Please Forget Me - Chapter 374

‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.

Even if they call you a harlot, that alone won’t make the marriage valid. Perhaps he sensed he would lose the case. Perhaps he foresaw that we would eventually marry and so he dug a pit in our path in advance.

I was prepared to fall into that pit as long as I could fall together with you. Still, there were times when the slander against you went too far for me to endure.

But I had to endure it. If I stepped in, it would only put you at a disadvantage.

That is how I learned just how agonizing it is to wait without moving.

In the meantime, Dr. Loveridge’s hospital was driven to the brink of bankruptcy, though fortunately it recovered by securing investments from various sources. In truth, I offered to invest in his place instead of Rupert, but the doctor refused.

[The losses I suffered have already been repaid far more than enough by a single sentence from my daughter.
Even if I were to lose the hospital over this, it would merely be the price of my failure as a father.
So please withdraw your offer.]

I could feel the sincerity in the doctor’s words, but they also struck me as a rational judgment rather than a purely emotional one. No matter how genuine my intentions, he would hardly welcome a hospital rising and falling again at the mercy of his daughter’s love life. Even if I am nothing like Rupert, that would mean little to a man who does not truly know me.

Nor would he know that I am not the sort of man to sit idle just because my offer was refused. After all, I never invested under my own name.

I exchanged a letter or two with the doctor after that, but with you, I exchanged nothing at all. Our letters could easily be intercepted and paraded in court or splashed across gossip sheets.

Flowers, however, could do you no harm even if displayed openly.

So from the time the year turned and the snowdrops began to bloom, I went into the woods near the estate every day, picking wildflowers, drying them, and sending them to you. Each week, you replied to say you had received them—by sending me a newly knitted pair of socks.

That was the only way we could silently assure each other of our well-being.

You seem to have been curious about my mother as well. One week, you sent two pairs—one of them unmistakably for a woman. I wonder how the two of you grew close enough for you to knit her socks. I still don’t know whether that is a good thing or not.

In any case, my mother recovered without complications. Our relationship remains distant, but it is improving.

“Dana sent something for Mother as well this time.”

“A hand-knitted pair of socks, something money can’t buy.”

“If you dislike it enough to be sarcastic, I can take it back.”

“And what would you do with women’s socks? Give them here. Hmm… she’s quite skillful. But you said she lost her memory. Did she relearn knitting?”

Thanks to you, my mother and I finally had a topic of conversation. And whenever I speak of you with her, I miss you all the more.

When will this lawsuit finally end?

There is no guarantee it will end in the way I hope, yet I find myself waiting only for its conclusion. Even if the court rules the marriage valid, I know you will never return to Rupert. And if not to him, then to whom would you return? To me, of course.

The proceedings dragged on so slowly that the war ended before your marriage did.

I heard that based on the information I provided last year, the army succeeded in occupying the Eisenthal region and locating and raiding the bunker.

I felt guilty for putting people who were once our neighbors in danger. At the same time, I hoped that this would bring the war to an end and prevent further loss of life.

They say the enemy’s leaders were never captured. Naturally, they must have fled long before. I expected that, and yet I still hoped for the impossible. Even now, thinking of it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

In any case, with Eisenthal lost, Highland’s fate was already sealed. After a grueling winter, the Highland government reportedly signed an armistice this spring under deeply humiliating terms.

If it was to end like this, why didn’t they stop sooner?

This isn’t something a victor says to the defeated. Nominally we won, but our own government—having lost so much in this long war—deserves the question just as much.