About Things That Haven't Occurred Yet
Chapter 5
The King departed Mont Palace, promising to return in the near future.
For several days, Adelheid did not step outside the building.
Naturally, Dominic was left on his own.
He welcomed the solitude and hoped it would continue.
‘Adel only acts like that because she wants my attention.’
He felt this even more strongly after hearing those words from the King.
The maids approached and spoke to him from time to time, but Dominic brushed them off as politely as he could without causing offense.
Aside from Adelheid’s absence, the days passed much as usual.
Though barely two weeks had passed, he already felt drained.
It was a place of utter emptiness.
It was so thoroughly vacant that it wore a person down.
From the evening after his duty ended into the late hours of the night, Dominic spent every day in the library.
It was not a large library, but it held enough books to occupy a man for years.
Pacing before the shelves for a while, he noticed a single volume jutting out slightly. It was Dorfman’s On Loss.
It was a book that captured in print the turbulent era of decades past, when countless wars raged.
Dominic casually opened the book without much thought, then paused.
The page he opened to was slightly rumpled, as if it had been left open for a long time, and a straight line was underlined beneath one paragraph.
Because it was a tragic era, the author saw and learned much. In this age, there is oppression, there is violence, and there is loss. And there are humans who submit. Yet no one has been granted the right to judge whether submission is right or wrong.
Dominic stared at those sentences for a long time, then briskly turned the pages.
Before long, another underlined passage appeared.
When an infinite void settles within, humanity finally realizes the meaning of contemplation. Right and wrong all pursue a single purpose: to contemplate. There is neither morality nor a greater cause.
It is pure because it is a stripped soul, and essential because it is a frail existence. The most insignificant and smallest things are sometimes closest to the archetype. Only upon reaching that state do we transcend death. Death is…….
Everything is beautiful because it never happened.
He had heard Adelheid did not enjoy reading.
Were the maids allowed free access to the library?
After a moment’s thought, Dominic turned back to the first page and began reading through the printed words.
The meticulous underlines and the notes scribbled beside them—though nothing more than lists of words—made him increasingly curious about the reader.
While he was deeply absorbed, the sound of a presence came from the entrance.
Lifting his eyes from the page, he turned his head. The person who stepped in asked cautiously:
“……Is that you, Captain?”
It was a voice he had not heard in days. And not a welcome one.
It seemed to be the first time he had ever seen Adelheid unadorned.
Even indoors without the King present, she had always maintained a near-flawless appearance.
Her loosely tied blonde hair spilled over her chest, with stray, slightly tangled strands tucked behind her ear.
The white off-the-shoulder dress looked somehow disheveled.
Seeing Dominic flustered by the unexpected intruder, Adelheid smiled, the corners of her eyes crinkling.
“It has been a while.”
“…….”
“Did I disturb you?
She had. But Dominic did not bother voicing the thought.
Instead, he chose to excuse himself.
The moment he gave a slight bow and naturally moved to rise from his seat, Adelheid’s words stopped him.
“Why are you leaving? Just stay.”
“……I was already planning to turn in.”
“Were you reading that?”
Adelheid ignored Dominic’s reply and pointed to the book in his hands.
Dominic answered with a brief nod. She let out a soundless laugh.
“Do you find it agreeable?”
“……Yes.”
“Your face says otherwise.”
Adelheid was right. To Dominic, On Loss seemed excessively pessimistic and cynical.
It dressed itself up in ostensibly eloquent prose, but underneath, it dredged up and exposed the ugly depths of human nature.
He despised submission. He believed that the only thing in this world to which humans must submit were natural phenomena—and even then, one ought to resist.
Dominic had endured many things that once seemed impossible.
Seemingly impossible training, impossible trials, impossible battles, impossible absolute power. And the seemingly impossible slaying of the dragon.
Yet he had never submitted to them. He had seen it through to the bitter end, seizing what he desired in his grasp.
