Shall We Call It a Draw? - 2
Elodie flinched inwardly, yet she asked as if nothing were amiss.
“What do you mean by that? The question is so out of the blue I can’t begin to grasp your intent.”
“Before I give you an answer to that question……”
Sssk. Marie slowly bent at the waist, her clasped hands hanging loosely at her sides.
A perfect ninety-degree bow.
It was so formal it bordered on abject.
“First, I would like to apologize. Blinded by impatience, I committed a grave wrong.”
A confession of sins right after the question.
The utterly disconnected flow of conversation left Elodie more than a little bewildered.
“What sort of wrong?”
Even so, she asked with composed calm, and Marie’s lips parted slowly—still bowed, because she knew herself to be the sinner.
“In my haste I did something unforgivable to a precious friend.”
The tale of reincarnation.
The tale of abilities.
And at last the tale of Seo Ji-hyuk himself.
Elodie listened to the rather lengthy account with her eyes growing rounder by the second.
That Seo Ji-hyuk had lived through two more reincarnations was startling enough; that one of them had been bound to Marie Antoinette was something she had never even imagined.
So that’s why.
Only now did she understand why that particular question had burst out of nowhere.
A look of pure relief settled over Elodie’s face.
Hurt at having been left out of the hidden story?
Any ordinary person would have felt it; Elodie did not.
If a crime had been committed, that would be another matter.
She simply concluded there had been no real need to tell her.
Elodie’s way of thinking had always been a little different from most people’s.
“Lift your head first.”
“Yes.”
While Marie straightened her back, Elodie quieted the absurdity and the complicated tangle churning inside her.
After a brief pause she asked,
“Why did you reveal your ability to him? You could have kept it hidden forever.”
“Perhaps… because he resembled someone I once knew so closely that I let my guard down. And in truth, he was that someone.”
“And yet you used that ability on Ji-hyuk?”
Marie nodded without a word and lowered her gaze.
Once the heat of impatience cooled, shame and the weight of her mistake settled in.
Anyone can do that.
Even the cleverest mind narrows its vision when the heart races.
When vision narrows, a person charges straight at the goal, caring nothing for shame or dignity.
Elodie had lived through such moments herself, and she had watched countless others do the same.
It was simply one of the mistakes humans make.
“I trust you already understand that you wronged Ji-hyuk. Apologize properly, and receive his forgiveness.”
In an age that demanded the guilty be flogged many times over, Elodie’s words carried a mercy that swam against the current.
Do not add interest to a grudge.
As one who served God, she meant to keep that teaching.
Yet more than anything, she believed that since Seo Ji-hyuk was the victim, forgiveness belonged to him alone.
She was connected to the matter, yes, but not enough to pass judgment.
If, however, his body or mind had been truly harmed?
Even the word of God might have been set aside.
“You are right.”
Marie nodded as though she had already intended exactly that.
“My next question. Why insist on meeting me first? Once you learned what you wanted to know, you could have apologized to him on the spot.”
Elodie’s voice held no tremor—only flat calm.
Whatever noble blood the woman before her once possessed was merely the past; that thought steadied her.
Just as the glory she herself had known as Joan of Arc was merely the past.
“Learning that you had been Joan of Arc was so astonishing, so overwhelming… I desperately wanted to meet you. I also felt you ought to know first.”
Marie answered in a trembling voice.
Whether the comparison was perfect or not, to a Frenchwoman Joan of Arc was a national hero—something like Yi Sun-sin or King Sejong to a Korean.
So of course a Frenchwoman like Marie had been turned upside down.
“And… I simply lacked the courage.”
Yet even that was only a secondary reason.
At bottom it was fear—an utterly simple, childlike fear.
The hot blood of youth.
The absence of Seo Ji-hyuk, who had always known how to cool that blood just enough.
And above all, the poison called impatience that turns people simple.
All of it had driven her down a path that was swift but wrong; she felt the truth of that now, sharp and clear.
Like those who fall into the trap of taking shortcuts.
Had Seo Ji-hyuk been nothing more than an ordinary friend, she would have taken her time, felt no anxiety, chosen another road.
After all, the original Marie Antoinette—on the very brink of execution—had still found it in herself to apologize to the executioner who accidentally stepped on her dress.
Even if that courtesy might have sprung from resignation.
