Please Forget Me - Chapter 254

‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.

Killian buried his face in his hands, his voice sounding as dry and broken as someone whose last hope had withered away.

“My brother’s dead. He passed away last month.”

It was the flu, apparently. For someone with tuberculosis, it was fatal.

“How could this happen…”

Despair washed over me too, but in my case it was selfish.

‘Does this mean… there’s no one left to help us now?’

That night, I boarded a train to nowhere. The whole journey, I simply sat with Killian, trying to comfort him as he stared out with empty, hopeless eyes.

In truth, all I could do was quietly rest in his arms. I didn’t dare say a word—not with all those third-class passengers around us.

There were so many things I wanted to say, so many questions I wanted to ask. But I kept them all to myself.

By the next morning, when I woke in a mountain village inn, it was just the two of us—no one around to overhear.

Even so, I still couldn’t bring myself to say anything. It wasn’t that I feared someone might hear; it was just that the man who would have to listen looked so precarious, I didn’t want to push him further.

‘It’s already been four hours.’

A mountain breeze drifted in through the open window, making the dress I’d washed last night flutter on the line. I had nothing else to wear, so I was lying on the bed in nothing but a thin slip, waiting for my only dress to dry.

Killian, who normally couldn’t keep his eyes off me when I was half-dressed, hadn’t even glanced my way. He wasn’t even sitting near me. Instead, he’d been slouched on the sofa by the window for hours, staring out in silence.

‘What is he doing?’

From my spot on the bed, all I could see was the back of his head. I got up, wrapped myself in a sheet, and walked over—pretending to check if my laundry was dry, but really, I just wanted to see his face.

When our eyes met, he managed a smile before turning back to the window. At least there was a little life in his gaze now. Maybe he was just lost in thought, not despairing anymore.

“Why isn’t it drying?”

I needed an excuse to look at him again, so I grumbled about the laundry—even though it was already dry—and went back to the bed.

‘Is he stuck?’

He’d been thinking for more than four hours with no answer. I knew my thoughts wouldn’t solve anything, but I couldn’t bear the silence anymore.

“What about my family? Do you think they might help us?”

He barely hesitated before shaking his head. Clearly, he’d already considered it.

“Then…”

I hesitated, knowing this was probably the worst possible idea, but I was desperate.

“…What about your mother? You’re her only child left now…”

He cut me off with a bitter laugh.

“My mother’s the one who turned me in.”

“What?”

“My own mother reported me.”

Even hearing it twice, I could hardly believe it. What kind of mother would turn her son in and make him a fugitive?

“Why would she do that? Is she your stepmother or something?”

“It would be easier to understand if she were.”

“So the person you spoke to on the phone yesterday… was your mother?”

He nodded.

“What did she say?”

“She told me to send you back and turn myself in.”

I was speechless, but what he said next was even more shocking.

“If you want to go back, I understand.”

That was so ridiculous, I sat up in bed.

“But before you go, there’s something I want to say…”

Tap.

I took the gold ring I’d removed from my dress pocket and set it on the windowsill in front of him.

“Sell the ring.”

We’d left all our other belongings behind when we fled, but luckily we still had our money, our weapons, and our identification papers. That was the only reason we’d managed to get this far.

But with what we had left, escaping the country was nearly impossible.

“Let’s sell this and get out of here by ourselves.”

He looked at me with such tenderness, but when his gaze landed on the ring, it turned pained.

“I appreciate the thought, but selling this won’t get us enough to buy forged IDs and travel passes.”

“They’re that expensive?”

“And besides, this ring is a famous artifact. Any jeweler or forger would recognize it immediately. The bounty on it is worth much more than its weight in gold. What do you think those people would choose?”

Even so, I couldn’t let it go and kept racking my brain for solutions.

“Then don’t sell it. Give it to a forger as payment for the bounty.”

“That’s exactly what I just said—”

“No, not quite.”