CATIP 15

CHAPTER :15

#D-118

In the early spring rains, the pitch-black sky rumbled, weeping mournfully.

The scent of spring drifted, tangled in the sorrowful patter of the rain.

The last scent I would ever breathe in my life.

With this season as my last, I was destined to stand forever on the threshold of a vibrant summer.

I would never welcome autumn, when all of creation bears abundant fruit; instead, I would remain submerged in early summer.

When others joyfully harvested the fruits they had nurtured so dearly, I, having failed to bear even a single tiny fruit, would return to winter.

Tea time after lunch.

Basking in the languid aftertaste of fragrant black tea, I quietly watched the transparent raindrops strike the windowpane.

The sound of the rain was unchanged, yet a luxury I could never have enjoyed during those longed-for days had now enveloped me completely.

A soft chuckle escaped my lips before I knew it.

Strangely, a wave of nostalgia for the time I lived most wretchedly bloomed within me.

The days when I drifted through the slums, clutching my starving stomach with nothing to eat, yet free from any mental anguish.

It was absurd.

Hunger is one of the hardest things for a human to endure.

And yet, how could I possibly long for those days?

Because looking back, everything becomes a memory, a form of happiness.

Because I had walked toward an uncertain future, leaving beautiful things behind one by one.

And because that uncertain future had now solidified under the grim name of reality.

On the irreversible final day of my life, which would soon arrive, perhaps…

…I might long even for this very moment.

At least now, I had the luxury of basking in the warmth of hot tea.

Drunk on fleeting emotions, I rose from my chair.

Steps steeped in nostalgia led me out to the garden.

As I stepped into a puddle, a familiar splash echoed.

In the chilly air, cold droplets of water began to pelt the crown of my head.

The cries of my maids trying to stop me sounded as if they were coming from far, far away.

Getting drenched in the bleak rain in the courtyard of the Queen’s Palace, I retraced the footsteps of my past life.

I couldn’t remember how long it had been since I last stood in the rain.

At least since the age of fifteen, when I first set foot in the palace, I had never once wandered in the rain without an umbrella.

Having spent my childhood in the dirty, wretched slums, I was used to getting caught in downpours.

Heightening my senses, I focused on every sensation wrapping around my body and took in the world.

Every living thing in the world was in motion.

The rumbling sky. The rushing roar of the falling rain.

The whisper of the wet grass bowing its head, the gentle rustle of leaves brushing against one another.

The whistling wind. The rough friction of the churning water.

The soft rustle of grass yielding underfoot. The flow of damp air filling my lungs.

All the sounds of the world, which I normally wouldn’t have spared a second thought, felt as if God Himself were speaking to me.

If only I had a piano, I felt as though I could sit before it and translate all these sounds into His language.

I was simply abandoned amidst the echoes of this pitch-black, drenched world.

I turned my hands over. On my palms, the essence of spring pooled in the raindrops falling from afar, only to shatter into pieces.

The breaking droplets reflected everything in the world, like tiny mirrors.

Ah, Largo.

So this is the color of spring rain.

What did summer showers look like again? What about autumn frost? Or winter snowflakes?

Amidst the questions pouring over me like rain, I suddenly realized:

Nothing had changed. Not a single thing.

I, who had been so ignorant of the world, merely walking through my mother’s happy dreams, had simply grown up before I knew it.

Though my heart still lived in those days, my body had grown, and now I was waiting for the day I would return to my mother’s side.

How long had I been walking in the rain like this?

Through the dense spring droplets clinging to my eyelashes, a shadow flickered.

— You are behaving more and more eccentrically, my Queen.

There you were, tilting an umbrella over me in the darkness.

At his scolding tone, I was taken back to another past.

A faint memory of being scolded like that when I first entered the palace lingered in a corner of my mind.

The dumbfounded gaze that had stared at me.

There was once someone who looked at me with the exact same eyes.

