Please Forget Me - Chapter 326

‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.

So he asked that I be looked after for a while.

By my grandmother.

“Dana, thank you. Thank you so much. You can’t imagine how grateful I am that you came back alive.”

She looked far more aged than the fragments of memory I had recovered suggested, yet the impression she gave—like someone molded entirely from greed—was unchanged.

“When the Marquis returned alone, I was so worried you might never come back.”

She stroked my face with tears in her eyes, with the same hands that had slapped my cheeks in my memories.

I don’t know what my relationship with her was like after I grew up. I only know the one from childhood, and to those eyes, her behavior looked nothing more than hypocritical.

“The Marquis said you really don’t remember anything. Is that true?”

Why ask? So you can at least pretend to be a good grandmother if I don’t remember?

Come to think of it, that man had warned me about this too.

‘Unfortunately for you, I remember perfectly well how you abused me.’

I almost said it—that being touched by those repulsive hands while she pretended to be a loving grandmother made my skin crawl—but I held back. She had already exposed her vulgar true nature herself, seeing me as nothing more than merchandise.

“Still, the Marquis searched for you so desperately, so why would he leave you here the moment he found you? Did something happen on the way? Did you perhaps say something that offended him? Or was your appearance so dreadful he couldn’t bear to look at you?”

She called a maid and ordered her to ‘scrub the country out of me and polish me into a proper noblewoman’.

“I’m tired. Let me rest.”

The moment I was shown to my room, I dismissed the maid.

“M–My lady, you needn’t speak so politely to a lowly servant…”

Flustered, the maid disappeared without further protest. Once alone, I locked the door. Perhaps because it was late, no one disturbed me afterward. Thankfully so, though one question lingered.

‘Is the man called my father not at home?’

I got my answer only after midnight.

“The Marquis brought Dana back?”

It was when I heard a strange voice asking this of a maid after someone returned to the estate. Whether because the maid said I was asleep, or because the man called my father had little interest in his daughter, he didn’t come to see me that night.

I know this because I hadn’t slept at all.

I’d spent the night almost entirely awake. After hearing so many stories and experiencing so much in just one day, I was utterly exhausted yet sleep wouldn’t come.

‘Is it because it feels unfamiliar?’

But ever since leaving Eisenthal, haven’t I slept in unfamiliar places every night? Even so, I’d rarely had trouble sleeping.

‘Why am I here?’

My body would give out and I’d drift off, only to jolt awake in shock. Half-asleep, I looked around the unfamiliar bedroom, groped at the wide bed, and thought, I need to go home.

But I don’t have a home. No, that’s not right. This is our—no, my home. Then why do I keep thinking I need to go home?

“Killian…”

In my haze, I stared blankly around the empty bedroom and called out his name aloud. Then flinched and covered my mouth. Only then did I realize it.

I want to go back to him.

To that conman?

He’s not my husband. He’s a fraud.

The fact that I’d spent so long agonizing over whether to forgive him or trust him suddenly felt absurd.

If even the story of how he was the man I truly loved was likely a lie, why was I letting myself be swayed by lies again?

But I’d already confirmed that some things were true. And if that story, too, were true…

So what? What would change? Whether his story was true or not, the unchanging fact was that he was a con man who deceived me. To cling to a fraud’s love, I must be insane.

Love?

No. It was a deception. Just as he said, it was nothing more than a survival instinct. He was the only one I could trust and lean on, so I had to bind him to me with love because I needed him…

Trying to reduce my love to a mere tool for survival didn’t make me feel any lighter. It made me feel even more uncomfortable.

‘But my feelings were real…’

I tried to prove that my love had been a survival instinct, only to end up confirming the opposite, and it left me shaken.

If it were just a survival instinct, I shouldn’t be looking for him anymore. I now have a safe home, a comfortable bed, and enough wealth that I won’t starve or go cold. I don’t need that con man anymore, so why do I keep searching for him?

‘No. It’s just because it’s the first day. It’s become a habit…’

Then a thought struck me. My love for him was like a violin.

I may have forgotten my memories, but I hadn’t forgotten my habits. Just as my fingers would move on their own to play the violin, my heart was simply following the habit of trying to love him.

‘Forget him. I have to forget him.’

But I never knew how to forget the violin.