Lingering Trace (2)
Lingering Trace (2)
Serepina stayed buried in her room, just as she had been.
She had lost all sense of how much time had passed.
The thick curtains over the windows refused every sliver of light. The room lay submerged in an unchanging dark.
Morning, evening.
Neither mattered anymore.
She had stopped attending classes. Stopped seeing the friends she'd once been close to. That, too, felt like a long time ago.
She hadn't tried to count the days.
She simply curled inside the hollow her body had worn into the mattress.
Now and then she ate from the tray a dormitory servant slid through the gap under the door.
Most of the food dried out untouched. The water turned lukewarm.
Only when hunger twisted into something unbearable did she tear off a mouthful of stale bread before letting the rest sit.
After Ravin told her he could no longer trust her, everything had stopped.
The words wouldn't leave her ears.
Serepina turned over in her mind how easily she had once spoken those same words.
When Ravin tried to explain the Forbidden Archive incident. When he got tangled in trouble at the Academy. Even when he was caught up in the pettiest misunderstandings.
She had always silenced him with the same phrase.
I can't trust you.
How could I ever trust you?
The things he'd done before. The wrongs he'd committed.
Looking back, he might have dodged an answer now and then, but he hadn't actually lied to her.
Even when he caused trouble, even when he did something wrong, he had always told her the truth.
But telling him she couldn't trust him had become a weapon too familiar, too convenient.
Because everyone around her said the same thing.
Her father. Levina. Everyone at the Academy. They all said Ravin was exactly that kind of person.
She had only repeated their words like a parrot, firmly believing the judgment was her own.
She had never once seriously considered how deep those words wounded him.
But when he threw the words back at her, they became a boulder crushing her chest.
She couldn't breathe.
The same word. The exact same sentence.
So why did it hurt this much?
How many years had he — had Ravin — endured this exact pain?
Only now, faintly, did she feel she might understand something of what he'd carried.
But it was already too late.
Far too late.
These belated realizations didn't matter now. The engagement was broken. They had become less than strangers.
He would have thought she wasn't even worth listening to.
She had only ever tormented him. Only ever wounded him.
Maybe that was why he'd chosen that maid.
That girl, at least, would have believed him.
Serepina remembered the day he came back from the annex. How peaceful his face had looked.
An expression she had never once seen when he was with her.
When he was with her, his smiles weren't easy or natural like that. They were constructed, meant to placate.
Jealousy stirred, but a despair heavier than jealousy swallowed her whole.
In the end, all of it was her own doing.
Whatever the truth was, she no longer wanted to do anything at all.
She had only ever run her mouth about loving Ravin. She'd never shown it. Never expressed it directly.
And so Ravin had discarded her.
Truthfully, she wasn't even sure 'discarded' was the right word.
She'd been the one trying to break off the engagement, saying she couldn't trust him. Only at the very end had she clung to him.
While spouting insane, unhinged excuses about not being in her right mind.
She just wanted to disappear, slowly, right here on this bed.
When she closed her eyes, childhood memories surfaced.
An afternoon sharing freshly baked bread with Ravin from the village bakery.
His face was vivid — laughing with crumbs stuck all around his mouth.
Memories of running barefoot through the manor garden came back too.
She hadn't cared that the hem of her dress was getting filthy. She just chased after him.
When he fell, she fell too, and they laughed together in the dirt.
The first day she held Ravin's hand.
The awkward feel of his sweaty palm.
His face flushed bright red.
The day she first kissed his cheek came back as well.
That day, Ravin had gathered lilacs from somewhere and handed them to her, saying they were for her sake.
The beginnings of the memories were always beautiful and happy.
But every single one ended the same way.
The sharp words she'd hurled at him.
'How could I trust you? Do you know how hard you make things for me? Everyone says you're the problem. They say they feel sorry for me, stuck with a fiancé like you.'
'Do you even mean any of this junk you write and call letters?'
The image of herself lashing out came back like an afterimage.
And that afterimage soon flickered into Ravin's hollow face as he said he couldn't bring himself to trust her.
Then the scene shifted without warning.
Ravin crumpled on the ground, blood streaming from his head.
Ravin swaying from a noose hung from the ceiling.
Ravin burning to death in the flames, screaming her name in utter desperation.
Whenever those terrible dreams came, Serepina always woke with a scream.
Then she cried for a long time.
She had woken from just such an ominous dream now.
Her whole body was slick with cold sweat.
