Coloring (9)
Coloring (9)
The sofa in the drawing room was excessively soft.
It felt like being swallowed whole.
How long I sat there, I couldn't say.
Time had turned to gauze.
The hours in this mansion seemed to flow at a different speed from the world outside.
Every glance around the room triggered Ravin's memories, replaying scenes that had unfolded within these walls.
Not a pleasant experience.
Dinner came before long.
Levina came to fetch me.
The click of her heels down the corridor was as steady as ever.
She said nothing.
I said nothing.
We walked down the long corridor.
The portraits on the walls seemed to watch us pass.
Every face wore the same expressionless mask as Levina's.
The dining hall was vast.
The ceiling soared above a long table set at the center.
More than ten chairs, but only three people.
At the head of the table, a single man sat alone.
Levina's father, Head of House Edelgard.
A face I knew only from Ravin's memories.
Older now than in those recollections. Gaunter.
Like a man reduced to his own shadow.
He didn't look up when we entered.
"Sit."
His voice was cracked.
"You as well, Levina."
She hesitated a fraction of a second, then quietly took her seat. She'd intended only to deliver me and leave—a faint fracture appeared in that immaculately composed expression.
The meal began.
Servants carried in dishes on silver trays.
The soft clink of knives and forks against porcelain echoed through the enormous room. I cut into the steak. Red juices seeped out.
No one spoke. We just ate.
Then the esteemed Family Head coughed once and let words fall.
"Your mother never cared for food like this."
He said it abruptly, dipping a piece of bread into his soup. His hand trembled, barely perceptible.
"Always thin soup, bread, salad. Claimed she had no taste for expensive spices or steaks slathered in sauces. Other nobles mocked her behind her back. Called her provincial." He coughed. "I liked that about her."
A dry cough, rattling up from somewhere deep in his chest. He looked half a corpse already. His skeletal frame jerked with each spasm.
Levina's brow tightened at the mention of Ravin's mother, but she kept her silence. Her eyes stayed fixed on her plate.
The father studied her. Something complicated moved behind his gaze—the look of a man watching a beloved daughter, or perhaps a man watching the person who had taken his place. Or maybe just a man staring into a mirror that showed him his own past.
"Ravin. You may be a disgrace. You may run wild, cause scandals, spread every manner of rumor. You're still my blood. I don't consider that a stain, whatever others might think." He glanced sidelong at Levina. "But I wished you hadn't been a son."
A knife screeched across a plate.
"My wife believed you might one day take Levina's position."
His clothes were immaculate, but the wrists that emerged from the sleeves were brittle, desiccated.
"You were a bright child. Quick to read. Showed talent with a sword. Her fears may not have been entirely unfounded. I didn't kill my own brother—I merely drove him out. I wonder where that blood ended up."
He looked at Levina as he spoke. She met his eyes and showed nothing. He exhaled and continued.
"So when your mother died..."
Another cough. Longer this time, more violent. His bony shoulders quaked.
"...as grieved as I was, a part of me felt relief. Too many people hated her. Staying alive seemed to cause her more pain. There was nothing I could do to help."
He spoke matter-of-factly, as if discussing the weather. Not the death of his woman, but the death of a neighbor's old dog.
"The Academy. Will you graduate?"
I lifted my head and looked at his face properly for the first time. Sunken eyes. Bloodless lips. He wasn't looking at me. His gaze was fixed somewhere behind me, on empty air.
"Yes."
"I'd prefer you didn't."
His voice was quiet.
"The more you know, the more you've held—the more you remember what you've lost. Living like a fool isn't the worst fate. Might be happier, in the end."
A faint smile crossed his lips. Self-mocking, yet somehow unburdened.
"No one pays attention to a walking corpse waiting to die."
He jerked his chin toward Levina.
"Ravin. From now on, you're just Ravin. Levina decided it. My wife decided it."
He rose unsteadily. His chair scraped back with a harsh noise. A butler hurried over to support him.
He left the dining hall. Never once looked back.
In the cavernous room, only Levina and I remained.
A long silence stretched between us.
"You heard him."
Levina spoke first. Her voice was the same as always, but if you listened closely, there was the faintest tremor underneath.
"I heard. What do you want me to say?"
"Stop clinging to that Academy. Father wasn't wrong, was he?"
"What do you actually want from me?"
"Nothing."
"..."
"I mean it literally. I want you to do nothing. I'll give you the annex. Live there. I'll supply all the liquor, tobacco, and entertainment you could want. Ah—bring lowlife thugs or whores inside, and I'll throw them out. Be aware."
