At Last, I Reach Your Sorrow - 3
Adrian was warm. Perhaps, all this time, I had been hoping someone would come to me like this.
Even though I had done nothing but take her into my arms, it felt as though the anxiety was draining out of me. Whether it was some power of a Saintess, I couldn't say, but I came to understand that what she harbored toward me was no simple pity. Not sympathy, not condescension — something closer to understanding. And Adrian, wrapped in my embrace, was sobbing.
I, who had actually lived through those deaths, felt nothing much — yet she, whom I had only met for the first time in this life, was the one crying. How should I put it? It was a first. A feeling I had never once known in this life, and so I had no idea what to say to Adrian.
I had never imagined there was anyone who would grieve for me. Never thought that someone could take the deaths I had endured, understand them, and weep because of them. Not out of pity for me — simply, truly sad. Faced with a woman crying from the depths of real sorrow, I didn't know what I was supposed to say.
My heart thundered, beating all on its own. That pulse, quickening little by little, built a heat of its own until warmth glowed in my flushed cheeks. I brushed back the hair of Adrian, who flinched now and then against my chest.
I couldn't name the emotion I was holding at that moment. It was far too unfamiliar — was this not the first time in all my lives I had ever felt it? Perhaps I had simply been scaring myself. I had never once told anyone about my past, so maybe I had worked myself into fear over nothing. Of course, most people would have felt something entirely different from what Adrian felt — but one thing was certain: all of this had done me genuine good.
Her crying had stopped, and I slowly drew her head back from my chest. Careful not to be too rough about it — I only wanted to show her, at the very least, that I was all right now. Around her reddened eyes I gave a soft laugh and rubbed her cheek; my fingers came away damp with tears.
The simple fact that she had wept for me set a dozen emotions crossing through me. Who else in this world could cry like this for a man she had met for the first time in this life — a man she had seen only a handful of times at that? It was possible only because she was Adrian. Meeting her in this life, I found myself thinking, might be something like fate.
"Lift your head. I should wipe your face for you."
At my words, Adrian slowly raised her face. Perhaps from having it pressed against my chest all this while, her whole face had gone scarlet, and I smiled faintly at the sight. She gave a little sniffle, and it struck me as slightly different from before. If a moment ago she had seemed more mature than anyone, now she looked almost like a child.
It wasn't a bad look. If anything, it suited her. Whenever I caught this side of Adrian, a smile would surface in me for no reason at all.
Offering no resistance even as I wiped her face, Adrian kept her head tilted up toward mine, lips fluttering open and shut.
"Are you all right? About... about seeing Robert's memories, I mean."
"I'm fine. I always assumed I would have to tell you someday anyway. It came a little sooner than expected, which caught me off guard, but you held me, Adrian, and now I'm all right."
"I-I didn't come here to hold you, you know."
The tips of her ears had gone faintly red. I shrugged and finished drying the last of her tears. Once her face was clean, Adrian went quiet, still gazing up at me. Her lips, which had parted and closed several times as though deliberating something, finally stilled. Probably about the memories being shown now. This thirty-fifth life had been, in more ways than one, a special one for me.
"Can you see Mirajane?"
Adrian seemed mildly startled that I called the Princess by her given name, but she soon nodded.
"I can't see her, but the memories are flowing into me. That's how I was able to see your feelings, Robert. If it upset you... I'm sorry."
"It's fine. I can't speak for just anyone, but you, Adrian — you're allowed to see."
I had no great wish for Mirajane or Adele to remember those days. Mirajane above all might carry the guilt of having killed me. Had I come to the Coffin of Memories with her, things could well have turned far graver than I cared to imagine.
Adrian bowed her head deeply at that, and I went on explaining the memory unfolding before us.
"Up to this point, I was still rather naive."
It might sound absurd to call myself a fool after dying thirty-four times, but that was precisely how it looked to me now. Back then, I had believed I'd found my own kind of wisdom. Consider it — I hadn't killed the Crown Prince, I'd earned Yuria's acknowledgment, and I had come within arm's reach of marrying Mirajane. You could call it the closest I had ever come to success.
Except that Mirajane died. If "inexperience" wasn't the word for a man who had failed to account for that, then what was? I had thought I'd died plenty by then, but to the me of the hundred-and-first life, that man simply looked dim. A fool, through and through.
"Do you remember what I once told you? That there was someone I loved."
Those words had been about Mirajane. That she was the first and last person I had ever loved in all my born days, and that I would never love another. That resolve still held. I had made many connections in this life, but I did not wish for a single one of them to become something closer.
"I remember. Don't tell me... that was Mirajane?"
"It was. My last love was always Mirajane."
For a moment Adrian's expression turned strange, and she studied me in silence. As if she had only now understood what those words meant, she hesitated, then opened her mouth.
"Then the one who killed you... was Mirajane as well."
"That was the death I had wanted from the start. I don't know how you read the memories, but if you've seen them, you'll understand."
What the Coffin showed was me, howling as I clutched Mirajane's body to my chest. A rainy day. A night when an inexplicable unease filled me, and I refused to let Mirajane go anywhere alone. I had more or less made my peace with those feelings by now, and yet seeing them again, I couldn't deny that old sentiment rose unbidden.
