation partner because I lack knowledge about opera?”

“No, that’s not it.”

“I can tell that much by intuition. I couldn’t understand what you were talking about.”

Edward said in response to Louisa’s denial.

“So I told you. To teach me a little. You’re good at giving your time and heart to others as if bestowing alms. But why to me—”

Why won’t you let me hear your voice properly even once?

It would be enough just to stay by my side, but why can’t I even do that…

He suddenly stopped speaking as he was pouring out the emotions boiling inside him. The words he had uttered came back to him as wounds.

When his words didn’t continue, Louisa spoke in a voice so weak it seemed about to break.

“There wasn’t… much worth bringing up again. I’m sorry.”

It seemed his wife had decided not to give him anything.

He looked at her intently for a while, then softly uttered a word.

“…I see.”

Louisa’s expression contorted as if she was about to burst into tears. She lowered her eyes, clenched her hands tightly, and then turned her head back towards the window.

Looking at his wife’s back, he thought.

The harshest winter of his life was approaching.

The season when trees become bare has arrived.

Louisa sat in her room at the mansion, staring blankly outside.

‘…I should work, but.’

That day after returning from the opera house.

When even the memory that could have been cherished as a beautiful recollection was miserably tainted, from then on, no thoughts came to her.

There was no room to think about what to do in the future.

She was just trapped in that moment of the past, endlessly repeating the same thoughts.

Consoling herself that she had thought it might be like this, then resenting him for it being too much.

Feeling endlessly ashamed and miserable at her own foolish liking of something without even knowing what it was, yet still holding hope that she hadn’t heard an explanation from Edward, so it was unknown.

In the end, she just shed tears of misery at the thought that even if her husband, who shared nothing with her, were to explain, would it be the truth without any secrets?

The whirlpool created by emotions coming and going by the minute pulled her down like an antlion’s pit, and soon squeezed her chest so that she could barely breathe.

Kiiing—

“Ugh.”

Along with the throbbing chest pain, a ringing in her head arrived.

Louisa raised her hands to cover both ears at the sudden tinnitus.

As her ears became muffled and sounds grew distant, it gave the feeling of being thrown out alone, isolated from this world.

After pressing for a while, the sounds of the world gradually came closer. Soon, the sound of wind with the usual sense of openness began to be heard.

Suddenly exposed to the sense of a wide space, she acutely felt her solitude in this room.

Tears welled up abruptly. Without even knowing what was sad, they just surged up.

“Ahck, huu… hick…”

She wrapped her arms around herself.

Other people were living their daily lives as before.

As meetings resumed, the council members gathered in the hall again to start debates about who was better, and people visible on the streets passed by, laughing and chatting with their own stories.

Her husband too, saying the preparations for the upcoming exhibition were urgent, started staying at the company again like before, and the Johnsons, as always, quietly looked around and tidied up the house and went for walks.

But not Louisa. Her daily life was completely broken.

During the time she was awake, she had to fight with the thoughts that kept invading her mind while sitting alone in the house without any signs of life.

Then when she fell asleep, she was trapped in a room covered entirely in deep pink, slowly withering away.

This silence, the empty space, and the nightmare of deep pink repeating even when she closed her eyes made her writhe in agony.

She had been trying to live a life fulfilling the responsibilities and duties given to her. However, Louisa finally realized that it had been possible because she still had room to spare.

‘I have to leave this place. Away from Edward, staying in a new place with new people…’

She suddenly raised her head at the rising impulse.

If she did that, she would be able to become numb quickly. Even if he didn’t love her, even if he had deceived her, she would be able to brush off such facts as if they were nothing.

‘…He said it wouldn’t be good for the company if divorce rumors spread.’

The promise that had initially brought the situation to this point came to mind.

She had to endure for her husband’s happiness. Clearly, that had been her intention at first.

But now she couldn’t find the strength to do so at all. She just felt depleted and desperately wanted to cut off these emotions by running away somewhere. That thought alone was earnest.

She thought that for survival, not for each other’s happiness, she needed to leave his side as soon as possible, even if just for a day.

‘Should I go to our family’s townhouse? No, I don’t like the capital. Then should I go to Tanassen where Daniel is working? I wonder if he’ll be okay with that.’

In about a month, it would be the anniversary of her father’s death.

By then, the parliament would enter the Christmas recess, and Daniel, her elder brother, would board the train returning to the capital’s townhouse, leaving the college where he works, to welcome the end of the year and New Year.

Let’s finish everything before that and visit our parents’ graves lightly with my elder brother.

If her elder brother doesn’t take this divorce very well, she could just stay at the Averitt family’s country house.

Louisa decided.

I must leave now.

This was her last bastion.