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LOS 8
Flustered by the unexpected request, Giles looked back and forth between the piano and Lily. The last time he had touched a piano was before his voice had even broken. He wondered if he could even play properly.
However, unable to flatly refuse, he eventually sat down at the piano. Most of the pieces he had learned as a child had long since vanished from his memory, but he could still clumsily play a basic Sonatina practice piece.
Soon, he pressed the keys. The melody flowed at a slow pace. The Nuremberg Sonatina was a simple practice piece designed for children learning the piano.
A practice piece from his childhood. Tracing back each note engraved on the score was a process that accompanied a return to the days he had destroyed with his own hands.
Giles was no longer in the empty room of an abandoned house. The sounds of people chatting vibrantly overlapped like auditory hallucinations.
I can't do this. It was the moment he finally tried to take his hands off the keys. Someone sat down beside him. It was Lily. Lily reached out her right hand and pressed the keys. Her melody guided Giles like a tutor. Following Lily's lead, Giles continued to play.
As they played together, he found himself returned to the familiar mansion of those happy days. Giles looked to his side. There was a happy young lady with long, flowing black hair.
If only he could go back to those days when he ignored everything and knew nothing. His heart burned. At the same time, it grew hot. A slender, thin melody was leading him. Unable to resist the pull, Giles slowly leaned toward Lily.
The moment he kissed her, the melody that had conjured the illusion vanished. The surroundings fell into a silent stillness. Giles snapped awake within the cold boundary between illusion and reality.
“Ah, my apologies.”
Quickly pulling away from her, Giles reflexively straightened his tie. What should he do? He had just kissed her without permission. He hadn't approached her with that intention, but he had no excuse if she misunderstood.
“I mean, I—”
But before Giles could finish his sentence, Lily closed the gap between them once more. This time, she was the one to kiss him. It was a clumsy but passionate kiss.
Giles could not resist. Lily was a woman from a world far removed from his own. None of the pasts that were slowly destroying Giles from the inside were connected to her.
When Lily was by his side, when he listened to her playing, he could forget all those things as if they belonged to another world.
Eloise Bismarck... no, Lily Belmore was his sanctuary. Giles sank deep into the sweet moment that had arrived like a utopia. The pianist he had saved. The 'right choice' he had made...
As long as he was with Lily, everything was alright.
It felt as though everything would be alright.
Giles wrapped his arms around Lily. He was desperate, as if protecting her so that the cold reality could not steal her away.
“Lily...”
He called her name in a feverish voice. Giles had been nothing more than a hunk of scrap metal that had lost its momentum and stopped in its tracks. But at this moment, the hot furnace in his chest was burning once again.
Harrington had said that he had nothing he wanted to achieve, nothing he desired. No goals, no longings, nothing at all. Only now did Giles realize.
Lily was more than just someone he wanted to protect.
Giles needed Lily.
He didn't want to lose her.
Lily Belmore was the person who made him move again.
-
For some reason, that day felt like a day he wanted to stay at the mansion longer than usual.
At first, he used to return after simply confirming that Lily was safe, but gradually, the time he spent at the mansion grew longer. Perhaps it was because this vast, desolate abandoned house had become a more comfortable place than the apartment complex where he resided?
In the empty mansion, where the revolutionary army had confiscated everything down to a single pen, the most comfortable spot was the instrument storage room where Lily spent most of her time. Giles had to admit that the broken instruments, which were so useless that even the revolutionary army had left them behind, actually provided a sense of stability.
Lily had her own way of spending time alone in a place where there was no one else. She pulled out a bundle of newspaper clippings from beneath the floorboards.
As it turned out, they were crossword puzzles that often came as supplements in the newspaper. Lily explained that she used to secretly steal and cut out newspapers her family had read and discarded to kill time.
Lily held out the bundle of crossword puzzles, some of which still had blank spaces, toward Giles.
“Since there’s nothing else to do, please solve these for me. No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to solve them.”
“Is there some kind of reward for finishing them?”
“It just feels good.”
Giles took the crossword puzzles. He silently began to solve the quizzes Lily had left blank. Lily sat beside him, watching as he filled in the blanks one by one.
