I Did Nothing At All (3)
A person can come apart in a single instant — so thoroughly that sometimes they even forget why they broke in the first place.
What was the reason? What was the cause?
Arthur, lying where he had collapsed, couldn't begin to wonder. Theresia, however, ought to have known exactly why.
"...Where's Ned?"
At the chill in her voice, the attendant shuddered.
The room was a wreck of shattered furniture, and in its midst stood a woman with her hair torn loose in disheveled strands, her lips twitching.
She was the one who had reduced the room to that state.
Perhaps someone was hiding nearby, watching. Watching her every move, waiting to pull some scheme or other — or so her mind insisted.
"H-He isn't here. He's in the basement right now."
"Ah, right. Of course he is."
Theresia burst into laughter, chuckling between breaths.
Ned — her butler, and in the end, even he had forfeited her trust. Thinking back on it now, hadn't he always been suspicious? Her dear brother lay groaning where he'd fallen; there was no way the food was innocent. The poison in the food must have been Ned's doing. Once the man being tortured downstairs confessed with his own mouth, this whole affair would be settled.
Her former fiancé had done plenty of vile things, granted — but poison?
...He was more frightening than she'd thought. Since when had he been carrying a dagger in his breast? Letting out a small sigh, Theresia dragged her fingers through her hair — strands matted stiff with dried blood, hopelessly tangled. She pulled anyway, wrenching at them until hairs tore free from her fingers.
Even then, her face never changed expression. It was the attendant whose complexion went deathly pale.
Theresia couldn't feel any of it as pain.
It had already been a week since Arthur's illness took its turn for the worse. Every doctor who came failed to identify its cause — even a priest had been unable to purify that poison.
"And the one who swore he'd summon the Saintess?"
"W-We still can't reach her—"
"How many times did I say she has to be here by today?!"
Slam! Theresia brought her palm down on the desk — the last piece of furniture still standing — and screamed. Splinters drove into her hand, blood dripping to the floor, and still her mind churned with nothing but that poison.
It had entered the body through food, most likely. What kind of poison, then? The question gnawed at her.
Even the attendant quaking in terror looked pathetic to her now. Perhaps she should interrogate him... the way she had Ned. There was no need for him to cower like this, was there? Had she even raised her voice? No — she had merely asked. She'd asked quite kindly when the priest expected to bring the Saintess. So why was he reacting like this?
Then, from somewhere far off, came the sound of coughing, and her frozen eyes slowly thawed.
It was a sound no one could call a mere cough anymore. Each bout retched up his very life force — enough that anyone could tell he was dying, little by little, from the coughing alone.
"What in the world — what in the world is happening? House Taylor, poisoning us!"
To Theo, head of House Violet, it was nothing short of a thunderbolt from a clear sky. The two houses had never so much as crossed swords — until mere days ago, their children had been betrothed to one another, no less. Why on earth would they poison us?
He didn't know the truth either. He had only Theresia's account to go on, and even he could not pass cool judgment on any of it.
"...I don't know either. Why would they go so far as to do this to us?"
"C-Could he not simply be ill? They never spared us a glance to begin with, did they? Why would they poison us of all people..."
Stupid.
Someone was this sick, and he suspected nothing but illness? She'd heard of diseases with similar symptoms, but the fact that no medicine brought even a hint of improvement made it plain this was no ordinary disease.
Pneumonia? As if. That was poison.
Poison used by Robert Taylor himself — to bring down House Violet, the house that had used him.
"Father, don't worry so much. They won't be able to touch us either."
It was a ploy so transparent it was almost laughable. Once the testimony Ned's torture would produce was in her hands, she could turn it against House Taylor in turn. Foolish Robert. Did he truly believe she would crumble from a scheme this crude?
Ha — a sneer spilled out of her, warping the corner of her mouth. It was such a grotesque, uncanny expression that Theo shivered at the sight.
Nothing at all reflected in those cold, dead pupils. She only stared at her elder brother, lying there and coughing up blood.
No reason. No sanity left. How was this any different from a zealot convinced that her every judgment was gospel truth?
It was Ned who came to Theo's mind. If he wished to calm his daughter even a little, perhaps Ned — who had been at her side since childhood — could reach her. And so Theo opened his mouth to call for him.
"Come to think of it, I don't see Ned anywhere. Where could he be at a time like this? Fetch him here at once!"
"Even if you fetch him, he cannot come."
At the words, dropped flat as a stone, Theo turned his head. Cannot come? The only soul in the room who failed to grasp what that meant was Theo himself.
The attendants one and all bowed their heads, eyes squeezed shut, doing their best to shut out whatever would come next.
"He's downstairs. The traitor."
"...I cannot make sense of a word you're saying. A traitor? You mean Ned?"
"He hid the fact that he poisoned the food. He must have assumed we'd trust him blindly. He'll open his mouth soon enough. Why, our own household keeps one, doesn't it? A torturer."
Theo's mind went blindingly white in an instant. He could not bring himself to believe the words pouring from his daughter's mouth were real; all he could do was stare, hollow, at her smiling face.
