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The bedroom door opened, and Agatha entered with Joan, who was carrying a meal tray.
It was the first time Rose had seen such an explicit look of worry on Agatha's face. Is my appearance really that wretched? Rose wondered blankly.
After Joan placed the tray—holding a piece of bread and a glass of water—on the nightstand and left, Agatha sat on the edge of the bed.
"Rose. I heard you skipped your meals again."
Rose remembered that Agatha had also been moving tirelessly since this incident broke out. It seemed she was exerting effort in various directions to resolve the problem.
"……I'm sorry."
Guilt now followed her like a habit.
"For what?"
"Just... for everything."
At Rose's apology, Agatha lightly shook her head.
"I know well enough that this isn't something you should be sorry for. Did I seem like someone so lacking in judgment?"
A sigh was buried in the end of her words.
"This marriage is my responsibility as well."
"Because you accepted me, Agatha?"
At the thoughtless remark, Agatha became visibly flustered.
"……Did Ray tell you?"
"I overheard you talking with Ray. In the bedroom corridor."
"That kind of conversation……. You must resent me."
"You did it for your husband."
At Rose's powerless answer, Agatha looked over her again with a worried expression.
"Anyone listening would think I'm a wonderful wife who cares deeply for her husband. Which isn't the case."
Muttering self-deprecatingly, Agatha gazed at Rose in silence for a while.
In the silence, she repeatedly clasped and unclasping her hands, as if hesitating over something.
"Ray's father was……."
After a long while, Agatha spoke.
"He was a good man. Kind and gentle, and just as weak. That's why his father chose me as his daughter-in-law. I think he felt the family needed someone like me."
With her gaze fixed vaguely on the floor, she began to speak. It almost sounded as if she were talking to herself.
"He, for his part, was delighted. He said he had liked me for a long time."
Rose found herself focusing on the low voice.
It was because she had reached a state where she welcomed anything, as long as it wasn't a story about herself.
Any story was fine, as long as it allowed her to forget herself and this situation.
"He told me he loved me. Every time he said those words, I didn't even answer. It was utterly pathetic. What could be more dangerous in a marriage than such fickle emotions?"
"Then what is necessary for a marriage?"
At Rose's question, Agatha laughed. It was as if she were asking how Rose could possibly not know.
"Faith, Rose. Faith is the best. That never changes. I wanted a responsible partner who clearly understood their respective roles; I didn't want someone singing love songs."
Studying Rose's face, Agatha gestured with her chin toward the tray on the nightstand.
"Eat a bit if you're going to keep listening. Even just one bite."
Rose had no appetite at all, but unable to refuse, she forced herself to take a bite and chewed listlessly.
"Drink some water, too."
As Rose drank the water, Agatha nodded as if she had done well and began to speak again.
"Still, because he was a kind person, married life was comfortable. I ended up nagging him a lot, but there were no major problems. Until the war broke out."
A deep sigh escaped her.
"He told me he didn't want to go to war. He wanted to get a fake medical certificate to be exempt. There were other nobles who did that, after all. When I heard that, I……."
Agatha stopped speaking.
It seemed she couldn't bring herself to continue.
As Rose tentatively held out the water glass, Agatha let out a hollow laugh.
"You drink it. No, before that, take another bite. Look at your face."
Watching Rose tear off a piece of bread with a reluctant expression, Agatha slowly continued.
"Seeing my husband like that, I became so angry. To a degree that I couldn't even understand myself. It was pathetic that he claimed he couldn't fulfill a duty he was naturally expected to do, but……."
Agatha's gaze drifted toward the distance again.
"I felt like I was going crazy with envy. I hated him because I was so envious. That the position and glory of the Crawfords were given to him, even though he didn't seem particularly impressive."
At the familiar narrative, the speed of Rose's chewing slowed.
Rose recalled the emotions she had felt while watching Ray give a speech in front of people. How much she had envied him in that moment.