And yet she had still let impatience push her into a mistake?
It could only mean she regarded Seo Ji-hyuk as someone that special—special enough for selfish, clumsy feelings to rush ahead of everything else.
“Did you love him? Enough to commit a wrong you knew full well was rude?”
Elodie asked in the same even tone.
She, too, had been saved by Seo Ji-hyuk; a sense of kinship flickered in her eyes.
The hope that the savior of her life had been granted yet another existence—she had once lived clinging to that single piece of news.
“…Yes. I love him.”
Bitterness colored Marie’s reply.
Until the moment he closed his eyes inside the carriage she had thought of him only as a friend.
Only after his death had she realized it was never merely that.
For decades afterward—right up to the natural closing of her own eyes—she had lived with a heart that always ached.
If only she had loved him sooner, would something have been different?
Would she have been happier? She had often wondered.
Even though neither her station nor her era would have allowed such feelings.
Elodie spoke.
“I’ll speak to him. Come to the house tomorrow morning around nine. Will that be all right?”
“…I will do exactly as you say.”
Even after hearing words that were not easy to utter, Elodie remained unruffled.
As though she had expected precisely this.
Or as though she already held some other thought in mind.
Nine o’clock in the morning.
At an hour when some people were already at work, I was receiving an apology.
The woman kneeling on the floor, bowing so deeply it looked like a full prostration, seized my eyes with a politeness that bordered on desperation.
Bent forward like that, her already generous hips stood out all the more.
Marie Reinhardt—my friend from a past life, Marie Antoinette.
So it really was her.
I had felt a sense of familiarity, but I never imagined it was truly Marie.
When I heard the story last night I had been so startled I hardly knew what to do with myself.
Joan of Arc, and now Marie Antoinette as well.
Which meant Erzsébet Báthory might also have been reborn somewhere.
Thoughts of every sort had kept me tossing half the night.
Once I finally grew exhausted, the restless thudding of my heart had settled into quiet.
I had thrashed about in a swamp with no answers until sheer weariness claimed me.
And being exhausted was not necessarily a bad thing.
A “whatever happens, happens” mood had left me with a surprisingly generous cushion of calm.
Bent over like that, she looks even bigger.
Perhaps it was the calm that did it.
My gaze drifted naturally along the curve of Marie’s hips.
An absurd thought came free of charge.
“I’m sorry. I truly did wrong.”
While I was still wool-gathering, Marie pressed her forehead to the floor and spoke in a trembling voice.
Even without seeing her face I could tell how terrified she was.
“What do you plan to do?”
Janette, sitting beside me, asked in a small voice.
Her expression still said her temper had not fully recovered.
“…Let me think a moment.”
I answered in a noncommittal tone and closed my mouth.
In truth I had already reached a conclusion after turning the matter over all night, but I deliberately delayed.
I wanted to weigh it once more in the clear light of morning.
First of all, Marie Antoinette is my friend.
Friends can be close and still quarrel over something.
Yet through a sincere reconciliation they can also mend the bond.
So while I had been startled, I felt no hatred.
If anything, I had missed her.
Just as in the old days, her nature was kind, yet she had always been hasty and a little clumsy.
Take, for example, her judgment of Madame du Barry.
She’s reflecting hard.
Even for someone raised in the modern world, flattening oneself on the floor is no easy act.
How much harder if one still carries the memory of having been a queen.
Yet she was doing that difficult thing right now—suppressing every urge to take a shortcut.
Whether it was because she believed Dominate would never work on Janette, or because she was truly repentant, I could not know.
I did not know, but I wanted to place my weight on the latter.
Besides, as the saying goes, blood is thicker than water.
Had a stranger done the same, I would have demanded a more public reckoning.
Because she was a precious friend, my standard could only be generous.
“Marie.”
When I called her name she raised her head.
Knowing she was my friend, casual speech slipped out of me as naturally as breathing.
Slightly moist eyes.
Above them, flickering anxiety and fear fixed on me.
“Since you say you already know everything, I won’t drag this out. Let’s go straight to the conclusion.”
“…Yes.”
“For whatever reason, you used the power called Dominate on me, and I was affected by it. That is no different from attacking me. Do you admit it?”
Marie slowly nodded.
Her whole body trembled; fear was beginning to show plainly on her face.
