Lingering Fragrance (2)
Lingering Fragrance (2)
When she opened her eyes, the first thing Serepina saw was a pristine white ceiling.
The sharp, sterile smell of disinfectant filled her nostrils.
The infirmary.
She tried to sit up, but her body felt like waterlogged cotton.
"......"
Her throat was parched.
She opened her mouth, but no sound came. Her tongue was stiff, as if packed with sand.
She turned her head.
Ravin's sister sat in a chair by the window.
She was looking outside. Her profile was as cold and expressionless as a statue. Faint bruises were still visible on her throat.
"......Could I have some water."
She finally managed to speak. A cracked, hoarse rasp.
Levina turned her head.
Her eyes were hollow. Perhaps the light from the window was partly to blame, but the dark circles carved deep beneath them told a different story.
Wordlessly, Levina stood and picked up a water glass from the bedside table. Serepina took it with trembling hands. The cold water slid down her throat, and for the first time, her mind felt clear.
"......"
The moment she set the glass down, Levina seized her by the collar.
It happened in an instant.
A choked cough.
Her body jerked forward. Levina's face was inches from hers.
"Why the hell were you just sitting there like that."
"I don't quite understand what you're—"
"Why did you spend the entire day holding a dead Ravin. No calling for help. No intention of letting him go."
"Why would Ravin be dead?"
The strength left Levina's grip.
Her signature blank expression nearly twisted. She only bit down lightly on her lip, glanced vacantly at the air, and let out a long breath.
"......"
"I know. He died. Please don't look at me like that. I'm not insane."
Serepina said it plainly, then dropped her head and began to laugh—a stifled, half-hysterical sound swallowed into her own chest.
"Isn't it all a bit funny."
"What is."
"Everything. This whole situation. How I look. How you look. It's all absurd, isn't it? I said I wished he'd die, and then he actually went and died on me."
Serepina's laughter filled the hollow silence of the infirmary. Though it was closer to weeping than laughter.
Levina said nothing. She simply looked down at her. Not a flicker of expression on her face.
"Not funny, is it? Your brother's dead, after all."
"......."
"Well, he was just the family's disgrace. A thorn in your side. Probably feels more like relief than a joke. Isn't that right, Heir Apparent of the Edelgard family?"
Serepina stopped laughing and looked up at Levina. Her face was streaked with tear tracks, but her eyes were bright.
"Why won't you answer? Don't pretend you're decent when your insides are black and festering."
Levina's brow gave the faintest twitch. The only change whatsoever.
"Say one more word and I'll take it as an insult."
"Oh, will you now?"
A mocking smile curved Serepina's lips.
"One disrespectful word and you're ready to act, but what did you do to Ravin?"
"He deserved it."
"Ah, did he now? Well, I suppose Ravin was the type to deserve it."
"......."
"Even so. You shouldn't have done that."
"Now you say this? You were the one who wanted the engagement broken—and that's the accusation you bring?"
"You're the one who made him that way."
Levina flinched at the word 'you.'
"Don't address me like that."
Her voice came out with a slight tremor.
"Then what? Should I call you 'Lady Edelgard,' like I did a moment ago?"
Levina didn't answer. She simply glared at Ravin's former fiancée with a faintly furrowed brow.
"Do you know why Ravin died?"
"Lie down and clear your head. I understand you're distraught over Ravin's death, but right now you're not in any—"
"Where exactly are you going to find someone here more lucid than me!?"
Serepina's voice rose, then she caught her breath. She steadied herself and continued in a calm, cold tone.
"It was because of you."
Her voice was quiet. But somehow, the air in the infirmary seemed to grow several degrees colder.
"You know perfectly well why he turned out that way."
Levina was still silent. She merely looked down at Serepina.
"When we were young. How desperately he clung to you. He respected you more than anyone, you know. He even used to ask me what kind of gift might finally soften your heart, make him look good in your eyes."
Serepina pushed herself upright in the bed. Her body still felt impossibly heavy. She didn't care. She wanted to face Levina directly.
"But how did you treat him? You always looked at him like he was a worm. The family's disgrace. The dirty bastard child. As if the very fact of his existence disgusted you."
"What would you know. I still treated him as a brother."
Levina's voice was low and dry. But she was avoiding eye contact, fiddling with the water glass on the table. She couldn't meet Serepina's blue eyes.
"You have to know how he was treated in that estate before the academy. Do I need to list everything? I heard no shortage of stories, given how long we'd been together since childhood. And I saw it myself plenty of times—the way you'd ignore Ravin right in front of me."
"......That was for his own good. Because at some point he started getting ideas above his station. He needed to understand his place."
Levina paused to think, then continued.
"You know as well as I do that in normal circumstances, a bastard like him would never be permitted to live under the same roof or receive the same education. Everything that child had came through my leniency. Because I thought—at least we shared the same blood, if only by half."
Serepina was momentarily at a loss for words.
Levina's logic, at least to Levina herself, was so cleanly constructed, so absolute, that there was no crack wide enough to pry open. But to Serepina, Ravin was just Ravin. The man she loved, regardless of what blood ran in his veins. At the very least, his being a bastard had never factored into why she hated him.