Mirajane was alive now, wasn't she?
I swept a hand across my brow and breathed out low. Adrian drew close to me again and gently took my hand. I felt equal to any conversation in that moment, so it hardly mattered — but at the worry written across her face, I smiled a little. Being worried over by someone was, in so many ways, something I hadn't known in a very long time.
Her manner was nothing like Adele's, and as we talked through the memories, I kept registering that small difference. If Adele treated the past as just that — the past — and held the present above all, then Adrian took in the feelings of the memories entire, exactly as they came. That, I supposed, was why she responded to my every smallest gesture. In Adrian's eyes, the man before her now must have seemed terribly unsteady.
I watched her clutch my hand as though she would never let it go, and after a moment spoke quietly. It seemed I would have to reassure her, after all. Because from here on, whatever came, I would not waver.
"Do I still look that fragile to you?"
"...No."
"I'm all right. Yes, I was thrown for a moment earlier — but that's all it was, a moment. If it troubles you, you may let go of my hand."
The strength in her fingers slackened, and yet Adrian went on holding my hand all the same. Not the full warmth of her embrace, perhaps, but every bit of it reached me still. A hand soft as anything, without a single callus, small enough that mine could fold over it completely. I understood at once that this was want born of the feelings she carried — and this time, I decided to accept it.
If repaying a debt of gratitude had a method, surely this was it. Even if a day came when we laid our hearts open to one another, I could only hope she would not be hurt then. And if, by some chance, I was still alive once my goal was achieved — well. I would have a different answer to give by then.
My fingers stirred inside her grip and interlaced with hers. At the small flinch of her shoulders, I quietly drew her in. A moment ago we had faced each other; now I embraced her from behind, the woman gazing straight ahead. Thump. Thump. The sound of a racing heart carried clear to my ears. If this was the only thanks I had to give, there was no helping it, was there?
I thought that, for a little while at least, I had been saved. If the Saintess reaching out her hand to me from the mire of emotions I could never crawl free of was not salvation, then what was? Simply — because I was grateful. Simply — because I did not want to forget this feeling, here and now.
I held her like that for a long while, until Adrian's ears had flushed deep, deep red.
The memories went on.
From the night of the thirty-fifth life, when Mirajane died — through the fifty-fifth, when I died at Mirajane's hand — and on to the life where I abandoned everything and left for the North. Adrian, seated against my chest, watched them all in quiet stillness.
It unnerved me a little, her watching without a word — but our conversation just now had shown me that she understood what I felt. There was no cause for unease. I simply kept my eyes on her, in case Adrian might start weeping again.
"Is this when you first met the Grand Duchess?"
"It wasn't our first meeting, but it was the first time we grew close. I came out of the capital as if fleeing for my life — without a word to my sister or my fiancée, abandoning even the castle behind."
Come to think of it, it still amazed me that Adele had taken me in at all. To welcome, without hesitation, a stranger who had arrived with no ties to her whatsoever. If I had been someone hired to assassinate her, what in the world would she have done? A flicker of that old worry crossed my mind, only to scatter as Adrian hugged my arm tight. It was a curious posture, all things considered — her leaning against my chest as I sat with my legs stretched out, viewing the memories like a performance. Her hair, swept up and tied in one bunch, tickled my nose now and then, and at that sweet scent my eyes would narrow.
If I had thought of Adrian as merely another bond, I suspected this whole affair had shifted that feeling somewhat. Could it be love? I hoped not — but left as it was, who could say when my heart might turn?
The woman who had been my lover, the woman I had tried to make my lover, and the woman who had been nothing of the kind — and still, what I felt toward them had not changed. In this tangled knot, I suspected I was the only one doing the agonizing.
"Robert... will you tell the others about your memories, too?"
"...Honestly, I don't know."
Adrian knew now, and I believed that just as Adele had, Mirajane too would one day recall the past. Should I tell her before that happened? However many times I turned the question over, no clear answer came. What they would remember was not only happiness — given the choice, I thought it kinder if they lived their whole lives never knowing at all. I wished that, even if they did learn of it, they would not grieve. But telling them now was surely too much to ask.
"I imagine I'll have to keep it hidden for a while yet. You've seen it yourself — my memories are not all pleasant ones."
"...No. I suppose they aren't."
Murmuring this, Adrian gave a wry smile, sighed, and looked straight ahead. My memories were now slowly nearing their end. Since she was watching them march toward the hundredth death, there was one thing I needed to tell her as well.
What was it I had truly wanted, that I kept repeating my regressions? The heart of it had gone blurry with time, but there was one goal I still carried in a corner of my chest — that, at least, had never faded. To kill the Crown Prince. Ought I not tell it to the only woman in this world who knew my memories?
When a long while had passed and every death had played itself out, I spoke quietly to Adrian.
"By now, I imagine you understand. That I died a hundred times, and that I am living my hundred-and-first life."
"I do. I've... seen all of it here, after all."
"I don't know how many more times this regression will repeat itself. But I intend to end it within this life."
Adrian looked at me, startled for an instant. It circled back to the beginning, in the end — the reason I had chosen to head south at all was to win her support. I held her gaze steadily, then went on, carefully.
"I am going to kill the Crown Prince."
