Come and Cry at My Funeral - Chapter 46
Yet, Izar indifferently tapped the edge of the bed.
“Sit here.”
“…….”
If she hesitated again, would he get angry, saying, ‘Didn’t I tell you not to make me repeat myself’?
Freesia silently complied with his command.
But even as she sat down, she kept nervously trying to gauge his mood, causing Izar to sigh, forcibly suppressing his irritation.
“You need to lift it enough for me to see.”
Eventually, Freesia bit her lip and did as instructed.
Just as it’s better to be hit early if one is to be hit, embarrassment too should pass quickly. Her bare legs were revealed as she lifted her dress up to her knees.
The front part, which once had bruises, now only showed faint discolored patches under the lamp light.
Izar knelt on the floor facing Freesia, lightly grasped her slender calves, and felt around.
He could feel the scars with his fingertips without needing to visually inspect the back.
The skin, once torn by thorny whips, had healed, leaving long scars now broken into intermittent scabs.
It felt like touching the clumsy stitches of a very unskilled maid.
Only, it felt infinitely more, stretching from the ankle up to the inside of the knee…
“…Any pain?”
Was it that he had been silent longer than he thought?
His voice sounded unusually husky even to his own ears.
Freesia whispered back with a hoarse voice.
“It doesn’t hurt anymore… it’s really okay now.”
The lamp light flickered with the night breeze seeping through the window cracks.
Despite the breeze, it was hard to breathe.
She wanted to cover her face, unable to meet Izar’s eyes, as if she had caught a fever, but her hand wouldn’t rise.
“Duke.”
“…….”
“Enough… it seems enough, you can stop checking…”
No, she desperately wanted him to stop.
Freesia clenched the bedsheet, biting her lip.
He might not know, but Freesia had once been held by him in her previous life.
Thus, such touches made her knees tremble involuntarily.
For the first time in her life, that one incident where she had been intimate with this man unraveled several memories to the surface.
The man touching her in the dark room.
Her ‘husband’ looking down at her as she was trembling with fright.
Just like now, with those golden eyes…….
And then, the mistaken belief that giving birth to her briar baby might lead to a happy life for the three of them.
“……!”
Remembering that moment made her heart ache as if it was burning.
This man would never see her as a woman, and it was torturous for her that he could disturb her so.
Freesia desperately grabbed Izar’s wrist.
With a voice less embarrassed than before, she barely gasped out.
“It’s okay, you can stop looking. It’s almost healed.”
“…….”
Izar slowly lifted his fingers from her ankle.
“It has indeed improved from before.”
“Yes…”
“You still need to go a few more times, but we can start preparing to leave.”
Freesia responded only with a nod, unable to lift her head.
She just couldn’t face him right now.
And silently, she burrowed into the blankets.
‘…Frustrating.’
She was angry at herself for getting unnecessarily tense and embarrassed.
She felt frustrated by her foolishness, yet also now felt anew her resentment towards his indifference.
Izar would never be swayed by her, not even if she’d die.
But conversely, Freesia, despite all her efforts to appear calm, was utterly undone by each of his sudden actions.
‘So frustrating.’
For the first time, Freesia wished for more than just seeing him shed tears at her death.
She hoped that he, too, would be this shaken, this wrecked because of her.
Just once, she wished he would taste this mixture of anticipation and shame, to feel his body overtly boil with longing for her, unsure of what to do with this yearning…
‘But he wouldn’t, would he?’
That’s why she hadn’t set her life’s expectations to be anything more than a ‘useful wife’ in the first place.
She had said that even a single tear would be enough. That was truly the least she could compromise on.
Lowering expectations made them easier to fulfill, and it seemed like the only way to die without regrets this time.
So, she no longer wanted to dream impossible dreams for the remaining time she had left on this mortal plane.
Freesia pressed down on her eyelids, trying to fall asleep.
***
As had happened every night he had tried to sleep in this bedroom, Izar woke up mid-way and clicked his tongue.
At this rate, it would become a habit even after returning to the castle.
“Really, always something…”
The shepherdess was curled up in the very corner of the bed again.
Contrary to the atmosphere she gave off, she turned out to be a woman with rather bad sleeping habits.
‘At this rate, she’s going to roll off the bed headfirst.’
He pulled her by the shoulder and laid her properly at the head of the bed.
Because of the moonlight shining through the window, her scattered flaxen-brown hair on the pillow gleamed with a silvery gray hue.
“…….”
Before lying down again, Izar wordlessly gazed upon her sleeping face.
