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LOS 65
“Then what about Giles Hessen? Do you think they lied about him as well?”
Giles. At the mention of his name, the pleasant moment vanished, and the reality facing me returned. I closed my eyes for a moment, imagining him standing upon the scaffold.
“What exactly do you want to know?”
“Just... there are so many rumors circulating about that man. They say he committed every atrocity a human being is capable of. After hearing Anna's story, I started thinking that perhaps not everything said about him is true. Of course, the fact that he did terrible things is likely true! He did kill people, after all.”
I nodded. Giles had killed and tortured people. For that, he deserved punishment. It was simply that I could not bear to watch him die with a peaceful heart.
“Does the young lady—no, does Anna—really love him?”
Someone might have advised me to answer cautiously. But I had no intention of denying the truth. I didn't want to beat around the bush or pretend otherwise. Whether he had committed sins or not, what had passed between us was honest and innocent.
“I love him. Of course, there were times I suffered from nightmares because of him. Times I cried until I felt I would die. But seeing that my feelings for him never change, I must love him. Perhaps that is why I call it love. Because it is an emotion too deep to change easily.”
“But... Giles Hessen killed all the nobles in Ipswin. Perhaps he might have tried to kill Anna too.”
“Giles did not kill me. He saved me even though he could have killed me. Even though it put his own life at risk.”
Judging by Adele's expression, this was also a story she was hearing for the first time.
“This isn't in the newspapers either, is it?”
“But how could he? To kill all the other nobles and spare only Anna... Were you two perhaps acquainted before?”
“No. I met Giles for the first time that day.”
“Then how on earth...?”
The words he had spoken came back to me.
‘You... because I saved you. For that fact alone, you are the one and only person to me. Because you make me forget what kind of person I originally was. Because looking at your face allowed me to escape my reality, if only for a moment. You... were the only right choice I ever made.’
Lost in thought for a moment, I spoke up just as his image began to fade from my mind.
“I think he needed something to hold onto. That's why he acted on a whim. He must have felt himself that things couldn't go on as they were.”
I didn't know exactly what he was thinking when he decided to save me. But it was certainly a whim. There was no other way to explain it.
However, he spent the rest of his life clinging to that single moment of caprice. Giles himself probably hadn't realized he would become such a person at the moment he saved me.
There was only one thing I was certain of.
He had never once regretted the choice he made.
Adele showed me the room I would be using. In my opinion, it was a truly beautiful room, but it was also absurdly large.
It seemed certain that, as the head of the House of Count Bismar, I now possessed the best room. Realizing this, I asked with an expression I couldn't quite control.
“This isn't the room the Count and Countess used, is it?”
Fortunately, Adele shook her head.
“There is a separate room they used. It's on the top floor. All the furniture has been removed, and it is currently locked.”
Right. Surely the servants wouldn't give me the room used by people who had dropped dead. If she had told me this was the Count and Countess's room, I would have demanded to move immediately. That was something I simply could not tolerate.
Since I had brought almost nothing with me from Ipswin, new clothes occupied the large wardrobe. I worried they would push lavish dresses upon me that were uncomfortably ornate, as the Count had done, but fortunately, these clothes looked wearable.
“What would you like for your meal? Shall I have them bring calf meat and grilled scallops as the main dish?”
“No.”
Even I thought that was too blunt a refusal. While I was searching for a way to excuse myself, Adele asked again.
“Then perhaps a chicken dish with sauce...?”
“Something simple is fine. I'd like an egg sandwich.”
“A sandwich?”
“Yes.”
Adele looked as if she wanted to ask if I was planning a picnic, but she simply nodded obediently.
“I understand. I will pass that along. An egg sandwich.”
She opened the window to let the air circulate and then left for the kitchen. Now, I was alone in the vast room.
I sat upon the luxuriously plush bedsheets—feeling as if I were sitting on a cloud—and listened to the birds singing outside.
On one hand, I still couldn't believe it. That not only this massive mansion, but all the assets they possessed, had become mine. Even though I hadn't even been a proper member of the family.
Strictly speaking, I was the Count's daughter, but I was closer to an asset than a family member. I was merely an obedient doll kept to fulfill a purpose.
Now, the family that had persecuted and tormented me were all dead. I am the head of the Count's house. But I had never wished to be the head. As Giles had said, I was merely an ordinary pianist. That didn't mean I was unhappy about inheriting a great fortune, but...
