MB Chapter 3

It had not been so very long since Goiyo last saw Therio. Measured against the past, perhaps the reckoning would be different—but only a week had passed between the day she ended her life and today.

Yet looking at Therio's face, Goiyo felt the weight of a very long time.

Seven years wound backward. No other face she had encountered since her return had made it feel so real.

He was still in his twenties now as he had been then—twenty-nine was hardly old—but the face before her was stranger than she had imagined it would be.

That face, which had become something like a wax figure toward the end, had once been filled with such life. There were shadows beneath his eyes, yes, but no more than anyone carried.

Goiyo's throat tightened. She felt it—the plain, unwelcome certainty that Therio had become this way because of her.

Therio studied her complexion and asked after her health.

"I heard you were ill. Are you all right?"

"It was a few days ago now."

"Even so."

Rather than answering his concern, Goiyo closed her mouth.

Therio exhaled softly and drew closer. He moved to kiss her cheek in that easy, familiar way—and then found himself checked by the hand at his shoulder.

Goiyo...? She ignored his questioning look and settled herself onto the sofa.

"I'm sorry for summoning you here. I would have gone to you, but I still have a little fever."

"It's fine. It isn't far."

Goiyo lifted the teacup before her and took a slow sip, choosing her words.

"I called you here because there's something I want to say. Or rather—something I thought you might want to say."

Until the very eve of their wedding, Therio Alte had never once brought himself to speak what lay beneath. The shadows on his face had deepened day by day, and the warmth in his eyes had slowly gone out.

Even on the night he had come to her drunk—had come to tell her something—Goiyo had not let him speak. So in the end, not a single true word had ever passed Therio's lips. Not until Melishi Rubiette died. Not until the ruin was complete.

Was that pitiable, or was it simply foolish? The one who had sealed his mouth had been Goiyo herself—and yet she could not say with any certainty how she felt about it.

Though that wasn't quite right, either—sealing his mouth. Therio had only tried to speak on the night before the wedding; by then, everything had already been decided.

Foolishly—that was the only word for it—Therio had waited until everything was finished before trying to open his mouth.

Perhaps it was regret. Perhaps it was the desire to lay blame at Goiyo Rubiette's feet.

What had Therio been thinking throughout all those months as their marriage drew near?

Even now, with everything between them erased, the thought of it made Goiyo ache.

"Our formal engagement ceremony is almost upon us. And we'll be married next year."

"...So we will."

"Do you remember, Therio? What you said to me when we were still only friends. That we would be friends forever."

To Goiyo Rubiette—who was shy and disliked people and had no one around her—those words had been such happiness. How reckless, that joy had been.

She thought of it now and smiled, small and quiet. The smile tasted bitter.

"It broke apart the day you confessed to me."

"Goiyo."

"Do you remember the day I accepted your confession? You cried so much."

It had been so long since she had seen Therio cry that she had been genuinely flustered. She had been frantic trying to comfort him—her new lover—and then she had seen him turning his face away like a child, hiding his tears from her, and she had finally laughed despite herself.

That day, he had said it again.

"You said it again, through your tears. That you would love me forever."

Better not to have said it at all.

"I've known you a long time. I know very well how changeable you are. How poorly you keep your promises."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Really?"

His face—that face, so distinctly a man's—looked no different from usual, but Goiyo had spent more than ten years in that face's company, and she could see the tremor in it. The faint shaking at the corners of his eyes.

She raised her hand to smooth it away, then stopped. She did not want to do that anymore.

"Once the formal engagement ceremony is done, there will be no undoing it. Whatever you might do after—whether you cry, or rage, or make a scene—it won't matter. If there's something you want to say, you must say it now. Otherwise, everything that follows will be your own fault, Therio."

She had thought she was being rather transparent, but Therio did not answer. He only kept his same expression, holding her gaze.

He looked confused. Whether he had not yet become aware of his own heart, or whether he had decided he must keep his promise, or whether dissolving the match simply felt too heavy—she could not tell.

Perhaps he needed time to think. Goiyo softened her expression into a smile and lifted her shoulders lightly.

"I only called you here to say that. Silly, isn't it?"

"Goiyo..."

"I'm sorry—I'm not feeling well, so I'd like you to go now."

She rose from the sofa. She turned her back and moved to leave the parlor—and then was caught by firm arms, and drawn, just like that, into Therio's embrace.

He pulled her close and buried his face against the curve of her shoulder.

'It's been a long time since Therio held me like this.'

She thought it without feeling. This was the man she had loved so desperately, the man she had ached for years and years to have return to her—and yet, as though her longing had been buried along with her death, her heart did not stir. Not even a flutter.

She had never once spoken of eternal love herself—but still, she had not prepared for this: that her feelings would simply be gone.

"...How long have you known?"

"I haven't known you for a day or two."

"I'm sorry, Goiyo. I—"

The voice muffled in her shoulder was trembling finely. It was stained through with guilt—and yet beneath the guilt, in some deep place, it harbored joy. At the very moment of being given permission to leave, it was in this voice that Therio Alte spoke.

