RAMHM Chapter 43

Born Anew

"……An."

I squeezed out a voice that barely came, calling for An again. Rhodness looked at me, frozen in that stopped posture. His eyes—which had been dark, extinguished—blazed suddenly, as if someone had switched on an electric light. Those half-mad eyes I'd seen at my gravesite.

My hands, already trembling, clasped each other tightly. As my solitary conviction hardened into perfect certainty with Rhodness's reaction, I found it difficult to calm myself as well. Moreover, the blood flowing down his throat, soaking his entire front, made me even more anxious.

Rhodness's dry laughter split the cold, dark air. He buried his face briefly in his large hands. In a situation where even tears wouldn't come, laughter kept leaking ceaselessly between his parched, cracked lips.

"……An."

"Stop."

The voice that emerged from him sank heavily to the ground. The pet name 'An' was a name only he and Adrienne knew in this world.

On a winter night pouring with heartbreakingly beautiful stars, Rhodness sank down with a body growing coldly stiff. Every ounce of strength seemed to have drained from his body. He could have ended his life with a beautiful finale. It was also the only way to prove his feelings for Adrienne.

The heart that had crumbled upon confirming the corpse, and the heart that didn't want his last moments to be with a woman who reminded him of Adrienne. Setting all those feelings aside, the path to go alone to Adrienne's side where she would be lonely. Ending his breath on the starlit hill where Adrienne had so wanted to go with him—it held considerable meaning.

Though he didn't know if he could reach where Adrienne was, given how much blood stained his hands. While resting his arms on his bent knees and dry-washing his face, he reminded himself that this place where he'd heard the name An was not heaven, and that Bliea Acacia, who drove him mad, existed in reality.

Had he truly gone mad, and mad again, and mad beyond that until he heard hallucinations? The moment he saw Adrienne's corpse, had he bitten his tongue and died right there? If not that, there was no way to explain it, no courage to ask that woman how she knew that name.

But when Rhodness saw Bliea Acacia's eyes—unwavering unlike his own that shook mercilessly—his throat seemed blocked, unable to produce any sound, any words at all.

"Believe me. No, you must believe."

Truly, no words at all. Rhodness stared blankly up at the woman speaking while trembling. It was dreamlike.

"An, An please… believe me."

Finally he buried his face completely in his large hands. As he blocked the escaping laughter, contempt for everything surrounding him surged simultaneously.

"…Tell me it's a dream instead."

Rhodness's body jerked. From the outside, it was impossible to tell whether he was crying or laughing.

'Maybe because I don't want to believe too much that she's dead, so that woman… I'm waiting like a madman for her to tell me she's actually Adrienne.'

Making such pathetic wishes—he must be receiving punishment.

"Stop driving me mad, just like this…"

Rhodness spoke as if sobbing, without tears coming.

"If you want to watch and mock me going increasingly mad while seeing Adrienne in you, do as you please. No matter what, I will absolutely never betray Adrienne. I, absolutely…"

At Rhodness's voice muttering as if retching, I finally broke. I approached Rhodness, who remained in despair with his face buried in his hands. And I placed my hands over his hands covering his face.

"An, An…… I'm Adrienne. The body died, but my soul is in this body now."

Rhodness slowly shook his head.

"You're not mad, you didn't betray me. I'm the bad one. Foolishly deceived, I gave my heart to another man."

Rhodness shook his head as if thinking this entire situation was absurd, yet couldn't take his slightly revealed eyes from me.

"At dawn, I suddenly had a seizure and swallowed medicine. Shocking everyone in the household… And I died like that."

"……."

"I definitely died…… The sensation of breath ceasing is vivid in my lungs, it definitely was. But when I woke up, I was inside this Bliea Acacia's body."

Rhodness stared at me intently. The expression he'd shown until now was absent from that face. His remotely sunken gaze desperately tore through my face.

"If you don't believe me… I'm truly no different from dead."

No one will remember me for long, no one will care about my dead feelings. I whispered sadly.

"An."

I firmly grasped Rhodness's wet hand as he stared vacantly at me and pulled it toward me. The hand that had always been hot was coldly chilled.

"I was too foolish, too dull to recognize you were An."

"I, I……."

"…Adrienne."

As his eyes—not knowing what to say—wandered through empty air, I gripped his hand tighter.

"Adrienne… That's what you called me."

"!"

"Even when everyone said I was dead, disappeared from the world. Even when everyone called me Bliea…… Only you called me Adrienne to the very end."

I pulled a handkerchief from my dress and blocked his still-flowing blood. Rhodness didn't stop me.

"It doesn't…… make sense……."

The emotion reflected in Rhodness's strangely contorting face was not displeasure.

