Chapter 3.5
But strangely, it really wasn’t. Anyone who saw her now would probably think she had lost her mind rather than being any kind of noble girl, but truly, she was all right.
The terror that had felt like the world ending, faced head-on, it was nothing so great. Her beautiful appearance had washed away, and she looked like someone she’d rather not see in a mirror, but…
Azelin was still alive and breathing, exactly as before.
The man walking slowly through the rain didn’t let go of her hand. He held it firm so she wouldn’t trip or lose her way, and he watched her expression shift through its changes with quiet interest. He was looking at her with a satisfied smile as she went from frightened, to eyes squeezed shut against the downpour, to starting, gradually, to look around and find things to smile at.
“One step each, now we’re even.”
“Pardon?”
Azelin, who had been taking in the world around her like a newborn, snapped her head toward him. She’d half-missed what he murmured through the rain. He shook his head, indicating it was nothing.
They walked slowly, and without noticing they had reached the far end of a quiet stretch of road.
“Stepping out in the rain clears your head of all those complicated thoughts sometimes. Not so bad, is it?”
“…No. Really not bad at all.”
“But if outside the greenhouse gets too cold and hard sometimes, it’s also fine to walk under an umbrella.”
A soft pop sounded, and a shadow fell over Azelin’s head. The umbrella he had opened blocked the rain in an instant.
Startled still, Azelin looked up, and he tucked the handle of the umbrella into the hand they had been holding, naturally.
She stood there with the umbrella suddenly gifted and in her hand, looking back and forth between it and his face, too taken aback.
“I didn’t want you getting sick and I’d be feeling indebted again.”
He murmured something she couldn’t quite parse, then gently peeled a wet strand of hair from her cheek and smiled, raising his hand in a light farewell.
“Wait a moment, this is… !”
He had already walked back out into the rain before she could stop him. He had come to her without hesitation, and he left the same way.
She reached toward him, trying to call him back, but someone appeared at his side immediately, and Azelin pulled her hand in and gripped the umbrella handle hard instead.
‘If he had an umbrella, he didn’t need to come in out of the rain at all.’
Why?
She couldn’t understand why he had come to stand with her. Why he’d walked with her in the rain when he had an umbrella the whole time. Why he’d given her his umbrella and gone off into the rain alone. She couldn’t mae sense of any of it.
“I’m sorry to be late, Marquis Calveron.”
“Meeting you was all that mattered.”
His shape went indistinct through the rain-mist, growing smaller.
Azelin rolled the name she had just barely caught on her tongue.
Marquis Calveron.
She only learned who he truly was much later, but his name, at least, scored itself onto her heart in that moment like letters cut into stone.
The Marquis became a milestone in Azelin’s life. A signpost pointing toward the way out of the greenhouse her family and its name had built around her.
Azelin, who had once thought father’s world had been the entire world, finally understood that stepping outside the greenhouse and being rained on was not quite as impossible as she’d thought.
She might look less presentable for it, and it might be colder and harder, but at least she wouldn’t have to stand anxious and eroding, waiting for someone to choose her and wondering what she was worth.She was afraid of being hated, but she had no desire to spend her life longing for someone’s love.
‘No one else can take the blame for your choices.’
The signpost existed, but walking toward it had to be her own decision. Azelin gripped the umbrella and set her stopped feet moving again.
“It’s nothing.”
The weight that had been sinking her heart slowly rose back up. The rain battering the umbrella gradually grew lighter.
The downpour that had seemed like it would swallow the whole world eased, and sunlight began to fall again onto the puddles on the ground.
Azelin looked once more in the direction the Marquis had gone.
‘I’ll have to ask him why, next time we meet.’
She looked after him a moment, then turned without lingering and walked forward, stepping without hesitation into a puddle.
The walk back to the hotel was no longer heavy. Because this time, she wasn’t walking back into the greenhouse.
And that night, Azelin slipped quietly out of the hotel carrying one small travel bag and the umbrella the Marquis had given her.
Her steps as she left her family behind were light and trembling with excitement, like a child setting off on a picnic.
* * *
Azelin had never assumed that because the memory was precious to her, the Marquis would feel the same about it.
She only wondered whether the man who had held her hand casually and walked with her through the rain back then was still the same person now. Even if he wasn’t, he would still be someone she was grateful to, but still…
Azelin pressed her fingertips lightly to the region of her chest where her heart was beating. Was it racing like this because she was afraid he might have changed?
“It’s quite lively out here.”
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