Chapter 183 …
“Is it because you can’t forget her that you’re suffering?”
The woman smiled.
“Shall I comfort you?”
“…….”
“You don’t have any experience with women, do you? If you try it just once, you might find it’s surprisingly nothing special.”
She leaned closer to him and whispered.
“Love, in the end, is all just carnal desire. No matter how aching and precious it is in memory, it can’t beat the warmth of living flesh you can touch right now.”
“…….”
“I’ll help you, Brigadier General. Forget her, give up, and make yourself comfortable.”
The woman placed her hand on the buttons of his uniform. Gide watched the scene with unfocused eyes, then muttered in a voice as if he were sinking underwater.
“If I give up, will it be easier?”
“Of course.”
“Nothing but carnal desire, huh….”
“What does it even mean for a man to like a woman? If you peel it back, it’s all the same. You just want to hold her in your arms. Love, all that talk—it’s not some lofty, sacred emotion. It’s just desire dressed up prettily.”
The woman narrowed her eyes and chattered as she undid his buttons.
“You’ve held out and stayed chaste all this time—you’ve done more than enough. With a body like this and a face like this, to be so pure and devoted… but once you have real experience, your thinking will change.”
“…….”
“Love in memories is nothing. It’s like some cheap toy you desperately wanted as a child. When you finally get it, you think, huh, was it always this shabby? I wanted something like this that badly? That kind of thing.”
She tilted her head toward him and whispered.
“I’ll make you forget.”
Gide didn’t push her away. With a vacant expression, he let her do as she pleased.
When his upper body was almost completely exposed, he suddenly raised a hand and wrapped it around her red hair. A tender touch.
Thinking Gide was responding, the woman lifted her head and smiled.
The moment their eyes met, his face twisted, as if he’d been stabbed.
Gide shoved her away roughly and bent down beside the bed.
Then he vomited everything inside him. Since all he’d had was alcohol and medicine, that was all that came out.
The woman, who had rolled off the bed, groaned in pain, then looked at him with an incredulous expression.
“Hey, Brigadier General, you’re just throwing up because you’re drunk, right?”
“…….”
“You’re not throwing up because of my face, right? Right?”
“…….”
Gide kept retching, offering no reply. The woman glanced down at him.
“…So you really can’t do it. This is unbelievable.”
She gathered her clothes and stood up, then turned at the door and spoke to him, who was still vomiting.
“If you change your mind, come find me, Brigadier General. It’s fine even if it doesn’t go well. Looking at your face makes it all bearable. I can even wait until you give up.”
“Don’t wait.”
Gide wiped his mouth and spat out in a hoarse voice. The woman tilted her head.
“Yes?”
“If I could give up that easily, I would have done it long ago.”
He staggered to his feet and collapsed carelessly onto the bed. Slurred words spilled out.
“If it were just simple desire, how easy would it be. And yet her body is still alive and breathing. Dorothy….”
“What nonsense.”
The woman clicked her tongue, closed the door, and left. Left alone, Gide raised an arm to cover his eyes and muttered drowsily.
“There’s no such thing as noble feelings like love.”
A hollow laugh escaped him.
“Yeah, that must be right. What I’m doing now probably isn’t love anymore. This kind of thing….”
He grabbed his face.
“I want to give up.”
I want to stop now.
“And yet every time, as if possessed, I check the collateral, and then again, and again….”
Gide gasped for breath, then forced the words out in pain.
Rita, you’re like a curse.
A curse that binds me to this hell.
Lilieta stepped back hesitantly from the scene.
The fog swallowed her from behind. His disheveled form was buried in the mist and disappeared.
She looked around in the hazy fog.
Unlike the other memories that had stayed quietly in place, the scenes here were slowly drifting away from her, as if they wanted to escape.
She peered at the flickering shapes beyond the fog.
The scent of roses was suffocatingly strong.
She heard his words, sometimes like screams, sometimes like moans.
I want to forget you.
I’m tired.
