Please Forget Me - Chapter 172

‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.

‘Ha, but Johann said I’ve never killed anyone.’

But Johann is a liar.

“Ah, no. The major must be framing me. He’s probably trying to blackmail me, using some weakness to intimidate me into submission.”

I desperately denied it, but I couldn’t hold on for long.

“The operations command would naturally conclude that the commander was poisoned by an enemy assassin. They had to catch the spy who infiltrated the command, but since there was no evidence, they had to let you go. Doesn’t that drive you mad?”

So, they had been watching us and the doctor. After the commander died and the operations command was in chaos, the situation turned around, and the front lines moved closer to Leningen. Then came the air raids.

While the command focused all its efforts on defending the city, we disappeared without a trace.

“Of course, you can’t be sure that just because someone fled the city, they’re the culprit. Who would stay in a city that was about to fall to the enemy? Well, Johann Renner, being a military officer, ran away, so he became a deserter. They put out a manhunt for him, but in this country, there must be a few people named Johann Renner, right? They nearly gave up, but then this spring, they found Johann Renner. But not the one who fled—the real Johann Renner.”

The real… Johann Renner?

While recovering part of the lost territory, the army took control of a prisoner camp that had been set up by the Falkland forces. A soldier who survived told them that his former company commander, Johann Renner, had been executed two years ago for some absurd reason.

The soldier had kept the dead officer’s ID tag, which he handed over to the army, and the personal details on it matched exactly with the Johann Renner they had been looking for at the operations command.

Johann Renner had died a long time ago in the prison camp. The Johann Renner at the operations command, the husband of Rize Renner, the one accused of killing the commander, was a fake.

“The soldier testified that, about a month before Johann Renner was executed, an officer from the Falkland forces came regularly to ask about his personal life—his hometown, family, school, close officers, and even small habits. The purpose was obvious. But the appearance of that enemy officer looked just like the man who claims to be your husband. Tall enough to touch the doorframe, black hair, green eyes, an aristocratic manner of speaking, and a handsome face that looked like it had never seen hardship, even though he was a military officer.”

Just from the description, it sounded like my husband.

‘No. This could be a made-up story, though.’

The article about the operations commander’s death, the internal documents from two years ago, and the staff card from the operations command that had my handwriting on it, something I had never shown anyone but Johann.

I tried to deny that everything could be fake, but what the Major said made it impossible for me to continue denying the truth about my husband’s identity.

“The real Johann Renner isn’t from the upper class, but your husband—the fake Johann—used an upper-class accent. Did you know that? The upper class and intellectuals in Falkland actually hate us, but they still make their children learn the Highland language as part of their education, in that upper-class accent.”

The mention of the Highland language suddenly brought back memories of last night.

“I did it because I love you…”

“…Ugh!”

The sleep talk from last night wasn’t in our language.

It was Falkland.

I only realized it after retracing it. How could I not notice in the moment?

I had been so focused on the meaning, overwhelmed by the name that followed, stunned by the betrayal, and blinded by anger.

No matter what, now…

“So, what kind of person is this Johann Renner who claims to be your husband?”

Finally, I realized… My husband is…

“A Falkland spy.”

…That was the truth.

The Major wasn’t making up stories. It was the truth. Johann, or rather the man pretending to be Johann Renner, had been desperately hiding the truth.

“Did you know?”

I shook my head. That motion caused the tears that had been clinging to my lashes to drop and trail down my cheek.

“Ah, poor Rize.”

Even though tears blurred my vision, I could clearly see the major grinning with his teeth showing.

“I’d like to comfort you in my arms, but unfortunately, it’s not the right time yet. I still have more to say.”

The major kept talking as I tried my best to hold myself up, nearly crumbling under the weight of his words.

“We finally figured out who the culprit was, but the command had given up looking for him. They believed he’d escaped the front lines during the Leningen air raid and had slipped back into his country like a rat. That would be the logical assumption. But when his name appeared in the public notice, you can imagine how shocking it was.”

So the real reason Johann had been so eager to leave ‘this valley’ and hurry out of ‘this country’ was because he was an enemy spy.

“Leningen air raid and the Renners. Johann Renner is a common name, but a wife named Rize Renner isn’t so common.”

Since the article didn’t mention the location, the operations command asked the government’s public relations office where Johann Renner was, and they got the answer that he was someone introduced by General Hildebrandt.

“The officer in charge was terrified. He thought that if he made a wrong move, the operations command would be suspected of trying to politically end the second-in-command at the highest command level. Even so, a spy had infiltrated both the military and the government’s top ranks, and they couldn’t just let it slide. So they asked for our help in the security office.”

That’s when the major’s department, the one who had already suspected Johann’s true identity, got involved.

“I reported that Johann Renner knew how to celebrate Christmas the Falkland way…”

The Major had suspected for months that Johann was a spy.