MB Chapter 3

It wasn't as if Goiyo had last seen Therio particularly long ago. It might be some time, going by the past—but only a week had passed since she had ended her own life and arrived at today. That was all.

And yet in Therio's face, Goiyo felt a long time.

It was seven years the clock had been wound back; she could have felt this in any face. But she had never felt it so acutely in any of them as in this one.

It was the same decade as before—Therio was still in his twenties, twenty-nine was hardly old—but the face in front of her was stranger than she had imagined it would be.

In those days the wax-figure quality she remembered had not yet set in. This face brimmed with life. There was a shadow or two, but the kind that anyone carries.

For a moment Goiyo's throat closed. It was because the change in him felt like her doing.

Therio looked her over and asked after her health.

"I heard you'd been ill. Are you all right?"

"That was days ago."

"Even so."

Instead of answering his concern, Goiyo closed her mouth.

Therio sighed and stepped closer. He moved as he always did, comfortable and automatic, to kiss her cheek in greeting—and found himself eased back by a hand at his shoulder.

Goiyo? He looked at her with a question. She paid no attention to it and sat down on the sofa.

"I'm sorry to have summoned you. I would have come myself, but I still have a little fever."

"That's fine. It's not far."

Goiyo reached for the tea in front of her and took a sip while she considered her words.

"I have something I wanted to say to you. Or rather—I thought you might have something you wanted to say to me."

Therio Alte had not, until the very night before the wedding, ever taken out his inner thoughts and shown them. The shadow on his face had deepened day by day, the smiles had grown fewer.

Even on that night when he came drunk and ready to speak his mind—Goiyo had not let him. So his truest voice had never once left his lips. Not until Melishi Rubiette was dead, and everything had collapsed.

Was that pitiable, or simply foolish? The one who had pressed a hand over Therio's mouth had been Goiyo herself—and yet she could not quite settle on a feeling about it.

Though pressing a hand over his mouth isn't quite right either. Therio had been attempting to say something on the very night before the wedding—by then everything was already decided.

Foolishly, Therio had tried to open his mouth only after everything was over.

It might have been that he wanted one last chance. Or it might have been that he wanted to lay the blame at Goiyo's feet.

What had Therio been thinking, all through those months as the wedding approached?

Even trying to imagine it was enough to cause Goiyo pain. Even now, with all of it erased. Even now.

"Our formal engagement ceremony is coming up. And next year we'll be married."

"That's right."

"Do you remember, Therio—something you said when we were still just friends? That we would be friends forever."

For the girl that Goiyo Rubiette had been—a girl who kept her distance from people and did not particularly like them, and so had no one around her—those words had been such a joy.

Goiyo recalled her own careless happiness and gave a small smile. It tasted bitter.

"It broke the day you confessed to me."

"Goiyo."

"Do you remember the day you confessed? You cried terribly."

Seeing Therio cry had been a genuinely long time ago, so she had been quite thrown off. While she was floundering about trying to comfort her newly minted lover, he had been turning his head away childishly to hide his crying face from her, and eventually she had laughed.

That day, Therio had said those words again.

"And while you were crying you said it again. That you would love me forever."

'He might as well not have said it.'

"I've known you a long time. I know perfectly well that your feelings are changeable. I know you don't always keep your promises."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Really?"

His face looked no different from usual—but to Goiyo, who had known him for more than ten years, Therio's unsteadiness was visible. She could see the fine trembling at the corners of his eyes.

Should I brush them with my hand? She raised her hand, and then lowered it. She no longer wished to.

"Once the engagement ceremony is past, there will be no taking it back. No matter whether you cry or get angry or create a scene—it won't be possible. If you don't say it now, all of it will be your responsibility, Therio."

For all that she had spoken rather plainly, Therio said nothing. He simply continued to hold her gaze with the same expression.

He looked uncertain. Whether he hadn’t yet become conscious of his own feelings, or whether he felt bound to keep his word, or whether ending the engagement was simply too much to face.

Perhaps he needs time to think. Goiyo let the serious expression fall from her face and smiled.

"I just wanted to say that. Ridiculous, right?"

"Goiyo—"

"I'm sorry, I'm not feeling very well today—if you wouldn't mind leaving?"

Goiyo rose from the sofa. She turned her back and moved to leave the drawing room—and found herself pulled into Therio's arms, caught there by a firm grip.

With Goiyo held against him, Therio buried his face in the curve of her shoulder.

'It's been a while since I've been held by Therio.'

She thought it with complete indifference. For all that she had loved him so completely, for all that she had wanted so much for those feelings to return—whatever feeling had existed seemed to have been buried along with her former self. Her heart did not move.

The love she’d believed would last—it was gone. That, too, made her sad.

"When did you know?"

"I've not known you for a day or two."

"I'm sorry, Goiyo. I—"

The voice buried in her shoulder was trembling finely. A voice stained through with guilt—and beneath the guilt, carrying a deep joy at the very bottom of it. That was the voice with which Therio Alte was speaking to her, here on the occasion of their parting.