"When I had to live as Bliea, you…… made me want to live as Adrienne."

The tears that had briefly retreated from too much shock finally burst forth. I shed tears without making a sound. Rhodness's face—agonizing over whether I was an illusion, whether this place was reality—now contorted as much as it could possibly contort. His parched, dry-cracked eyes crumpled abruptly, and soon hot tears burst forth like a broken dam.

Seeing Rhodness's eyes transformed desperately in another sense, I drew closer to him.

"……!"

Simultaneously, Rhodness pulled me—who had been holding his hand—toward him. As if swept into a whirlpool, I was sucked into Rhodness's embrace in an instant. His arms constricted me strongly.

He trembled as much as I did, having witnessed him trying to take his own life. Sobs he couldn't swallow boiled desperately around his throat. This was the first time I'd been embraced by someone so desperately.

The soundless crying continued for a very long time. Held in an embrace that made breathing difficult, I briefly separated him as soon as I felt his tears flowing down my throat.

Against the night sky as backdrop, An—sparkling like shattered stars—was before my eyes. His lips, which I'd always thought sensual, trembled and parted.

"I thought… you'd really died."

Ah.

"My heart…… I couldn't even properly convey it."

Ah, ah. Could he really believe this absurd situation? As Rhodness seemed to believe me and began speaking, my chest swelled.

"If I'd at least gone to your wedding, even if it felt like having my entire chest carved out, I could have remembered as my last memory you smiling brightly in a wedding dress."

Only thinking such pathetic thoughts, I suffered every day. Rhodness's wet face as he whispered looked like the resentment accumulated in his chest was flowing out with tears.

"Hearing you'd died. I couldn't sleep every night—when I slept, you cried in my dreams."

'I kept dying like that.'

"And Bliea Acacia……."

He dropped his head. The shoulders I'd always thought broad trembled precariously.

"Every time I saw you in this woman's eyes… wanting to help, my eyes drawn to her, I cursed myself for having such thoughts like when I met you."

A trembling voice like confession flowed endlessly into my ears.

"The moment I confirmed your corpse, my first thought was that I shouldn't leave you alone in that cold, dark underground prison. So…"

'I wasn't in my right mind thinking I should follow and stay by your side.'

"But you, you……."

"An."

At that single word An, his face crumpled again abruptly, pouring endless tears.

"You asked to be taken to Starlight Hill…"

How could I forget that. Though it was an unfortunate thing to say to him continually sobbing, the tears sparkling in starlight were as beautiful as they were poignant, and I couldn't look away.

"…Thank goodness."

Ah. This was exactly the voice of An I'd imagined. Now I felt like I was dreaming.

"Really…… thank goodness. That I…… I……."

An's voice, crawling along the ground yet kind and sweet.

"…Didn't forsake you."

That what drew me again was you. His muttered monologue gave me the illusion that it was shattering and crushing my everything to remake it. His enormous love—trying to take his own life fearing that being drawn to me again would become a betrayal—was no longer something that suffocated me.

It was the power to carefully mold my shattered, crushed soul to make me not Bliea Acacia but Adrienne Pirreta. Even if the entire world called me Bliea Acacia, before this man I could be Adrienne. Without any acting, without any lies. That single fact alone—the terrible loneliness that had felt like I was left alone in this world seemed to fly to that distant edge of the sky.

"Novian Trovika, I'll kill him."

"!"

"You stay back from dangerous matters now."

Rhodness's face—which had been thoroughly soaked then frozen, hardened stiffly—his words breathed out with vapor were quite shocking. This was after I'd briefly explained the situation until now. Rhodness, who'd been sitting as if collapsed, gripped my arm tightly—not painfully—and stood, his eyes blazing.

Just before dawn, when the sun was slowly rising. Rhodness, placing his hand on his sword hilt and stroking it firmly with his thumb, wore a face wanting to end everything in a different sense. If I nodded even slightly, he looked ready to gallop out on horseback like a knight receiving orders. But I didn't want to dirty An's hands with my wrongdoing. I sighed deeply. This was why I hadn't tried to involve An.

"I'll gratefully accept help. But the one who should stay back is you."

Rhodness's head turned straight to me. His rippling eyes looked extremely precarious.

"The end of love filled with deception…"

At the word 'love' coming from my mouth, Rhodness's eyes shook greatly. He immediately caught on that 'love' filled with deception meant Novian. Meeting Rhodness's darkly sunken gaze directly, I continued speaking.

"My past wrongs of foolishness and naivety…"

Rhodness's hand gripping my arm—as if I might disappear—was trembling.

"……Let me, let me end it with my own hands."

Wrapping his trembling hand, this time I was the one whose eyes blazed as I spoke.