Coloring (2)
Coloring (2)
Serepina sat on the sofa.
She said nothing.
She only stared blankly at a fixed point in the air.
Occasionally she lifted her head to glance at me, then dropped her gaze again.
Her hands moved restlessly.
She clutched and released the hem of her skirt over and over, then fidgeted with her fingers aimlessly.
Sometimes she gnawed at the skin around her nails.
Her lips parted several times.
She seemed on the verge of speaking, but no words came out.
Only the motion of her tongue wetting dry lips repeated itself.
Her unease drifted through the room like mist.
Her gaze traveled toward the ashtray.
The butts I'd smoked and discarded.
"...That."
After an immense silence, she opened her mouth.
Her voice was very small.
"Why do you even smoke those?"
Instead of answering, I picked up the cigarette pack and held it out to her.
She hesitated for a moment.
Her blue eyes wavered.
Then she reached out with trembling fingers and took a single cigarette.
Pinched between slender white fingers, it looked somehow out of place.
She brought it to her lips.
With clumsy, unpracticed movements.
I rose silently and walked over to her.
I struck a match and lit it for her.
The small flame illuminated her face brightly.
An expression stiff with tension.
Eyelashes fluttering faintly.
The flame touched the cigarette's tip but it didn't catch.
She held it in her mouth, at a loss.
"Bite down gently and inhale."
I said quietly.
She did as I said, drawing in a careful breath with the cigarette between her lips.
I struck another match.
This time it lit.
An orange ember bloomed as the tip began to burn.
At the same time, pale smoke leaked from her mouth.
Cough, cough—hack.
She coughed violently.
Her face crumpled, tears welling in her eyes.
"Wh-why would anyone smoke these?"
Her voice was tearful.
She looked ready to throw the cigarette away at any second.
But she didn't.
Instead, she began to smoke, slowly.
Awkward and unpracticed.
She couldn't even inhale properly—the smoke swirled inside her mouth and then she blew it out.
There was something about it that felt like she was clumsily trying to mimic me.
We smoked in silence, staring at nothing.
Smoke filled the room and slowly dispersed.
Time seemed to pass at a crawl.
When the cigarette had burned down about halfway, she spoke.
Her gaze remained fixed on the floor.
"I told Father. About breaking off the engagement."
As if it were nothing. The way she always spoke.
Her voice held a fine tremor.
She'd been shaken by what she'd just seen from me.
"Then go home. Don't do things that don't suit you."
"...That's all you have to say?"
Her voice shook with disbelief.
"What else is there to say?
If I begged you to stay, would you actually stay?"
At those words Serepina's blue eyes trembled.
I stood and walked past her to the window.
"They say you released a monster that was sealed in the Forbidden Archive."
"I didn't do it. You must've heard I was cleared of suspicion too."
"...And you expect me to believe that?"
"Yeah."
"Everyone says you did it.
They say you killed a classmate and walked away clean because you're the precious Young Master."
"If everyone says so, I guess that's how it is. What do the facts matter?"
Maybe that answer—delivered while I stared out the window instead of looking at her—didn't sit well.
When I turned my head, Serepina's shoulders were trembling faintly.
She raised her head and looked at me.
Her eyes were full of distrust.
The way they always had been.
The suffocating agony of hands crushing my throat.
The helplessness of thrashing at empty air.
Her indifferent back as I stood at death's threshold.
All of it flashed through my mind at once.
The image of Serepina from that moment surfaced.
Even as I hung there dying, she'd tidied my room neatly and set the chair upright again.
My feet couldn't reach, no matter how I stretched.
Because it was an illusion.
But what was the difference, really, between that phantasm and the Serepina in front of me?
Dying and coming back changed nothing.
Everything except me stayed exactly the same.
I was still a suspect, and she still didn't believe me.
Earning her trust was far harder than dying.
I was ridiculous.
"Heh."
A strange sound leaked from deep in my throat.
A suppressed noise, like air escaping.
"Heh, haa..."
I gripped the windowsill and started laughing.
At first it was quiet — a choked, stifled sound.
My shoulders heaved. My body shook on its own.
I couldn't even stand properly. I walked to the sofa and collapsed into it.
Serepina stared at me with a bewildered expression.
Her eyes went round.
"Ravin, what's wrong...?"
I didn't answer.
Couldn't answer.
The laughter wouldn't stop.
