It wasn’t a very long distance. Of course, even that was no small feat for me, who had been bedridden.
It took several more days and nights before the familiar sight of Monferrato, with metasequoia trees lining both sides of the road, came into view.
I had visited the ducal family’s cemetery once, not long after marrying him. It looked much the same as it did back then.
Statues of gods were placed here and there, hoping for the deceased to reach heaven, and there were quite a few sculptures depicting scenes from the Bible. However, given the nature of the place, even these beautiful works of art had an eerie atmosphere about them.
At the entrance to the cemetery stood a marble slab densely engraved with the Lord’s Prayer.
[God, save us.]
I quietly recited the prayer. Then suddenly, a thought occurred to me.
They say those who choose suicide often fall into hell. Did he ultimately fail to reach heaven?
‘Well, I’m already too tainted to reach heaven myself.’
Calmly recalling this fact, I set out to find the child’s grave. I moved my steps slowly, looking around.
I tried to find a distinctive place by moving my gaze diligently, but it wasn’t easy as the tombstones of the historical ducal family members all looked similar.
He said he buried the child in the sunniest spot. However, finding a sunny place in a gloomy cemetery, as most are, was a difficult task.
‘The sun will set soon.’
With tombstones of uniform shape, I might lose my way if it gets dark. As the sun tilted further west, something appeared at the edge of my wandering gaze.
It was an orange tree.
I unconsciously stopped at the sight of this incongruous presence. The fresh yet upright posture of the tree didn’t suit the desolate cemetery.
Despite being rooted in a place of the dead, the tree was too full of life. The sturdy branches with lush leaves were evidence that plenty of sunlight reached where the tree stood.
After a moment of feeling this dissonance, I vaguely remembered that oranges were the fruit the child couldn’t resist in life.
As if entranced, I walked towards the tree. I hadn’t noticed from afar, but not far from the tree stood a recently erected tombstone.
I took a deep breath for a moment.
On the white marble were inscribed the child’s name and their brief life. And densely engraved were prayers hoping for the child to go to heaven after death.
Indescribable emotions welled up inside me. I slowly knelt before it.
“Soliet.”
I gently caressed the cold stone as if it were the child. But what lay before me was merely a piece of rock. Tears welled up at the hard and cold touch on my hand.
The warm and soft feeling of holding the child in my arms is still vivid, but I can never feel it again.
Even as years pass, Soliet will remain forever seven years old.
A little one with a tiny frame that didn’t even reach my waist, happily chattering nonsense. That image will fill my mind for the rest of my life, frozen in time.
The death I had barely accepted engulfed me again like a massive wave. I crumbled helplessly before it.
“A world without you has no meaning.”
But…
I raised my head with a tear-stained face. The neighboring grave was simple compared to the child’s, which showed signs of careful attention. Yet it had dignity. Just like its owner in life.
I didn’t even have the courage to look directly at his grave. I didn’t have the right to call his name and miss him.
We, who were always busy turning away from each other, finally face each other like this in death.
On that day, which would have been the last in his life without me, the words I spewed out in anger eventually returned to me as arrows.
But what pains me most of all were his last words to me.
[If there’s a next life, I hope we never cross paths again.]
Tears streamed down my cheeks, where tear stains were still clearly visible. I mumbled a belated apology.
“…I’m sorry.”
For making you like this. For ultimately rendering even your death futile.
But I swear this is not to insult you.
This was my limit. No, I had already surpassed my limit since his death.
I was lost in thought before the two graves until sunset when I took out the medicine bottle I had brought.
As the sun dipped below the horizon, its red glow gradually tinted the blue grass with its color. I firmly grasped the medicine bottle as I took in this sight for the last time.
I thought I would never see this scene again.
The sunset was particularly red today. It almost looked like blood. As it seemed to engulf even my body, I unhesitatingly lifted the bottle and emptied it into my mouth.
