A Night I Couldn’t Be Honest - Chapter 3.3

Azelin’s listless footsteps finally stopped. She had walked away from the Baron’s estate and away from the hotel where her father and brother waited, without any destination in mind, and found herself standing alone on an unfamiliar street a little off the main road.

Tap, tap. Raindrops began to fall one by one. Her gaze went up automatically. The dull, heavy sky mirrored exactly how she felt inside, and Azelin laughed faintly to herself, stepping back under the overhang of an old shopfront to get out of the rain.

It was the same city, same streets, but this quiet side lane, removed from the busy main road, the secluded alley had a slightly run-down, deserted feeling. The shop she was sheltering under showed no light or movement inside the firmly shut door. It looked like it had been closed for some time.

Muddy water splashed up over Azelin’s shoes. The intermittent drops became a steady, cold stream. The sound of the rain swallowed every other sound in the world. Her ears went numb.

The smell of wet earth. The damp, cold air. Staring blankly out at the blurred world, Azelin felt her heart slowly sink along with the falling water.

She wanted to run.

But where? Could she?

She’d told her father multiple times before they came to the city that she didn’t want this marriage, and not once had it been heard.

“You’re not a child anymore! How long do you plan to act like one? Do you truly not understand this is the only way to save our family? Is that why you’re spouting such nonsense?”

“But Father, a marriage like this is just… just… “

“You were born the eldest daughter of this family and you’ve had every right and protection it offered, you have a responsibility to match that! You think a few coins from your little jobs would ever be enough to lift this family back up?”

She had plenty of things she wanted to say in return, but they wouldn’t come out. Because no matter what reason she gave, the fact that she had no means right now to earn enough money to save her family remained unchanged.

“How long do you think your worth will be the same as it is now?”

The price of her worth was calculated on beauty and youth, and her father wasn’t wrong in a pure, mechanical sense. Noble marriages had always been contracts that weighed interests against each other rather than feelings, after all, so there was no point in resenting it.

She knew that. Her head knew it clearly, and still her chest felt heavy, as if pressed under a stone.

Her gaze, which had been empty and distant, drifted lower and lower on its own. Breathing had grown difficult, and her parted lips let out a slightly rough sound. She didn’t want to go back, but she didn’t want her father and brother to hate her either.

‘They’re my family.’

The one relationship that had been there from the birth. The closest bond, the one that would never break for a lifetime, and she was afraid of being hated by them.

The servants who had filled the house were gone. The people she had seen at parties occasionally and considered something like friends, they were all gone too.

That was why Azelin was even more afraid. Because her family had stayed beside her even through the fall. If they hated her, she feared that she would truly be alone in the world. An outcast with no one.

It felt like she was trapped in a prison with no way out. The more she agonized over it, the tighter her chest felt and the worse her head ached. If only she could stop thinking. Just walk the road that had been laid for her and smile prettily, the way her father always said….

“It looks like a sudden downpour.”

Azelin’s shoulder jerked at the unexpected voice beside her. Her empty, unfocused eyes moved to find its source.

A man who had come to shelter from the rain under the same awning, just as she had, smiled at her and spoke.

The ends of his white hair were lightly damp. The clean, sharp lines of his face were not rough, though, somehow they had been drawn with a careful, searching beauty.

But sunk as she was in heavy gloom, Azelin couldn’t feel the force of it. Even his kind, unhurried smile only made her more uncomfortable.

“It seems you’ve been separated from your attendants. Once the rain eases a little, they’ll come looking for you quickly.”

He’d taken her dark expression for the fear of a young noble lady who’d lost her servants, and offered easy reassurance with a harmless smile.

The kind of small talk people exchanged when thrown together for a moment by rain, nothing with much weight to it.

“No one is coming. I’m… I’m nobody.”

“Hmm?”

“I know it’s ridiculous to stand here getting rained on like this, but if you just presume so easily that I, no, that, hm…”

She had answered a little sharply and just barely caught herself. She knew it was an overreaction to the man’s harmless remark. The confused look he gave her made her face warm.