Spring Flower (4)

Lucy lost consciousness soon after.

Exhaustion must’ve been piled up to the limit, because she fell asleep in my arms.

Fine, breathing golden strands.

I quietly stared at the warmth radiating from my chest.

“Ryden…”

Even in her sleep, while tossing and turning, the girl was murmuring my name.

Tears that couldn’t quite fall glimmered.

I carefully reached out a finger and wiped them away.

The reunion, after almost a month, was filled with chaos.

My lord was looking utterly haggard.

Dark circles under her eyes, messy fingernails, disheveled hair.

Lucy was a wreck.

‘……What the hell.’

What the hell could have happened?

I couldn’t bring myself to voice such a question.

Knowing that *I* was the one who’d driven this frail girl to such a state.

I just bit down on my lip.

The severed yesterday stabs like a knife into my heart, triggering a stinging phantom pain.

“……Rest easy.”

I mutter to myself in a subdued voice.

I embraced the withering golden hair, organizing the tormenting emotions.

And as I kept the silence for a while.

Before long, I began to feel the stinging glares pouring in from all around.

It was the servants’ eyes.

Among them was Gilbert, who had come down to the reception room with me.

Their eyes were all filled with shock.

“……Ah.”

Only then did I realize our appearance wasn’t all that great.

I had actually made the royal family’s precious jewel cry.

Not only did I make her shed tears, I’d even made her faint.

What the hell could you even *do* to reduce a princess to this state.

Probably everyone’s thinking that, inside.

Only Ariel and Rachel, who know the whole story, were staring at us with complicated looks.

“Oppa…”

“Master…”

Two voices, laced with worry, as they came closer.

I forced a smile.

But it was like a badly sculpted mask, only conveying a feeling of dissonance.

My mood was chaotic.

Shaking off the pain clinging to my heart, I got up.

I couldn’t leave Lucy like that.

I gently lifted her limp body.

Careful not to wake the girl, I asked Gilbert,

“Could you show us to a spare room? Her Highness seems to need some rest.”

“Ah… yes, Master.”

Gilbert, who’d been out of it, quickly nodded.

I followed the old man’s hurried movements, calmly placing each step.

*

How much time had passed like that?

The girl opened her eyes.

Through her blurry vision, all she could see was the ceiling, dark and still.

Lucie, her mind still hazy, soon realized she was lying under an unfamiliar ceiling.

She wanted to sit up, but,

the overwhelming lethargy weighing on her prevented her from even moving a finger.

‘……My head hurts.’

She furrowed her brow at the throbbing pain.

Her focus, flickering in and out of clarity, messed with her awareness.

Lucy exhaled a faint breath.

Each time she breathed out, she felt herself slipping from sleep.

The girl, her mind still hazy, scanned her surroundings.

‘Where…am I…?’

The first question that surfaced, naturally, was about the space she was in.

The heavy shadows made it hard to see clearly, but at least she could tell this wasn’t her room.

A slight confusion arose.

The girl struggled to shake it off, trying to recall her memories.

‘I was definitely going to meet Raiden…’

She had headed directly for the Lyscht Duke’s mansion.

She’d made it all the way to the drawing-room, and after that…

“Raiden…!”

A flash of blue sparked in her shadowed eyes.

The name, which burst out of her involuntarily, shattered uselessly, filled with a fleeting desperation.

Lucy abruptly sat up.

She felt like her entire being was about to crumble, but the girl clenched her teeth.

She had to meet Raiden.

There was something she absolutely had to tell him.

But her body wouldn’t cooperate.

The weariness that had built up over the last month was cruelly weighing her down.

‘No… I have to meet him…’

Lucy bit her lip.

A terrible sense of lethargy made her eyes burn.

Tears welled, blurring her vision, when,

“Have you awakened?”

A calm resonance reached her ears.

Lucy froze for a moment.

It was the voice of the person she was so desperately trying to find.

“Rai…den…?”

The girl let out the trembling question.

Her voice was thick with tears, a complex mix of emotions churning within it.

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Raiden… is it really Raiden…?”

She keeps asking, repeating herself as if she can’t believe it.

As if to soothe Lucy’s disbelief, the boy who had been standing in the shadows finally came into view.

“I’m here… Your Highness.”

Black hair like the night sky.

Dark eyes holding a quiet light even in this pitch-black space.

Even the faint smile on his lips.

Seeing the boy’s form in her wavering vision, the dew clinging to Lucy’s eyes finally falls.

“Raiden…!!”

The girl flinches again.

Raiden gently presses on her forehead as if to tell her to stay still.

