Previously
Sienna is released from prison on the condition of exile following the Grand Duke's suicide. She meets Count Monches, who gives her a check from the sale of the Grand Duke's ring, expressing his disdain for her role in his master's downfall.
How to Say Goodbye to You Completely, Episode 5
It was not terribly far. Naturally, even that distance had been no small trial for someone who had been bedridden.
A few more nights and days turned over before the familiar sights of Monferrato came into view, lined on either side with metasequoias.
I had visited the grand ducal cemetery only once before, shortly after our marriage. It remained largely unchanged from that day.
Statues of the gods stood everywhere, praying that the deceased might reach heaven, alongside numerous carvings depicting biblical scenes. Yet because of what this place was, even those fine works of art carried a chilling air.
At the entrance stood a marble slab densely engraved with the Lord’s Prayer.
[Lord. Deliver us.]
I softly murmured the prayer under my breath. Then a sudden thought took hold of me.
They often say that those who choose suicide fall into hell. Did he, in the end, fail to reach heaven?
‘Not that I have any right to reach heaven myself.’
Placidly recalling that truth, I set out in search of my child’s grave. I moved forward with slow steps, looking around the grounds.
I swept my gaze constantly across the area for some defining feature, but the gravestones marking generations of the Grand Duke’s family looked so alike that finding it proved difficult.
He had said he buried the child in the sunniest spot. Yet as with any cemetery, finding warmth amidst such desolate grounds was no simple task.
‘The sun will set soon.’
With only identical headstones everywhere, I risked losing my way entirely if darkness fell. As the sun drifted further to the west, after wandering aimlessly for quite some time, something caught the edge of my sight.
An orange tree.
Struck by its sheer incongruity, I froze in place. The tree’s posture, fresh and standing upright, felt entirely out of place in this bleak graveyard.
Though rooted in a place of the dead, it brimmed with excessive vitality. Its stout branches were thick with lush leaves, proof that sunlight poured in abundance where it stood.
Only briefly caught in that sense of mismatch, I faintly recalled that the fruit my child had loved above all else in life was the orange.
Drawn as if under a spell, I walked toward the tree. From afar I had failed to spot them, but close to the trunk stood two recently erected gravestones side by side.
My breath caught sharply.
Engraved upon the pure white marble was the child’s name and her brief span of life. Beside it ran dense lines of prayer, wishing her into heaven after death.
Indescribable emotions surged from deep within me. Slowly, I sank to my knees before it.
“Solli.”
I stroked the cold stone with tender care, as if it were the child herself. Yet what lay before me was nothing more than a block of stone. At the hard, freezing touch beneath my fingers, tears welled up and spilled over.
The sensation of her warm, soft body gathered in my arms remained so vivid, yet I could never feel it again.
No matter how many years passed, Soliet would stay seven years old forever.
A little girl who had not even reached my waist, chattering nonsense with pure delight written across her face. Frozen in that moment, she would fill my thoughts for the rest of my days.
The death I had barely begun to accept crashed over me once more like an immense wave. Helpless, I crumbled before it.
“A world without you has no meaning.”
And yet…
I lifted my tear-streaked face. The grave beside hers was simple compared to the child’s, which showed every trace of meticulous care. Yet it still carried dignity. Just like its master in life.
I did not even have the courage to look directly at his resting place. I lacked even the right to speak his name in longing.
We, who had always been so busy turning away from each other, have finally come face-to-face only in death.
The words I had spat out in blind fury on that day—the final day of his life, not mine—had ultimately turned into arrows flying back at me.
Yet what tore into me more painfully than anything else were the parting words he had left behind.
‘If there is a next life, I hope only that we never cross paths again.’
Fresh streams traced down cheeks still marked by tears. I murmured a belated apology.
“…I’m sorry.”
For driving you to this. For rendering even your death utterly meaningless in the end.
Yet I swear this is not meant to insult you.
This was my absolute limit. No, I had already crossed that limit the moment he died.
After lingering in a daze before the two graves, I pulled out the vial of medicine I had brought as the sunset began to fall.
As the sun sank past the horizon, its crimson hue gradually stained the green grass to match. Gripping the vial tight, I drank in the sight for the final time.
To think I had believed I would never see this view again.
