Please Forget Me - Chapter 263

‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.

‘Did he really intend for us to die together?’

I hid my hands—now starting to tremble uncontrollably—beneath my hat and looked up at Killian as he approached me. He blatantly avoided my eyes and reached toward the revolver.

The thought that he might shoot me made my whole body shake so badly I couldn’t hide it.

But he merely picked up the revolver and put it back into his bag. Just like always, I calmly took the hand he offered and he helped me to my feet. Still, fear continued to ripple through me.

‘If he’d meant to die together, why did he change his mind?’

Or perhaps he hadn’t changed it at all. I was suddenly afraid to go back inside the inn. I told myself it was still early and the weather was nice, and decided I should wander outside for a while instead.

But I didn’t even need to say it. Killian passed the inn without slowing and led me back toward the busy streets. His destination was a pawnshop.

Out of the two guns we had, Killian pawned the one we’d stolen from Major Felkner and received a considerable sum. Then he walked with purpose, as if he knew exactly where he was going—until he stopped in front of the dress shop.

“That dress. Please bring one that will fit this lady.”

“I told you I don’t want it.”

Ignoring me, Killian not only bought the dress I’d been looking at, but also shoes and a matching hat.

‘Why… why is he doing this?’

He’d never been the type to spare money when it came to me, so in itself that wasn’t strange. And if he truly planned to die, buying clothes and shoes he wouldn’t need should have been reassuring. And yet, for some reason, my fear only deepened.

“Eat plenty. You like this, don’t you?”

When he then took me to an upscale restaurant he’d learned about from the shop owner—and treated me to an absurdly expensive dinner—I was struck by a sense of déjà vu, and finally realized the source of my fear.

‘I’ve been through this exact thing before.’

No—more accurately, I had remembered the memory that planted this fear in me.

“Dana, isn’t the weather lovely today? Shall we go out together, just you and Mom?”

“Yes!”

I don’t remember how old I was, only that I was young enough to be oblivious. Young enough to be happy that my mother, who usually lay in bed like someone dying, suddenly got up and suggested an outing.

My mother had suffered multiple miscarriages. I vaguely remember that it was around the time a younger sibling was lost during childbirth. After that day, I don’t think she ever truly got back on her feet.

“If you can’t contribute anything to this household, at least you should have given birth to a son! Useless!”

I also remembered my grandmother’s cruel shouting.

I don’t remember my father. He wasn’t living with us at the time. Perhaps that was when he became the king’s personal physician.

The silence when my mother lay wordlessly in bed was terrifying. The moments when that silence shattered under my grandmother’s yelling were even worse.

Then one day, after living in fear for so long, my mother suddenly regained her strength. She dressed herself carefully and took me to the shopping district.

She bought me new clothes, since mine had grown too small. She bought me the doll I’d always begged for. She even bought me piles of sweet treats she normally said were too sugary for me.

After that, we ate dinner at a restaurant as grand as a palace. That night, when we returned home, she tucked me into bed and read me a fairy tale, something she hadn’t done in a very long time.

“My dear, how was your day today?”

“It was perfect.”

“Was it?”

Of course it was perfect. She bought me everything I asked for and did everything I wanted. But more than that, I was happy simply because I was with her. Because she smiled all day.

I remember fighting off sleep because I didn’t want the perfect day to end. Even when she closed the book, I was wide awake. Her smile as she looked down at me was sad, but I didn’t understand why back then.

“Can’t sleep? You’ve always been like this. Even as a baby, you’d never fall asleep unless someone held you.”

She lay down beside me and wrapped me in her arms. I tried even harder to stay awake, fidgeting restlessly. As I did, I played with the forget-me-not necklace she always wore, toying with it like a little trinket.