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“I didn't know you knew how to smile.”
Rose spoke as if it were a novelty, accepting the single cigarette he offered.
“Well, I’m not a Boltonian.”
“We know how to smile too,” Rose protested, shooting him a glare.
“Then try it.”
“No... how can someone just smile out of nowhere? It’s not like there’s anything to smile about.”
He hadn't expected much, but her answer was exactly as he had anticipated.
Instead of saying ‘See?’, Ray lit his lighter and leaned slightly toward Rose.
With the cigarette in her mouth, Rose leaned closer to him, resting her arms on the balcony railing. With a click, the flame of the lighter illuminated the woman's face.
The moment the fire heated the tip of the cigarette, the light made her green eyes seem to sparkle as she looked at him.
The flame lasted only a moment, but the time their gazes locked was longer.
Ray’s gaze slowly swept over those sparkling green eyes, the red lips holding the cigarette, and her slender fingers.
Even the way her fingers held the cigarette suited her.
A thin trail of smoke rose from the end of the woman's cigarette—the one he had handed her.
The woman looking up at him still didn't know how to smile even when given what she wanted, but her cheeks were still flushed. Just the right amount.
Standing with one hand on the railing, Ray reached out with his other hand to touch her cheek. The back of his cold hand brushed against her skin.
Her eyes widened, startled by the sudden contact.
Staring into her eyes, Ray quietly felt the temperature of her cheek with the back of his hand. No matter what she said, Ray was a man who believed only what he could verify was reality.
It was warm. Just as he had expected.
For tonight, at least, she wasn't an empty shell.
The moment he confirmed what he was curious about, he withdrew his hand without hesitation.
“Your cheeks were red.”
“Ah, it’s because I drank some wine...”
Embarrassed, Rose fumbled with her own hand over the spot where his had been.
Thinking he had been scolding her, Rose glanced at Ray’s expression before putting the cigarette back to her lips.
The sight of the woman leaning against the railing and smoking looked natural and relaxed. She almost looked like someone who was finally breathing for real. It was another unfamiliar, first-time sight.
Yet, from this unfamiliar woman came a now-familiar scent. His scent.
“Thank you.”
Exhaling a long breath, the woman murmured in a voice as faint as the scattering smoke.
It was the first time he had received a thank you from her. To think he would hear those words for a mere cigarette, when he hadn't even heard them while cleaning up her messes.
“And I don't think of you as a loafer. How could I think that while looking at you?”
Her low voice sounded almost like a song.
Ray wondered if she would remain this honest even after this night passed and the effects of the alcohol wore off.
Standing with his cigarette, Ray watched the woman as she tilted her head and gazed at the night sky, feeling a sense of satisfaction that was greater than he had expected.
The woman, teased and tickled by the wind, looked simply at peace.
In all of Orturan, only Ray could see her like this. Because it was something only he could permit.
A scenery that only he could create.
This subtle sense of triumph naturally brought back other memories.
“...Do you not sing, other than playing the piano?”
Rose turned her head to look at him, her face looking purely bewildered.
“You’re being very random today. I don't sing.”
As if.
He swallowed the sneer.
He decided to keep the secret to himself—that he had already heard the songs she claimed she didn't sing.
Instead, he took out a new cigarette and lit it, standing side-by-side with his wife in the same posture, gazing at the night garden unfolding beyond the balcony.
The white smoke rising from the corners of Ray's lips vanished faintly into the night sky along with a gentle breeze.
The night deepened thoughtlessly, and the sound of insects chirping felt distant.
2. EXPOSITION - ii
In her dream, her mother was wearing a sky-blue dress and watering the roses in the yard.
She was a woman who wouldn't lift a finger for anything else, but she loved watering the flowers herself.
Come see the May roses.
The sound of her mother humming a song tickled her ears like a familiar lullaby.
“This rose, that rose, they're all pretty, but the prettiest rose in the world is the one I'm raising.”
Stopping her song, she looked at Rose and giggled.
Seeing that face, so tender it brought tears to her eyes, Rose could vaguely tell when this was. Probably around nine years old. A time when she was happy even without a father, and her mother wasn't sick.
