“Huh?”
I couldn’t hide my bewilderment at the unexpected answer.
To my reaction, Ruth, with a calm face, said in a deeply cracked voice,
“I know. Burning the mementos of my mother, it’s like an act worse than that of a beast, a real act of unfilial behavior.”
I got the feeling that he was reciting criticisms he had heard from somewhere else. If not, he wouldn’t make a face as if he was cursing himself while looking hurt.
If I had only recently met Ruth, hearing this story would have disappointed me a little, or actually, quite a lot.
But now, it wasn’t the case.
I believed the real Ruth was the one who worried about a wolf pup being ostracized from the pack, who smiled while gifting me a flower ring, and who pretended not to see when I was crying.
And the Ruth I knew wouldn’t have burnt his parent’s mementos without any reason.
Moreover, if he always carried it with him, it meant the item was precious to him.
If he hated his mother to the extent of burning her mementos, he wouldn’t carry around her last pendant.
With that thought, I shrugged my shoulders.
“Well.”
“Well?”
Ruth furrowed his eyebrows in confusion, unable to guess why I responded the way I did.
“Hmm.”
Seeing that, I pouted my lips and let out a shallow sigh filled with a bit of irritation.
I didn’t like that he, who had been laughing just a moment ago, now only seemed to frown.
“Cheer up, Ruth.”
“…Now’s not the time for that…”
Before he could finish, I pressed down firmly on the stiff corners of his mouth, causing Ruth to slap away my hand with a flustered expression.
“What on earth.”
“Your decision to burn all of your mother’s belongings wasn’t right. It was something that should never have been done.”
“…”
I said this, looking at the hand he had pushed away.
Ruth then let out a scoff, as if he had expected me to say that. It was a small snort, barely audible unless one was close, but the shape of it was clear.
However, that self-mocking laughter soon faded away with what I said next.
“But it can’t be called an act worse than that of a beastly brute.”
“!” Surprised by my words, his eyes widened. The trembling, long eyelashes and the shimmering violet pupils seemed to reveal Ruth was quite taken aback.
As I observed Ruth’s eyes, mine slightly twinkled. It was pleasant to see his change, now displaying more expressions following his emotions compared to before.
“The you I know wouldn’t do such a thing without reason. If you’ve burnt your mother’s keepsake, there must have been a compelling reason for it.”
I revealed my firm belief in him and tapped my lips lightly.
“So, just smile in front of me, Ruth. Don’t make such a face. You look prettier when you smile than when you frown.”
“…….”
After I had finished speaking, Ruth, who had been silent for a long while, eventually slowly opened his mouth.
“You always exceed my expectations.”
“Huh?” I tilted my head, puzzled by Ruth’s cryptic words.
“Do you know what other people say when I tell them I’ve burnt my mother’s keepsake?” Ruth ruffled his hair and leaned back against a tree, sliding down as if to sit.
Leaning against the base of the tree, I saw him, overlapping with the day we first met, talking to me in the same posture with numerous stories.
I couldn’t easily shake off the afterimage and stared intently. Then, coming to my senses, I went over and sat down quietly next to Ruth, hugging my knees and asked, “What are you saying?”
“As if waiting for my question, Ruth replied immediately and let out a small chuckle, “Saying they’re worse than a damned beast.”
“It’s not even funny. They kill their own kind for power,” I said.
“Ah.”
A moment later, he stopped laughing and added a comment that made me grip my hands white until they were clenched. As I suspected, the phrase he had used earlier to insult himself was something he had heard from others.
Swallowing the bitterness that inexplicably rose up at this realization, Ruth’s gaze, which had been directed toward the sky, pierced through me.
“Why do you speak differently from them?” he asked.
His already clear eyes shone like glass marbles, a sight quite mystical. Seeing a slight redness around his eyes, I wondered if he was trying hard to hold back tears.
Upon noticing his eyes, seemingly on the verge of shedding tears like melted ice if touched, I grasped the hem of my pointless dress. It was to hold back my hands which were moving thoughtlessly.
While I was suppressing the urge to reach out, Ruth continued in a shaky voice, “You think I wouldn’t do that? How can you be so sure? What if I really am worse than a beast, a complete disgrace, just like they say, and I burned my mother’s mementos out of malice? Would you still speak to me the same way?”
He hurled question after question, as if vomiting everything he had accumulated inside, sharply and relentlessly, just like that time.
