I Will Die for You, My Darling! - Chapter 33

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Chapter 33

Behind him, time stood still, the beast still gnawing on the woman. Ignoring the gruesome scene, Arietta leisurely opened her book. Having read it countless times, she could flip to the desired page by touch alone. ‘Or perhaps,’ she mused, ‘it’s only possible because this is a dream.’

The pages of ‘On Love’ were as extravagant and ornate as its cover. Each page held a short anecdote about love—a fable, an aphorism, or something else entirely. The words were written in elegant script, and beautiful illustrations adorned the margins.

“Page 54,” Arietta murmured sleepily, reading aloud. The page held a short poem:

[Sacrifice

Willingly offer yourself, spill your blood.
Do not lament your fading breath.
Shed your frail flesh.
Permeate the intangible.
Into the heart, the breath, every glance exchanged.]

Arietta blinked, a smile touching her lips, her eyes gleaming with a light Isaac disliked. She stretched, lifting the book, then closed it and hugged it to her chest. ‘Truly, a book of excellent instruction.’

‘You are a curse. Your existence makes my life a misery.’

‘Is all your unhappiness because of me?’

‘Yes.’

Seia had told her a story long ago.

‘Aria, everyone lives to be happy. Very few actually achieve it, though.’

‘Mama, what is happiness?’ young Arietta had asked.

‘The absence of unhappiness, my dear,’ Seia had replied. ‘Humans are born with a fate that prevents them from achieving happiness because of their inherent unhappiness. They watch their unhappiness, feed it, and ultimately live a life where they can do nothing but watch over the monstrous thing it has become.’

‘So, for humans to be happy, they must transcend their humanity in at least one aspect.’

‘You are the very embodiment of unhappiness in my life.’

Isaac’s voice rang in her ears. Her foolish, human Isaac, bound hand and foot by watching over his unhappiness—her.

Happiness is the absence of unhappiness. Arietta liked that simple definition. If Arietta, the unhappiness, disappeared, Isaac would be happy. He would fulfill the purpose of his birth. He would become one of the ‘very few’ who achieved happiness. And he would owe Arietta, in a way, a ‘wonderful life.’

‘There was no reason to regret what came after death.’

Arietta’s death would become an influence that permeated Isaac’s entire being. Even after her death, he would live under her influence.

‘How wonderful,’ she thought, ‘that my existence could dictate the happiness and unhappiness of the one I love.’

‘Shed your frail flesh. Permeate the intangible. Into the heart, the breath, every glance exchanged.’

‘My beloved Isaac, I will sacrifice myself, shed my flesh, and live within you. That is how I will possess you. And this sacrifice, people call love.’

Arietta released the book. The dream shattered. The chandelier fell, the walls crumbled. The book, instead of falling to the floor, tore into individual pages that fluttered upwards. The forms of the beast and the woman it had bitten distorted and collapsed.

The floor beneath her gave way.

She fell, and fell, and fell. The sensation was exhilarating, liberating, almost like flying. Choosing to fall had been an excellent decision.

Everything went black. She no longer felt herself falling. Something brushed her forehead, a kiss. She had a premonition that everything would be alright.

***

Isaac, once again, stood in his prized possession’s bedroom, gazing down at her pale face, her eyelids stark white against her skin. Lately, he’d been spending more time watching over the unconscious Arietta. During those long hours, he thought and thought. ‘Why did Arietta fall from the attic, not the second floor?’

He had been turning over this unanswerable question for days now, only to find himself increasingly frustrated. It would be a simple puzzle to solve if he knew that Arietta truly wanted to die. But Isaac had completely dismissed that possibility, searching for answers in all the wrong places.

Arietta was right. It was too much to expect someone who lost their memories with each regression to handle things perfectly. Isaac knew nothing of the lost time, the year Arietta had painstakingly relived, what she had endured, what realizations she had come to. From his perspective, the current situation was simply Arietta acting ‘out of character’ on May 22nd. The repercussions of that single incident had been dragging on for weeks.