Chapter 311
‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.
I hoped it was a misunderstanding, but it wasn’t.
After that, you truly avoided me, clearly uncomfortable in my presence.
To you, the priest who had been safe precisely because he wasn’t a man had, all this time, been looking at you as a woman. It must have been repulsive.
You probably thought Rupert had been right to be wary of me all along. That I really was a vile, filthy man. I couldn’t deny it. There was no point in denying it.
“We’re moving into Leningen proper. That way Dana can commute on her own. There’s no need for you to keep living with us. The liaison work will be over in about a month anyway, just come and go as needed.”
A few days later, Rupert told me to join Miller. He was trying to separate me from you. Perhaps it was what you wanted first.
Dana, I can’t leave. I came here to protect you.
I couldn’t cling to you with words like that.
What had I even done, claiming I’d come to save you? I’d forgotten my duty and drowned in my own delusions. I couldn’t stand how contemptible I felt. If I couldn’t trust myself anymore, how could you possibly trust me?
So I withdrew without a word.
On the day I left, I walked you home one last time.
This was the end—forever. I could never again be remembered as a good person. The only way to ease the discomfort I caused you was to disappear.
“…I’m sorry.”
I knew it was meaningless, yet I still apologized and only made things worse.
“What I said back then…”
Please, forget it.
Even if I told you that my feelings weren’t filthy desire, that we had once loved each other, and I simply hadn’t been able to forget, that confession would be nothing but pitiful. Who would it even be for? Nothing would change now.
So I wished you would treat it as if it had never happened.
“What did you say?”
You were perceptive.
The moment I dropped you off, I drove away. My vision kept blurring so badly that I had to pull over again and again.
I think, deep down, I’d been playing at being your husband, indulging in an illusion. I believed that the countless nights we spent together, the countless conversations we shared, might have made us special again, like we once were.
I even dared to think that maybe, like back then, you might come to love me again.
But you showed me clearly that you didn’t love me at all. It was a shock entirely different from Rupert’s betrayal.
You had loved me. You loved me so much that you loved another man in my place. And because you loved me, you loved another man. Because of that, you no longer loved me.
…What good would resentment do? In the end, you rejected me. It was time to truly end this impure, one-sided love.
Forget me.
That wasn’t something I needed to say to you—it was something I had to say to myself.
Like flowers fade and are forgotten.
Gripping the steering wheel, I silently recited a poem from the poetry book where we once hid our letters. It was the only poem that spoke of eternal parting, one I had ignored back then.
Forget it, as the flame that once burned golden is forgotten. Forever. Forever, forget it.
When I was in love, every love poem felt like my own story. After losing you, only that sorrowful poem remained mine.
I used to repeat it like a spell, staring at the necklace engraved with the flower whose name meant ‘do not forget’. Of course the spell never worked.
“If anyone asks, tell them this—that it was forgotten long ago, a very, very long time ago… ha….”
That’s what I should have done. A spell you never truly listen to can’t possibly come true.
Even that day, I left while chanting the poem like an incantation.
“…Forever, forget.”
This time, the spell seemed to work.
After leaving, I was surprisingly fine. It was hard to believe that the boy who had once been wracked with agony and rage was the same person as the calm man I had become.
Back then, I had lost the woman I loved. Now, you have rejected my love.
I won’t lie—I did resent you a little. But at the same time, I was grateful that you rejected me so cleanly, like a blade cutting through flesh. I no longer had to cling to false hope. Thoughts that began with what if stopped tormenting me.
I even felt light, as if I’d been freed from a long captivity.
Your coldness was like a splash of cold water. It brought me back to my senses.
Why am I even here?
What did I have that qualified me to follow you this far, claiming I would protect you? I was ashamed.
I resolved to return home as soon as my assignment ended. I would leave the army, return to the clergy, seek out my brother, and apologize.
Strangely, the longing for death that had haunted me for over ten years was completely gone.
I even thought if I’d been rejected ten years ago, maybe that would have been better. I wouldn’t have wasted a decade.
Only then did I finally start thinking about myself.
Grenz Operations Commander assassinated.
In the end, you killed the operations commander.
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