The sunset seemed exceptionally red today. It looked almost like blood. Just as that light reached out to swallow my body, I raised the bottle without hesitation and emptied it into my mouth.
They had said that beyond a certain measure, even the sturdiest adult would meet instantaneous death without exception. And the amount I swallowed was easily twice the lethal dose.
This, then, would be a death that could not fail.
Rolling the mouthful of fruit on my tongue, I ground down with my molars, and a sickeningly bitter juice rushed down my throat.
Gulping the fruit down, a searing heat ripped through everywhere the juice passed, as though burning alive. It felt as if my esophagus were tearing apart.
Blood welled up, pouring relentlessly past my lips, and an agony so violent it choked the air from my chest mounted within me.
That pain soon transformed into ecstasy. Even while gagging and gasping for breath, I smiled.
The moment this agony ceased, everything would truly be over.
As my senses faded into the distance, I wondered what thoughts had crossed his mind in his final moments.
Had he resented me when his last breath slipped away? Had he regretted taking my hand in Lopawell?
The field steeped in the sunset’s red filled my sight. I blinked slowly.
If our beginning had been different, would our ending have changed as well?
I will never know the answer now.
* * *
Her stopped breath broke free. Sienna coughed violently, like someone pulled from the brink of suffocation. Even as she gasped, her blue eyes darted restlessly across her surroundings.
“Cough…!”
Only after hacking up dry coughs again and again could she catch her breath properly. With every inhalation came a sound like iron scraping down her throat.
Clutching her throat and managing to breathe at last, Sienna finally took in her surroundings. It was a cramped, shabby room.
Above her head came the sharp squeaks of mice that grated on the nerves, and not far away stood a heavily cracked mirror—a scene that felt eerily familiar.
The web of fractures divided the glass into multiple fragments, distorting her reflection unevenly. Yet even inside that shattered mirror, her image showed clear. Luscious hair, and lively pearl-pale skin…
Sienna blinked slowly. That was certainly her, yet it was not.
And with good reason: after losing her second child, Sienna’s face had been entirely overtaken by sickness, stripped of any sign of color.
Every prominent physician had declared in unison that she would never recover her former health. She knew that truth better than anyone.
Yet the reflection in the mirror was beyond healthy; it looked as fresh as summer fruit. Her blank expression twisted abruptly.
“…This can’t be.”
“Are you awake?”
At the voice behind her, Sienna’s shoulders stiffened and she turned her head. Meeting familiar olive eyes, her lips parted slowly.
Tawny hair and nicely tanned skin. That smile, reminiscent of a summer coast, belonged to someone she had known for a long time. It also belonged to someone she could never see alive again.
A name she had forgotten for so long drifted dazedly between her teeth.
“Theodore…”
The man called by name gave an airy chuckle. Yet Sienna turned pale, looking as if she had just seen a ghost.
“What… is the meaning of this? Why am I…”
“What do you mean, what is it?”
“I clearly died, so why am I here? And you…”
Sienna could not bring herself to finish.
Theodore Monches.
The only younger brother of the current Count Monches, he was originally an imperial knight who had served as Sienna’s personal escort ever since her days in the capital.
Yet he had undoubtedly died years ago.
It had happened before Sienna had even spent a full year back in the capital.
An artillery shell during the war had blown away his entire lower body, leaving only his torso to be recovered. Count Monches’ voice, breaking into uncharacteristic tears as he delivered the news, remained vivid in her memory.
This situation was sheer madness. That she was alive after ingesting twice the lethal dose of poison, and that this man was casually standing before her…
Her racing thoughts left Sienna shifting her uneasy gaze back and forth.
“Could this be the afterlife?”
At her words, the man’s face twisted into an odd grimace. Staring at her as if he had just heard the most absurd nonsense, he muttered with a sigh.
“Well, when you spend all day shut inside your room, I suppose it’s no wonder you mix up dreams and reality.”
Sienna’s brow furrowed deeper. Yet Theodore, just as she remembered him, was not the type to care about such reactions.
“You certainly have it easy. Even while the country’s been at war for years.”
With an impassive sneer, Theodore placed a breakfast tray onto the side table by her bed. Yet Sienna did not spare it a single glance.
“At war?”
“Haven’t you come to your senses yet?”