Mulling over the memories that were particularly vivid today, I responded softly, “Because you wouldn’t.”
“What did you say?”
Ruth, having not heard me properly, took a couple of large steps closer and asked again.
Catching a glance at Ruth, who had now approached right in front of me, I gestured towards the pendant around his neck, “If you truly harbored malice and did such a thing, you wouldn’t cherish that pendant and carry it with you.”
“…”
Lost for words upon hearing my explanation, Ruth’s eyes turned curious. It seemed he had finally understood what I was trying to say.
“If you understand now, relax your brows. Won’t you get wrinkles like you said if you keep frowning?”
I teased him by gently pressing his furrowed brow with my index and middle fingers, a joking reproach. It was an act born from a selfish desire to break free from the somewhat heavy atmosphere.
However, Ruth, who had been giving a look full of unsaid words, suddenly grasped my hand.
“…You said I was strange. But in my eyes, you’re even stranger.”
“Now is not the time for this kind of conversation….”
“But what’s even stranger is that I don’t dislike that aspect of you.”
“…!”
At this unexpected confession, I was frozen on the spot.
For a moment, my mind went blank, while the sound of a drum began to beat at regular intervals in my ear. It did not take long for me to realize the drumming sound enveloping my ears was coming from my own heart.
Why is my heart….
Just as I was about to be flustered by this strange phenomenon occurring within me, Ruth bent forward and lightly touched his forehead to mine.
“To me, you are an unknown variable, Serbia.”
“So, you’re saying you dislike that?”
Barely regaining my composure, I tried to hide my surprise by grumbling, and Ruth chuckled.
“Serbia. I know it’s not the right time to have this conversation, but I haven’t completely trusted you until now. I thought of you as just a passing acquaintance. But now, I want you to be my person. Precisely, my own person.”
Somehow, his phrase felt embarrassingly cheesy. Not only that, but I felt a queasy sensation in my stomach as if I had swallowed a handful of dandelion seeds, and I kept wanting to spit something out.
I struggled to ignore this indescribable feeling and looked up at Ruth, who was less than half a step away from me.
“If I become Ruth’s person, does that mean Ruth becomes mine?”
“Of course. The moment you become my person, I am yours.”
Looking at Ruth, who nodded without a hint of hesitation, my lips involuntarily curved into a smile.
The reason why he suddenly trusted me enough to ask me to be his person, even though he had not trusted me until now, didn’t matter. After all, there was only one answer I could give to his request to be his person.
“Then, I agree. I’ll be your person.”
(TL/N: I think she doesn’t realise it was a proposal and she accepted it)
As soon as I said that, the grip of his hand holding mine tightened.
“Not at all.”
The eyes turning into crescent moon shapes clearly showed they couldn’t contain the joy, so I ended up bursting into laughter too.
It was a moment that had suddenly reached the tail end of spring.
***
After the day I met Ruth, I lived only within my bedroom. I felt no need to leave it, and the foreign feeling that something was happening in the mansion that I was unaware of was unpleasant.
Thinking back, my heart was racing then.
While resting my chin and blankly staring out the window, I suddenly remembered how my heart raced a few days ago seeing Ruth’s smile.
“Hmm.”
Was it simply because his smiling face was so charming that I reacted? But then again, I don’t feel anything special when Tommy smiles.
The more I tried to figure out why my heart reacted to Ruth, the more it felt like I was getting lost in a maze.
In fact, this wasn’t the first time my heart had raced at the sight of him.
But all the other times, there were plausible reasons.
It was because it was the first time meeting someone from outside the mansion. It was because the flower ring he gave me as a gift was too pretty. It was because I was thankful for Ruth, who silently stayed by my side.
However, this time, I couldn’t find a reasonable explanation.
Maybe it was because Ruth said, “Of course. The moment you became mine, I became yours.” But it was odd to think that this statement made my heart flutter.
Moreover, what was even stranger was that even now, as I pondered over these worries, I felt butterflies in my stomach and my heart was racing.
“How strange… Huh?”
As I was counting the petals falling from the tree, engulfed by a strange emotion I felt for the first time in my life, I heard a noise from behind.
…What’s that?
I hadn’t heard the sound of a door opening, so an uncomfortable shiver filled with tension spread up my forearms.
After taking a deep breath, I turned around on high alert.
However, as soon as I identified the intruder, the high alert I had built up crumbled away.
