74
===
It was a perfectly natural question. Aileen was Cesare's. Unless he cast her out, she would never think of leaving his enclosure on her own.
As Aileen slowly nodded, Cesare's hand lost its strength. Clang, the letter opener fell with a sharp sound.
It was that look again. Shattered into pieces, eyes like desolate ruins with nothing left behind...
Cesare caressed Aileen's neck with his bloodied hand. He slowly traced the handprints he had left, then closed his eyes for a moment.
"Why..."
Catching his ragged breath, he met Aileen's gaze again.
"Why didn't you resist?"
At his low question, Aileen opened her lips.
"There must be a reason..."
She was about to answer that Cesare must have a reason, but when a terribly cracked and hoarse voice came out, Cesare stopped her.
"Promise me, Aileen."
She was full of questions. Aileen looked up at him with tear-filled eyes.
Cesare spoke desperately, like someone cornered at the edge of a cliff.
"Promise me you won't die for me."
He had said something similar to her before. But it was a difficult promise for Aileen to make. However, when Cesare urged her to hurry, she had no choice but to say she would.
As soon as she uttered the promise, Cesare embraced Aileen as if to imprison her in his arms. Aileen felt a faint tremor. At first, she thought her own body was trembling, but it wasn't. It was a sensation transmitted from Cesare.
Without realizing it, Aileen hugged Cesare back. Her body, barely alive after a near-death experience, cried out in terrible fatigue and pain.
But she couldn't resist the urge to hold the man in front of her right now. Cesare silently held Aileen a little tighter.
As the tension eased, her vision quickly blurred. Her body, having exhausted its last remaining strength, signaled its limits. Laboriously awakening her rapidly sinking consciousness, Aileen whispered in a voice barely audible to him.
She was fine. She didn't hurt at all.
She spoke with difficulty in a metallic voice, but it didn't seem to reach Cesare. Until she lost consciousness, the person she saw still had eyes as ruined as a wasteland.
The sound of rain was terribly grating on her ears. The raindrops drumming against the window continued incessantly. Cesare, who had been focusing on the raindrops etched on the window, looked at Aileen lying on the bed in the Grand Duke's Residence.
Afraid of what he might do if he fell asleep in the brick house again, he brought the unconscious Aileen back to the Grand Duke's Residence. He personally wiped Aileen's bloodied cheeks with a cloth soaked in water, changed her into a new Night Robe, and laid her on the bed.
Standing by the window and looking at Aileen on the bed, he then checked his palm. The palm he had slashed with the letter opener was already about half healed. Perhaps by tomorrow, the wound would disappear without a trace.
However, even if the wound healed quickly, it didn't mean he couldn't feel the pain. Cesare repeatedly self-harmed whenever reality felt ambiguous. Pain was one of the few means by which he knew that Aileen existed in the world.
Cesare, who had been staring silently at his palm, smiled faintly. The more he recalled the moment he strangled Aileen's neck with his own hands, the more the memories in his head became confused, unable to distinguish between reality and illusion. The increasingly violent sound of rain disturbed Cesare's mind.
It rained when young Aileen fell asleep in the Imperial Palace's bedroom, and it rained when he killed Aileen in the brick house's bedroom.
And it rained on the day he went to the tavern where Aileen's head was hung.
He forcibly dragged the tangled memories back and rearranged them. He recalled the time before he turned back the clock seven years, after returning from victory and learning of Aileen's death.
When he learned that Aileen had been beheaded at the Guillotine.
Cesare couldn't readily feel a sense of reality. As if trapped in a terrible nightmare, he harbored the vain hope that Aileen would be alive and breathing again when he woke up from the dream.
But Cesare eventually realized the truth. That this was a cruel reality that couldn't even become a nightmare.
It was the day he went to the tavern where Aileen's severed head was hung.
It was pouring rain that day. The sky, which had been fine, suddenly poured down rain, and Cesare, dripping with rainwater, entered the tavern. His knights, dressed in plain clothes, followed him in, and the clerk ran out, holding a pile of dry cloths.
Cesare roughly wiped his wet body with the cloth the clerk handed him and casually looked around the inside. The largest tavern in Fiore Street was full of people. As he looked around at the people packed in despite the bad weather, the clerk glanced at Cesare several times.
He wore the hood of his robe low, but he was easy to spot because of his physique, which was distinctly different from others. His knights were drawing more attention because their faces were exposed.
Accustomed to ignoring the pouring gazes, Cesare gave the clerk a gold coin and was led to a seat. People glanced at the sight of several tall men and women entering. But the interest was only momentary, and they started chattering noisily again.
The tavern, which sold alcohol and women, was full of lustful humans. The guys with lustful eyes were already half out of their minds, heavily drunk on alcohol.
They were making crude jokes at the female singer singing in the center of the stage and snickering. The singer silently continued her song in front of those who were harassing her.
"Why can't I go back to that day? I still remember you. You are still so clear inside me..."
Cesare scanned the faces of the customers one by one. Until then, he was just planning to check the necessary information and leave the tavern immediately.
"Her eyes were the sexiest. Damn, it's such a waste that she's dead."
Until he heard the story about Aileen.
Cesare's gaze slowly fixed. The drunk man didn't recognize the red eyes looking at him. He was just muttering lewdly, pretending to fondle his crotch.
"Ah, even though I was too late and everything was ruined, it was great. The boss probably made a fortune back then. Not just Fiore, he must have swept up all the money in the capital."
The group who agreed with the man burst into laughter and added a word each. The boss had a hard time forcing her closed, dead eyes open. Everyone thought that the condemned woman was ugly when she was alive.
Even if a noblewoman of higher status died, she wouldn't be as sexy as that woman. It would have been nice if the corpse hadn't rotted. Then we could still hang it here and enjoy it. The guys who come to the tavern still only talk about that woman...
Cesare listened to the whole story that went on for a long time. He listened to everything without missing a single detail, and then suddenly burst out laughing.
After laughing for a while, Cesare slowly pushed the chair back and stood up from his seat. Then he approached those who were still laughing and talking about the head of the young female convict.
The men were startled by the sudden approach of the man and turned around. Cesare scanned their table. There was a long knife for cutting meat.
Without hesitation, Cesare picked up the knife.
The man who had been talking the loudest made a short sound, "Uh." He opened his eyes wide and groped his neck with his hand, but he couldn't feel anything. That was the man's last moment.
The knife was pulled out again, and a fountain of blood gushed out. Crimson blood splattered, and the man's body leaned backward. The sound of a thud echoed through the tavern, and an eerie silence fell on the space that had been filled with noise until just now.
In the frozen silence, the first to move were Cesare's knights. Rohan, Diego, and Senon blocked all the exits from the tavern. Michele jumped onto the stage, dragged the only woman in the space, the singer, and hid her in a corner.
And the massacre began. It was the first day that the sword that had protected the Traon Empire began to massacre the empire's citizens.