Submission was for the weak.
The only line in the entire book Dominic could remotely agree with was that single sentence: ‘Everything is beautiful because it never happened.’
“In what way do you dislike it?”
“It portrays humanity…… as humiliating.”
“Humans are inherently humiliating creatures. It is merely that when circumstances permit, they have no need to be humiliated.”
“…….”
“Have you never experienced such circumstances, Captain?”
“Many times. But I did not choose humiliation.”
“Then that is your world, Captain. But my world is not the same as yours.”
“Unless it serves a greater morality or cause, there is no circumstance that demands one be humiliated.”
“I wonder. How can you be so certain?”
“One chooses humiliation because they wish to walk an easier, better path.”
“Even when one’s life is on the line?”
“There are many in this world who hold values greater than life. For the contemplating human described in this book willingly walks the difficult path.”
“I contemplate all the time.”
Adelheid added.
“And yet, I am humiliated.”
Dominic wanted to refute her. If Adelheid herself knew her actions were humiliating, then that, too, was merely part of choosing an easier, better path. She had chosen humiliation because she wanted to live, because she wanted status, because she wanted to be loved.
There had always been other choices—death, independence, or forsaking love altogether.
Adelheid had excluded all those options herself and chosen humiliation.
“Just because you are unaware of it does not mean it does not exist in this world. My humiliation stems from things you know nothing about.”
The reason Dominic could voice none of his counterarguments was because Adelheid herself called her own actions humiliating.
She smiled with a face that seemed completely ignorant of all the world’s hardships.
She walked like someone who knew how to be loved, and spoke like someone who was loved.
Yet now, Adelheid was calling all of that humiliation. Dominic was bewildered.
Enduring humiliation was not difficult, but calling humiliation what it was was a hard thing to do.
As he had thought ever since their first meeting, Adelheid’s words had a strange way of getting under his skin.
It was happening even now. Despite not wanting to exchange a single word with her, he had been swept up into having this conversation—on a topic he could never have imagined discussing with her.
***
Dominic talked with her late into the night. They spoke of war, of loss, of contemplation, and of every facet of humanity.
Though they rarely found common ground, Dominic had no choice but to acknowledge it. Adelheid was a thinker.
“Learning something is different from putting it into practice. Likewise, obedience is different from resignation. Since we do not know what our unthinking bodies are capable of, I simply do the best I can. So, Captain, you cannot definitively label my humiliation as mere humiliation…….”
She was someone who had contemplated deeply for a long time.
She understood the longing for justifiable suffering far better than Dominic ever could.
Even in the points where he could not agree, he caught glimpses of her profound anguish.
That was why he found it all the more incomprehensible. Why had someone who contemplated this deeply chosen humiliation?
Adelheid hesitated for a long while, then asked, as though blurting out words she had held back until now:
“Is the war completely over?”
Dominic was momentarily taken aback. The end of the war was something even a child outside the castle walls knew.
Yet Adelheid’s face looked dead serious.
“……It is over. Quite some time ago.”
“I see…….”
Had no one told her the war had ended?
No, regardless of whether anyone had told her, Genomes after the war had been in a literal festive mood.
It was impossible not to know. Had she simply been so steeped in the comfort of palace life that she never even thought to look outside?
“……Do you have no intention of returning to Henburg?”
Ruined though it was, Adelheid was royalty of Henburg.
Yet she was living as a concubine in an enemy kingdom. Regardless of Henburg having been an enemy of Genomes, Dominic believed that, as royalty, she should at least possess a shred of pride.
Should not royalty dream of returning to their homeland, or strive toward its rebuilding?
Was living as the consort of the man who destroyed her country not humiliation in itself?
Adelheid offered a smile, as if she knew exactly what Dominic was thinking. In her usual coquettish voice, she said:
“If I tell you this, Captain, I suspect you’ll despise me completely.”
“…….”
“I do not tell lies in this place.”
