Chapter 45

Chapter 45 – What Truth (4)

“…Ah.”

Lepis barely spoke the first word. He staggered towards me as he couldn’t hide his trembling body. He looked like he was about to cry.

“I…I was wrong.”

What?

I didn’t mean to die though I gazed up at him with a blank look. Anyway, the end of this story was getting closer and closer. It was time to pretend I was going crazy.

Really, do I still think this is fiction…?

I ignored the question in my heart. At this point, I didn’t know if I was pretending to be crazy or if I was really going crazy.

“It was, all… My wrong.”

I looked up at him

“The falsification of documents… When the crimes that did not exist, got increased instead… Forcing you. Confessing my love to you with a selfish heart…”

I lowered my gaze. It wasn’t his fault.

“I… was…wrong.”

He knelt before me and slowly leaned towards me as he put his head in front of me. Lepis’ pure white shirt was drenched in blood as if it was corroding his despair. I stared at him without saying a word for a long time.

Lepis’ transparent tears wet the floor. He was crying

…I couldn’t understand why he acted like a sinner.

“Why are you like this now? Ignore me, despise me, it’s your specialty.”

“….”

“Are you feeling guilty? Or, are you sorry that you loved me now?”

“….”

“Are you loving me to relieve your guilt?”

I despised Lepis’ desperate apology. I thought he wasn’t serious. I thought it was just an apology to win my heart… This wasn’t just a feeling for Lepis. All of their sincere apologies or sympathy towards me were offensive.

As I glanced at the dripping blood, I lowered my head at the bitter disgust that was creeping up.

Acacia’s neglect was also a sin. It was also a sin to use force to destroy a country for no reason. It was also a sin for Lepis to manipulate the destruction of the Sorano Kingdom, and it was also a sin to try to kill Arne by contract.

Originally, they did not apologize to Arne.

Ah, maybe it was because I was the only bad person here… Was I the only one who was a terrible person, so this feeling came from it? They reflected on what they did to Arne and apologized because they didn’t want to apologize to her.

The more I realized that this was still the case, the less I felt guilty about Arne and the stronger I felt for myself in this situation where no one knew me.

…Because I’m a bad person.

It was all in the past, it was all gone. They used to be like that…

Those who ignored the suffering of others.

They were people similar to me in a sense, enjoying Arne’s pain. However, it was humorous and ridiculous to come and apologize now. It was irritating. It felt like they were pretending to be nice, and I thought it was fake. It felt like hypocrisy.

However, I couldn’t face it properly or avoid it.

‘…Now, when I see them apologizing, I feel like I should be sorry for them.’

The relationship of being used and using was good. If they wanted to feel less guilty, I could fully use them and take advantage of them. Nonetheless, I couldn’t even do anything with the sense of reality I had now.

If this wasn’t a story, it was my life… was this the end?

What would happen to me?

If they acted like the people in the story, I would rather have them despise and ignore me. I’d rather they only want my body and get drunk in it. Why did they feel emotions? Why were they asking me for feelings and making them feel like a person?

I denied the feeling of reality.

If they were selfish, if they had behaved badly, or If they had no emotions… I wished they behaved overly flat like the person in the story.

“I’d rather you get drunk whenever you want and whisper love as you like. Don’t expect my truth. If you want me to be your lover, act like a sweetheart…”

“….”

“I’ll give you whatever you want that suits you better. Don’t be pretentious. Laria Lepis.”

Lepis, who had been silent with his lips closed, opened his.

“…No.”

He shook his head. It was an insulting remark that aroused Lepis’ anger. Yet he did not frown, grimace, or get angry. He looked at me with rather sad eyes.

“…My name is not Lepis.”

“….”

“It’s… It’s Eris. Arne.”

Lepis laughed lowly.

“I guess I am a selfish person. Even in this situation, it is annoying that the first name you call me with is not my name.”

“…No. That selfish look. It suits you better.”

He took the shards of glass I had in my hands, and the shards fell on the floor. Then, Lepis grabbed my blood-soaked hand and clasped it. He wrapped his other hand around my waist.