"Call off the engagement."

"Yes, Therio."

She nodded, and there was no grief in it at all.

'So. It's done.'

There would be no more resentment from him to endure. Melishi would not die. She would not have to listen to his accusations because of it. She would not have to watch for signs of a new lover, would not have to count down the days to her own death.

All of it—finished.

"Tell the adults yourself."

"I will."

"And there's one condition."

Therio, allowing himself to be gently pushed back, looked at her. A condition?

"Nothing extraordinary. Simply this—escort me to the imperial ball next month. It would be troublesome to find another partner on short notice."

"I didn't know you liked balls."

"I have a reason. It doesn't matter if you speak to our families before then." A pause. "You'll do it, won't you?"

Therio nodded readily. It was a light enough thing to ask; his agreement came easily.

Elated, his face openly bright, Therio offered his thanks.

What is there even to thank me for? That she had folded her love away? That she had let him go without a struggle? That she had seen it before he did and spared him the difficulty?

Goiyo watched him smile and smiled in return.

"Don't thank me. Just be happy."

'You're the one who killed Melishi. If you hadn't refused to break the engagement yourself—if you had released me—Melishi would still be alive right now.'

The truth was, Goiyo was curious. The man who had blamed her for Melishi's death. The man who could not lay down that resentment even on the day she died. What face would he wear this time?

If it was Goiyo—not Melishi—who was driven to the edge of a cliff by her own whim, and her breath stopped there— in that moment, whom would he blame?

'If there's something you want to say, you must say it now. Otherwise, everything that follows will be your own fault, Therio.'

No—even if he had spoken, it would still be his fault. His choice and his responsibility. In the end, it was Therio Alte who had changed his own heart and made himself suffer for it.

"It's your choice, so don't regret it this time."

She hoped—truly hoped—that whatever blame Therio placed, he would place it on himself.

The years she had endured on guilt alone, on responsibility alone. The love hollowing out, and resentment flooding into the empty place, until she could not have stopped herself from resenting him even if she had tried.

Whether she wished for Therio to be happy or unhappy—even that, Goiyo could not say.

What she knew for certain was only this: in this room, there was no Therio who loved Goiyo, and no Goiyo who loved Therio.

It was the kind of sadness that had no one to blame.

For some people, perhaps, the reversal of time would be a blessing. One might recover something lost—money, a lover, a life.

But for Goiyo, there was nothing that turning back time could change.

Goiyo Rubiette, eldest daughter of House Rubiette, had been born holding a great deal. Wealth, power, beauty—the things that made others envious were hers in abundance. But there was much she did not have, either.

Her parents had come together for political reasons. They did not love each other, and they did not love the child between them.

The one who raised Goiyo with genuine warmth was a wet nurse hired by House Rubiette. She died in an accident when Goiyo was five. After that, there was only the formal attendance of care.

At thirteen, even her loveless mother disappeared, and the Duke of Rubiette married again—someone he truly loved.

The man who had taken a beloved wife into his home looked happy. His family looked happy. Even his stepdaughter—the one who did not carry a single drop of Rubiette blood—was happy.

Spring arrived for everyone but Goiyo.

And so, as she grew, if Goiyo Rubiette had one wish, it was only this: a happy family. Nothing more.

When, after all her wandering, she accepted Therio's feelings—when she could feel, with clarity, that he loved her—Goiyo had believed her one wish was about to be granted.

But, regrettably.

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

Her options remained the same. One: marry Therio Alte and repeat the life she had already lived.

And one: accept Marquess Bethelgius's proposal and disappear into history alongside House Rubiette.

Either path led to ruin.

And she could not choose no one. The Duke, though he did not love his daughter, was the kind of man who could respect her as Rubiette's eldest—and precisely because he was that kind of man, his expectations of duty were all the more strict.

Having been born and raised as the daughter of a great house, having taken all it offered, Goiyo could not abandon that responsibility. Still less because she was not the kind of person who could simply run away and survive on her own.

Even if the Duke proved more lenient than she expected and permitted her a third choice—even if she took some other man's hand and that man truly loved her—the result would be the same.

Even if she found happiness through that marriage, it would be a happiness surrounded by dread.

Marquess Bethelgius would not leave the surviving members of House Rubiette in peace. Goiyo had only survived as Duchess Alte because of the Alte name—she had been sheltered in the arms of the only other ducal house in Solaris, the Emperor's sword, and that shelter alone had allowed her to breathe until the day she chose her own end.

After Rubiette's destruction, Bethelgius had met her once at a ball and said something to that effect. 'The Duchess of Alte is truly a fortunate woman.' She had not even been able to summon a derisive laugh.

Goiyo had no choices. What is the point of calling something a choice, when the only decision is which form of ruin to accept?

And so Goiyo Rubiette chose the ruin she could see most clearly.

So that false hope would not bloom again, would not reach into her chest and tear at it.

So that she could release, completely, the attachment—the belief that happiness might still be possible.

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

Goiyo Rubiette decided to become Goiyo Bethelgius.