First (12)
First (12)
Estelle had told me not to come back starting tomorrow, but I dragged my feet there anyway.
Apart from the shaggy-haired priest doing his cleaning, the small church stood empty.
It felt like waking from a brief dream.
Maybe those hours with Estelle had been the most peaceful I'd had since opening my eyes in this world.
No sense of being hunted, no expectations between us — just blankly spending time together.
Wednesday and Thursday.
Two days that were neither long nor short.
I spent most of the time in my room.
Serepina still came by in the mornings.
She seemed a little startled to find me there, but she asked no questions.
She tidied the room in silence, and I watched her in silence.
Our silence had become so familiar by now that it felt less like quiet and more like ambient noise.
These days, she spent increasingly long stretches just staring at me vacantly.
Her lips would twitch as if she were about to say something, then press shut, and she'd go back to staring blankly before shaking her head...
Her eyes landed on the peach resting on the table.
The one Estelle had given me, still unbitten.
Her gaze lingered there for a moment, but she said nothing.
She just wiped the table down one more time with a dry cloth.
After Serepina left, stillness settled into the room, thick and absolute.
I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes.
My head was empty.
Then Friday arrived.
I had to go meet Levina.
Estelle's words echoed in my ears — that there was something she'd return to me.
The afternoon sunlight was warm, but somehow drained of strength.
I walked the familiar corridor toward the Student Council Room.
The hallway was steeped in the languor of a Friday afternoon.
I hesitated in front of the door.
Should I knock, or just turn back?
I didn't want to see her face.
In the end, I raised my hand and knocked.
Knock, knock.
A low voice came from inside.
"Come in."
Levina's voice.
I gripped the handle and stepped inside.
One wall was crammed with bookcases; the other side held a large conference table.
The air was cool and smelled of old paper with a faint trace of ink.
Levina sat at the grand desk in the center of the room.
Her head was bowed over documents she seemed to be reviewing.
Even though she knew I'd come in, she didn't look up for a long while.
It was always this way.
She'd summon me and pretend not to care, and the moment I spoke, she'd turn high-handed and imperious.
I stood still by the door until she finally raised her head.
The ticking of the wall-mounted pendulum clock seemed unusually loud.
At last, she lifted her head.
Our eyes met.
Her gaze was cold, but something unsteady flickered within it.
Her lips were pressed tight, her jaw set.
She was making an effort to look composed, but I could tell she was on edge.
And that made sense, considering our last fraternal interaction had ended with me straddling her and wringing her neck.
A faint handprint and a broad, pale bruise still lingered on Levina's throat.
"Sit."
She gestured with her chin toward the chair in front of her desk.
I walked over and sat down without a word.
The leather chair let out a creak.
Silence fell between us again.
Levina fidgeted with the papers on her desk, and I watched her fingers.
She wasn't reading or organizing them — just aimlessly scratching around the desktop like she'd lost her way.
"I heard you had something to return."
I was the one to break the silence.
Her fingers paused for a split second.
"Yes."
"Found it too disgusting to keep, I suppose?"
"You really never manage to open your mouth without something low crawling out."
"Those were always your words to me."
"...'Your'?"
"I've been expelled from the family. Isn't that the appropriate address?
Or should I call you Lady Levina instead?"
"The procedures aren't finalized yet."
"Right. The engagement's been decided but not formally broken either."
Levina's lips quivered.
She drew a deep breath.
The sound of her forcing down her emotions was almost audible.
"...Still insolent as ever."
"I wonder. Seems like you're expecting a lot from an outsider."
I leaned back in my chair.
Somewhere along the line, our conversations had all turned into this.
Swiping at each other's words, sneering, digging into old wounds.
And it always used to end with my esteemed elder sister — the one destined to become Family Head someday — grinding me under her heel and looking down from on high.
But now I'm just Ravin.
And to the "me" who isn't 'Ravin,' the name Edelgard was never something worth clinging to.
She seemed to chew on my words for a moment.
Her lips moved, but no sound came.
Instead, she opened a desk drawer, took out something heavy, and set it on the desk.
My mother's revolver.
The afternoon sun caught the black metal, giving it a dull gleam.
"There. I called you here to give it back. Take it."
"How generous."
I rose from the chair and reached for the revolver.
The chill of the metal met my palm.
A weight both familiar and foreign.
"I held onto it because I was worried you'd do something else stupid."
I didn't answer, just picked the revolver up off the desk.
"Whether I die or not is none of your business.
Since when did you start caring so much about me?"
"Ravin."
"What."
"Why can you only ever think in that way?
Twisting everything, taking every kindness for malice."
Her voice was low and subdued.
"Kindness?"
I murmured it under my breath.
