Chapter 74
Chapter 74. I Will Die Locked in My Choice
“You say this is the medicine that can restore my lost memories.”
Balak rose from his seat. He took her hand that wasn’t holding the vial and placed it on his chest. Just like that night of the Empire Foundation Day banquet when she had rejected him, when only the two of them existed under the moon.
Thump, thump, thump. It was a heartbeat so strong that anyone could see it.
Balak looked down at Vinea with desperate eyes.
“I dare to beg you. Please believe me. Believe in my plea, for I can throw away everything for you…”
The look in his eyes, his breathing, his voice, and his heartbeat—none of it could possibly be an act.
As if Balak’s sincere wish for his true feelings to be conveyed had worked, Vinea slowly brought the vial to her lips.
Her lips came precariously close to the mouth of the bottle where his lips had touched, almost about to make contact.
However, her lips stopped just before the opening, and for the first time, a deep emotion bloomed on her previously indifferent expression as she looked at Balak.
Vinea’s blue eyes sank like the deep sea. As if recalling a very distant past, her eyes drew another him beyond Balak.
“Why didn’t you hand this to me back then, Balak? You had plenty of opportunities.”
“…Lady Vinea?”
Vinea’s hand, which had been placed on Balak’s heart, slipped away.
Vinea put down the bottle she was holding and replaced the glass stopper that had been on the table.
Only a cold emotion appeared on her face as she looked at the liquid still sloshing in the half-full bottle.
“Do you believe in fate, Balak?”
Somehow, she who had lost her memories was calling his name familiarly. He sensed that something was wrong. What could be the intention behind that question? His heart pounded fiercely with anxiety.
Balak answered with a confused face.
“I… I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Fate. The kind of fate that, no matter how much you try to change everything around you, eventually comes to pass. Like it’s controlled by a god, inevitably happening.”
Fate. Wasn’t that exactly what he felt the moment he arrived here?
“…I do believe in it. Because the moment I fell for you can only be described by that word.”
Vinea smiled lightly. However, her eyes were so cold that Balak could no longer deny the suspicion growing in his mind.
“Yes. I can’t deny that it’s also fate. But is that all? Our terrible connection.”
Vinea raised her hand and brushed Balak’s red hair. Her fingertips, caressing the small scratch, conveyed no warmth at all.
“Shall I guess? Who you met before coming to see me.”
Despite knowing it was impossible, Balak felt that Vinea might say the correct answer. And his guess was exactly right.
“—Eurene Castallo.”
His clenched fist trembled. Unable to utter any words, the best he could do was not to focus on the hand that fell from his forehead.
“How careless the gods are. How did they entangle your fate with mine? Making it so that it could only rush towards tragedy every time.”
Balak realized the secret Vinea was hiding. The secret she blatantly revealed in front of him.
“You… you never lost your memories. From the beginning…”
“That’s right.”
“But why…”
“If you knew, would you be able to give up on me?”
Balak closed his eyes with a devastated expression. No. He knew it would be better not to hear it.
If the reason for her choice wasn’t freedom, there was only one thing left.
Tatar de Tessibania. The Emperor of this empire and her husband. The one sitting in the place he could never occupy.
Beneath his slowly raised eyelids, his dark red eyes were immersed in unbearable loss.
Vinea grasped his chin and lifted it, making him meet her eyes.
“I’ll give you one last chance.”
“A chance. A chance for me, who can never win your heart no matter what?”
“Choose. The first option is to leave the palace now, maintaining your silence. Then I won’t be able to hurt you anymore, but you’ll suffer for the rest of your life, carrying unresolved feelings. I might even hate you forever, but you wouldn’t know that.”
Vinea lowered her hand that had lifted Balak’s chin. But his head didn’t drop, and he gazed intensely at her lips, which might offer him one last hope.
“The other option is to tell me everything about the plan you and Eurene have made. Tell me what you’re encouraging her to do.”
“If I do that, what will become of me to you?”
“I will…”
Vinea looked up at Balak with calm eyes. Her blue eyes followed another shadow of the past behind Balak.
