Please Forget Me - Chapter 294

‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.

“I’m praying that Ted recovers soon.”

It sounded sincere, and that only confused me. Has Rupert truly matured over the past ten years?

I felt small by comparison, as if I were the only one still trapped in who I had been a decade ago, utterly unchanged.

Of course, that was an illusion. Rupert hadn’t grown into an adult. He had merely learned how to act like one. That truth revealed itself little by little over the course of that year. But at the time, I didn’t know that.

“The priest’s robes suit you. You chose the right path. I’m relieved.”

Chose. You chose it.

After Rupert left that day, I climbed the cathedral’s bell tower and stared at the distant horizon until the sun slipped away. All the while, I held your necklace tightly in my hand.

When the sun finally vanished and the horizon went dark, it suddenly flared back into view, looking brilliant and violent. The battle had begun.

Only then did I rise. I hung your necklace around my neck and descended the bell tower. Even after reaching the ground, I kept walking, toward the orange glow at the far end of the world, stained by artillery fire and flares.

The battlefield was far from the encampment. Yet even when I stepped into the trench, the shelling hadn’t ceased. The enemy seemed determined to drown the night in bombs and gunfire.

It was a perfect night to die. I wanted to disappear without leaving even a fragment of myself behind.

And yet, I didn’t die. Ridiculous, isn’t it?

Once again, I survived, only to return with the dying in my arms. If I had truly gone there to die, I should have ignored them and waited quietly for my own end. But whenever hands reached out to me, I couldn’t push them away.

Pathetic, I know.

As soon as I returned to camp, I went straight to the field hospital. It wasn’t because I wanted to see you. I was simply exhausted. My mind had shut down, and my body moved on habit alone.

“F-Father… sob… I-I’m going to hell now, aren’t I…?”

Praying for those who could not escape death was part of my duty. So I moved from bed to bed, holding soldiers’ hands, staying with them as life slipped away, so they wouldn’t die alone.

Some people, seeing those who must die despite wanting to live, would feel their will to live burn brighter. But I still wanted nothing more than to die.

Did I envy them, then? No. Not at all.

Do you know what emotion shows in a person’s eyes at the very end of a painful life?

Loneliness.

They all die profoundly lonely.

In the moment of death, focus drains from their eyes. They can no longer see. They hear nothing. They feel nothing.

They are severed from the world, from relationships, even from their own memories. Everything that once defined them is lost. They realize that they themselves are disappearing forever.

Only when sensation fades completely do they finally understand: I am vanishing. I will no longer exist.

I am going to be alone forever.

That must be the final thought of the dying. Assuming, of course, that one must still exist in some form to feel anything at all.

Around that time, I came to believe there was no hell and no heaven. That God didn’t exist, and that humans simply vanished when they died.

The loneliness at the threshold of eternal oblivion looked unbearably cruel.

‘Could I become even lonelier than I am now?’

As I closed the eyes of yet another fallen soldier, I felt that same crushing loneliness within myself.

“Father.”

I heard your voice.

When I turned, you were standing there, holding a clean towel with steam still rising from it in both hands. I stared dumbly, not understanding, until you gestured toward my face with it.

Only then did I realize my face must have been smeared with mud and blood. For over a year on the front lines, I’d never once cared about my appearance. But in that moment, I felt unbearably ashamed. I accepted the towel without protest and wiped my face.

“You went through so much last night. Thank you for staying with the soldiers until the end.”

“It’s nothing. It’s simply my duty. You, Miss Loveridge, seem to have had a far harder time.”

While I was attending the dying, I’d heard your voice—running, shouting, moving frantically from one place to another.

“I was only doing what I had to do as well.”

There were still countless wounded soldiers. You must have been terribly busy, so why go out of your way to bring a towel to someone like me, who wasn’t even injured?