Chapter 97 – Gaze (4)
Lucia doubted her ears for a moment.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your sister, help me get Mason out of Isabella.”
The vigilance and fear in Lucia’s expression collapsed. Of course, there was no reason to cooperate with such a stupid plan. In an instant, my pulse was released, and I even felt a sense of collapse.
She let out a small sigh, feeling sorry for herself who had been nervous for a moment.
“Why do you think I would cooperate?”
Of course, Lucia had no reason to cooperate. She had no reason to thwart Isabella’s plans, nor was she stupid enough to make enemies with Isabella.
“Seeing you say that, you don’t even know exactly what kind of child Isabella is. And they don’t know what kind of relationship I have with Isabella or with her sister.”
At Lucia’s answer, Grace shed a sneer and answered.
“Okay. As far as I know, you and Isabella stuck together, and your sister seems to care about you a lot.”
“Be careful with your words. I am in love with Isabella.”
“Love? Is she talking about your one-sided feelings that Isabella will never return?”
Lucia answered, keeping her composure so as not to get caught up in Grace’s narration that got on her nerves.
“Is it so. Love. Even if it’s one-sided, I won’t cooperate with you.”
“Sounds stupid.”
Grace replied, dismissing her words.
“No matter how you look at it, you are blind. Pretending to be rational, pretending to be more cunning than others is nothing more than pathetic self-consciousness.”
“You are a very good psychologist.”
Lucia was sarcastic, but Grace’s expression did not change. Her golden eyes staring at her unwaveringly. A sneering smile with only one corner of the mouth raised in contrast to the clear staring eyes.
Her expression as if she had a complete understanding of herself.
The moment she saw that expression, she couldn’t hold back her anger any longer. In particular, those golden eyes of hers somehow made her uneasy.
In the end, having decided that it was best for her to avoid the occasion, she decided to close her conversation.
“Is that what you mean? Well, I wish you no luck with your foolish plan, but I can’t seem to be of any help.”
Lucia quickly turned around. I thought that if I mixed words with someone like that, I would only lose myself.
However, things did not go according to her will.
The moment she took three steps in the opposite direction, Grace’s words caught her step again.
“Isn’t it comfortable to run away?”
Her words bound Lucia’s feet like fetters.
“Brainwashing yourself to turn away, avoid, and justify yourself in irrational situations. It has always been that way, and it will continue to be that way.”
It’s a lie. It was just a stupid provocation thrown at her to fuel her own anger.
But unlike Lucia’s ruminations, her body did not intend to move, as if it were frozen. A weak trembling that runs through the whole body, a stuffy feeling rising from somewhere in the body.
“Because it’s convenient to think of it as love. It only seems to be the way you chose to live on the conveniences Isabella provides.”
“… Don’t bullshit.”
Lucia murmured softly and turned her body around. Grace was laughing. A soft, unmatched smile.
Suddenly, the thought crossed her head that that smile looked so much like Isabella’s.
“Tell me honestly. You abandoned your sister and chose Isabella. Because it is comfortable and makes you feel safe. She must have felt guilt and fear for her sister who went far for you.”
Grace took a step towards Lucia, and Lucia, feeling overwhelmed by her unknown aura, involuntarily took a step back.
“I understand. I hear you were young then. She must have felt guilty towards her older sister, who left because of her. But without you knowing, should I tell you what you must have felt the most?”
Grace’s sparkling golden eyes were powerful. The power to make the opponent feel uncomfortable, yet unable to take their eyes off it.
Lucia couldn’t take her eyes off Grace.
“Fear. The fear that, like your parents who died first, your sister might have left you first, or she might have abandoned you. Then you naturally depended on your surroundings. Then, is there anyone around you you can rely on?”
Grace smiled, her eyes curling softly.
“I can only think of one person.”
“… What do you know?”
“As a friend, as well as the only daughter of a local nobleman, she is of course financially well-off, and a young girl who is so clever that it’s not even a job to take control of a child who doesn’t know anything.”
“… What are you talking about like you know everything?”
“In the end, you made a choice. The only support I could lean on during my unstable childhood. And the insane who take pleasure in being able to manipulate people as they please.”
“Her guilt towards her sister and her fear of being abandoned must have gradually turned to resentment towards your sister.”
“Stop.”
