Chapter 40: Upheaval (8)
Chapter 40: Upheaval (8)
“Then why did you visit my brother’s grave?”
Though she struggled to sound composed, her voice trembled with barely concealed tears.
Jin no longer had the presence of mind to weigh his words. He simply stared blankly at the tears that fell beyond his control, answering as the words came to him.
“I didn’t know Aska had a child. He never once mentioned it to me. I only learned about Aynkel Elias when I happened to come across the name ‘Elias’ on a list of the deceased. That’s when I first suspected he might have had a child… so I looked into it and found out that you were still alive.”
With that answer, Ariel finally understood why Jin had come to visit Aynkel’s grave and the reason behind his sudden patronage.
“Then… the flower my brother liked…”
“White roses were Aska’s favorite.”
“…Ah.”
From a faded box of childhood memories, an old image emerged: Aska, who had planted dozens of white rose bushes in the backyard, tending them with loving care. That first spring when they bloomed, he had proudly called the entire family over to admire them. Her father, Aska Elias, had loved white roses.
“I see… So that’s why…”
Perhaps Aynkel had loved white roses too because he’d grown up watching his father’s fondness for them. The thought brushed Ariel’s mind out of nowhere.
Even after seeing how Aynkel adored white roses for nearly twenty years, she had never once connected it to Aska until now. It was a realization far too late in coming.
To Ariel, her parents had long become distant, hazy figures. So even upon learning that Jin might have had something to do with Aska’s death, the knowledge didn’t stir much in her. Her memories of her parents, her affection for them, had long since faded. Her tears had nothing to do with what Jin thought they were for.
As she watched the droplets fall from his unseen face to the bedsheets below, Ariel softly called out to him.
“Sir Kreutz.”
“…Yes.”
Jin replied without lifting his head. From that desolate figure, Ariel felt a strange reflection of her own heart. He was merely sitting there, silently shedding tears, yet to her it felt as if his soul were screaming out, stained with guilt.
It was the same pain, the same agony, that she had felt and suffered from when she’d lost Aynkel. That wound hadn’t yet healed. Moved by his sorrow, Ariel’s own guilt resurfaced. Part of her tears had come from him.
But what made her cry more than anything else…
“…I don’t resent you.”
She reached out with a pale hand still hooked to an IV, gently brushing away the trail of tears on his cheek with cool fingertips. Because she pitied him, this man, still chained by long-standing guilt and trauma he had never been able to shake off.
If her grief was a raw wound only a few months old, his had had more than enough time to scab over and fade. In fact, the very same wound she had received at the same time was already so far gone that she could hardly recall it anymore. It felt almost like someone else’s story now.
But he hadn’t been able to move on. That was what pained her most.
Ariel added gently, “You don’t have to hurt anymore. Father would’ve wanted that too.”
Her soft touch passed over his cheek and wrapped around the back of his neck. She shifted slightly to face him, then drew closer and embraced him, cradling his head with her free hand. Those words were for him and, in a way, for herself as well.
Jin, who had been drowning in a mire of tangled emotions, temporarily detached from reality, only realized much later that he was now resting in her arms. The moment he became aware of it was when he felt the weight of her head on his shoulder.
With that as the starting point, all his other senses returned like a flood. The limp weight of her thin arms around his neck. The dampness soaking through his shoulder. Her delicate, bony shoulder supporting his forehead. Even the faint scent of bitter medicine that lingered on her skin.
Startled, Jin suddenly came to his senses. The overwhelming shame and surprise instantly washed away all the anguish that had bound his body. He couldn’t even remember what he’d been thinking just moments before.
Before the warmth could fully leave the space between them, it was filled by a tidal wave of embarrassment. Heat rapidly built up in his body, radiating from every point where she touched him, tingling and sharp. He flinched.
After fidgeting awkwardly for a while, Jin suddenly noticed that Ariel hadn’t moved at all. In that instant, the heat drained away and his mind froze. His body stiffened as he slowly lifted his head from her shoulder and called out in a daze.
“Ariel?”
There was no reply. When he tried to sit up, her limp body slumped toward him. He flinched in alarm and caught her carefully, almost frantically. For a fleeting second, the word ‘death’ crossed his mind. Just for a second. But it felt as though a boulder had dropped into his chest, stealing the breath from his lungs. That moment stretched into eternity.
He inhaled deeply and then he heard it. A soft, steady sound of breathing against his chest.
She was just asleep.
His rational mind slowly returned.
It hadn’t even been half a day since she was admitted for her injury. Unlike divine healing, medication worked slowly. There was no way she could’ve recovered in just a few hours. And now, after pouring her heart out in tears, her already weakened body had simply given out.
With that realization, all the tension that had frozen his body melted away. As if on cue, he let out a long sigh of relief.
“Ah…”
Thank goodness.
Jin gently laid her down on the bed and pulled the blanket up to her neck. He stared at her face for a long moment.
The tear tracks, the reddened tip of her nose, the eyelids likely to swell from crying. It was pitiful, but she also looked more alive than she had when he first arrived, and that brought him comfort.
Even so, those sorrowful traces of tears were hard to look at. As if drawn by something, Jin reached out and carefully wiped away the moisture lingering on her cheeks. The heightened sensitivity he always felt when touching her made his movements especially gentle.
Her face, small enough to fit in one hand, felt noticeably warmer than before. A renewed sense of relief settled over him.
Once he had wiped away every last tear, he slowly drew his hand back, curling his tingling fingers. Then he looked at her again.
While staring at her sleeping face, he suddenly realized that he had been crying, too. Quietly, he brushed away the remnants of tears on his own cheek with the back of his hand.
The storm within him had completely calmed. Jin became aware of something else.
He had spoken everything he’d kept inside. He had spilled all his emotions. He had received comfort he never expected, and she had even said she didn’t resent him.
She, who had every reason to question him, had been the one to offer closure. He, who’d been too afraid of the truth to approach her, had kept his distance in vain.
All of it had been pointless.
And yet, instead of feeling regret, Jin simply felt liberated.
Strangely, beyond all that, there was a peculiar lightness in his chest. As if something massive had been lifted. Wondering what it was, Jin retraced his thoughts and then he realized.
The guilt he had carried for so long over Aska had diminished.
Why… all of a sudden?
No sooner had the question arisen than an answer drifted through his mind in her voice.
[“You don’t have to hurt anymore. Father would’ve wanted that too.”]
Reason came a step behind emotion.
Though she wasn’t Aska himself, the words spoken by his blood, his daughter, who so resembled him, were like a spell breaking a curse he thought would haunt him to the grave.
That terrible wound he had been aware of but could never heal, the one he had chosen to ignore and grow accustomed to, had been soothed in an instant by a single sentence from her lips.
And because it vanished so suddenly, the void it left behind felt even more distinct. In the absence of that pain, all that remained was a freeing lightness. And with it, Jin was struck by just how much agony he had been living with, how unbearably heavy his life had truly been.
He had never imagined his heart could feel this light.
“…Ah.”
So this is what it feels like… to be healed.
The warmth washing over him made his eyes sting anew. He buried his face in his hands and bit his lip beneath them.
She was his salvation. His purpose, once marred by pain and guilt, had reached its end. And in its place, a new goal began, one touched by light.
“As I thought… I…”
The rest of his life would be lived for her.
The gray clouds that had long hung like a curtain over his sky parted at last. The sun, hidden for so long, peeked through once more. The rain, though slower to ease, began to soften, losing its lash-like sting.
A gentle drizzle under a clearing sky. And through it, a radiant rainbow appeared.
……
T/N: Aww… Jin… 😭
