Chapter 79
Through the closed curtains, Rabian’s absinthe-colored eyes burned black.
It wasn’t because he wanted to stay here longer.
Truthfully, he wanted to storm out immediately.
This was a place he had once sworn never to return to.
But if he went out now, he didn’t know what he might do to the people waiting outside.
That was why he couldn’t leave.
“All this time… was it always like this?”
Was that how Nina had grown up?
Rabian pictured Nina—
not the image in the recording he had just watched,
but the Nina he knew,
the Nina after he met her.
Her little hands clenched tight.
Those sparkling blue eyes.
That cheeky way of speaking.
Her laughing face.
Her crying face.
That time her front teeth were missing.
From the very beginning, he had thought she was no ordinary brat.
The moment they first met, she had turned his world upside down.
She never did anything the way he expected.
But never had he imagined that behind that cheeky façade something like this was hidden.
He knew she was keeping something from him, but who would have thought it would be this?
All her talk about exile, he’d dismissed as the spoiled whining of a pampered brat.
“And yet, you still…”
Of course, there had been red flags that had drawn him here.
Sally juice.
Her talks of dieting.
Grinding teeth.
Her odd comments about clothes.
All those strange little words and habits.
But still—he had never imagined anything like this.
And what the recording stone revealed was only a tiny part.
“Why…?”
A useless question slipped between his teeth.
Why?
Why had they let Nina end up like that?
If only Leopart and Diana were people incapable of loving their own child, it would have been easier to understand.
But Rabian had seen with his own eyes how much Estella was loved.
It was impossible not to notice how differently Estella and Nina were raised.
And that was why it was all the harder to accept.
He knew Leopart and Diana too well—
and that made this incomprehensible.
Worse yet, after letting their child end up like that, Leopart had the gall to beg him now to find her.
How was he supposed to interpret such hypocrisy?
“Why the hell did you even have a child if you were going to treat her like that?!”
Thud.
His fist slammed into a pillar, cracks spiderwebbing out as fragments fell away.
Was this what it felt like for blood to boil backwards through your veins?
Grinding his teeth, staring at the rubble on the floor, a bitter déjà vu washed over him.
Seven years ago—this very same feeling.
Back then, too, Leopart and Diana had driven him mad.
And now again.
Even the fact that the root of the problem was the master of this very room—it was the same.
Realizing this, the boiling in his head cooled at once, and a hollow laugh escaped him.
“Ha… this is disgusting.”
He had never wanted to feel this way again.
He had tried so hard never to feel like this again.
Slumping down as if collapsing, Rabian sat on the floor, staring blankly into space.
Now the choice lay entirely with him.
Pretend not to know, and proceed with the original plan?
Or—
Or tear down, in a single day, the abyssal walls he had built over the past seven years since Anna’s death?
“You are forever responsible for what you have tamed.”
When he finally understood the meaning of the words spoken by the rose in that fairy tale, Anna was already gone from the world.
But Nina was still alive.
Still alive—still waiting for him.
Nina was not Anna.
“You… how could you…”
He had never done for Nina even half of what he had done for Anna.
He hadn’t even known how Nina had lived all this time.
He had dismissed her as a brat.
He had hurt her, probably countless times, without even realizing it.
Yet Nina had always looked up at him with those shining, radiant eyes.
After a while, Rabian abruptly stood, went to the table, and replayed the recording stone.
Even though part of him couldn’t bear to see more, it was like a self-inflicted punishment, a compulsion.
“How… how could you smile at me like that?”
And so, Rabian sat down on the floor of Nina’s bedroom and watched the Nina he had never known, over and over again, until the day faded into night.
* * *
The sound of heavy winter rain pattered against the glass surface of the greenhouse.
Inside, with no moonlight seeping in, it was as dark as a midnight forest.
Rabian lay stretched across a bench in the shadows, staring vaguely at the faint outlines of the cherry-blossom path.
He absentmindedly took out a cigarette, about to light it.
“I told you to cut back on that.”
Had he thought about her so much that he was hearing things now?
He froze, glancing toward the voice.
“Mister.”
Not a hallucination, then. A damn vision again.
But this time Nina’s appearance was very different from before.
“How do I look?”
Under the cherry tree, Nina spun once and beamed at him.
Rabian’s eyes widened.
For a moment, he nearly mistook her for Anna.
She looked that much more mature.
Her skinny, gangly limbs had grown long and straight.
Her frizzy golden hair now flowed in elegant waves.
Her pale blue eyes sparkled—coldly mocking, yet with the divine radiance of a goddess.
She looked thirteen, maybe fourteen—an untamed, blossoming adolescent girl.
“Why that face again? You finally came back after so long. Do you know how long I waited for you?”
Nina skipped closer, a mischievous grin on her lips, one he had never seen before.
“It’s okay, Mister. It’s all okay now.”
Rabian blinked slowly.
What was okay?
Nothing was okay.
Nothing at all.
And then, suddenly, the surroundings brightened and Nina’s figure scattered into nothing.
He had no time to wonder what it had been.
Rabian’s half-lidded eyes turned toward the glow of an approaching lantern.
A sultry voice followed.
“…I was afraid you wouldn’t be here.”
Irene set the lantern on the table beside the bench, smiling seductively.
The jewel clinging to her earlobe sparkled.
On the table were a bottle of liquor and two glasses.
Rabian sat up, poured the drinks, and handed one to her.
“You’re late.”
Irene’s cheeks flushed red as she accepted the glass.
“Sorry, the rain started suddenly. But really, winter rain—it’s unsettling.”
“Why?”
“They say winter rain brings bad luck.”
“Mm, you’re right. It is bad luck. You’re about to be interrogated by me.”
Rabian hooked an arm around her waist, pulling her close.
Pretending to resist, Irene perched on his knee.
“Is this how you interrogate people?”
“You’re the one who came, aren’t you? And what about you—should a maid without a mistress really be acting like this?”
“Oh my, I have no excuse.”
“No excuse? Looks to me like this isn’t your first time.”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
“Somehow, I doubt you bought those earrings on a maid’s wages.”
“And what about you, my lord? Your precious niece is missing, and yet here you are with me?”
“I’d be glad if she disappeared. If she were gone for good, what do you think would happen to the line of succession?”
“Such dangerous words.”
“I like classics.”
When Rabian’s lips curved in a strange smile, Irene stifled a giggle.
“I find classic men quite charming.”
“Do you? That’s an unusual taste.”
Before long, both their glasses were empty.
As Rabian refilled hers, he shifted the subject.
“So. Do you like children?”
“Why? Do I look like someone who would?”
“Not really. I just wondered if you volunteered for the First Princess’s Palace because you do.”