“Please lie down. Your Highness needs more rest.”

Then, as if to reassure her, he adds,

“Please cast aside your worries. I will stay by your side until Your Highness has completely recovered.”

A gentle hand strokes down the girl’s cheek.

Only after that quiet warmth settles in does Lucy find some calm.

Her blonde hair loosens, losing its tension, and spills onto the bed.

Raiden sits on the edge of the bed and takes her hand.

His skin was full of warmth.

Lucy, feeling the warmth fluttering through her fingertips, couldn’t stop the wave of emotion rising within her.

“I’m sorry…”

“Your Highness?”

“I’m sorry for… coming… hicuup… Raiden…”

A poignant sorrow spreads through the thick darkness.

“Rai, den… said he… hated me, to… go away… but, in the end, he… came…”

The girl remembered.

Raiden, steeped in resignation and resentment, pushing everyone around him away.

He had been glaring into the void with a venomous gaze.

“I thought… it couldn’t be… but, still, without, Raiden… I really… don’t think… I could, live…”

Lucy, sobbing, swallowed the sorrow that reached her throat.

As her emotions surged, jumbled sentences poured out in a messy rush.

“Please… Raiden, please…”

The girl remembered.

The loneliness she felt when Raiden suddenly vanished.

The suffocating, choking sense of loss that tightened around her neck every night.

She had only just found him again.

The you she’d lost had returned to her.

“No… please, don’t leave…”

If she were to lose him again like this.

She felt as though this time, she would truly be robbed of the will to live.

“…Please don’t leave me.”

The girl pleaded weakly.

Across her pitifully trembling blue eyes lay an indelible scar.

*

“…Please don’t leave me.”

The blue whisper, faint yet pervasive, echoed in his ears.

Her plea, heavy with sorrow, left his chest tight, and he bit down hard on his lip.

“…”

Lucy was crumbling.

Because of him.

Each word she spoke became a sharp pang of pain, stabbing at his lungs.

Where had it all gone wrong?

The question almost surfaced, but he barely managed to cut it off.

He had decided to not think like that anymore.

The most important thing was to live in the present.

No matter what failures, what misfortune, what sorrow had happened yesterday, his priority was to live today to the fullest.

“Your Highness.”

He quietly tightened his grip on her hand, which was clasped in his.

It was such a faint warmth.

With these fragile fingers, she had untied the knot that was around his neck.

Beside him, screaming and trying to commit suicide, she must have stopped him with her trembling hands.

Did you despair then?

I couldn’t even begin to fathom the helplessness you must have felt in that instant.

“I’m sorry.”

And so, I bowed my head.

Because my sorrow had stabbed a cruel memory into your heart, leaving a scar that would never fade.

I had become a sinner.

“I was foolish… I was blinded by anger and resentment.”

But I will not run.

Because I know the sorrow I caused, I have the courage to face it.

“I left a memory too painful for you, Your Highness.”

Perhaps, for me, life was like a shattered mirror.

But I didn’t let go of my will.

I’m rebuilding those days of the past – broken, scattered, hated.

Though only lament will flow in the place where they crumbled.

I didn’t want to live this moment as something false. I just wanted to be ‘me’.

“I have no intention of leaving at all. Though there has been much sorrow… I have resolved to live stubbornly on.”

The past, the pretense, and the last lingering greed.

I’m cutting off the days I spent in a dark room, only smoking cigarettes.

I cast aside the notion of life as simply the time until I die, picking up one by one the fragments of ideals I’ve ignored.

“I need you, Your Highness. As my closest friend, as the lord I will serve for life, I need you.”

Yes, life is a heat rash.

The most painful moment means the moment is closest to recovery.

I chose to live.

Imagining the spring flower I have no doubt will one day bloom.

“I left many wounds on you, Your Highness, but if you would allow me…”

I want to live with you.

“I am going to stay by your side.”

I recited the words, each one filled with sincere intent.

Lucy, who had been crying, had stopped, staring blankly at me.

Her mouth moved aimlessly, as if she were stunned.

Sorrow, doubt, surprise, various emotions momentarily strayed.

So many words flashed past, and the very last thing to fill the girl’s eyes…

“Uh…!!”

Was none other than joy.

A pure white joy without even a trace of shadow.

Tears began to flow down Lucy’s cheeks once more.

Only joy.

Tears filled only with joy.

“I will do my absolute best to stay by your side from now on.”

I knelt respectfully before the girl.

Then, I lifted her pristine white hand and slowly kissed it.

“My lord.”

It was a single offering of affection dedicated to a noble bond.