Lingering Fragrance (1)
Lingering Fragrance (1)
Morning.
Serepina tied on her white apron, the same one she always wore, and made her way to Ravin's room.
The hallway lay hushed in weekend stillness. Pale dawn light stretched long across the floor through the windows.
In her hands, a freshly washed cloth and a small feather duster.
Had he read the letter she'd left on his table yesterday? That clumsy attempt—promising she would stall the broken engagement as long as she could, that she would find some way, somehow. She knew perfectly well there was no way. More likely he hadn't even bothered to read it properly. Still, a splinter of hope had lodged itself in her chest.
She stopped before his door and drew a shallow breath.
The door was shut tight.
She hesitated, hand resting on the handle. What should she say? Better to say nothing at all. He didn't want conversation. Speaking to someone and receiving no answer—that was a terribly sad thing. Ravin had always been like that. Never letting the sadness show.
It would be laughable, wouldn't it—to kick away someone's feelings, sever every tie, and then suddenly start hovering close again. Serepina knew full well how strange it was, showing up every morning just to clean, just to see his face. Especially as his former fiancée. Even more so.
The handle was cold. She took a small breath and opened the door.
Creeeak.
The old hinges made the same sound they always did.
The room's air spilled into the hallway at once—heavy, stale. It carried the acrid smell of tobacco, layered with something sweet and faintly sour. An unpleasant, unfamiliar smell. Serepina wrinkled her nose. He'd been smoking through the night again. In all the mornings she'd come to clean, the room had never smelled this bad. Today was sharper than usual. Even for someone who smoked all day in a closed room, this was different. A scent she couldn't place.
She stepped inside.
Her eyes stopped at the center of the room.
Ravin was there.
Suspended from the ceiling.
In the middle of the room, hanging from the ceiling. A human shape, slack and limp. It swayed faintly from side to side, like a pendulum. A current of air, perhaps. Or a trick of her eyes.
The Ravin she had known did not look like this.
Serepina did not move. She stood there, hand still gripping the door handle, staring.
His tongue protruded, swollen, far past his lips. His eyes bulged as though about to burst, fixed on a single point in the ceiling. His face had bloated into a dark, bruised red—the features barely recognizable.
He floated in the air.
A filthy strip of cloth was wound around his neck, and his head was wrenched at an angle no living neck could hold.
Serepina did not move. She did not scream. Serepina could not move. She hadn't even dropped the cloth and duster in her hands. There was nothing Serepina could do. She could only stand there and look at him.
Her mind went white. No thoughts surfaced. She prayed no thoughts would surface. Her heart refused to accept what was happening, whatever conclusions her uselessly sharp mind might deliver.
This was only a nightmare. She had slept poorly last night, that was all—exhaustion playing tricks.
She closed her eyes. When she opened them, he would be sprawled on the sofa staring blankly at the ceiling, or still in bed, not yet risen. Then she could quietly begin cleaning, as she always did.
But when she opened her eyes again, the scene had not changed.
Ravin still hung from the ceiling. Motionless. The tips of his feet pointed into empty space.
Her gaze drifted downward. Directly beneath him, a wooden chair lay on its side. The chair he always kept at his desk. One leg had snapped off and rested against the floor at a precarious angle.
Why was the chair over there? She needed to set it upright to clean. Dust would gather.
Serepina stepped into the room—slowly, very slowly. Careful to make no sound, as though trying not to wake someone sleeping. One step. Another. The creak of floorboards fractured the silence. Shadows stretched long across the wood. She tried not to step on them. She didn't know why. She only felt that she shouldn't.
She lifted her head and looked up at him.
"...Ravin?"
No voice came out. Only her lips moved, barely shaping the name.
There was no answer.
She reached out. Her trembling fingers brushed his dangling leg.
It wasn't cold. The texture wasn't far removed from lifeless meat.
At the sensation, Serepina's body lurched. She staggered backward. Her back hit the cold wall. Still, she remained on her feet.