“That kind of reliance on Isabella gradually turns into an obsession, and to justify it, there is probably no more comfortable rationalization than the word love.”
“Stop it.”
“You have been tamed since then. Like clothes getting wet in drizzle, little by little without you even knowing. To Isabella’s liking, more easily maneuverable. Do you believe that I love you without even knowing that you are that kind of person? I don’t know if I’m getting cut off and I’m trying to motivate myself. Could there be an easier opponent than this?”
“I told you to stop!”
Lucia screamed. Her hands were holding the skirts on either side of her to the extent that they turned white. Her fingertips were cold and she could feel them wet with a cold sweat. Her rapid breathing made her chest rise and fall busily, and the hum deafened her ears.
I wanted to refute. I wanted to make that hateful woman shut her mouth so she couldn’t even cheep. But for some reason, she couldn’t easily represent herself. Her head, cluttered with anger, did not allow her to think logically, and all she could do was vent her anger in a pitiful whimper.
“What do you know? What do you know about me, about Isabella?”
In her trembling voice, she retells the story she had told. She hated herself for not being able to properly defend herself against the woman who had insulted Isabella.
“And even if you’re right, what difference does it make? It was her sister’s fault for leaving me in her childhood. I was only, only nine years old. Know? You can’t leave a kid like that alone.”
Her voice began to crack, and her vision began to blur little by little. She didn’t want to shed a tear, she tried to hold it back, but the more she did, the more she felt that she was losing, and in the end she couldn’t control it and wiped her eyes.
“Isabella takes care of me, and she has always been by my side. Even when I was sick, when the kids in the neighborhood threw stones at me and teased me for being an orphan. That’s what her family is like. She’s always by your side, and it’s family that never leaves you!”
She continued to open her mouth, trying to catch her breath.
“When I was afraid of sleeping alone, he invited me to the mansion. They protected me when I was teased badly by other kids. They treated me as family several times, dozens of times more than my older sister who left me. Still, why do I not love Isabella? Can you bet you wouldn’t!”
Grace stared at her as she screamed at her, gasping for breath. After a bit of silence, Grace’s words were enough to make Lucia deaf and mute.
“That goes for Mason, too.”
“… What?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Your sister was thirteen when she left to become a knight with the intention of supporting you. Did you know that regular training begins at 15 to become a knight?”
Lucia quietly shut her mouth. It was something she had never known.
“You know what it takes to become a knight? Waking up at dawn every day, praying, taking tests, rolling over, and getting hurt, I spend years. Wouldn’t your sister need a family? What do you think was the reason that made you endure it in the first place?”
“… Stop. I don’t want to hear more.”
Lucia muttered softly, but Grace did not stop.
“Responsibility and sacrifice to do anything to make it easier for you.”
Grace quietly rammed her cruel words into her.
“That is love. It’s not your playing house with Isabella.”
Grace continued her words, looking at her with her pitiful look in her eyes.
“Looks like you need to realize what you did to your sister first.”
She pulled something square of hers from the rucksack she was carrying over one shoulder. What she pushed into Lucia was a small box.
“Receive.”
But when Lucia wouldn’t extend her hand, Grace forced her box into her hand.
“If you can’t feel anything… You are just the person that got there.”
Grace turned her back and began to walk away, as if she had nothing to do with it anymore. Lucia was left alone, standing alone in the street, holding a box in a daze.
Neither her proper rebuttal nor her proper defense of Isabella.
She felt helpless that she couldn’t properly protect her love, which she always thought was more precious than herself.
The feeling of defeat at losing to her teeth in denial of her feelings.
Unable to contain her rage, she held her box high in her hand and slammed it on the floor with all her might.
Bagak-
The contents of the box, which had been shattered by the impact, rose in all directions and then sank. Over the filthy puddles of the road, under the shoes of passers-by, getting wet with filthy dirt and filth.
-What?
-I don’t know. What kind of paper do you think it is?
The moment she was about to leave, ignoring the buzz of passers-by, a single word written on a piece of paper caught her eyes for a moment and stopped her steps.
Crooked, poorly written words from freshly learned letters.
– Lucia.
She bent down and examined the paper. Paper that has yellowed for a long time and is full of finger marks no matter how many times you read it. An inscription with clumsy drawings and calligraphy that is incomparably cohesive.
Vivid tear stains, recognizable even after many years.
It was a letter.
That she spent in her childhood.