Why did I feel a void in my heart, an emptiness, even while occupying this magnificent, large room all to myself?
I felt as if I had become a loner. The sheer size of the room only fueled that feeling. It felt as if I were floating alone on the vast ocean, clinging to a wooden plank.
Until recently, there had been someone by my side, but now there was no one. I had been thrown alone into a new world, and I was that much lonelier.
‘They will protect you.’ Giles had believed that and sent me to Beldam. But was this the safe future he had imagined?
I pulled a bundle of newspapers from my bag. No one would disturb me until mealtime. I spread the newspapers featuring Giles and myself across the bed and read them meticulously.
「Murderer Hessen Tears Apart Happy Couple in Tragedy — Lady Eloise Bismarck was engaged to Duke Johan Meyer and scheduled to marry soon, but it is reported that Giles Hessen's atrocious genocide miserably trampled their love...」
Nonsense. I wasn't even his fiancée to begin with. I was nothing more than a substitute for the fiancée. Whether they knew and pretended not to, or truly didn't know, that part was conveniently omitted from the article. Moreover, I was the one who had broken off the marriage talks before the winds of revolution even blew.
Most of the articles about me were far from the truth.
‘An innocent and virtuous girl raised in affluence’
— I wasn't raised in affluence, and while I was certainly naive, I was absolutely not virtuous.
‘The precious youngest daughter, dearly obtained by the Countess after a difficult labor’
— My mother was a maid. The Count likely raped her.
‘Loving toward her family’
— I never loved them for a single moment.
‘A girl who, due to her frail health, hoped for a husband who would warmly embrace her’
— What on earth is the correlation between those two things?
But at the same time, they knew far too much about me. From the fact that there was a birthmark under my right ear to my habit of twitching my index finger when nervous.
The more vulgar tabloids detailed what physical characteristics of mine Giles might have seen that led him to chase after me. In other words, they were openly dissecting my body.
Giles said Beldam would protect me... But here, I seemed far from an object of protection.
Rather, I felt a familiar sense of déjà vu. They call me an innocent victim... but in reality, I felt a malice that sought to use even my fingernails to attract public attention.
I finally understood why Arent told me not to leave the mansion. People knew unnecessarily many things about me.
Furthermore, that vicious interest showed no sign of ending. In short, I was in the same position as Giles here.
I wasn't facing a death sentence, nor was I an object of hatred, but I was a piece of chewing gum, perfect for people to gnaw on and tear apart.
Fatigue washed over me. I turned my gaze to the articles about Giles.
If they had pinned me to the newspaper like a dissected frog, Giles was like a furnace. Burning endlessly, he was a collection point for all sorts of sordid and filthy emotions.
‘A traitor who betrayed his country to survive.’ ‘Everyone fears death equally — most simply do not commit murder.’ ‘Giles Hessen, who begged for his life from the Ipswin Revolutionary Army.’ ‘A man no different from a loose whore.’ ‘The only value important to him was survival’...
Among them, one headline caught my eye. Printed in large bold letters, the headline read:
「
Giles Hessen Returns Voluntarily
— Why did the man who fled to avoid death return to the scaffold?」
I did not read the body of the text. I was simply shocked, like someone who had forgotten a very obvious fact for a long time.
Giles feared death. It was all true that he had become a traitor to his country to survive. He believed that being pointed at by the entire nation was better than death.
And yet, he had appeared before the guillotine of his own accord. A man who would have done anything to survive had declared that he would give up his life.
And that... I knew the reason. It was all because of me. He accepted death because of me.
I recalled the time Giles had locked me in the safe house. Trapped in a secret room with boards nailed over the windows and the door firmly locked, I had cried incessantly. The fact that he was no different from other people had driven me to despair.
I believed he treated me as an object. That he had decided to hide me away without asking my opinion, like a piece of jewelry he didn't want to lose.
I was used to being treated as an object, but thinking that Giles treated me the same way made me feel as if I were falling down an endless cliff.
But the reality was different.
From the moment I first met him, I thought all the decision-making power was concentrated in Giles. He had the power, and I was the one being hunted. He was the one who could have thrown me into the gutter if he had so desired.
However, I had been thinking wrongly. Giles was not the one holding the initiative. From the moment he decided to save me, the scales had tipped the other way.
The one holding the initiative was me.
I was the being who could make Giles live, or make him die.
It was so from the very first moment, and it remains so even now.
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