What Am I to Do with You
Is it anything like the way Ludville searches so desperately for me—for a woman he cannot even remember, whose very existence has been erased?
Odelli buried her fevered face against his chest, as if to hide it, and whispered lower still.
"I don't know what to do with you."
To the very end... Was she meant to pretend she did not know, all the way to the end?
Yes. That was what she had to do.
His body was this resilient, and the lifespan he had been born to stretched past a hundred years. How, then, had he become tangled up with someone like her, of all people, and come to live by dying thousands of times over?
Only Odelli could sever that terrible cycle. She had to feign ignorance completely—of whom he was waiting for, and of why the sight of her stirred a sense of déjà vu. Just as she always had, she would have to keep a perfectly straight face and give him some other reason to live.
That was what I decided.
Her heart was not permitted to soften over nothing more than a brief embrace. How could she pretend to yield and drag him down the road to the underworld? She had done that thousands of times already. It was enough.
This time, she would truly let him go.
Slowly, she loosened the arms she had wrapped around his back.
"...My lady!"
Right on cue, the soldiers of the subjugation force who had followed Odelli came running toward them.
"Heavens, what in the world has happened!"
"His Grace lost consciousness and collapsed against me."
In an instant Odelli wiped every feeling from her face and told them what had happened, expressionless.
He barely managed to lift his heavy eyelids. The faint pattern on the ceiling slowly swam into focus, and a familiar ceiling filled his sight.
...My room?
Light entered only dimly. Morning sun, leaking through the heavy curtains, soaked the foot of the bed.
Ludville drew a slow breath. Air swelled his lungs full, and yet some place in his chest felt strangely hollow. It was as if he had lost the world, though he had lost nothing at all—and the sensation was unpleasant beyond all explaining.
He groped meaninglessly at his chest. Had someone carved his heart out while he slept? The absurd thought flickered past. But of course he was still alive. The familiar ceiling, the familiar fatigue, the familiar pain. Nothing was different from usual, and yet today it was uncannily strange.
He felt as though he had been gripping something tightly... and now that hand held nothing.
Looking down at his palm, Ludville slowly clenched his fist and opened it, again and again. He had thought he had only just managed to hold on. Like grains of sand slipping between his fingers, he was made to realize once more that what he had been clutching was an illusion. The pulse beating beneath his skin—that was the only reality.
...There had been something.
Rapture, and fulfillment. A fierce relief, as if something had finally slotted into place. For one instant there had unmistakably been the sensation of fireworks bursting overhead. And yet his mind itself was empty as blank paper. What had filled him so completely. What he had seized and refused to let go. All of it was gone, and what remained was a longing mad enough to drive him insane.
Eyes closed, a hand pressed to his brow, Ludville reached out by habit and groped at the bedside table, searching for the silver case that held his cigarettes. If he burned through those and forced himself back to sleep, he might dream that sweet dream again. He wanted to catch even an illusion that lasted only a moment.
Someone seized his wrist first.
"Your Grace."
It was Odelli.
For a moment Ludville stared up at her, dazed, then looked down at the hand that held his. A small, soft hand. A white, fine hand that looked as if it had never known a day's hardship...
Without thinking, he brushed his thumb across the back of it, as if tracing the skin.
"...What are you doing?"
"You were the one who took a man's hand so freely, my lady."
"Only because the moment you opened your eyes, you started fumbling at the bedside table like an addict."
Odelli shot back, incredulous.
"An addict... So you caught my hand to stop me?"
"And if I did?"
"Then will you take their place, my lady?"
"What is that supposed to—"
For an instant Odelli could not keep her composure. Ludville was drawing his face nearer and nearer, as if he meant to press his lips to the back of her hand. She startled as if burned and snatched her hand away.
"You don't seem fully awake. Come to your senses."
All at once, Ludville's gaze drifted to the curve behind Odelli's ear. That neat white line had flushed a faint pink, like a shy petal.
...Well, now. Look at that.
His eyes, black and dead as the ash left after a fire, glinted as if they had found something of interest. He lifted the corner of his mouth with shameless ease, like a man who had just spotted prey.
"Ahem."
That was when it happened. The Archducal Physician, who had been keeping a quiet place in the room from the very start, cleared their throat and ruined the moment.
"Your Grace, cigarettes are forbidden for the time being."
Ludville had been staring straight at her ear, occupied with the question of just how he meant to savor it. His expression soured at once.
"Ha. And who are you, to forbid my pleasures as you please?"
"Your physician, Your Grace."
The reply was firm. The tone said they would not yield another inch. To serve as personal physician to an archduke who treated his own body like something disposable, one needed at least this much nerve.
"Do I look like a man who listens to talk like that?"
But Ludville was no easier to handle. The smile at his mouth turned in an instant into a sneer, and a sharp pressure gathered in that crooked, upward pull. The physician had unconsciously begun to draw a foot back when—
What in the world...
Ludville's incredulous gaze swung toward Odelli. She went on in a perfectly calm voice.
Her cool gaze settled over his face.
"If you mean to enter into a contract with me, these are the things you will have to keep."
"We haven't contracted yet."
Even as he said it, his eyes returned to the physician.
"...You said for the time being, didn't you? Fine. We'll leave it at that, for now."
The physician let out a short breath. Looking at a man who had not the slightest awareness of himself as a patient—cooperation being out of the question—they sighed with the full weight of professional exhaustion. If the young lady had not stepped in...
Hoping that Odelli would remain at the archduke's side for a long while yet, the physician spoke.
"Your Grace, do you remember what happened before you fainted?"
Ludville's face went listless in an instant, and he answered offhand.
"We were hunting monsters. I remember as far as killing every last one of them."
"...At the time, Your Grace, you were extremely exposed to the monsters' miasma. According to my lady, the condition had progressed all the way to pre-monsterification."