I can’t find you anywhere.
There’s no way to save you.
I don’t even know how to go back to the time when you were there.
I want to give up.
But why?
I’m afraid.
Because I can’t imagine myself after forgetting you.
Would that still be me?
The time I spent with you made me who I am.
If I forget you, will I still be myself?
So much time has passed that now everything but you has faded away.
It feels like you’re all I have left.
I want to give up… and that’s why I can’t.
It’s like a curse.
I want to die.
I want to end it.
But I can’t.
Because you, as I see you in my final moments, are too beautiful.
Because I envy the me who’s by your side.
After seeing that, I’ll start doing this all over again.
But I can’t not look.
If I don’t even have that, how am I supposed to endure…?
I’m already living only for that moment.
I feel like I’m going insane. No—maybe I already am.
Now I understand why Pascal was happy when he saw I’d been chosen by a star.
I wish someone would just end this.
Because I can’t give up my collateral on my own, because I can’t pull you out of myself, because I can’t break this curse by myself.
I wish someone would kill me forever.
Then I could rest.
I think I can understand that man, disgustingly enough.
It’s revolting….
I think I’ve changed too much, Rita.
The me you knew wasn’t like this.
I want to destroy everything.
Why are you all fine? Why are you all okay?
You’re fine even without her?
Why?
I can’t.
No matter how much I want to, I can’t.
What should I do? I want to kill everyone.
Should I kill them? Smash everything to pieces, the way you were shattered?
Would that make me feel a little better?
It’ll all be undone if I regress anyway.
Doesn’t it not matter what I do?
Lilieta stopped breathing and backed away.
The memories fleeing from her disappeared farther into the fog. His scream-like voice could no longer be heard.
Only then could she breathe again. Her stomach twisted and dry retching rose up.
She crouched where she was, clutching her chest as she tried to steady her breathing.
“Huh… hhk, hhk….”
Her vision was blurred. Only after rubbing her eyes did Lilieta realize she was crying.
She sobbed like that for a while. She didn’t even know exactly why she was crying.
She was forcing back the tears that kept spilling out when suddenly the fog roiled violently.
Her body was shaken.
Rita!
Someone’s call struck her mind like thunder. Cracks spread through the world made of fog and memories. It collapsed.
Lilieta blinked.
Once, twice, three times.
After blinking several times, she saw a different scene.
No—was it the same?
Fog surrounded her on all sides.
She blinked again.
Only then did she see green magic mixed into the fog. Ollie? It looked like Ollie’s magic.
The scent of roses was gone.
She looked around.
Shattered spectator stands. The towering Red Queen, piercing the sky. An old king swinging his sword. A black clown grinning with his mouth split wide.
A surging black domain suppressing them all.
Gide’s domain.
She blinked once more.
Gide was holding her with one arm while driving his sword into the ground with the other, spreading his domain to suppress the monsters.
He looked down at her with a pale face.
“Rita, are you okay? Are you conscious? You were caught in a hallucination—”
You’re like a curse.
I wish someone would kill me forever.
Should I kill them? Smash everything to pieces, the way you were shattered?
It’ll all be undone if I regress anyway.
Doesn’t it not matter what I do?
Over his worried voice, over his face drawn with concern, those twisted voices overlapped.
She couldn’t properly hear what he was saying.
Without thinking, Lilieta shoved him away.
“Rita?”
She twisted her whole body to escape his arms and gasped for breath. Unable to move freely while maintaining his domain, he stared at her in shock.
“Why are you crying?”
“…….”
“What did you see?”
“…….”
“It’s okay, Rita. It was all the Red Queen’s hallucination. You know that, right? Remember what happened to Luca? It’s just replaying past nightmares. Things that are already over—”
“They’re not over.”
Lilieta cut him off sharply. Wiping the tears that dripped down her chin with the back of her hand, she spoke in a voice tight as if her throat were being strangled.
“I saw your memories, Gide.”
The expression vanished from Gideon’s face.
