My Ruin to You - Chapter 247

It was a scene seen through someone else’s gaze.

No, it was Valen’s gaze.

[Roseline.]

A low voice resonated in her mind. Thick, calloused fingers continuously wiped away the blood spreading from the corner of her mouth. The fingertips trembled wretchedly, but the motion of stroking her cheek, over and over, was nothing but careful. As if pressing too hard would make her shatter.

“……”

Roseline, who had been glaring at the scene in the mirror, squeezed her eyes shut. But even with her eyes closed, she couldn’t escape the memory. Valen’s eyes, soaked in despair, his desperate voice, and the heart-wrenching pain that gripped her.

The unexpectedly encountered final moment swelled like a bruise. To be perfectly honest, she didn’t want to see it. Separate from her desire to know about Valen’s life after her death or the causality of his regression, she wanted to turn away from that moment, the one that ultimately ended in ruin.

But turning away didn’t make it disappear. Perhaps Valen’s regression, the very thing Roseline so desperately wanted to understand, also originated from this moment of destruction.

“……”

Roseline slowly opened her eyes and faced the mirror. The scene had changed. In the mirror, within Valen’s field of vision, Roseline lay carefully on the bed, her face pale. At a glance, she looked asleep, but her completely bloodless complexion was not that of a living person.

[It’s past time to wake up, Roseline.]

At that moment, the low voice resonated in her mind again. Cracked and sunken.

“He’s… insane, ugh.”

Roseline covered her own mouth. As she blinked, tears she didn’t know had pooled fell with a splat, streaming through the gaps between her fingers.

The scenes changed incessantly. The clothing of the deceased was different each time. The man, unable to accept her death, kept talking to the lifeless corpse, tenderly brushing her brittle hair.

[Here, I won’t bother you anymore. Let’s just change your clothes.]

A gentle voice, a hand coaxing and soothing her, and then… a wedding dress.

Overwhelming emotion filled her vision until she could no longer see clearly. Her breathing grew ragged, and Roseline’s body began to shake as if convulsing. Yet, she did not put the mirror down. Clutching it tightly with trembling hands, she faced the wreckage of the destruction she had delivered, refusing to look away.

[I’ll give you a different answer. It wasn’t that I wanted to tame your disobedience into submission… I just wanted to receive the love you give. You might not know this, but I liked you precisely because you were disobedient.]

“…Hhuuk.”

[I can’t agree with the sentiment that we should never have met. But… if we have a ‘next time,’ I’ll try. I’ll try so you won’t get hurt.]

The man forcibly placed a dagger in the hand of the deceased, then, clasping that hand with both of his own, stabbed it into his own heart without a moment’s hesitation.

“Wh-what, no…!”

She dropped the mirror. It fell with a dull thud and rolled across the floor. But she couldn’t even think of picking it up, couldn’t think of closing her now-empty hand. From her red, raw eyes, tears surged forth endlessly.

How could he? How?

She remembered having a similar thought on the day she discovered Valen’s deception. How could he do this? How could it hurt this much?

Even when she had faced her own end, she had presumptuously assumed no pain could be greater than that. It was foolish vanity.

It hurt. This man’s end hurt far more than her own death. It felt like a sharp blade was hollowing out her insides.

You wanted him to feel loss too, to hurt enough to die, to feel exactly how much you had hurt—you never wished for his very life.

After Roseline’s mother passed away, her father stopped eating and drinking, fell ill, and it took exactly one year for him to bring in a stepmother. So, she had believed that Valen, too, would suffer for a few years at most, bury the pain in a corner of his heart, and then live his own life. But he had followed Roseline before her corpse could even decay.

“Hic……” Roseline buried her face in her hands.

“We have arrived, my lady.”

Edan, standing before the carriage, announced their arrival and knocked on the door. There was no response. Just as a puzzled Edan was about to knock again, a faint, sobbing sound reached him. His hand, poised mid-air before touching the carriage, froze.

“……”