Episode 39
Translator: RaidenTL
Episode 39
“Did you draw this?”
Rayner’s study of art, once dismissed as a simple whim, had surprisingly continued for a long time. Now a young man of twenty, he hastily shoved the paper he was holding into a drawer and scrambled to his feet.
“No.”
Marianne murmured, a look of puzzlement on her face.
“But I saw you sketching…”
Damn it, she already saw everything. Realizing it was useless to deny it, Rayner scowled and grumbled.
“Marianne, when you open a door, you should knock—”
“I did. You were probably too focused to hear me.”
He hadn't wanted to show her a drawing this pathetic. Objectively, it wasn't pathetic at all—in fact, he was more often told he was talented. But the person before him was the kind of formidable figure who would casually critique the works of masters as being “a little disappointing.”
“Show me. You can’t even show something like this to your fiancée?”
Marianne, who had been so quick to run away when they first met, now casually approached and took his hand.
A smile bloomed on his face as he remembered a younger version of himself, chattering on about everything he was learning after starting his art studies, and a young Marianne watching him.
The look on her face as she pondered him, as if trying to determine, ‘Is this person safe?’, was like a cat watching a stranger dangling a tasty treat.
Lost in the past for a moment, Rayner failed to stop Marianne from casually opening his desk drawer. He gave an awkward laugh and muttered.
“It’s because you’re my fiancée that I don’t want to show you.”
“Why on earth?”
“…Because it’s embarrassing.”
“I don’t understand.”
In the end, the sketch in the drawer fell into Marianne’s hands. His heart pounded in his chest. The light silence that fell felt unbearably heavy to him. Rayner avoided her gaze and mumbled.
“It’s just… something I did roughly. My hands were bored, so I just… doodled.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“…Huh?”
“Your drawing. I said it’s beautiful.”
Rayner stared blankly at Marianne as she looked down at his drawing.
Ten years. It was more than enough time for the boy who once asked with a hint of disappointment, ‘Why do you never smile when you’re with me, but you smile when you look at other things?’, to grow up and understand the emotions he held.
He saw the corners of Marianne’s usually expressionless lips lift slightly, just so slightly, and felt his heart pound as if it would burst.
It was love.
And that was why, when she truly smiled with her whole heart, a part of his own heart couldn't help but ache.
“Isn’t she just incredible? I want to meet her, just once! I feel like I’ve lived my whole life just for this moment…!”
Standing before a painting by Siene Reve in the exhibition hall, the two of them looked in different directions. Marianne’s eyes were fixed only on the painting on the wall, while his gaze was on her face, her eyes glistening with tears as she smiled. The man, his own face impassive, touched his lips and thought.
I’ll never be the one to see you smile like that, face to face.
Even if I wait a lifetime, it will never happen…
*
The night of the incident, 9 PM.
His mind was a complete mess, so he had stepped outside his screen to clear his head with a short walk. It was then that he spotted a figure lingering in front of someone else’s workspace.
Rayner narrowed his eyes, trying to make out who it was. Silver hair fluttered in the breeze coming through a slightly open window. It was Siene Reve.
That’s Lucian’s screen…
After glancing around, Siene cautiously stepped inside. Intrigued, Rayner stood his ground, waiting for her to come back out. The sounds from within the studio were a chaotic mix—the frustrated noise of something being broken, as if in anger, and the clatter of paint cans being knocked over.
Just as he was growing bored and considering giving up on waiting to continue his walk, Siene came rushing out. Unable to control her surging emotions, she clutched the area over her heart with both hands, trying to catch her breath.
With a lingering look back, Siene left the studio with a thrilled smile on her face.
“…Hah.”
He checked the time. More than half an hour had passed since Siene had gone inside. He found himself walking into Violante’s screened-off area without thinking.
And the moment he saw Lucian’s painting on the easel, he froze like a pillar of salt.
Its overwhelming beauty struck him like a weapon, piercing him with a searing heat.
The passionate composition, formed with perfectly calculated angles; the beauty of its unity, achieved using only shades of blue, as if confidently declaring that something as trivial as splendor could be discarded.
“Ha, haha…”
A hollow laugh escaped him. He felt like an idiot for having just been agonizing over which colors to use. This was overwhelming talent, a work of art from a realm he could never reach, no matter how hard he tried.
This was the level of someone who was barely considered a follower of Siene, the artist who had made Marianne smile so brightly.
Faced with a painting that seemed to negate his life’s efforts, he lost his mind.