The one who had always spoken harshly to me was the Queen, who had constantly viewed me as a thorn in her side.

Yet even that memory filled me with such longing that a sob threatened to burst from my throat…

— An eccentricity? Far from it.

— Then how else should I describe your behavior right now, my Queen?

— If I may… I believe Your Highness has forgotten my origins.

— Your origins?

His voice as he asked back was low, as if holding something back.

— I used to live in the slums of the capital. There, an umbrella was an unaffordable luxury, so getting rained on was a daily occurrence.

And yet, if a single raindrop falling on my head felt heavy enough to crush my entire body right now…

…it was surely because of the weight of my own hand as it finally drew back the shroud of night looming over my life.

— That may have been true in the past. But…

For a split second, I thought I saw contempt in his eyes.

— Not anymore.

A warm gesture, paired with eyes that were anything but.

— Nor in the future.

His gaze darkened heavily as he wrapped his hands around my shoulders.

— Maintain your dignity.

— …Did you say dignity?

I lifted my head high and studied his figure, drowned out by the sound of the rain.

Shrouded in dark clouds, he possessed an innate nobility.

In his sublime, beautiful figure lay something someone like me could never hope to approach.

Realizing this at last, a bitter smile played on my lips.

I felt my own sense of inferiority flare up, but what could I do?

This was the vast difference between him, a born royal, and me, who was nothing but an illegitimate child.

Between you and me lay a boundary I could never cross.

Just as the man who was my father had ruthlessly banished my mother and me from his life.

A bitter smile deepened on my face.

— I… do not think I can ever discard my true nature.

— What?

— It was what His Majesty the King always… told me. Only now, only today, do I finally understand his words.

Had he called me the evidence of a past he wished to erase?

Ironically, I now understood why the King had wanted to erase that past so badly.

Even if my heart couldn’t accept it, my mind understood it with crystal clarity.

When my voice finally escaped my throat, it was resolute.

— His Majesty was not wrong.

— My Queen!

Tossing the umbrella aside, he grabbed me by the shoulders.

The bleak, relentless rain finally began to drench him as well.

He spat out his next words.

— Do not drive me mad.

In truth, I knew.

I knew my current attitude was slowly suffocating those around me.

— Just why are you doing this? I cannot even begin to fathom what went wrong, or where.

Droplets of water dripped down his cheeks.

Was it rain, or was it tears?

Unable to distinguish the nature of those transparent traces, I merely looked up at him, my lips parting slightly.

There were words I had turned over and over in my mind, steeling myself to say, but they refused to come out.

— Has some misfortune befallen the kingdom?

— Of course not.

Did you know?

That even uttering the words that I would soon die required an immense amount of courage.

My heart wavered several times a day.

— Even if some misfortune had occurred, His Majesty would have informed Your Highness long before me.

I was not terminally ill.

Nor was I a death row prisoner waiting for the executioner’s axe after committing some heinous crime.

Yet, in the sense that I was waiting for my final day, I was no different from them.

— So there is no way Your Highness would remain ignorant of something I know.

Simply because the one who brought me into this world—the one I had trusted and served, whether by choice or by force—had declared that he would take back the life he gave.

And so, the conclusion was ultimately the same.

To announce with my own lips that my life had little time left was tantamount to ending it with my own hands.

It meant accepting and resigning myself to my demise without putting up any fight.

I was too much of a coward to put a period at the end and speak of it as if it were nothing.

No matter how much I told myself to accept it and set things in order, something I could not bring myself to acknowledge still breathed fiercely in my chest.

Even if the day came when I would drown in my own tears.

— I do not like this.

— What do you mean?

— Your attitude. Your thoughts. All of it, my Queen.

There was no reason left for me to act to your liking now.

I merely wished to let myself be drenched in the eternal spring rain, looking at you, who were trapped in the same time as I.

Today was the only day left for me to walk alongside him in time.

Within a time that would never, ever return.