She looked exactly like a child being scolded for a misdeed.
“Even so, I want to try following the saying: do not add interest to a grudge.”
As I spoke slowly, Janette’s eyes went round.
Of course they did.
Those were words she herself had spoken often in her previous life.
She had even shown that same mercy to someone who had nearly killed her—despite later possessing more than enough power to take revenge a hundredfold.
I guess the old saying that couples grow alike is true.
Joan of Arc, Marie Antoinette, Erzsébet Báthory.
All of them were remarkable women, yet the only one with whom I had formally bound my life was Joan of Arc—Janette.
Naturally she held the greatest influence over me.
Gulp.
While Marie swallowed hard, I slowly moved my lips.
Was this answer truly right?
Even after I had steeled myself, a last-second doubt caught at my ankle.
Still, I did not change my mind.
Because Marie herself knew perfectly well how great a wrong she had done.
A mistake it might have been, yet her fundamental nature was good.
Knowing that, if I offered only ordinary mercy?
She would almost certainly live for a long time under the weight of guilt.
The Marie I knew was exactly that sort of person.
Therefore something a little extreme—an eye-for-an-eye sort of conclusion—was needed.
I wanted her to feel, for herself, that this was enough; that it was sufficient.
If the knot in her chest continued to torment her, I would be uncomfortable watching it too.
“Exactly as much as I suffered. You used Dominate on me, so for a while you will repay me with Dominate. That is my conclusion.”
“I see. In plain terms, when you give an order I must obey… something like becoming a kind of slave?”
The wording was extreme, yet the meaning was roughly correct.
I nodded silently, and the shadow on Marie’s face began little by little to lift.
Even in the midst of tension she looked oddly relieved.
Janette, by contrast, kept her seat with an impassive face.
She had already known what conclusion I would reach, and she had not uttered a single word of opposition.
“‘Slave’ sounds a bit much… let’s call it subordinate. What will you do?”
“I’ll do it. If only you will forgive me, for as long as you like—even for a lifetime.”
Fortunately Marie answered without hesitation.
Just as I had expected.
Still, calling her a subordinate did not mean I intended to treat her like a slave of the old days.
It was closer to the way people jokingly call themselves “corporate slaves.”
There would be inconvenience and lack of freedom, yet no stripping away of legal human rights—exactly that much.
“But… is it all right?”
While I was sitting there with nothing left to say, Marie turned trembling eyes toward Janette.
It felt like watching a maid seek permission from a noble lady.
“I simply follow Ji-hyuk’s decision. Still… yes. If you are asking my personal feelings, I can answer that it is fine.”
When Janette nodded, Marie’s forehead struck the floor again.
Fortunately there was no loud thud.
“Thank you.”
A European—moreover a former princess—performing a full dogeza.
The sight was so bizarre I felt a fresh wave of wonder.
“István…? Seo Ji-hyuk? Or Master? How should I address you?”
Marie asked as she slowly rose.
Before she knew the truth she had simply called me Ji-hyuk; now she seemed to feel the need to establish a new form of address.
“Anything but Master. Call me whatever feels natural, and speak comfortably.”
“Then… I’ll keep calling you Ji-hyuk, the way I have until now. And the way I speak will stay the same as well.”
“In that case I’ll go back to formal speech, the way I first did.”
“No—please keep using casual speech with me, Ji-hyuk. That feels far more reassuring.”
If she wanted the old way of speaking, that suited me perfectly.
I nodded quietly, and a heavy silence settled over the living room.
Forgiveness given, forgiveness received.
Even after genuine hearts had been exchanged, an awkward atmosphere still lingered.
The old saying that time is the best medicine felt painfully true in that moment.
That we could only sit here with nothing left to say to each other…
A stifling tightness filled my chest and I was about to sigh when—
“Ji-hyuk.”
Marie’s voice opened the first breach in the awkwardness.
“Hm? What is it?”
A little fear mixed with expectation as I asked; Marie answered,
“Have you ever thought of making a quick trip to France?”
At the word “France,” a spark lit in Janette’s eyes as well.
Clearly this was no idle suggestion.
“Why France…?”
“The secret funds you once mentioned. I wanted to look for them on my own, but… I simply cannot find the location.”
Ah—the secret funds!
In that instant a brilliant spark flared inside my head.