The image of Marianne’s radiant smile as she looked at Siene’s art flashed through his mind, and his vision went white.
Consumed by a rage so intense it could burn everything to ash, he unconsciously reached into his jacket’s inner pocket and gripped his compass. Then, as if stabbing a person, he drove it down into the painting.
With the sound of tearing fabric, his body lurched forward, and blue paint smeared up his arm. Only when he heard the sharp tip of the compass he was holding clatter against the floor did he finally regain his senses.
What have I done?
He hastily picked up the compass from the floor and stared at the canvas, which was now damaged beyond repair. The painting that had been so beautiful it had ignited his inferiority complex into a fiery rage now looked merely hideous. A wave of fear washed over him.
“God damn it…”
He clenched his trembling fingers into a fist, but his heart refused to calm down. He remembered the drugs a group of delinquents had once offered him. Desperate for something to cling to, he quickly opened a window and poured the Crea into his pipe.
A sudden gust of wind blew half of the drug he intended to use onto the windowsill, but he didn't even notice.
After managing to light it, he slowly inhaled the drug-laced smoke. As he exhaled, his vision blurred, and his guilt began to dissolve with startling speed.
He was an arrogant bastard anyway. He had it coming.
He brought the pipe to his lips once more. With every puff of smoke he inhaled, the inferiority he had so desperately hidden reared its head. From inside the studio, he could still hear the sounds of things being angrily overturned and paper being torn.
He started to think, trying to figure out how to clean up the mess he had made on impulse.
This kind of noise is normal around here.
He checked his watch. It was almost 10 o’clock. With little time left before closing, the students would be in their own workspaces, focused on their final touches and oblivious to what was happening outside.
He lifted the painting from the easel, left Violante’s workspace, and opened the chute on the studio wall.
After shoving the painting inside, he took off his blue-paint-stained jacket and frantically stuffed it into the chute after it. He closed the chute, washed the paint from his hands, and put on a mask of composure.
Siene Reve. Her reputation was great, but her family lacked the power to back it up. In this school, where power was everything, there was no reason his testimony—that he saw her enter the workspace—wouldn't be believed.
Yes, I’ll frame her. Then, at least I…
“What are you thinking about? You look spaced out.”
Lost in thought, Rayner was jolted back to reality by Marianne nudging his arm. He was in the middle of leaving the Art Hall with her through the main entrance. As he helped her into the carriage, he glanced at the large clock on the building’s outer wall to check the time.
A little past 11:15. In 45 minutes, the waste collection wagon would leave the Art Hall.
He was about to follow Marianne into the carriage but hesitated and stepped back.
I have to check for sure.
The person loading the waste onto the wagon might discover the discarded painting. The canvas was large; he couldn't overlook the possibility of it catching someone’s eye.
He had to make sure.
“You go home first.”
“Huh?”
“I left something in the Main Building. I’ll go get it.”
“I can just wait and we can go together—”
“Marianne, you’re tired. Go on and get some sleep.”
He closed the carriage door on a wide-eyed Marianne and hastily told the coachman to depart before heading toward the Main Building.
Taking a shortcut barely wide enough for one person, he reached the Main Building before the carriage. As soon as the carriage arrived and the coachman left his post, he retrieved the canvas he had destroyed and ran to an empty lot. He intended to burn it completely, destroying the evidence.
And then… and then what?
Suddenly, his memory of the event grew hazy. He couldn't control his body, as if he were drunk. No, that wasn't it. It was different from being drunk.
“You’re just going to stop there? How disappointing.”
A strange, unpleasant sensation made his stomach churn. Something had stirred up all the jealousy and inferiority he had kept hidden and set it ablaze. That something was, well, it was definitely…
That goading voice… whose was it?
When he came to his senses and looked down at his hands, his fingers were red. The red paint he had brought along out of a petty desire to mess with the arrogant Lucian was smeared all over his hands, and a mocking sentence was written across the ruined canvas.
He had no idea what had happened. He had torn the canvas in a fit of anger, but he had never intended to take things this far.
But there was no use crying over spilled milk. His mind raced. He would pin everything on Siene Reve—a person who was on bad terms with Lucian, had entered his studio that day, and wasn't particularly powerful.
It was, yes, it was just a mistake. All he had to do was cover it up. As long as Marianne didn't find out, that was all that mattered. He was desperate.
Siene, with her immense pride, would choose to withdraw from the academy rather than actively fight the false accusation. He believed his plan was perfect. Until his fiancée whispered those words in his ear.
“Where on earth did you go that night?”