I leaned back against the sofa, clutching my stomach, and laughed.
Tears came.
Laughing so hard I cried.
I could barely breathe.
I'm pretty fond of black comedy, but this isn't even fucking funny.
Once it broke loose, the laughter poured out uncontrollably, like a dam collapsing.
Serepina, face utterly flustered, reached out to pat my shoulder.
I shook her hand off.
And kept laughing.
Until my throat went raw and my stomach ached.
Like a madman.
How long did it go on?
The laughter gradually subsided.
I gasped for breath, sprawled limp against the sofa.
All the strength drained from my body.
Silence settled over the room again.
Serepina simply watched me, her face pale.
Confusion swirled in her eyes.
I met her gaze.
And very slowly, I opened my mouth.
"I like you, Serepina. I think I love you too much.
I know you've heard it every single day so it probably means nothing, but I mean it."
Serepina couldn't muster any reply.
She just stared at me, blankly.
"Even if you never believe a word I say. Even if you're always too busy condemning me no matter what I do. Even if you let other people push you around and swallow whatever those bastards spout about me—people whose faces you've never even seen—over anything I tell you. I don't hate you.
No matter how much effort I put in, no matter how many hundreds of times I say I love you, you never give it back. And I still don't hate you."
Thinking back, I hadn't told a single lie in the last three years.
The words I'd said to Serepina—that I liked her—the letters crammed full of pretty phrases.
I could be certain there'd been no lies, at least.
"And I hate myself for it.
I hate the me who's going to be thrown away by you.
I always act like I'm fine, but it feels like I'll die without you."
The more Serepina heard Ravin's words, the paler her face grew.
Her blue eyes wandered directionless around the room.
My face. The letter stained with cigarette ash. The butts piled in the ashtray. And her own trembling hands.
She wanted to be angry.
She wanted to say, then why didn't you do better from the start?
She wanted to scold him—was he really trying to gloss over what happened in the Forbidden Archive by throwing around the word love so carelessly?
But that didn't feel right.
Every single word he said stole her breath.
She wanted to hold him right then and tell him everything was alright.
And so she covered her mouth with her hand.
Because breaking the engagement was already decided.
She'd already told the Heir Apparent of House Edelgard. Already told her father.
What could she possibly say now?
That laughter—now inaudible—still echoed in her ears.
She hated Ravin.
She despised him for always causing trouble, for dragging her reputation through the mud.
But at the same time, she liked him.
She couldn't help but like him.
They'd spent their whole short lives together, since childhood.
With someone so dreadful and so dear.
The cigarettes he'd never once smoked when he was with her.
Her resolve wavered.
If she threw a fit right now and said she wouldn't go through with breaking the engagement, would he accept it?
Her father might, but Lady Levina certainly wouldn't.
That woman had seemed genuinely regretful that Serepina was marrying Ravin, after all.
At times she'd even made it excessively clear.
"Maybe that's why. I can't stomach the thought of seeing you with someone else. Not while I'm alive, at least."
She couldn't stand hearing it—the wish to die at the hands of the person you love.
Because it felt like not just Ravin, but she herself would become someone who deserved to die.
The engagement was already over. Someday she'd marry someone else. And she hated the Serepina who used to come to his room every morning to clean.
Her face slowly flushed.
Blue eyes trembling, offering no answer, looking only at me.
Even this Serepina was dear to me.
It was Ravin's fault.
This feeling is nothing but dregs.
And still, I loved her.
Maybe because over those three years—acting the fool in every way possible, fawning over her, writing letters, eating meals while enduring her scolding, being rejected no matter what I did—I'd come to love the time we spent together.
Even if she never trusted me. Even if she despised me. Even knowing she'd abandon me in the end, just like now.
"The engagement."
Serepina finally spoke.
Her voice was as thin and tiny as a mosquito's whine.
"The engagement talk... next time.
When the formal documents arrive. We'll talk again then."
She rose from her seat.
Walked toward the door with unsteady steps.
Like someone who'd spent every last ounce of strength.
"Fine."
I answered.
Watching her back blankly.
The door closed and she was gone.
Only the acrid smell of cigarettes and the faint trace of her lilac scent remained in the room.
I picked up the envelope on the table—the one marked with cigarette burns.
I tore it, slowly.
Into two pieces, then four.
Between my fingers, the shredded scraps of paper drifted down, weightless.