Please Kill Me - Chapter 97

As time passed, her anxiety grew and her nerves became more frayed. Eventually, she couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“Leonid, are you still very angry with me?”

She finally asked when they were alone together.

Leonid paused, halfway through drawing the curtains, and turned to face her. The room was so silent she could almost hear the wax of the candles melting, and his face was clearly visible in the stillness.

He had an indifferent expression, the kind highborn people often have when they’re puzzled.

Leonid and Yekaterina shared this same indifference, and even a certain tenderness, which made her feel a bit indignant. If only he had been merely indifferent. If only she felt he was ignoring her completely, it might have been different.

But she knew that if she reached out to him, he would give himself in.

“I’m asking if you’re angry with me.”

“…I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I understand if you don’t want to admit it. But by now, couldn’t you at least say something? I’m just curious about the reason.”

“I know you think I’m a liar, but I genuinely don’t understand. When did I ever get angry with you?”

“You were angry that night.”

“…Not since then.”

“What difference does that make when you haven’t spoken to me since? Did you realize it’s been ten days?”

Yekaterina expected Leonid to make some excuse, or perhaps get angry again, or even try to end the conversation. But she never anticipated that he would be at a loss for words.

He looked at her with an expression as if he had just been hit, then asked in a doubtful voice.

“Has it really been that long already?”

“Are you seriously saying you didn’t know?”

He didn’t respond. Apparently, he hadn’t realized it. Yekaterina knew Leonid could lie convincingly, but this excuse was too feeble.

Did he really not want to talk to her that much? If he just admitted he was angry, she could understand that.

Yekaterina was starting to feel tired of this conversation.

“Enough with the excuses. That’s not what I’m curious about. Just tell me one thing and I’ll go. Why have you been avoiding me?”

But once again, the answer was disappointing.

“I wasn’t intentionally avoiding you.”

“…I didn’t think you were someone who lied so frequently.”

“I understand why you might feel that way, but—”

“You’ve been avoiding me. Even in the bedroom, you just slept and left.”

“Well, what else would I do in the bedroom?”

“I’m right there next to you.”

“You know that sounds misleading, right? We’ve always kept our distance and just slept!”

Leonid frowned and rubbed his face in frustration. It was a textbook display of inner turmoil, but Yekaterina remained unaffected. She lowered her gaze and spoke in her usual even tone and detached expression.

“You used to talk to me often before sleeping.”

Claiming he couldn’t fall asleep, which was a common excuse.

After the lights went out, Leonid would often engage in conversation with Yekaterina. She slept very little and had started taking naps during the day since coming to Rostislav, so she stayed up late.

Leonid, unable to sleep properly while keeping an eye on her, would initiate these late-night conversations. They were often trivial, almost as meaningless as counting sheep.

However, one night when Leonid no longer spoke to her, Yekaterina realized she missed those moments. She also realized she had been waiting for him to speak to her again.

“If you don’t want to talk to me anymore, that’s fine. I just want to know why. Is it because you’re angry?”

Whether she hit the mark or not, Leonid rubbed his face again with a troubled look. His hand, like his handsome face, had an aesthetic appeal.

“…It’s not that. I didn’t mean to stop talking to you.”

“If it’s not because you’re angry, then why did you do it? Why do you keep watching me if you don’t want to talk? Do you want to look but not interact?”

“It’s not like that. I just—”

“At first, I thought maybe you didn’t like me anymore. But that didn’t make sense. People don’t usually stare at someone they don’t like so much. But you—”

“Stop! I realized I don’t know you as well as I thought! That’s why, damn it!”

Leonid finally admitted, clutching his head. Yekaterina, who had been chattering non-stop, abruptly fell silent.

The rapid back-and-forth of their conversation just moments ago made the brief pause feel unusually long.

“You thought you didn’t know me well enough?”

“Yes. Every time we talked, it seemed like I ended up getting angry. Damn it, I thought it would be better to step back and observe for a while before talking. You must hate it when I get angry all the time, right? But I didn’t realize so much time had passed.”

“And you don’t think you’re getting angry right now?”

“No, this isn’t me getting angry, it’s just—”