A soft breath touched my ear.

“…Please, call me by my name.”

“…Eris.”

“One more time.”

“Eris.”

Lepis kissed my lips. The blonde hair that had been crumpled on the bed spread out in a mess. His words broke my heart. Even though I felt a deep sense of reality, I just accepted the reality of Lepis’ circumstances, which I didn’t know.

If this wasn’t reality, there would be no reason for me to know about him, who was just a character.

My heart was broken.

The broken heart was shattered and reattached again and again. This was my world. Arne’s world, in which she lives and breathes, had disappeared since she gave up her life here.

After she left her life to me, her world disappeared.

I killed my sense of guilt towards Arne. I admitted my guilt. I acknowledged that the death of the people of the kingdom was caused by me. I also admitted that Rewan’s death was my own fault. The reason they liked me was because of me in Arne’s body… Their favor was created by me.

It was the relationship that I killed, the relationship that I made, and the world in which I became the subject. No matter how much I copied Arne’s actions, it was only me who acted independently.

…I am no longer a stranger to this place.

This was not the world in the book, the world with a fixed future. It was another world with a variety of futures that I did not know. It was a new story I made up.

There was no me from the past that did not belong to this story.

I…I am Arne.

[ Arne gazed at the stars in the night sky.

In the Kingdom of Sorano, the King was regarded as a star. The falling of the stars was regarded as the sublime (a word used in honor of the death of a king or a noble person). Arne looked at the shooting star and thought.

She wasn’t dead, but because she lost her right to be a king, the stars were falling.

For a moment, she thought of death as she stood there staring out the window for a while. Climbing over the window sill, the view to the bottom seemed far away. The illusion that gave her motion sickness. The illusion that the floor is close even though she hasn’t fallen yet.

The cool night air passed through Arne’s body. The sound of the wind blowing fiercely sounded like the screams of the people of the Kingdom of Sorano.

…It was as if the sound of the wind was screaming to her that she must not die, that she must not die.

Her body trembled. It was not tremors that were caused by the cold. Arne came down from the window. She backed away without even thinking of closing the window. Arne sat down on the floor and only wept.

Arne’s death… She was afraid of death in front of her eyes.

Not living, not dying, no courage to die… However, there was no hope of getting out of this place. Arne watched the stars fall again.

It was not the King’s right to lose.

It was her own heart that had endured. ]

Even if I realized a sense of reality and recognized what I was denying, nothing would change. I would not feel guilty about the people I had killed, and I would consider their deaths natural and fateful.

What I needed to relieve my guilt would be the original story, and if I didn’t need the original story to add on to my guilt, I would think of myself. If I could relieve my guilt, I would think of it as a story in a book that didn’t really exist. I would lightly dismiss it as fate and move on.

It wasn’t something to be this complicated in the first place. This was… It was only for a moment that I was confused when I saw people who genuinely yearned for me.

Originally, this was the correct way. For me, it was only right for me to think only of myself.

Lepis stopped by the Imperial Palace treatment room and brought bandages and medicine. Gazing at me with soft eyes, he poured medicine into my hand and wrapped a bandage around it.

“Don’t get hurt.”

He gently pressed his lips to my bandaged palm.

“I didn’t forgive you. Don’t get me wrong.”

“I know.”

Lepis responded to the soft mutter.

Blankly, I looked at my bandaged hand. It was terribly bitter. I was happy because this degree of pain seemed to be a measure of reality to me.

“When it’s just the two of us, I want you to call me Eris.”

As if I wanted to feel real and not feel guilty. I made a selfish choice. I asked for love. This was right. Lepis, who pretended to give everything for love, was awkward. I gladly accepted his choice.

“…Yes. I’ll do as you want.”

Even though I said I would do whatever he wanted, Lepis didn’t release his frown. He hugged me without a word. What was he thinking? How did he look at me? I didn’t know at all.

He kissed my lips softly.

“…I’ll just leave today.”

“Why…?”

With my question, His steps came to a standstill.

“I’m…a little tired… I think I should go back first.”

Lepis left the room without looking back at me.

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