Chapter 328
‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.
The doctors who examined me were excessively cautious and kind, whether because I was the director’s daughter or because I was a Marchioness. Either way, thanks to that, I heard the test results before it was even lunchtime.
“Due to a traumatic brain injury, there is frontal lobe dysfunction and memory loss…”
I was the only one who didn’t fully understand those difficult terms. As we listened to the results from the head of neurosurgery, my father’s face darkened noticeably.
“Um… does this mean that if things go on like this… I’ll die?”
Seeing his expression, I started to feel scared too and asked. The doctor hurriedly waved his hands.
“No, not at all. It’s just that recovering the abilities and memories you’ve lost… won’t be easy.”
Nothing about that diagnosis was new.
If I wasn’t going to die, then why did the man called my father look like that? Was he truly heartbroken because he cared about me? Or was he disappointed that I’d become a fool who didn’t even know basic etiquette?
I wasn’t particularly disappointed by the doctor’s words. I no longer felt much desire to recover my former self.
Most of the memories I’d regained were the kind better left forgotten. What that man had said, that forgetting is medicine and memory is poison, could be called the truth.
Besides, from what I’d heard from Killian, my past self didn’t seem especially smarter than I was now. He’d said I was brilliant, but I couldn’t tell where that brilliance was supposed to be.
‘If I were really brilliant, I wouldn’t have become such a fool.’
If I’d truly been clever, I would have withdrawn from Leningen long ago. Of course, my husband bore the greatest blame for insisting on staying. But it’s hard to call someone brilliant who handed over control of her own life and death to such a fool.
So I didn’t feel any regret over the abilities or memories I’d lost. I’d lived perfectly well without them so far, so what was the problem?
After hearing the results, my father sat with a dark expression for a long while, then suggested we have lunch together and took me to a restaurant near the hospital.
Perhaps because I hadn’t slept, or because everything still felt like a play, the restaurant and the people in it all looked like an elaborately decorated stage set.
As I scanned the room, half-expecting that man to be hiding somewhere, my father, who was sitting across from me, asked,
“We used to eat here together sometimes. Do you remember?”
“No. I was actually just thinking this was my first time at such a lovely restaurant.”
At my half-honest answer, my father smiled sadly. Was he longing for the person I used to be? And was the person I am now a disappointment?
“I heard you’ve been recovering bits of your memory…”
“Maybe I don’t remember this place because it was a good memory. I mostly recover the bad ones.”
His face twisted again with sadness. Now he looked like nothing more than a parent pained for his child.
“I should have stopped it, no matter what…”
He murmured this as he ordered a glass of strong liquor and drank it in broad daylight.
“Stopped what?”
“Everything. You going to the most brutal front line, volunteering for that absurd operation, and even holding a wedding without this father present.”
So he had opposed it.
“Then why didn’t you come to the front to stop me?”
I wasn’t accusing him, I was genuinely curious. He answered awkwardly, looking ashamed.
“Dana, I’m a hospital director and the royal family’s physician. Many lives and the livelihoods of my staff depend on me. It isn’t easy for me to leave my post.”
“I see… I’m an adult, after all. My life is my own responsibility.”
“……”
“So today, you managed to make time you usually wouldn’t.”
“…Dana, you’re my only daughter. Of course I should make time for you. Of course… I should have.”
He repeated the same words over and over, looking dazed, as if he’d been struck on the head.
I wondered what kind of father he’d been all this time. He seemed to truly care for his daughter, but to value his work even more.
‘He probably wasn’t any different with Mother.’
As I absentmindedly touched the forget-me-not necklace that had never left my neck, I finally spoke the words that had been circling in my mouth.
“I recovered the memory of the day Mother left.”
The man who had been urging me to eat froze, staring at me with wide eyes. I wondered why it shocked him so much, then realized.
“You never spoke about your mother when she was alive…”
It seemed my past self had never spoken of my mother at all. I don’t know why. But because I don’t know, the present me could speak of it.
“Do you know why Mother left?”
“You know now, too, don’t you… back then, your younger sibling died during childbirth…”
“You were told it was a stillbirth, right? You didn’t see it yourself.”
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