Chapter 207
Yes, a shabby pretext.
It was a justification he’d put forward after agonizing a thousand times, thinking ten thousand times, because he had no confidence he could endure not seeing her any longer. He could state with certainty that if he had known that pathetic excuse would come back to him like this, he would never have uttered it.
Valen was on the very brink of madness. For days now, he had been teetering precariously on the edge between violent impulses and the patience required to hold them back. He had long since reached his limit, and was barely enduring solely on the conviction that he must not damage their relationship or Roseline any further, but that meager patience ended today.
He had believed he knew Roseline better than she knew herself. He thought that if he shook her just a little, coaxed and placated her properly, she would return to him of her own accord. The fact that her magic, which used to make her faint just from meeting his eyes—when was that even?—had now grown calm even in his presence, bolstered his conviction.
Even if she habitually spat out refusals, he reasoned that if she truly disliked him, she wouldn’t have made that insolent provocation of offering her body, nor would she have reacted so indifferently after their kiss. If she had threatened to bite her tongue off, that would be a different story.
No matter how foul and wretched his feelings had been during the process leading up to the kiss, looking only at the result, that’s how it was.
When she counted the days, saying, ‘Another day has passed, so now only twenty-nine days remain until I think of Your Highness,’ he found it merely cute and pitiable. The term of her training was until the war’s end, not a fixed date, so if necessary, he could extend it to two months, or even a year. Even her naive assumption, born from not knowing this, seemed only endearing to him.
But after drawing Roseline to the battlefield, every situation that unfolded flowed quite differently from his expectations.
When he heard the news that Roseline’s team leader was Mür, he didn’t think it was bad. It was just that he disliked the idea of her clashing constantly with an eccentric man, causing that man’s presence to grow larger in her small mind.
But it was worth enduring. He thought that if she were completely alone, she wouldn’t seek him out or expect him to solve her problems, but the stubborn Roseline wouldn’t be able to just watch Malsen suffer and would eventually come to him. No, he hoped she would.
Just come to me once. Just take one more step toward me.
It was a miscalculation and an error, failing to account for the fact that while Roseline was gentle to everyone else, she became infinitely harsh and cruel only toward him.
Roseline, who shattered his delusions in an instant, acted as if determined to turn his insides out. Every time they met, every time news of her reached him, he had to endure a profound sense of powerlessness. That emotion was terribly similar to the days when he could do nothing for the Roseline who had grown cold toward him.
So he endured. Because she was still alive, because she was nearby, because he could see her anytime, and because it seemed that what Roseline wanted was his patience as well.
Watching Roseline willingly take on every manner of hardship, as if to defy him, his heart blackened and burned to ashes.
Did I say I would correct her habits?
It was the most absurd nonsense he had ever heard in his life. While a man who didn’t know his place loitered around Roseline, he, reduced to a powerless bystander, patiently waited for the opportunity she would eventually give him. Time was on his side. Once that man was erased from Roseline’s memory, he could dispose of him just as he had gotten rid of Vermouth in the old days.
Although the Section Head’s intervention had improved Roseline’s situation, he was not the least bit okay. Roseline still showed no intention of seeking him out, and with the entire camp adding their own commentary about her, how could he possibly be okay?
Even the kindness others showed Roseline felt like a punishment he had to endure. Every trivial act of kindness, every silent consideration, even every faint smile—he chewed over each one, replaying them thousands of times.
There was no way the Roseline who was lovely to him wouldn’t be lovely in the eyes of others, and the letters sent from the Schnitzel Marquisate were proof of that. Superficially, they were about supporting the war effort with necessary supplies to atone for their mistake, but it was a ploy to see Roseline again under a flimsy pretext. He endured even that.
But there has to be a limit.
If the reward for his arduous patience was to push Roseline to the front lines, then there was no reason to endure any longer.
“Don’t do it. You can’t.”
“If you command it, I suppose I must obey. But I’m allowed to consider it, aren’t I?”
It was laughable. Confronted with Roseline’s feigned indifference, his old patience tightened its grip, rendering his thought that there was no more reason to endure utterly pointless.
Her fluttering eyelashes, her vibrant peach-blossom cheeks, her fidgeting lips… How desperately he had waited for this.
Yes. He still had to endure a little longer. He could endure. This, too, stemmed from that shabby pretext he’d concocted because he couldn’t bear not seeing her.
Valen pushed all his savage thoughts aside and gripped the fraying rope of his patience, not knowing when it would snap. Since when had the magical control device meant for Roseline become the shackles restraining his rampages? Consciously aware of the foreign object tightly gripping his wrist, he calmly regulated his breathing.
“I threaten and coerce, and you resist and rebel. Isn’t it about time we stopped this?”
“Couldn’t you just… not do the threatening and coercing?”
“Isn’t that why I’m clinging to you? To stop myself. Don’t go.”
“…….”
“I’m enduring enough as it is. Please, just understand.”
“…….”
“Don’t go, Roseline. You can’t be a Tara.”
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