Chapter 320
‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.
“Things were complicated, but even so, you were a good husband to me. You deceived me countless times, but I don’t think your love and care for me were lies. So please, be a good husband from now on, too.”
With those words, I surrendered once again. Just like that night when I yielded to your promise that you loved only me.
Damn it… I’m doing it again, shifting the burden onto you like this.
Dana, all that happened is that you crossed paths, as a child, with a mad dog in that forest. It isn’t your fault that a rabid dog fixated on you and chased you so obsessively.
The metaphor isn’t wrong.
The night Rupert came to take you back, I wasn’t in my right mind. I couldn’t have been.
‘After everything I went through to keep you alive and bring you all the way back to your homeland, you’re telling me to hand you over to Rupert?’
It felt like the nightmare from when I was fifteen was repeating itself. The moment I lost you to Rupert after all the credit was taken from me. The time when I left your heart unguarded, and Rupert stole you away. It was about to happen all over again.
‘This time, no matter what happens, I won’t let you be taken.’
But I was still as powerless as I’d been back then—no, even more so. Rupert was now a Marquis, and worse, your lawful husband.
In the end, I tried to run far, far away with you.
And in doing so, I lied to you again. I said the military police were chasing me for treason. That wasn’t it. As you must realize now, Rupert was chasing me to get you back.
I don’t know whether surviving death made you suddenly feel more precious to me, or whether, since I hadn’t died yet, I was trying once more to offer myself up in your place.
Either way, if Rupert alone had been chasing me, I would have fled with you to the ends of the world. But when I looked back, your memories were chasing me too.
If I’m running away with you, and even you are pursuing me, where am I supposed to go?
So I stopped. I gave up on fleeing and drank, waiting for the final day to come.
The day you would recover the memory that I am not your husband.
Why do I call it the final day? Because I intended to die. How could I go on living after losing you?
Time and again, I thought of telling you everything and begging for forgiveness, but each time I realized it would only make me lose you sooner, so I kept my mouth shut.
For days, I was drowning in drink and couldn’t even treat you properly, yet I still wanted to stay with you a little longer. And before I knew it, I no longer wanted to let you go. In the end, I wanted to take you with me to where I was headed.
My heart returned to its starting point and I resolved once more to run away with you.
This time, to hell.
To a place where Rupert could never take you from me. To a place where, even if you regained your memories, you could never escape me.
Yes. Yesterday, in that flower field, I meant to kill you.
I was aiming the gun at your back so that a single bullet would pierce both our hearts. So that we would die in the same instant, and neither of us would have to endure the other’s death.
Behind your back, as you smiled, I hooked my finger around the trigger.
“You always appeared and saved me whenever I was on the brink of death. I love you, my knight.”
And because you said those words, I couldn’t pull the trigger.
They say that at the moment before death, your life flashes before your eyes. But what passed before mine were only moments when I tried to save you.
The stone wall I climbed with bare hands to save you.
The ruins of Leningen I ran through to save you.
The gun and the axe handle I gripped to save you.
All the blood I spilled to save you.
With these hands that struggled all my life to keep you alive, I tried to kill you. Where did the man who once prayed only for your survival go?
I came to my senses in a flash. And only then did I feel as though I had escaped the curse of becoming a monster and become human again.
That is the end of my story.
I am not your husband. I have deceived you countless times.
But my love alone was never a deception. This is my final plea.
Now I leave all judgment to you.
Dana—what will you do with me now?
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