"My father had no children but me, and the Anderson estate passed to a sixth cousin I didn't even know. I couldn't inherit my father's name or glory, and I hated a husband who was in a position to do so yet spoke such weak words."
A frown creased Agatha's brow as she retraced the situation.
"I was so angry that I truly pushed him hard. I told him I couldn't live respecting such a shameful man as a husband. I told him to protect the Crawford name."
After a brief, thin smile, Agatha slowly closed and opened her eyes, as if recalling a painful memory.
"He was a gentle man. Since I told him to go, he went to war. Truly, he was a man who did not suit the battlefield."
Even looking at the face in the portrait, it seemed so. He had a face that made one wonder if he could even hold a gun.
"After pushing him to go, I became anxious once he left. I wondered how such a weak person could survive. I went to the cathedral every single day. I prayed to God to return him safely."
Agatha sighed, clutching her two hands tightly together.
"If I could have gone to war in his place, if it had been permitted, I would have gladly taken up the sword and gun to drive those bastards away and protect this land. I wouldn't have minded giving my life. But I couldn't do that. So, all I could do was pray and volunteer."
A worn and old deficiency resided on the face delivering this slow confession.
In that familiar face, a person who had always felt distant—someone she thought was a completely different stranger—suddenly felt close.
"Even so, I was so anxious, I couldn't bear to stay here alone, so I followed him. Though we weren't together for long."
Agatha's voice grew smaller and smaller, as if she were afraid someone might hear.
"And by a stroke of luck, he returned with all his limbs intact. But…… only his limbs were intact. His mind was completely broken. I kept thinking. He wasn't a man who deserved punishment……. Was this a punishment fallen upon me? Why did God use an innocent person to punish me?"
"Did he resent you, Agatha?"
"How much more peaceful would my heart be if he had."
Agatha smiled with a weary face.
"One day, he said it. That it would have been better to die on the battlefield."
Continuing her words, Agatha blankly recalled the past for a moment. A certain moment that surfaced like a punishment whenever she was idle.
He had said.
Do you not hate weakness? Because there is no value in such things. Is that why I hate it too?
"You told me that I must return alive. I was happy to hear those words. So I did……. Now you regret it too, don't you? Because it would have been better if I had died honorably there."
The voice of the dead husband was still vivid.
As he said himself, he was a man whose every part was as fragile as soft flesh, as fragile as gums. Among those, the weakest part was love.
For the mere reason of love, he had very easily handed over all the authority of the household to his wife.
Yet, strangely, there was a tenacious side to that love, for he went to the war he so hated and feared. Simply because the wife he loved wanted him to.
"It wasn't a tone of resentment. He truly blamed himself for returning alive. He seemed to regret becoming a burden to me by surviving."
Agatha, who had been looking at the floor while speaking, slowly lifted her head to face Rose.
"But after that, I began to think that perhaps I was the one who was his burden. Even if I went back, my choice could not change."
Only then did Rose understand why Agatha had begun this long and tedious confession.
She thought it was a story unrelated to her, but in the end, this too was a story about her and Ray.
The moment she realized, the moment Ray came to mind, a terrible fatigue washed over Rose again.
"Whenever I looked at you, Rose, I always thought of my husband. Even though you don't actually seem that similar. But for the past few days……. I've been thinking of myself."
Compassion clouded the usually calm blue eyes.
"It is a painful thing, to be unable to only love someone, to be unable to simply cherish them with peace of mind."
"No, that's not it. I'm different from you, Agatha. I don't love Ray."
As soon as Agatha finished speaking, Rose desperately denied it. She shook her head in denial.
"I couldn't love such a person. I couldn't have such a foolish love."
Love always leaves scars.
If she came to love someone like Ray Crawford, who was neither scratched nor broken by anything, she alone would be shattered against that hardness.
Rose knew instinctively that loving him would become a wound she could not overcome, a wound she could not survive.
"Agatha, please help me."
Rose grabbed Agatha's arm.
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