They said even the healthiest adult would die instantly if they consumed more than a certain amount. And the amount I poured into my mouth was easily twice the lethal dose.
So this would surely be a death without fail.
As I rolled the berries around in my mouth with my tongue and crushed them with my molars, a bitter juice that made me want to retch flowed down my esophagus.
When I swallowed the berries, the parts where the juice had flowed felt as if they were on fire. It felt like my esophagus was being torn apart.
Blood flowed endlessly from between my lips as it refluxed, and gradually the pain became so intense that it was difficult to breathe.
The pain soon turned into ecstasy. Even as I choked and coughed, I laughed.
The moment this pain ceases, everything will finally end.
As my consciousness faded, I suddenly wondered what he thought of in his final moments.
Did he resent me with his last breath? Did he regret taking my hand in Lopwell?
The field, turning red in the sunset, filled my vision. I blinked slowly.
If our beginning had been different, would our ending have been different too?
Now I will never know the answer to that.
****
The breath that had stopped resumed. Sienna coughed violently, like someone rescued just before suffocation. Even as she gasped, her blue eyes searched aimlessly.
“Cough…!”
Only after coughing roughly several more times could she properly catch her breath. With each breath, it sounded as if her throat was being scraped with iron.
Sienna, barely exhaling while clutching her throat, finally looked around. It was a small, shabby room.
The sound of mice gnawing at her nerves squeaked from above, and not far away stood a heavily cracked mirror, a scene that felt strangely familiar.
The spider-web cracked glass mirror reflected her image unevenly in several fragments. Even in the shattered mirror, her image was clear. Luscious hair and a vibrant olive complexion…
Sienna blinked slowly. That was clearly her, but it wasn’t.
After all, after losing her second child, Sienna’s face was clearly marked with illness, with hardly any color to be found.
Renowned doctors all unanimously declared that she would never regain her former health. That was a fact she knew better than anyone.
Yet the her in the mirror looked not just healthy, but as fresh as summer fruit. Her face, which had been blankly staring at the mirror, suddenly contorted.
“…This can’t be.”
“Are you awake?”
At the voice from behind, Sienna stiffened her shoulders and turned her head. As her gaze met familiar olive eyes, her lips slowly parted.
Brownish-golden hair and appropriately tanned skin. The smile like a summer beach belonged to someone she had known for a long time. It also belonged to someone she could never see again in life.
A name she had long forgotten to think about slipped out between her teeth.
“Theodore…”
The man whose name was called smiled weakly. However, Sienna turned pale as if she had seen a ghost.
“What… what’s going on here? Why am I…”
“What do you mean, what’s going on?”
“I clearly died, so why am I here? Moreover, you…”
Sienna couldn’t finish her sentence.
Theodore Monches.
The only brother of the current Count Monches, he was originally a knight belonging to the Imperial Knights and had been Sienna’s personal knight since she was in the capital.
But he had certainly died a few years ago.
It was less than a year after Sienna had returned to the capital.
She clearly remembered the voice of Count Monches, uncharacteristically tearful, saying that only his upper body could be recovered as his lower body had been completely blown away by a cartridge during the war.
So the current situation was truly unbelievable. The fact that she was perfectly alive after consuming twice the lethal dose of poison, and that the man before her was casually facing her like this…
Sienna, continuing her thoughts, rolled her eyes around uneasily.
“Could this be the afterlife?”
At those words, the man’s face contorted strangely. He looked at her as if he had heard nonsense, then muttered in a voice mixed with a sigh.
“Well, I suppose it’s not unreasonable to confuse dreams and reality when you’ve been cooped up in your room all day.”
At those words, Sienna’s brow furrowed even deeper. However, Theodore, as she remembered him, was not one to care about such things.
“You’re living the good life. The country has been at war for years now.”
Theodore sarcastically placed her breakfast on the bedside table in front of her bed, his face expressionless. However, Sienna didn’t even glance at it.
“War? What war?”
“Have you still not come to your senses?”