She staggered up and made her way to the washroom.
She splashed cold water on her face again and again.
Then it came.
Knock, knock.
A sound at the door.
Serepina didn't move.
Probably another servant.
They'd have brought bread and water.
It had been about a week since even the friends who'd stayed close had stopped coming.
The first few days they'd knocked, full of worry, but nobody came anymore.
Talking to a room that gave no answer was exhausting, tiresome work.
She decided to ignore whatever she heard and walked back to bed.
She pulled the blanket over her head.
But the voice outside the door didn't belong to a maid.
"Serepina."
It was Kyle's voice.
Low, weighted, and flat.
"Your childhood friend is dead."
Serepina's breath stopped short.
Had she misheard?
Maybe it was an auditory hallucination.
She had been dreaming of Ravin dying just moments ago.
Maybe her body was simply weakened from barely eating these days.
But Kyle's voice was much too clear.
A voice with no feeling in it at all — just a dry delivery of fact.
Silence.
The cold air of the corridor seemed to seep through the crack beneath the door.
Serepina slowly pulled the blanket away.
Her body wouldn't obey.
She forced herself upright.
Her feet touched the floor.
The cold sensation of the marble spread through her.
Staggering, she moved toward the entrance.
The distance was only a few steps, but it felt impossibly far.
She took hold of the doorknob.
It was cold.
She drew a deep breath and slowly opened the door.
Kyle stood outside.
His face was gaunt and hollowed out.
Like someone who hadn't slept properly in days, darkness pooled under his eyes, and his lips were dry and cracked.
But his eyes were the real problem.
There wasn't a trace of life in them.
"...That's."
Serepina's voice came out raw and frayed.
"That's not something you say even as a joke."
Kyle showed no reaction to her words.
He just looked at her.
"If you don't believe me, go see for yourself.
Or ask that precious Heir Apparent of yours."
Serepina's mind went blank.
Kyle said nothing more. He turned and vanished down the corridor.
Listening to his footsteps recede, Serepina stood rooted to the spot for a moment.
Then she snapped to.
She stumbled back inside.
Stood in front of the mirror.
Tangled hair. A bloodless face. Hollow eyes.
She washed her face at the basin.
The cold water jolted her awake.
She washed again and again, then roughly combed through her disheveled hair with her fingers.
She went to the wardrobe and pulled out the neatest uniform she had, without a single pill, and put it on.
Her hands shook so much she struggled to fasten the buttons.
Once she'd finished, she left the room with desperate strides.
She practically ran down the corridor toward the student council president's office.
Students in the council stared at her in surprise, but she had no time to care.
She stopped in front of the door.
She caught her breath and opened it.
Levina was inside.
Buried under a mountain of paperwork, she moved her pen without pause.
Hollow-eyed, looking at nothing but the documents.
"Heir Apparent."
Serepina's voice trembled.
"Ravin — Ravin's fine, isn't he? He's staying at the annex. He's doing well, right?
Kyle came and said something strange. I got worried for no reason and came to ask.
So — Ravin's okay. Isn't he?"
Levina didn't lift her eyes from the papers. She kept scratching away with her pen.
Then, distantly, she looked up at Serepina.
And answered.
"Yeah. He's doing well."
Serepina let out an instant sigh of relief.
But Levina wasn't finished.
"He's doing well. That Ravin.
Not Ravin Edelgard. Just Ravin. We made an exception and buried him alongside the Edelgard family's own."
Levina said it as if it were nothing. Then she returned her gaze to the documents.
Serepina's mind stopped.
She couldn't process the words.
She said he was doing well — so why was she talking about burying him?
"...What? What — what are you saying? Why would Ravin be — be buried?"
She murmured without even knowing what she was saying.
Only then, as if annoyed, Levina set down her pen.
"He's dead. His head got cracked open.
Do I need to spell it out more plainly?"
"...You're lying."
Serepina took an involuntary step backward.
"There's no way Ravin's dead. Just a little while ago, at the annex..."
She bumped the desk behind her. A pen rolled off and clattered to the floor.
"If Ravin actually died, then how — how can you talk about it like it's nothing at all?"
Serepina's voice shook.
"The funeral — why didn't anyone call me? No, before that — that Ravin is dead — why is he dead? How!?"
She was nearly shouting the question.
Levina finally set her pen aside for good.
She looked at Serepina and spoke quietly.
"Because I killed him."
She said that, and then she said nothing more.
She simply turned back to the papers.