“Where is that rose?”
With a pleasant laugh, a warm embrace suddenly pulled her in.
“Right here, you silly! It's a special rose that exists nowhere else.”
The finest rose I've created.
That was how her mother used to call Rose. She hadn't been particularly beautiful as a child, but to her mother, the country girl from Bolton was the most special of all.
Even knowing it was a dream, Rose felt she didn't want to leave this embrace.
She wished the safest space of her life would last forever, that she could remember her mother in this form eternally.
However, the dream was as cruel as reality, and the tender embrace had shifted into a worn and exhausted face.
The three months after her father returned, before her mother died. Days spent fighting the moment they opened their eyes.
Not only did her mother effortlessly forgive and accept her cheating father, but she also actively agreed to the proposal that Rose should marry into a foreign country she knew nothing about.
“You are special to me, but do you think you'll be the same to others?”
It wasn't a tone of criticism, but rather a desperate tone, as if she were pleading. Her mother was always like that. She always spoke as if she were begging, as if something terrible would happen if she wasn't heard.
“Rose. Once you go out into the world, you are nothing. It's not just you. We're all like that. Do you think your talent is so incredibly special? You're delusional.”
Words sharper than thorns poured out in the dream, as vivid as if she had heard them only yesterday.
“I can say this because I love you. Don't you see? Because I love you, I can be the coldest to you. Why would complete strangers tell you the honest truth?”
Rose learned from her mother the sad fact that love, of all things, could create the deepest wounds.
“You are the daughter I bore with my own body. I know you best; who else could know you better?”
It was merely a repetition of words she had actually heard, yet it became a nightmare.
Waking from the dream with a groan, Rose barely pushed herself up from the bed, feeling a dull headache wash over her. She had lain down for a moment of fatigue and seemed to have drifted off.
It was a sad and meaningless dream.
For neither the mother who spoke tender words nor the mother who spoke wounding words existed anymore.
The clock on the nightstand informed her that it was already eight in the evening.
Ignoring the fatigue left by the dream, Rose looked around the bedroom and discovered that the balcony door was open.
She had no memory of opening it.
Wrapping a shawl around her shoulders and stepping out, she saw the back of a man sitting on a long chair.
The time for being surprised that he visited her bedroom had passed, but it was unexpected that he had waited quietly on the balcony.
Since that strange night they shared cigarettes on the balcony, her husband offered her a cigarette every time he came to her bedroom. Not more, not less—exactly one.
His attitude was strangely like that of someone giving alms, but she couldn't refuse. It was what she needed most.
Regardless, it was a fact that she could do anything in front of him. No matter what she did, at the very least, she would only be criticized by one person—Ray Crawford—rather than becoming the witch of Orturan.
The safest space for her right now was, ironically, in front of her stranger-like husband.
Stepping onto the balcony, Rose sat in the chair next to him. Seeing the ash already in the ashtray on the side table, it seemed he had spent quite some time here.
“You should have woken me.”
“No need.”
Even though someone had entered, he didn't seem surprised and elegantly turned the page of the book he was reading.
It was a book she had borrowed from Beth and read a few weeks ago.
“I didn't know you read things like novels.”
“I heard they were trendy. I thought I'd gauge people's thoughts.”
It was a truly politician-like perspective.
His answers weren't long, but he responded consistently.
Since that night, he seemed to have softened subtly. However, Rose couldn't fathom the reason why.
“I imagine you've read it too.”
His gaze, which had been fixed on the book, shifted to her with the question.
After having a few conversations with her husband, she had come to realize that his clipped way of speaking was actually a question asking for her opinion.
Previously, he had come like this, given her a cigarette, and then asked a few trivial questions as if demanding payment for it.
Usually, they were questions asking for Rose's opinion or how things were in Bolton.
Though she had hesitated at first, Rose could now speak more comfortably than she expected.
Sometimes she had the illusion that he enjoyed her responses, but since he was a man whose heart was so difficult to read, she couldn't be certain.
Perhaps he wasn't enjoying it, but mocking her.
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