Consciousness flared back to life as if a light had been switched on. Cárcel opened his squinting eyes. It was a small room where, at a glance, all four walls and the entire ceiling fit into view.
A prayer room, maybe. A palm-sized window set high up near the ceiling, and the light that poured in drew a straight line yet was dim, as if tinged with dusk.
He rubbed his gaunt face and started to sit—then let his head fall back again. He was dizzy. It felt like even his body wasn't properly made. Every last part of him a wretched little bastard. If he lifted his head wrong he'd vomit everything up any second, his gut was that sick—and in truth, he hadn't eaten enough to bring anything up at all, so he probably couldn't throw up even if he tried.
"…I wonder if Ines is the same as you."
Cárcel spoke to Emiliano, who was sitting in the unlit dark.
"Starting over from the very beginning. Remembering everything…"
"…No."
"How the hell would you know."
Cárcel shot back crookedly—though he was the one who had asked first.
Emiliano smiled quietly.
"Forgive me… It's just that the way you said that sounded so exactly like Lady Ines."
"...."
When he stared, wondering if the man was mocking him, Emiliano stepped into the light and smiled again—as if to say he wasn't.
"I wasn't sneering."
"...."
"Even the way you go straight to 'Is he mocking me?'… that, too, is something you share with Lady Ines."
"...."
"Perhaps it's true that spouses come to resemble one another."
Just looking at that gentle face brought the bile back up. More precisely, it had long been that way whenever he saw, on that face, some expression that made him think, Ines would have liked that.
Those eyes clearly still loved Ines. Did he not even hate me? Even if he still received love from Ines, that bastard had no way of knowing it; as for the likes of me, I couldn't even dare to see her face once if I wanted to; and now her husband stood right in front of him.
And on top of that, to tell him he and his wife looked just alike.
"…Ines would hate to hear that."
"It's all right. She won't hear it."
Answering simply with a smile, Emiliano gradually smoothed his lips and went on.
"And Lady Ines will not be the same as me."
"How do you know."
"…If we must draw the lines, I am much closer to you, Cárcel. Perhaps the same."
Cárcel's face twisted in disgust before he caught himself and rubbed his irritable features. With his eyes lowered, fixed on his own knees, Emiliano spoke in a cracking voice—
As though he were stating some tremendous misfortune, some grievous truth.
"Because Lady Ines did not receive the same opportunity as 'us.'"
If you do not know that you were born again, that is the blessing of opportunity.
From that time when, apart from being born again into this world, nothing at all had yet happened to me… Emiliano's clear voice circled through his fogged head.
"A chance, so to speak, to be born again."
"...."
"A chance to forget. A chance to begin everything anew. And thus, a chance not to be born ever again—a release…"
"Say it in a way I can understand."
"Yes. I believe Lady Ines did not receive even a single one."
Cárcel's eyes tightened.
"You said remembering is a punishment."
"Yes."
"And you said you 'volunteered' for it."
"Yes."
"I don't get it. If you got a chance, then Ines got one too. She remembers like you, and like you, again…"
"…No. That's wrong. My life restarted from the beginning."
As if the words were too much for him to say aloud, Emiliano's lips worked soundlessly several times; then the gaze he had pressed completely into the floor slowly lifted.
"Lady Ines has never once been born again. She is merely repeating some section of her life. Like someone who cannot wake from a nightmare."
"...."
"That is all."
For no reason he could name, his breath dropped all the way down. Cárcel felt the chilly breath crawl back up his throat like ice. Emiliano was, oddly enough, detached.
"There were moments, now and then, when I could not understand Lady Ines. She would, in passing, speak of some very small old story, but it sounded exactly like a story from the future… Of course, most of it was court talk that a lowly man like me could barely follow. She would be as lively as any sixteen-year-old girl, and then at some point—as if she were awaiting the day of her death…"
"...."
"…As if she were hoping for it. I could not make sense of the dissonance. Not as things beyond me because of base birth and ignorance…"
'Emiliano. I may be mad.'
'Why do you say that all of a sudden?'
'I find myself thinking perhaps this is all a dream. You feel like a dream… I'm afraid that one day I'll suddenly open my eyes, and it will be Mendoza.'
'....'
'I'm afraid I'll open my eyes again, sunk in that filthy mire. That I'll open them and be in the court, alive. I'm afraid you—this present—will vanish. I'm afraid that I didn't die then, that even that was a dream…'
Emiliano could recall her whenever he closed his eyes.
The time her sorrowing sobs wrapped around him and split his chest; the times when, failing to recognize him, a chilling hate seeped into her clouded gaze; the moments when even their very best days collapsed into fits as if pursued; the moments when, come morning, she looked at him with clear eyes that remembered nothing and smiled with happiness.
That pitiful girl, not yet even twenty. The gut-ripping pity.
'…Are you afraid of His Grace the Duke?'
'No.'
'Are you afraid of your brother?'
'Luciano is the least frightening person in my world. He was my only ally. He is the family I love most…'
'More than me?'
'Mm.'
'It wounds an orphan whose only person is you. Then what are you afraid of?'
'Luciano is a brother who would die for me.'
'....'
'That has always been what I feared most, Emiliano.'
