Wine, Knight, and Memories (3)
The kiss was cruel. In the air thick with the scent of wine and Theodora’s perfume, that was how Maxim felt it. Between their pressed lips, between their twisting, desperate tongues, heated breaths rose and fell in ragged gasps.
“Maxi...”
Theodora’s eyes glowed with a hazy sheen. Maxim knew that sorrowful gaze all too well. It was the look of a heart shattering, too sad to bear. Three years ago, when he had told her they should part ways, her eyes had been clouded with that same fog.
Memories flashed through Maxim’s mind. The academy three years prior, the depths of the dungeon, the thick mist, Count Benning and Baron Bourdin sneering down at his wounds. Those men who had gnawed at his roots, rotted his trunk, and now sought to wither even the leaves that had managed to bloom. The ones who had been frantic to seize power by using Theodora.
And then the snow had fallen.
On the academy training grounds blanketed in white, Maxim had delivered an incomprehensible farewell. The vow he had made while cutting down those monsters. The oath sworn with the resolve of a man shouldering every sin and throwing himself into the flames.
He would accept whatever punishment Theodora gave him. He would never beg for forgiveness.
Maxim looked down at her. At those misty eyes and lips glistening with saliva.
“Kiss me… more.”
That was why he had to push her away. Push her away, earn her hatred, make her direct all her loathing at him. Right now, he would choose to be hated by her. So this could not continue.
Maxim gripped both of Theodora’s shoulders and shoved her back. Confusion flickered in her hazy eyes.
“Why…”
“We can’t do this, Theodora.”
That hazy confusion solidified into a storm of emotions—doubt, resentment, grief. And those crystallized feelings fell like rain from heavy clouds, spilling over as tears.
“…Maxi, why can’t it be me?”
Her voice was slurred with drink. Her face was flushed, her words tangled and clumsy. Yet her eyes held him, asking with raw sincerity.
“Why did you let the vice-commander lean on your shoulder?”
The first tear slid down Theodora’s cheek. Maxim watched it fall in silence. Three years ago, she had cried exactly like this. On the winter training field where he had ended things, the wind gentle, snow drifting down. No curse or wound had ever hurt him as much as those tears.
But Maxim had to endure that pain again. He could not wipe away the droplets falling from those wounded eyes.
“Why… why did you indulge the vice-commander’s whims? Why is it never me…”
Theodora’s words were losing coherence. What began as simple doubt and jealousy gradually twisted into accusations.
“You said you got engaged. That’s why you broke up with me, you said.”
“Theodora.”
She shook her head, refusing to listen. That platinum hair, catching faint moonlight and the lantern’s brass glow, swayed like a curtain.
“Why… why am I the only one who has to be rejected by you like this…”
Ah, Theodora.
Emotion surged in Maxim’s throat. He bit down hard on his lip. He crushed the impulse—the urge to pull her close, to kiss that desperate mouth again, to whisper that he loved her. Blood trickled from his bitten lip. The metallic taste flooded his mouth.
Theodora’s arms remained locked behind his neck. Maxim seized her wrists to pry them away. They were still so slender, so beautiful.
“Don’t do this…”
Theodora wept. Maxim finally unwound her arms from his neck. Emotions continued to swirl in her eyes, asking him countless silent questions.
Theodora, resent me.
Maxim stayed motionless, still holding her wrist. Theodora stared into his eyes, trapped between action and inaction. Then, as if she could bear it no longer, she let her head fall against his chest.
“Maxi… why…”
The falling tears became sobs, then full weeping. Maxim looked down at Theodora as she cried helplessly in his arms. Her shoulders trembled violently.
He pushed her away again. She yielded like a sheet of paper caught in the wind, drifting back at his touch.
“We’re just… just drunk. Both of us. We could pretend it never happened.”
Her plea was unbearably earnest. Longing for him and a flood of other emotions had burst through every dam.
“So why… why do you have to push me away like this…?”
Of course there was no clarity left in either of them. If he had kissed her back, no one could have blamed them. But Maxim could not hide behind the excuse of wine.
He caught her as her arms fell and steadied her, speaking in a rigid voice. He wanted to soothe her, to comfort her. Yet apart from that desire, he kept his own emotions under tight control.
“Theodora, you know why.”
Her eyes widened at his words, as though she could not believe he would say such a thing. Her crying twisted. Tears that had fallen in single lines now streamed down in pairs.
“Know? What do I know…!”
She shoved him hard. Maxim staggered back from the force.
“I… I don’t know anything!”
Her voice was raw with passion.
“You… you can’t tell me that I know.”
Sobs kept breaking her words. Maxim clenched his teeth harder. Every sentence from Theodora was a needle stabbing into his heart. Because none of it was untrue, it hurt all the more.
“The one who announced our breakup out of nowhere, without any explanation… who was that?”
Her weak fist struck his chest.
“You said you had a fiancée… that you were engaged to a collateral branch of our own house…”
Another strike.
