About Things That Haven't Occurred Yet
Chapter 9
Chapter 9
After Anton left, Adelheid remained shut inside her room for days.
In the dark room, she trembled continuously with fear and anxiety. Nothing was truly different from her past lives. At this rate, Anton would lose interest and kill her.
Dominic… he had not changed either.
He would simply stand there and watch her die.
Adelheid loosely hugged her knees and rested her cheek against them.
Why did Dominic dislike her so much? Why did he look at her with such disgust and displeasure?
Truthfully, Adelheid felt she had a vague sense of why, but she did not know what to do about it. How was she supposed to treat someone who wasn’t Anton? How did one interact with a human being again? She ate the meals brought to her, thought, wrote meaningless words, slept, ruminated on her past lives, thought of death, ate, thought, wrote, wrote, thought…
She felt suffocated. Looking out the dark window, Dominic was nowhere to be seen.
‘Where does he usually go when his shift ends?’
‘Probably… the library. I don’t really know.’
As if possessed, Adelheid rose from the bed and stepped out of the room. Her feet carried her toward the library.
She hated Dominic. She despised him. She could never forget that utterly blank face as he watched her die.
Even Anton, who had wielded the sword with his own hands, had never worn such an expression.
Yet he was the only person she could meet right now.
She craved conversation so desperately that Anton continuously assigning her a useless guard felt almost like a kindness. Anything would do.
“Captain?”
Regardless of whether he liked, disliked, or loathed her.
Dominic seemed taken aback. Displeasure swiftly followed. Unbothered, Adelheid curved her eyes into a smile.
“It has been a while.”
“Am I disturbing you?”
Dominic stared at her with an impassive face, then eventually closed his book and rose from his seat.
Even an outright dismissal would have been better than this. Hurriedly, Adelheid stopped him.
“Why are you leaving? Please stay.”
“…I was already preparing to retire for the night.”
“Were you reading that?”
It was Dorfman’s On Loss.
It was one of the few books Adelheid had picked up again in this lifetime. It was also her favorite.
After a slight pause, Dominic nodded.
Adelheid smiled quietly, delighted by even that tiny sliver of communication. This was a smile born of a genuine desire to smile.
“Do you find it agreeable?”
“…Yes.”
“Your expression says otherwise… What part do you dislike?”
“It depicts human beings… in a humiliating light.”
“Humans are inherently humiliating creatures. It is only because their circumstances spare them that they need not be.”
“….”
“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 is for the sake of a greater morality and value, there is no circumstance where one must submit to humiliation.”
“I wonder. How can you be so certain of that?”
“People choose humiliation because they wish to walk an easier, better path.”
“Even when their very lives are at stake?”
“There are many in this world who hold values far greater than life. For the thinking human described in this book willingly walks the difficult path.”
No. My world is not like yours.
Dominic was saying that Adelheid had chosen humiliation for the sake of an easier, better path.
He was saying that Adelheid had chosen humiliation because she did not think.
Perhaps the world he saw was like that.
Enduring hardship instead of humiliation, bearing pain instead of humiliation, upholding morality instead of humiliation, facing death instead of humiliation…
A world where there was always another choice. A world where the worst possible choice was merely death.
“I think constantly.”
He was wrong.
“Yet I am humiliated.”
There were times Adelheid wanted to suffer hardship rather than humiliation, bear pain rather than humiliation, uphold morality rather than humiliation. And she wanted to meet death rather than humiliation.
At first, it was only sometimes; now, it was every single moment. She yearned for it at every breath.
Yet all of those choices were denied to Adelheid.
Her will had withered, and her convictions had turned wretched.
“Just because you do not know of something does not mean it does not exist in this world. My humiliation stems from things you cannot comprehend.”
The world Adelheid lived in was one Dominic did not know.
That night, Adelheid and Dominic talked late into the hours. They spoke of many things.
Until now, Adelheid had learned about matters outside the palace solely through Anton.
Yet that information had been terribly unkind and selective. Anton had declared that he utterly loathed women with thoughts in their heads.
That was precisely why he had locked Adelheid away in the depths of this palace.
So that, knowing nothing, she would look only at him and smile sweetly.
Even so, it was not as if Adelheid was entirely ignorant of the world.
Originally, she had been royalty of Henburg and had received a refined education. Yet she could hardly remember it.
All memories of her time as royalty had narrowed down strictly to the moment after her brother’s head fell.
Memories only from the moment she opened her eyes, and opened them, and opened them, and opened them again.
Her memories as royalty had worn away under endless regressions, her dignity as royalty had succumbed to the terror of a death that never ended, and her conduct as royalty was shattered beneath abuse.
Thus, Adelheid was ignorant of the world. The world she had forgotten, or never known, was pieced together through Dominic.
She took what she heard and combined it with the faint memories buried deep below.
How the things she read and pondered applied to reality, how they were being applied, and what ought to be applied. It was not perfect, but it was enough.
Then, Dominic suddenly asked:
“…Do you have no intention of returning to Henburg?”
She thought she knew what Dominic was thinking.
A royal of a fallen nation, living as the concubine of the man who destroyed her homeland.
How humiliating it must seem in his eyes.
Yet Adelheid could only smile, as she always did.
“If I say this, I think you will come to hate me very much, Captain.”
“….”
“I do not tell lies in this place.”
Here, and only here, Adelheid existed as Adelheid.
Throughout endless ages, this library had been her life. Her only conversational partner. Her friend. Her mentor.
And it was the only place Anton never visited.
“You see, I have no goals regarding Henburg. I have forgotten what a homeland is even supposed to mean to me.”
It had been far too long. They were memories that had all crumbled away into dust.
“My life is more important to me than my homeland. In my life, there is something… more important, something I cannot escape. You may not understand, Captain, but that is how it is for me. That is my world. Perhaps long ago, my homeland might have mattered more. But not anymore.”
“….”
“Not anymore.”
In my world, things like attachment, loyalty, love, and friendship hold no meaning whatsoever.
In my world, the things that exist in your life do not exist.
In my world, there are things that do not exist in your life. That is how my world is.
Adelheid closed the book.
“I will come tomorrow as well. I am always here.”
“….”
“Could you come again? I know what you are worried about. But the King has never once visited the library. So it will be fine.”
So, I just want someone to enter my world.
Because it is so lonely and desolate here. This was the miracle Adelheid had always longed for.
“If you come here tomorrow too, I will not seek you out during your shift anymore. I promise.”
Hoping someone would step into this world made solely of printed words.
Adelheid visited the library every evening. And Dominic was always there.
Neither had asked first, yet it was as though a promise had been made.
They read in the same space, and whenever there was something they wished to say, they spoke. And they listened. They exchanged thoughts.
She loved it.
She loved it so much—so much that tears welled in her eyes—that pure optimism filled her chest.
Though cold, he was always earnest in conversation. He listened carefully to Adelheid’s words and replied with quiet deliberation.
He rarely bent his own views, yet he respected Adelheid’s.
During those hours, there was no humiliation.
No one killed her, no one trampled upon her, no one mocked her, and no one forced her into submission.
It was simply Adelheid’s time. A piece of a real life.
Yet once this lifetime ended, Dominic would forget everything.
It would all become things that had never happened. And she alone would hold the memories of things that never were.
A life always took drastic turns from the smallest changes, and long waves of sorrow followed a single brief word.
Thus, this was an opportunity that might never exist in the next life. It might never come again.
Giving voice to the thoughts held deep in her heart for ages, having someone listen, raise a hand to question, discuss, refute—conversations like that. Such trivial, ordinary things…