"Levina."
"Or, since Father will pass soon enough, once that happens I can probably give you a room in the main house, whatever Mother says. Let you stay as a guest. You can read, you've had at least a basic education, so you could remain with the family and..."
Before I knew what I was doing, I picked up the glass salad bowl beside me. The chill of it was vivid against my palm.
I hurled it.
Crash.
The glass bowl traced an arc and struck Levina squarely on the head. The sound of shattering rang out as shards and shredded vegetables scattered in every direction.
Blood ran down from her scalp. It mixed with dressing and dripped thick and sticky down her cheek.
Levina sat still, as if nothing had happened. She made no move to wipe the blood away.
She just looked at me.
And kept offering what she thought were merciful proposals.
"You could stay like this. Help with the work. Not many people live in this mansion anyway. Even if you run into Mother, well, we could manage somehow..."
"Levina. Shut up."
She closed her mouth. Took a slow breath. Wiped roughly at the blood running near her hairline, stared down at her stained hand, then continued in a low murmur.
"What could I have done?"
She rose.
Walked toward me, slowly.
"How long are you going to keep calling me Levina like that? I'm your sister. Your older sister. Not Estelle, not that insane Saintess—I'm your sister."
Her voice was sodden and heavy, like waterlogged cotton.
"Do you know that crazy bitch is overlaying you with her dead little brother?"
"Doesn't matter."
She let out a hollow laugh. Stepped in front of me and seized me by the collar.
"What could I have done? Huh? If your mother hadn't been some lowborn whore. If you—if you hadn't been a half-blood bastard. None of this would have happened."
Her voice climbed steadily.
"If Father. If Father hadn't paid you any attention. If he'd treated you like a servant instead of a son. If my mother hadn't hated you so viciously. Everything—everything could have been different!"
I stood. I didn't want her looking down at me.
My chair scraped loudly across the floor.
"And then? Then what? When the Lady Edelgard punished me by locking me in a wardrobe, when the servants fed me rotten scraps in a dog bowl for days, when your social circle turned me into a punchline every time you went out—you kept your mouth shut. And so I went down to the village to steal food. Lived on the street running a gang of thugs instead of sleeping in the main house. And all anyone ever called me was a goddamn degenerate. With Serepina, I was the one who'd gone wrong. I was the one who was broken. I was the—was I really that fucking broken?"
"You should have endured it! You're that whore's son! The Belluz family was too good for you! You could have at least refrained from running a street gang, you piece of vermin—!"
Smack.
I slapped her across the face. I didn't care if she was bleeding or not.
"Ah, how fortunate for you. Born a fine noble, cursed with a pathetic mother whose husband's heart was stolen by a commoner. Must be wonderful."
She kept talking even with my hand still gripping her face.
"I protected you. When Mother tried to have you killed, I stopped it. I was the one who told her to leave you alone. That the elders would never choose a degenerate like you! Not that you'd know any of that."
My hand stopped mid-swing.
The strength drained from my body.
"You should've just let me die."
"..."
She had no answer. Her lips just trembled.
"You—you were always like this. Always ruined everything. Everything I tried to do for you, you kicked it all away. How many times did I tell you to control yourself? To stop causing scenes the moment you stepped outside? You never listened. You threw the Edelgard name around like a thug and dragged the family's reputation through the mud at the Academy with your constant, idiotic antics!"
Tears streamed down her face. Blood and tears mixed together, streaking her cheeks.
"And what more was I supposed to do? I was a child! I couldn't reduce my father—still healthy back then—to some senile relic in the back room. There was no way I could push back against my mother's influence!"
When had Levina, who once seemed so terrifying, become this pitiful?
Why had I ever groveled under someone like her, desperate for her to look at me again? Because I thought it would play out like a novel—the black sheep turns over a new leaf, everyone's opinion flips overnight, an instant redemption arc?
"Just listen to me. Just do as I say. That's all it takes. I can give you anything. Whatever you want, I can give it to you."
"You're insane."
I shook off her grip and turned away.
I left Levina behind in the dining hall, muttering blankly to herself. Ignored the panicked servants. Ignored the butler trying to detain me. Walked the corridor to the mansion's main entrance.
Climbed into the waiting carriage.
Told the driver to take me back to the Academy.
The coachman started to object, then met my eyes and set the horses moving.
Inside the rattling carriage, I stared out the window. Landmarks Serepina had pointed out drifted past one by one.
I didn't much want to see them.
I just wanted to go back. Right now.