Side Story 9
Izar looked at the sight of long eyelashes quietly veiling and unveiling pale green eyes again and again with a feeling almost spiteful.
Of course, she didn’t actualy feel spiteful. It was only because she had suddenly dragged out something he had deliberately left out when telling the old stories.
‘Absurd.’
She even chose a loaded word like ‘grope’ just in case he might say he did not remember.
She always tricks him with that delicate air of hers.
“Izar…?”
But when he saw Freesia waiting endlessly for his answer, memories of those unforgettable deep nights rose up.
A woman sleeping, breathing faintly.
At first ‘that woman’, later his first and only woman, and the one carrying his child.
“Haa.”
As he let out a long breath, the twisted, demon-like voice inside began to fade.
In the place where filthy hallucinations had lingered, another sound seeped in. Not the rough, greedy grunts of devouring a woman, but the small sighs of wonder he had once let out quietly while gazing down at her on silent nights.
Izar reached out and touched her cheek with his fingertips.
Back ‘then’, he had not even dared think of cradling her face with one hand.
“The reason I touched you back then was because…”
As if tickled by the brush of his fingertips, Freesia’s fair cheeks flushed like red blossoms blooming.
His index and middle fingers slowly traced along the curve of her cheek. Smooth, falling lines. The shadow cast by her pale lashes.
“Because I thought something like this was truly beautiful.”
“……”
“And…”
By now his fingertips hovered near her lips.
Her moist, soft pink lips quivered slightly as if restless, sparking thirst.
“Because I wanted to kiss you.”
“Why… Why didn’t you?”
Freesia twisted as the heat of shame climbed higher.
The answer was so plain and bare that it made the fluttering in her chest almost unbearable.
But Izar cupped her right cheek, so she could not move at all.
“Because I thought you despised me then.”
“……”
“But I thought someday you would have our child, and there would come a day when being with me was no longer just duty…”
“Izar.”
“Then, I thought I would.”
But when Izar reached that thought, he let out a small, self-mocking laugh.
‘Saying it aloud, it sounds all the more ridiculous.’
She had shown open disgust, wounded his pride, yet at her single mention of ‘duty’ he had simply given up on approaching her.
Why had he not seen or heard anything clearly back then, even with his eyes open and ears unstopped?
Only now, able to step back and think, did it feel sad and faintly laughable.
But now Izar also wanted to ask her in return.
“If you remember, were you awake then?”
“Yes…”
“You could have shown it.”
Freesia parted her lips at the question that was not quite a question.
‘Right. Really, now that I think of it, why didn’t I?’
If only she had gently woken then, or asked casually the next morning why he had done that?
Would he have answered honestly, ‘Because I wanted to kiss you’?
“But I thought if I woke up, you wouldn’t touch me anymore…”
Back then she had not imagined he could find her lovely at all, and she believed that even if they were intimate she would feel no pleasure.
So she had assumed his late-night touches were no more than idle curiosity, and if she asked, he might never look her way again. Fear took hold first.
But before she could sink into that sadness, Freesia startled herself awake.
‘Ah, no. I can’t just let this drift away like that.’
She had to call out the way he always drew lines, the way he acted as if she loved more and he less.
“Then why do you keep pushing me away?”
“Pushing you away? When did I?”
“Well, of course it’s nice sleeping with Nova, but… it feels like you’re using our child as a shield…”
Once spoken, it sounded like she was a love-starved mother, and that embarrassed her terribly. But while she shrank with self-reproach, Izar quietly answered.
Since things had come this far, he could only lay bare what he most wanted to hide.
“Because I remember everything I did to you back then.”
“Huh? But we already talked about it…?”
“When we lost that child. What I did in that room with you.”
“…Ah.”
At that, Freesia unconsciously hunched her shoulders. There had been a time when, broken in mind, he had taken her night and day without care, only for breeding.
Izar, seeing her go quiet, swept a hand down his face and closed his eyes.
“I needed time until those memories dulled a little.”
“……”
“Even now, sometimes I’m not sure what I might do to you. I wasn’t in my right mind back then, and it still echoes.”
Would she understand if he said there were moments he wanted to strangle anyone who so much as talked to her, swept up in the old madness?
But Freesia cooled her flushed cheeks with the backs of her hands and spoke in a small, trembling voice that shook his restraint.
“But Izar. I… I want to be spoiled by you now.”
“……”
“Of course that time still scares me, but… just once more, I want you to hold me gently, I want you to love me.”
Freesia looked up at him with pleading eyes.
She knew he cherished her and found safety in that, but she wanted to feel those words with her whole body.
“Would it still be no, even if I say it like this…?”
When she asked in that last, breath-held voice, Izar this time did not hesitate and leaned towards her.
He no longer had any patience left to stall anyway.
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