“I will come to hate you very, very much. I’ll regret all the lingering attachments of lives you don’t remember, and erase you without leaving any trace. Eventually, even the hatred and regret will disappear.”
Balak couldn’t fully understand even half of what Vinea was saying.
The strange nostalgia, or sadness and despair, that he had felt in her words from the beginning. A voice that spoke of memories of someone who wasn’t him, even though it was clearly referring to him.
Balak recalled an assumption he had made when meeting Eurene.
If Eurene knew the whereabouts of Sefitiana, why hadn’t she used it? If it were truly God’s miracle, taking a place by the Emperor’s side would be nothing.
Perhaps Sefitiana hadn’t been missing from the temple?
The temple where Sefitiana was said to be kept had always moved within the same rules, and after the end of the war, its routine had been broken only twice.
When Eurene Castallo secretly visited there. And before that, when the imperial couple visited to offer prayers right after their wedding.
Just twice.
Despite not being able to believe his own thoughts, Balak blurted out that question to Vinea.
“Is this not the first life where you and I have been entangled…?”
Vinea briefly looked away from Balak’s eyes and gazed out the window. The sun in the sky would turn yellow and become a sunset in half an hour.
This wouldn’t be the first time she had greeted this sky with Balak. After hesitating, Vinea opened her mouth.
“…That’s right.”
Balak’s face contorted as if he was about to cry.
Yes. Now everything made sense. The shocking first meeting that felt like fate, the strange relationship between the Emperor and her.
It wasn’t just a coincidence that those blue eyes, retracing memories of a life he couldn’t remember, perhaps terribly intertwined, had been directed at him.
‘Ah, why not this life? Why, why of all times…’
A distant despair engulfed Balak. It declared the end of his fate.
He had never been given a choice from the beginning. He dared not let go. How could he let go of himself when he was entangled with her in a fate he had not experienced, could not experience?
Even if he would writhe in terrible loss and regret for the rest of his life, if he could leave even a grain of lingering attachment with her, no, if he could live clinging to even the illusion of having left something…
He could willingly sentence himself to this tragic end with that.
Hot tears flowed from Balak’s closed eyes.
“Please remember me forever. So that I can die immersed in that dream…”
* * *
Tatar, who had received the news through a confidant planted in the Empress’s palace, dropped everything he was doing and headed towards the Empress’s palace where Vinea was.
He flung open the door of the reception room, his breath ragged.
His eyes, scanning the empty reception room, flickered with turbid emotion.
Balak. Balak Utar. Why did she meet him? Does she intend to give her heart to him even after losing her memories?
Vinea, Empress!
Was it anger, or anxiety? An emotion that couldn’t be measured covered his silver-gray eyes in darkness.
His chest heaved greatly. The breath he inhaled and exhaled didn’t work properly, as if blocked by someone.
Ah. His vision began to turn pitch black. Was it because of the recent rapidly destabilizing situation? Hallucinations that ate away at his remaining sanity overwhelmed him with more vividness than reality, tangling reality dizzyingly and causing his emotions to fluctuate.
Tatar staggered and leaned against the door of the reception room. Someone approached him, but he had no energy to pay attention to that.
He barely managed to ask about Vinea’s whereabouts through his tightly clenched teeth.
“Where is… the Empress?”
Through the crackling, tearing sound, he faintly heard the word ‘Baloua’.
The Baloua in the garden had long been uprooted, but it hadn’t completely disappeared from the empire.
Just as his mother had invited Eurene Castallo, there was another Baloua garden that only the Empress could enter, not the garden that was open to the public.
It was also a place he had never visited since the regression began.
Tatar swallowed his rapid breaths and climbed the stairs. Up, and up, and up again.
After walking a path that seemed like it would never end, now his vision was almost completely obscured by something black and sticky, except for the floor.
He felt the cold stone wall under his palm as he leaned to the side. Now the top of the palace was right in front of him.
As he opened the half-open iron door, the sunlight pouring through the glass dome adorning the top of the Empress’s palace began to brighten his dark vision.