That Luciano might die. That I might end up killing Luciano…
Afraid of that—afraid that, on my own two feet, I would go back to that mire.
"…Looking back, that dissonance didn't sound like the story of one person. At least, it did not sound like the life of a noble señorita who had lived a mere sixteen years. We were all the while fleeing the private soldiers of House Valeztena, not the Imperial Household, and yet she herself was never afraid of House Valeztena."
"...."
'It was providence that I met you the instant I opened my eyes "again." I'm glad I ran with you before I became a slave… before a leash was fastened around my neck…'
"And so I believed that if it were Lord Luciano, he would sever the 'leash' Lady Ines feared most."
"...."
"The bridle."
"Even if you died?"
"Yes. Even if I died."
Cárcel drew his brows together.
"…Cárcel. Do you remember saving me twice?"
"I can't even properly remember once."
He remembered saving him unwillingly. And how, from the start to the end, he had been unable to kill him. And…
"But I did save you. The idiot came back of his own accord and made it all for nothing."
"I am ashamed to have dared to betray the grace I received."
"Now, of all times."
"I thought I would never see you again, and so there was never any way to offer apology—but God has sent you to me…"
"Don't be ridiculous…"
"Forgive me, Cárcel."
Seeing him bow his head as if all his fortune consisted of debts unpaid only made his neck feel more stifled. Cárcel spat the words like a curse.
"Lift your head. I don't give a damn about any debt you owe me—just keep talking about Ines."
"To do that, I have to tell a little more of my story. Cumbersome as that may be…"
"As if you wouldn't."
Taking the crooked retort for permission—an old habit from his days with Ines—Emiliano's somewhat bloodless lips moved a few times. Only then did he force sound out.
"…When I died."
Cárcel closed his mouth. As if he couldn't believe he was speaking the words, Emiliano bit his lips for a while. Then, with a hollow little laugh, he went on.
"I don't know if that was the first time. What's certain is that that was the day I died for the last time. And this is a very foolish thing to say, but…"
"...."
"Only after I died did I know that I should not have died."
"Regret?"
"No, not that… Precisely speaking, I came to know this: at least 'then,' I should not have died 'that way.'"
"...."
"I 'learned' that there was another death prepared for me. That from there I went astray."
"Now you'll say you saw God's Apostle."
"Yes. Because he told me."
"...."
"Anastasio. The Apostle of Resurrection."
He watched the evening light settle over Emiliano's face. Calmly, Emiliano continued.
"He said my life had strayed from God's will like a kind of accident. That therefore I had not lived out a complete life."
"If that's so, does every child who dies young or every person unjustly murdered in this world get a chance like you?"
"No. He said most people meet a 'prepared' death. No matter how irrational or unfair it may look to our eyes. Or even if, to our eyes, some villain who deserves death falls—he said that may not be fate."
"...."
"The priests say we are all sinners born bearing original sin, that this world is a vast prison, and…"
"…'This prison was made to confine sinners from a superior world we do not know, and thus from birth we are sinners of an original sin we do not know.'"
Softly, Cárcel recited a historic sermon of some prophet. Emiliano smiled faintly.
"And then, 'We live to serve a kind of sentence and return only to where we came from. Death is liberation.' You test me with a passage Ines likes."
"I thought you would know it, Cárcel. You must have watched her closely."
"…Honestly, this isn't teasing."
"Yes. And when a child dies early, the priests say, 'The child has been released early from suffering.' That the child was so good he received a very short punishment."
"Because to them life is suffering. Are they wrong?"
"No—they're right. Thus, one who dies outside God's will has not, as it were, fully served the punishment of living."
"...."
"Having failed to wash away original sin, release is impossible."
"...."
"But if it was not his fault, then to live again is pitiable. The Apostle said that, because God is so merciful, He causes those who have lost their way to forget the pain of living again."
Oblivion.
"And that He grants a kind of opportunity."
A chance.
"For a better life—to wash away the remaining original sin and live a complete life."
"...."
"So as not to repeat life again. To go to a land where one will never again know the pain of death."
With a strange foreboding, Cárcel pushed himself upright. He felt a seasickness he hadn't felt even on the fleet. Down the cold nape of his neck there lingered a queer sensation, as if a ghost's grip had seized him hard and let go.
"That He would grant a single wish."
"...."
"And I prayed to be allowed to remember everything of the life I had lived with Lady Ines. So that I could never harm her again."
"...."
"So that we would never meet again."
Emiliano looked at him with smiling eyes. As if with that one sentence he had been freed from all loneliness.
"If you had been given a chance, you would never have offered the Apostle such a foolish, paltry wish. Unlike a lowly man like me, for whom merely not appearing is all I can do for Lady Ines."
"...."
"And so I have always envied you, Cárcel. I revered you that day, and…"
"...."
"As I told you then, I truly wished that a man like you would stand at Lady Ines's side."
Then, gradually, the faint smile at the corner of Emiliano's mouth faded.
"But then the Apostle asked me: did I know that memory is a punishment given only to those who commit suicide?"
"...."
"Ah. Only then did I…"
"...."
"…know that the sixteen-year-old Ines who took my hand had already come to me dead."
"...."
"Only after I let go of that hand."