"Call off the engagement."

"Yes, Therio."

Goiyo nodded. No grief at all.

That settles it.

Now there would be no more of Therio's reproach to hear.

No Melishi dying. No accusation following it. No waiting for a new lover to appear. No counting down the days to her own ending. None of it.

"Tell the adults yourself."

"I will."

"And there's one condition."

Therio, being gently pushed away, asked again. A condition?

"It's nothing much. Just come to next month's imperial ball with me. Finding another partner would be a bother."

"I didn't know you cared for balls."

"I have my reasons. It doesn't matter if you tell the adults first."

But you will do it? Therio nodded readily. It was a light request, so his nod was light.

Thank you. With a brightened face, Therio offered her his thanks.

What was there to thank her for? For releasing the feelings she had set aside for him? For letting him go without a scene? For noticing first?

'What is there to thank me for?'

Goiyo looked at the smiling man and smiled too.

"Don't thank me—just go and be happy."

'You killed Melishi. If you hadn't refused the proposal—if only you had let me go—Melishi would still be alive.'

In truth, Goiyo was curious. The man who had blamed her for Melishi's death, who had not relinquished his resentment until the day she died—what face would he make this time?

If it was her fickleness that brought Goiyo rather than Melishi to the edge—and over it—what face would that man make then? And in that moment, who would he choose to blame?

'If you don't say it now, all of it will be your responsibility, Therio.'

No—truly, even if you had said it, it would be your responsibility. It is your choice and your burden. In the end it was Therio Alte who changed his own heart and made himself miserable.

"This is your choice, so don't regret it this time."

Goiyo hoped with everything she had that Therio would be the one he blamed.

—The years of holding on through guilt and obligation alone. The years of resentment rising to fill the space love had vacated—because she could not help resenting him, in the end.

Whether she wished Therio happiness or unhappiness—Goiyo herself could not say.

The one thing she was certain of: there was no Therio who loved Goiyo in that room, and no Goiyo who loved Therio. That was all there was.

A sorrowful thing.

For some people, regression might be a blessing. Whether it was money or a lover or a life—there would be something lost that could be reclaimed.

But for Goiyo, there was nothing that a return to the past could change.

Goiyo Rubiette, eldest daughter of the Rubiette house, had been born holding a great deal. Money, power, a face—more than enough of the things other people envied. But there was much Goiyo did not have.

Her parents had come together for political reasons. They did not love each other. They did not love the child born of it.

The one who gave Goiyo warmth was a nursemaid in the Rubiette household. She died in an accident before Goiyo turned five. After that, there was only duty.

At thirteen, even the loveless mother vanished. The Duke of Rubiette married again—someone he truly loved.

He was happy with the woman he had brought home. His new family was happy. Even the stepdaughter who carried not one drop of Rubiette blood seemed happy.

Spring came for everyone but Goiyo.

And so the one thing Goiyo Rubiette had wanted, as she grew, was only this: a happy family.

Accepting Therio’s feelings after all that wandering—feeling, unmistakably, that he loved her—Goiyo had believed her one wish was finally coming true.

But unfortunately—

Twenty-nine-year-old Goiyo Rubiette had become twenty-two-year-old Goiyo Rubiette. But what exactly had changed?

Her available choices remained exactly what they had been. First: marry Therio Alte again, and repeat the life she had already lived.

Second: accept the Marquess Bethelgius's proposal, and disappear with Rubiette into the history books.

Either way led only to ruin.

Even so, she could not choose no one at all. The Duke of Rubiette was a man who, though he did not love his daughter, could treat the eldest daughter of Rubiette with respect; but it was precisely because he was that kind of man that his expectations were more exacting.

Having been born to a prestigious house and enjoyed all it offered, Goiyo could not turn away from that obligation. She was not the kind of person who could throw everything away and flee. That made it all the more impossible.

Even if Father proved more generous than she imagined and allowed a third choice—it would make no difference. Even without Therio, without the Marquess, even if she took another man’s hand, even if he came from a suitable family and Father gave his blessing, even if that man truly loved Goiyo—it would only be a happiness ringed by fear.

Marquess Bethelgius would not leave the remaining Rubiettes alone. Goiyo, as Duchess Alte, had been able to survive only through Alte's protection. It was precisely because she had been within the arms of Alte—the only other ducal house, the Emperor's sword—that she had been able to breathe until she made her own choice.

In fact, at an evening ball after Rubiette's ruin, Bethelgius himself had said as much when they crossed paths. That Lady Alte was really quite fortunate. She couldn’t even manage a scoff.

Goiyo had no real choices. A ridiculous set of options for choosing which particular form her destruction would take—no one with any sense would call that a choice.

And so Goiyo Rubiette resolved to choose the more certain and complete ruin.

So that hope could not rise again without warning and dig into her heart a second time.

So that she could let go entirely of the clinging idea that happiness was still possible.

At least despair had never tormented her the way hope had.

Goiyo Rubiette decided to become Goiyo Bethelgius.