The word rolled around on my tongue like something I'd never tasted before.
"Didn't realize 'kindness' was the word for it. Guess the blood really does run different.
This low, stupid bastard can't comprehend it at all."
Her face went pale.
"If you're going to call yourself an outsider, at least show basic decency, Ravin."
"Can't say I ever learned any.
The only decency I know is telling a child whose mother just died that she was a worthless whore..."
Levina cut me off.
Seemed she didn't much like hearing her own words come out of someone else's mouth.
"I was doing it for your sake...!"
"How the hell was any of that for my sake!?"
"You'd been shut up in your room for days— days— doing nothing at all, so I tried to force you out..."
Levina kept going, but the words fizzled, as if even she could hear how asinine it sounded.
"What's the point dragging up the past now?
I've been thrown out anyway. My fault for scrabbling so hard to hold on to something."
"You brought that on yourself.
Always causing trouble, staining the family's honor..."
"Honor."
I let out a hollow laugh.
"That damn 'honor' you always live by.
That great Edelgard honor — the kind that's sullied by my mere existence as a bastard. Isn't that right?"
"Watch your mouth."
"Watch what?"
Levina had no answer.
She just fixed me with a stony glare.
"Tell me, Duke Edelgard — the man who slowly decided I was unsightly and started treating me as less than human after one ill-judged night below the belt — since when was that my fault?
Guess I should've tried harder not to get myself born from a bad fuck."
It had always been that way.
Every time we crossed paths in the mansion's wide, cold corridors, she'd rake her eyes over me like I was filth.
At meals she ignored my existence entirely, and if anyone in the family showed me the slightest attention, she'd march to my room that very night to rain down every insult she had.
'A half-thing with dirty blood.'
'As vulgar as your mother.'
'The air in this house curdles just from having you here.'
And then one day, Levina had started spreading false accusations about me.
That I was destroying the gardens, tormenting the servants, that everything I did outside was utter trash.
I tried to say it wasn't true, but who'd take the word of some bastard over the capable, well-bred legitimate daughter?
I was just the wretch who should've been grateful just to eat and sleep under the same roof.
Because that's what 'Ravin' was — the kind of worthless bastard who'd smile through all that treatment like it was a gift.
"You've always... No. Why have you always... Why did I— ngh."
It wasn't me. It was 'Ravin' who endured all that.
But the line between us had blurred somewhere along the way.
"Why are you like this now?
Are you afraid I might actually die?
Isn't it a miracle I've stayed alive living under the same roof as you?
If it were me, I'd have..."
Levina's eyes shook violently.
She opened her mouth as if to say something, but nothing came out.
Just her dry lips twitching.
"Or do I suddenly look pitiful to you?"
"I don't know."
Her brief reply held a faint tremor.
"I'll go now if we're done here.
Sorry to waste a busy person's time."
"Wait."
Levina called after me.
I turned back slowly.
She'd risen from her seat and stood beside the desk, staring straight at me.
The rims of her eyes were reddening.
"Have something left to say?"
"......."
She mumbled something behind me, but I paid it no mind. I grabbed the handle, opened the door, and stepped into the corridor.
Then I quietly closed the Student Council Room door.
Her voice disappeared completely beyond it.
The hallway was still silent.
As if nothing had happened, I walked away at a slow pace.
I must have been expecting something.
After dying, Levina seemed changed somehow, and I'd caught myself hoping — for what, I'm not sure — that things might get better.
Maybe a part of me thought that since I'd actually died, some kind of reward was due. That something had to be different.
Anyway, I made it back to my room.
Thanks to Serepina's morning cleaning, it was still tidy.
And on the table sat a small sheet of stationery.
Serepina, presumably.
It was about the broken engagement, so I crumpled it up and tossed it aside.
It was always this way.
Her visits every morning — they were probably just to taunt me.
She'd act like we'd meet again somehow, then go ahead with breaking the engagement anyway.
Whatever she said standing beside me, however she treated me, nothing ever really changed.
Just like nothing had ever changed no matter what I'd done before.
Who knew that feeling powerless could grind your self-worth down to nothing like this?
Once I die, it'll work itself out one way or another.
Whether I loop back, or whether dying turns out to be a surprisingly decent [Ending] and I open my eyes right where I originally belong.
I pulled the noose from where I'd crushed it into the wardrobe and secured it firmly to the ceiling.
Then I sat on the sofa, stared blankly at the rope, and smoked.
Until the smoke hung thick in the room.
No bullets left.
Not that any better method came to mind.
When a pleasant dizziness settled in, I got up, dragged a chair over, took a deep breath, and climbed onto it.
And I slipped my neck into what might be the last noose.