Please Forget Me - Chapter 315

‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.

The nurse in the room froze when she saw me standing there, then broke into a bright smile and said to you,

“Mrs. Renner, your husband is here.”

“…My husband?”

You answered in Highland. Even in that moment of confusion, you didn’t forget to conceal your identity and I was grateful for that. I didn’t yet realize that you had forgotten it entirely.

In any case, the moment I felt relieved that our cover hadn’t been blown, a different kind of anxiety took hold. Because of the confusion in your eyes as you looked at me.

“You’re my husband?”

I thought you were offended, that you were about to condemn me for lying. I stepped closer, ready to explain why I’d had no choice but to claim I was your husband while you were unconscious. But the nurse stopped me and whispered,

“She doesn’t remember anything.”

At first, I thought you were acting, pretending in front of a Highland to protect your cover. But you truly remembered nothing. You believed yourself to be Rize Renner, a Highland citizen, just as the medical staff had told you.

It wasn’t only your memories that were gone. Much of the person you used to be had faded as well.

Whether it was because of memory loss or brain damage, you had changed into someone almost childlike—innocent and unguarded. You had once been cautious; now you were impulsive, impatient, and easily frightened.

That doesn’t mean you were worse than before, or that I was disappointed in you. As I told you once, that’s precisely why I couldn’t bring myself to tell you the truth.

I never intended to deceive you for this long.

At first, I planned to return to our homeland immediately. If you believed yourself to be a Highlander, there was no way you would follow me. I meant to tell you everything.

But by the time you woke up, all escape routes had already been cut off.

Every nearby agent had withdrawn. Miller left me the contact information of a local informant, but that person disappeared soon after as well. We had no way to contact our military.

We were lost, orphans stranded in enemy territory.

All the worries I’d postponed while waiting for you to wake came crashing down at once. The realization that we’d have to survive on our own and somehow make it home was overwhelming.

The front lines had pushed far away again. Taking you—your body still terribly weak—across the front without protection felt like suicide. That was why I couldn’t leave right away.

To be honest, at the time, running out of money worried me more than returning home.

So I decided to hide in the countryside behind the lines, save what we could, and search for a way back. Even if it meant going through a third country. I also thought it would give you time to rest and recover.

Back then, I believed you would regain your memories soon. When you did, I planned to tell you the truth. If not before, then at least before we returned home.

But your memories didn’t come back. And I began to think that, for the you of that time—so confused, everything unfamiliar—it might actually be better not to know the truth.

What do you think you would have done back then if I’d told you I wasn’t your husband, that we were spies in enemy territory?

You remember, don’t you? Even after you were discharged, you were afraid of me for quite some time.

After you recovered from that cold, you seemed a little less afraid of me… but even then, I was afraid of you.

It might sound strange, but I was afraid of you the whole time.

You remember falling asleep against my shoulder on the train to Eisenthal, don’t you? I told you I was nervous that night.

The truth is, I wasn’t nervous, I was afraid.

Because I remembered the night you had once leaned against my shoulder.

I was terrified that you might recover that memory and look at me again with those eyes.

I thought I was past that fear. But apparently, I wasn’t.

Since you didn’t have that memory, you looked at everyone else that way except me. When we first moved to Eisenthal, you followed me around like a duckling that had mistaken the wrong person for its mother.

I felt happy, thinking it meant you trusted me, yet I forced myself not to be happy. Once you regained your memories, you would stop trusting me.

‘I must just be the least uncomfortable person among people who all feel uncomfortable to you.’

That’s what I tried to believe.

And maybe I was right. At some point, you stopped following me and began spending time with Mrs. Bauer instead.

One day, while I was working calmly in the fields, you came to find me alone. I don’t know if you remember. I thought you had something to say.

“Is something wrong?”

“Nothing.”

I still couldn’t understand why you’d come looking for me.

“Is Mrs. Bauer making you uncomfortable?”

“No.”

Then why come to me, someone even more uncomfortable than she was?

That day, you truly looked uneasy. You kept clutching and releasing the hem of your skirt with both hands, and eventually you even brought your fingernails to your mouth.