Please Forget Me - Chapter 347

‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.

[To my only love, Killian.

This is the first time I’ve ever written you a letter, and I don’t know how to begin.

You, who once exchanged letters with me when we were young, would probably tilt your head and ask what I mean by ‘first’.

You wrote to me so often back in Eisenthal that you could have bound them into a thick book. And yet here I am, writing my first letter only now, worse, a letter of apology. Even that feels like something I must apologize for.

I’m sorry for apologizing by letter instead of in person. So please. Please accept my request to see you. Please. I’m begging you.

Killian, I know now that everything you confessed to me was the truth.

I’m sorry for not believing you.

It may sound like an excuse, but that day I was terribly confused. And because this is an apology, I won’t lie.

Yes, I was afraid of you.

And though I couldn’t say it honestly then, I never intended to leave you. But I didn’t intend to follow you either. If I had gone with you that day, I think I would have forced myself to forgive you while carrying doubt in my heart for the rest of my life.

I simply didn’t know what to do. Please understand this, Killian. I did not abandon you.

To be honest, I thought you were trying to frighten me. I thought you would pretend to leave me behind, then come back for me.

See? Even knowing what kind of person you are, I still let myself fall into such foolish fantasies. I wasn’t in my right mind then. I am now. And I regret everything.

I truly believed you would come back for me. But you didn’t. You really left. I didn’t want to admit it at the time, but… I was devastated. I cried in secret, you know.

You didn’t abandon me either, I know that, but I felt abandoned. I almost erased this sentence because it’s so shameless, but I’ll leave it. I want to be honest.

Simply put, nothing felt real to me back then.

You remember how I couldn’t sleep for days, don’t you? That night especially, I barely slept at all. I stayed awake until morning.

In that state, I heard the truth from you. Then you left. And suddenly, the man called my husband appeared. All of that happened within a single day. Can you imagine how disoriented I was?

That’s why, when that fraud shoved the letter in front of me and demanded to know whether you had written it, I nodded without thinking it through.

I am so, so sorry.

Everything you are suffering now, being imprisoned, it’s because of me.

But please believe this: I did not report you. I am not in league with the Marquis. If he says such things, do not believe him. You know I could never do that to you.

It was a mistake. I regret it every day, drowning in tears. If I could undo it, I would do anything. And I don’t mean that lightly. I am truly doing everything I can to save you.

So please, tell the truth.

You didn’t betray your country out of ambition. You were trying to protect me. That’s the truth, isn’t it?

Then why won’t you say so?

You once told me how painful it was to live your whole life misunderstood. (See? I remember everything you said. I may have claimed I didn’t believe you, but I listened. I really did.)

So why do you remain silent instead of denying it? Don’t tell me… you think I abandoned you, and that’s why you’re ready to die?

Please don’t do that, Killian. I didn’t abandon you. And when I said I no longer loved you, that was a lie.

I love you.

I have loved only you my entire life. If you’re gone, what am I supposed to do?

The truth is this: you are the only man I have ever loved. Please believe me.

I never loved the Marquis. I loved you, and because of that, I loved even that fraud. Which means, in the end, I loved only you.

You probably won’t believe me. I haven’t recovered all my memories, and you may think I’m just saying pretty words to win back your heart.

But you remember what I said when we met again at the military camp, don’t you? I said I loved the pure, passionate boy from my childhood and that the Marquis had changed.

You felt it too, didn’t you? That I wasn’t staying with him because I loved him, but because I loved that boy.

I’ve found proof that this is true.

The letters you wrote to me when you were young. I discovered them stored carefully in the vault of my study at the Loveridge estate.

And their edges were all worn down.

I asked a maid who had served the Loveridge family for many years. She told me that long ago, I used to take those letters out and read them again and again, whenever I had the chance.

Killian, think about it.

Why would I keep rereading old letters until they wore thin, while the man who gave me those love letters was right beside me?

When we lived in Eisenthal, I treasured every letter and drawing you gave me. But I didn’t read them daily until they frayed.

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