"That isn't treatment. That's husbandry. You should never have let him live with you at all."
Levina lifted her head and looked Serepina in the eye. The dark circles were heavy. Her lips were so dry the skin was peeling at the edges, and her cheeks were strangely flushed, as if she'd caught a chill.
"You're overstepping."
"What overstepped was your own behavior."
"I understand you're upset your former fiancé is dead, but have you lost even basic sense?"
"Ravin admired you. He wanted to be like you. You seemed so cool to him—cold, sharp, brilliant, utterly flawless at everything. He wanted to be like you more than he wanted to be with someone like me...."
"What's the point of saying any of this now."
"And unlike you, I'm on the stupid side. I suppose I took after Ravin. Or maybe we were together so long that he ended up taking after me. I can't pretend everything's fine the way you do. Can't act like a dead person is just dead and that's all there is to it."
"You're speaking as if I'm the problem."
"Well. If I consider the fact that you're effectively the one who drove him out of the family... I at least tried to make things right with Ravin again. The rumor that I was visiting his room every morning—there wasn't a soul in the academy who hadn't heard about it. Did you somehow miss it?"
"Trying? That's what you call trying? Showing up every morning to do a bit of cleaning? Why didn't you just hire some suitable servant to send his way? Or did he only start looking valuable to you after the engagement was broken?"
Levina's voice was ice. But underneath it ran a faint, unsteady tremor.
"Fine, I drove him out. And? What exactly could Ravin have accomplished if he'd stayed? Do you think he could've become family head? Even if he did, would the elders have left him in peace?"
"You sound as though you did it for his sake."
"Because I did do it for his sake. If that child had remained in the family—hell, if he'd grown up as a decent, upstanding man instead of a wreck—he'd have been poisoned long before now."
"And you'd have been the one who slipped the poison."
"......You're especially careless with your words today."
"Was I ever careful?"
Serepina smiled faintly. A self-mocking expression.
Ever since the day she'd held Ravin's body in her arms, the only thought that surfaced in her mind, day after day, was a desire to tear out her own tongue.
"You claim you did everything for Ravin. It's all a lie. To think this was supposed to be his sister. His family. Ha."
Serepina bit her lip, unable to continue.
Levina turned her gaze toward the window. As if she no longer wanted to look at Serepina's face.
Silence stretched between them.
Beyond the infirmary window, the faint sound of students passing by drifted in. The world outside was peaceful, as if nothing had happened. In truth, nothing had. Ravin's death was nothing. One ruined, disowned, engagement-broken wretch had died. A decent piece of gossip, nothing more. Nothing of any consequence.
"Why did you want to break off the engagement?"
Levina spoke first. An attempt to redirect. She wanted, at the very least, for the arrows to stop pointing at her.
"If you cared about the boy that much, shouldn't you have stayed by his side to the end? Even if, as you claim, I was the one who nudged you toward it."
"......"
This time it was Serepina who didn't answer.
She let her gaze fall to her own fingers. Slender, pale fingers. The ones that had once held Ravin's hand.
"I wonder. Why did I want that."
Serepina stared blankly into space.
"How many times did I hope on my own and get disappointed on my own. I believed he'd change, and then I turned my back over some small misunderstanding. Not once did I ever truly believe what he said."
Agitated, she started gnawing at her fingernails. They were already clipped short. The skin tore, and blood beaded up.
"When he started pulling away, little by little, all I did was pile on blame. I never helped him with a single thing."
She watched the droplets of blood welling on her fingertip, vacant-eyed.
"Maybe that's why. I want there to be someone I can blame. I don't want to hear it's my fault. Even if it is. So I hate you."
"That won't bring him back."
"I know."
Serepina's answer was calm.
"Which makes me resent you even more. Even you should've believed in him till the end. You said you treated him as a brother, didn't you? You were family."
"Family..."
Levina turned the word over in her mouth. As if she'd never heard it before.
A ghost of a cold smirk crossed her lips.
"What was the Ravin you knew like?"
The question was abrupt. Serepina couldn't quite follow why Levina would ask it now. But the Ravin that rose in her mind answered at once.
"He was kind. At least when he first met me. He didn't know how to hurt anyone. He was always smiling. He didn't know how to hate, either."
Serepina spoke as if recalling the distant past, eyes fixed on the air.
"At least, that's the Ravin I knew. Until you made him otherwise."
"...Yeah. He was that sort of child."
Levina, too, spoke as if recalling the distant past, eyes fixed on the air.
"Whenever he came back from seeing you, he'd stop being my obedient little brother and go back to being Ravin again."
Serepina couldn't follow what Levina meant by that, so she said nothing more. Blaming Levina, hurling accusations—none of it brought her any relief. She gave up on resentment altogether. At least for now. Right now, she was simply too exhausted.
"What now?" Serepina asked. "He's gone. The presence that tormented you has vanished. Are you relieved?"
Levina slowly turned her head and looked at her.
"The funeral is tomorrow morning. Just the family. A quiet affair."
Serepina nodded.