Please Forget Me - Chapter 292

‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.

I lived on and on for my kind brother’s sake, but I was still a wretched younger sibling. In the end, I couldn’t shake the desire to die.

So I enlisted.

I wanted to die by someone else’s hand, thinking selfishly that it would hurt my brother less than suicide.

Military chaplains rarely die in war. Their role is to stay in the relatively safe rear, blessing the living and praying for the souls of the dead.

Yet I constantly went all the way to the front-line trenches. Everyone thought I was some extraordinary man of service and sacrifice, but in truth, I was just a well-fed madman. While everyone else clawed desperately at life, I alone strained toward death.

I pushed past soldiers screaming that they wanted to live, praying to God at the very edge of the line of fire to spare them and take me instead—this full, ungrateful man. But my prayers were never answered.

I often encountered enemy soldiers, yet none of them shot me. Some even fled at the sight of me—unarmed, holding nothing but a rosary. We shared the same faith. They were afraid that killing a servant of God would invite divine wrath.

That much I could understand. What I still cannot understand is why the indiscriminate rain of shells and bullets also avoided me alone.

Once, I entered a minefield to pull out wounded soldiers. I walked straight ahead, carelessly, without even trying to avoid danger and nothing exploded.

Hard to believe, isn’t it? I still find it hard to believe myself.

After a year like that, I became known as the immortal priest. Soldiers began to believe that as long as I was there, they would survive.

“Father, please share God’s blessing with me as well.”

Everyone called it God’s blessing. I believed it was God’s mockery.

A punishment for daring to ask for death.

No, perhaps that’s too arrogant. Maybe God simply never cared about someone like me from the start. Perhaps Killian Ackroyd never even existed to Him. That, I thought, was why my wish was never granted.

These were not the thoughts of a man who served God. People believed I was devout, but in truth, I was a hardened unbeliever.

Not only the soldiers at the front, but even those who held supreme authority in the capital misunderstood me. Absurdly, my reckless attempts to die were mistaken for heroic devotion to saving lives and I became a hero.

One day, I was summoned to the royal palace, awarded a medal, and even knighted.

“As a man of the cloth, he has not only preached God’s will with words but embodied it through action, rekindling fading faith in the hearts of the people and serving as a courageous example to our soldiers…”

Courage? Ha. Funny.

I had merely tried to die by relying on someone else’s hand. What courage was there in that?

I once bragged to you that I was a knight. But at the time, I felt no pride at all. It, too, felt like God’s mockery.

Relatives and members of the clergy congratulated me, but my brother alone was angry. He saw through me that I was deliberately throwing myself into danger to die.

He told me to return to the church, but I refused. The state hadn’t awarded me a medal hoping I’d retire quietly anyway. After a brief leave, I was sent back to a deathly front where morale had sunk to its lowest.

“Dana?”

That’s how I met you again.

“That is my name, but it’s rather rude to address someone so familiarly at the first meeting.”

For a moment, I forgot that I no longer had the right to call you by name.

“I’m sorry.”

There was no wedding ring on your finger, so I didn’t need to call you Marchioness. Still, calling you by name was far from painless.

“…Miss Loveridge, please forgive my discourtesy.”

You looked at me as though you had many questions, but I turned my back on you and left the ward immediately. No, fled would be more accurate.

I couldn’t bear even facing you. It felt as though wounds I had barely stitched closed were being torn open again.

I had deliberately avoided any news of you and Rupert. All I knew was that his father had died and that he had become the Marquis.

And yet why were you, who should by now have been a doctor and the fiance of a Marquis, serving as a wartime nurse in a field hospital, standing before me again?

As the question belatedly surfaced and my steps slowed, you caught up to me.

“Wait. Who are you and how do you know me?”