A traitor... No one alive knew better than he did that it was impossible.
And the basement, on top of it all. His face had frozen stiff, past the point where even a bitter laugh could come — but Theresia, noticing nothing, went on muttering words he couldn't begin to comprehend.
Poison — at least as far as Theo could see, his daughter's fiancé had never seemed a man capable of anything so wretched. And how could Ned, the longest-serving soul in this household, possibly have had a hand in slipping such a thing in?
Theresia never even registered her father's hollow stare. Robert still filled her mind. The poison he must have smuggled in — how was she to get her hands on the antidote? Her father had long since ceased to exist in her eyes.
...As I thought, I'll have to kneel before him. Just once.
She had sent letters before, several of them, feigning remorse. But no reply had ever come, so she had waited. It seemed... she would have to see that face in person after all.
"Father, don't worry. I'll take care of everything."
She whispered it to her father, who had crumpled onto the floor. No doubt the shock of her brother's collapse had done this to him. What would he feel, she wondered, if he knew that every last bit of it was the work of one person?
Theresia still believed she could set this right. No — wasn't it obvious? What Robert wanted was her apology. However much he knew, if she named some plausible offense and begged, surely he would hand the antidote over. And if he refused — well, that would only be a losing move on his part.
"I'll be back shortly. It won't take long."
Outside, the sun still hung bright in the sky. She hated even that. Here she was, drowning in catastrophe — it felt as though even the heavens were laughing at her.
With a sharp crunch, Theresia crumpled the letter in her hand and rose to her feet.
"...And with that, she is on her way here as we speak."
I nodded along to Renald's report. I'd wondered why her reaction was so slow — had she been lost in her own little delusions all this time? She was a frailer woman than I'd given her credit for. To invent a poison I never even administered, then come demanding its antidote, no less.
"Has she... suffered from delusions in the past, Young Master?"
"No, she never did. Her family's health falling apart must have scrambled her mind along with it."
I knew perfectly well she had no such condition. Most likely, something I said had pulled the trigger and snapped her — or else she genuinely suspected me of orchestrating this whole affair. So burning a few letters was what finally brought her running.
Renald studied my faint smile with puzzlement, then seemed to recall the previous occasion and asked about preparations.
"Will it be all right to make no preparations this time, as before?"
"Hmm. I think it might be better to prepare, this time around."
I couldn't easily picture what state of mind Theresia would arrive in. Desperation, I assumed — and yet something told me she would come wearing a strangely earnest air. Rambling on about poison and antidotes, of all things; she must intend to apologize for it all. Ours was not a bond a mere apology could mend. My deliberation lasted only a moment before I gave Renald a small wave and spoke.
"One tea service will be plenty. I'll head out ahead."
"Understood, Young Master."
As I smoothed my attire and readied myself to go out, what surfaced in my mind was the time I had spent with Theresia.
Days lived clutching at every sliver of a chance to survive — forcing myself to embrace things I could have discarded, things it would have cost me nothing to let go. Hadn't I lived under the conviction that a single mistake meant death? In every moment, in every circumstance, the slightest slip had summoned my end. When I recalled dying for nothing more than a poorly chosen word, I could never fathom what this world wanted from me.
"Was it simply telling me to die?"
There had been a time I clawed against that, living with vicious desperation — and now here I was, practically yearning for such a death.
My steps toward the garden felt lighter than they had in ages. This meeting was hardly a pleasant one, and yet — wasn't I, at long last, hurling the hundred ties I had accumulated off into the past?
And yet it felt good. So good that, for a moment, I failed to hold back a smile.
It struck me that it was a truly fine day. The grass beneath my feet, the lush greenery rippling through the garden — it all seemed to smile upon me. Warm sunlight soaked into my skin, the heat of summer wrapping gently around everything.
On the lonely round table in the garden sat two teacups, and at its center, a single teapot waiting to brim with chamomile. I drew out a snow-white chair, settled into it, and began to wait for Theresia, who would arrive before long.
Renald alone moved to stand at my side, but I shook my head and told him there was no need.
"What if some unforeseen situation arises, Young Master?"
"There won't be any. Don't worry."
Theresia had tried to kill me in a truly colorful variety of ways. Which meant, naturally, that I knew exactly how to counter every last one of them. Besides — had I whiled away those hundred lives idling? However furious the woman, she would never have grazed a single hair on my head.
Neigh—
At the whinny drifting from far off, my closed eyes opened. No doubt the woman I had been waiting for had arrived.
I straightened my posture and, like a gentleman awaiting his beloved, put on a gentle smile — summoning, in that very instant, the memory of who I had been in previous cycles.
Clack. Clack.
The woman I had loved, if only for a time. The woman I had loved. For her sake I had smiled, and more than once I had donned a mask to smother the urge to weep.
Now, at last, it was time to bid that woman a farewell of my own making.
The most courteous, the warmest bearing I could muster — that alone was the only parting gift I had left to give her. And I would stake anything on this: the moment Theresia laid eyes on me, she would come apart entirely.
For this smile of mine would be, to her, a poison crueler than any other.