“Did you really think I could accept it with just that? No, of course not. But I forced myself to. I didn’t reject your notice at first.”
Another strike.
“Even though I cried and begged you not to leave.”
Again. Her fist hit his chest once more. Maxim’s body swayed slightly with each blow.
“How could you say those things…”
Strike. Strike.
Maxim could not speak. Theodora kept swinging her fists at him. There was no power behind them, yet they hurt more than any blow he had ever taken.
“Theodora, just… sit down.”
He reached out to guide her, but she violently slapped his hand away.
“Don’t touch me.”
The sob that escaped her was heartbreaking. Maxim stared at his rejected hand, jaw clenched tight.
Yes. It went exactly as planned. My clever, hypocritical plan worked perfectly.
He looked at his fist and tightened it until the knuckles whitened.
“…This is truly the worst.”
Theodora hung her head and cried. She wiped at the streaming tears with the back of her hand, but the alcohol had stripped away her control. Soon she collapsed to the floor.
Maxim stood frozen, unable to do anything. After a while, Theodora lowered her hand to the ground and whispered.
“…Get out.”
Her fist clenched, trembling.
“Get out. Don’t make me any more pathetic—just get out…”
She staggered back to her feet. Her lovely face was streaked with tears, hair completely disheveled, expression warped beyond recognition. Only resentment remained. Not hatred or disgust, but pure resentment poured heavy emotion onto him.
“Get out…!”
Theodora shouted through her sobs. Maxim turned his leaden steps. Very slowly, he walked away from her.
His hand shook as he gripped the doorknob. If he stayed any longer, he feared he would break down and cry himself. So he opened the door.
“You… really… are such a terrible person.”
The words struck his back from the open doorway. The tears in Theodora’s voice showed no sign of stopping.
“I don’t know how you are to that vice-commander or your fiancée, but to me, you’re a terrible person.”
Before he could see more of her tears, before he had to hear any more of that tear-choked voice, Maxim closed the door.
Beyond it, her words came once more.
“You’re the worst bastard this world has ever seen.”
In the cold corridor behind Theodora’s closed door, where faint moonlight slipped through the windows, Maxim sank to the floor. Every emotion he had suppressed, every word he had wanted to say, rose up with the wine.
He let out a long sigh. Tears fell. There was nothing false in what she had said. To Theodora, he was the lowest sort of human, a truly terrible bastard.
“I’m sorry.”
The apology he had never been able to give her slipped from his lips.
“I’m sorry, Theodora. I’m sorry.”
Maxim covered his face with both hands. His head spun in a dizzy fog. A wound that should not have ached burned fiercely.
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”
He kept repeating it. Yet with every apology, the guilt toward Theodora and the self-loathing for his own helplessness only grew heavier. Maxim wept. He shed the tears of regret he had never let her see.
“I’m sorry…”
Resent me more. If you want to punish me, I’ll accept anything.
Maxim clenched his fist until it felt like it might shatter. Blood welled where his nails bit into his palm.
It was the wine. Her mind was gone. All she could feel was the memory of wrapping her arms around the back of Maxim’s neck just like three years ago, and the fact that she had kissed him again exactly as she had then.
She wanted to forget everything. Maxim’s wrongdoing, the vice-commander who had sat beside him, and even herself for hating him. She wanted to forget it all and drown in longing, to return to how things once were. Even for a moment, she wanted to see the man she had once loved with her entire being.
“Bastard…”
Theodora muttered to herself again. Her head throbbed from the alcohol. Tears poured out uncontrollably.
She resented Maxim. She resented him, yet she could not let him go. It meant she could not simply close her mouth and pretend none of it had happened.
Theodora had been a girl who knew nothing of even the smallest love. The man who had illuminated the entire world she had lived in ignorance of was Maxim.
“Bastard.”
He had taught her joy, and he had taught her pain. It would have been better never to have known anything at all. If she had never known that joy, she would never have known this crushing sense of loss.
Theodora staggered to her feet and made her way to the bed, collapsing onto it. Even the sheets felt cold.
“Maxim…”
She spoke his name once more. Just saying it was almost too much to bear. The sobs that had barely subsided returned.
She knew this was the last time. There would be no more chances. She understood that wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him while pretending not to know had been the final moment.
The two of them were now so terribly far apart. The time spent separated had grown as vast as the time they had once shared.
Even at their parting, Theodora had been unable to understand. There had been too many things she did not know. When she had asked her fearsome father, he had only answered with cold mockery, saying they had never been suited, that it was better he had left after arranging an engagement.
After endless denial, Theodora had gone to the snowy mountains of cold Kips. To forget the warmth Maxim had given her when she hated the cold. To forget the snowflakes they had watched together.
Theodora lay down as though sinking into the bed. The brass lantern’s light flickered. Entangled, forever entangled, Theodora slowly closed her eyes. The last remaining tear rolled down the edge of her eye and fell.