"Ah..."
Her knees buckled. She crumpled to the floor. The cleaning tools scattered from her hands.
Thud. Clatter.
Instead of a scream, a strangled, breathless sound escaped her. Serepina seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. Her chest constricted. She needed air, but her body had lost the method.
She opened her mouth. Nothing came out. Only a thin wisp of air.
Her eyes caught the table. The letter she had left—crumpled, shoved beside the wastebasket. Beside it, a peach, half-rotted, collapsing into itself. A few fruit flies drifted over the blackened flesh.
She raised her head and looked at Ravin again. His unfocused eyes seemed to stare down at her.
A cool breeze swept through the window and brushed Serepina's face. The hanging body shifted with it, grazing her cheek.
"...The weather is beautiful today."
Serepina murmured the words blankly.
Beyond the window, the world blazed with light. The sky was a flawless blue, not a cloud in sight. Far too lovely a day for Ravin to die.
She sat there for a long time. She didn't know what to do. Should she call for someone? Tell someone? Or just... stay like this.
She could do nothing. Her body felt turned to stone.
Serepina looked up at him again. A motionless doll hanging from the ceiling.
When she thought about it, Ravin had always given her everything she'd ever wanted. When she'd accused him of not caring enough, of not loving her enough, he had responded with heartfelt letters and daily visits coaxing her to eat, bringing her favorite coffee nearly every day. Serepina had dismissed it all as lies and pushed him away. Anything she said she wanted, he would find and deliver—and what she returned was always...
Who was it, she wondered, who had told the man who listened to every word, who fulfilled every wish—who had told him every single morning that she wished he would die?
Serepina curled into herself.
She was terrified. Unbearably so.
Because she had probably killed Ravin. It felt exactly as though she had killed him with her own hands.
She had to call someone. The Saintess—the one Ravin had been going to see—surely if she could just bring the Saintess here, she could somehow bring him back. She was that famous, after all.
But her body refused to move. Her feet might as well have taken root in the floorboards. She couldn't even open the door and step outside. She could do nothing but look at him—nothing but meet those empty eyes.
How much time passed?
The light beyond the window grew brighter. The light beyond the window began to dim.
Serepina's gaze fell on the feather duster lying on the floor. Why was that there? Ah. Cleaning. She needed to clean. He hated mess. No—she hated mess. So she had cleaned every day. She thought he would like it. Nobody disliked living in a clean space. Someday, maybe, they could start again. Maybe the broken engagement could be treated as though it had never happened.
She pushed herself up, unsteady. Her hand tightened around the duster. She would start with the table. The rotten peach had to be thrown away. The fallen chair needed to be set upright. And the window—she had to air the room. The smoke was too thick.
Step by step, she moved like a machine. She walked beneath Ravin's hanging body toward the table. Above her head, his feet swayed.
She tried to focus only on the dust in front of her.
But she couldn't.
His presence overwhelmed everything in the room.
In the end, Serepina dropped the duster. Dust swirled and danced in the orange afternoon light.
Serepina leaned against the wall, staring at him vacantly. Her mouth hung open, unable to close. Slowly, she turned her head toward the window. The sun had already set. The sky was deepening into a dark indigo, and stars were beginning to appear one by one.
It was a beautiful night. The night of the day Ravin died was heart-achingly beautiful.
For a reason she couldn't name, she wanted to hold him. So she righted the wobbling chair and stood on it, wrapping her arms tightly around Ravin—as though she would never let go.
Ravin's body was found two days later. By Kyle and his companions, who had come after hearing rumors that Edelgard's disgrace, Ravin, had seized Serepina and locked her in his room for two days.
The Saintess, who had been standing to the side wearing a playful smile, watched her own expression collapse. She'd been expecting something moderately entertaining. At the very least, something entertaining. There was nothing of the sort. Only Serepina, clinging tightly to a corpse—not some family disgrace—dozing in a half-sleep.