As with all crossword puzzles, hints for the correct answers were attached like footnotes. A fish belonging to the family Pomacentridae. Also called a clownfish due to the arrangement of red or orange and white. This is a clownfish. He wrote down the answer. His handwriting, which didn't suit Lily's at all, created a sense of dissonance.
To get the answers right, he had to carefully read the footnotes and the letters Lily had already filled in before and after. A stone placed as a foundation under a pillar, or a figurative term for the basis of something. In television, a term for an image corresponding to a sound.
As he solved the quizzes one by one, his gaze fixed on one sentence.
A heart that deeply cherishes and values a certain person or existence, or such an act.
What was this? Giles felt his mind go blank, like a child caught doing something naughty. As if urging him on, another line of hint was written. A feeling of longing or affection between a man and a woman, or such an act.
He actually knew the answer. How could he not? Not long ago, he had felt such emotions crashing over him like a tide.
Giles couldn't bring himself to write the answer and glanced at her. He found it absurdly pathetic that he was acting so restless all by himself. He discreetly shifted his gaze toward Lily.
Lily was dozing off, her head leaning on his shoulder. Her tightly closed eyelids looked tired. The large military coat draped over her shoulders must have been quite warm. That was likely why she had fallen asleep without realizing it.
Giles reached out toward Lily. The fact that such a being was sleeping beside him felt surreal.
He was the one who had ruthlessly pushed people of his own hometown—who were screaming in horror and shedding tears—into trucks and had personally carried out the executions.
Arresting people, and killing them... such things were Giles's daily routine. Murder, legitimized by the new government, had become his very life.
A man who had lived such a life was now solving crossword puzzles beside a kind pianist who had survived against slim odds. This scene, which would be ordinary to some, was utterly surreal. It felt as if he had awakened from a long nightmare.
The hand that had lingered near Lily was soon withdrawn. He couldn't bring himself to touch her, fearing that the beautiful dream would break.
He looked down at the crossword puzzle again. An emotion that almost everyone experiences at least once in their life. The deepest, most intense, and most primal... Giles wrote down the name of the emotion he believed would never again be related to his life.
Love. The moment he personally wrote the identity of the emotion that had only been circling his mind as a blur, everything became clear. Giles cherished Lily. He wanted to protect her no matter what... and he loved Lily. He had no intention of denying it. Because it was the truth.
Then, did Lily love him? He couldn't jump to conclusions, but at the very least, she was currently sleeping beside him, covered by his coat. That fact alone was enough for Giles to find solace.
Why did Lily leave this blank?
Giles recalled the testimony of the Bismarck family he had interrogated. Perhaps she had lived her life forgetting about convenient emotions like love. Because she was so preoccupied with surviving, she probably pushed all the emotions that were of no help to survival beneath these floorboards and never thought of them again.
Just as Lily had become a comfort to Giles, he felt at peace thinking that perhaps he, too, had become a source of comfort for Lily.
Giles closed his eyes, listening to her soft breathing. In this moment of focusing on her, the intrusive thoughts that had been pressing against his head as if to make it explode could not find their voice.
He decided to enjoy this peace until he felt okay.
-
“What have you been thinking about so much lately?”
Giles looked up and gazed at the face of the man sitting opposite him across the table. Harrington was looking at him with a gaze that seemed as if he wanted to split Giles's head open to see what was inside.
Giles, who had unconsciously been spacing out, straightened his posture.
“My apologies.”
“I wasn't trying to reprimand you. I was just wondering if you're doing alright lately.”
As if the words were awkward even to himself, Harrington sighed.
“Considering what you've had to go through recently, it wouldn't be surprising if you weren't.”
“I am fine.”
“Don't think of lying to me. Even if she is an enemy of our revolutionary army, she was a sister to you before she was an enemy. You made a great decision for the sake of the great revolution. I hold you in high regard for that.”
Giles bowed his head and softly offered his thanks. They were at a restaurant. It was a meal arranged at Harrington's request. Giles had no right to refuse. Harrington seemed worried that he might commit suicide, as he could hardly bear to see him alone.
“I thought this would be enough for you to gain trust, but it seems there are more steps to climb. As you probably expected, a few subordinates who participated in the operation at that time were scheduled to submit reports on you.”
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