Please Kill Me - Chapter 111
The horse, now riderless, galloped away.
Turning around, Leonid saw a figure tumbling down the slope, an arrow lodged in their chest. The impact was loud, and though the fall should have elicited cries of pain, all that came from Sergei was a short, guttural sound.
At this point, Sergei was no longer a person but a corpse. His final, desperate cry echoed in Leonid’s ears.
Had Dmitry actually helped him?
Leonid, still unable to process what he had just seen, stood with his lips parted in shock.
“…What is this…?”
“What situation is this?”
Dmitry’s voice interrupted his thoughts. Smiling softly at the bewildered Leonid, Dmitry kindly answered.
“It’s about getting my sister.”
A glint flashed from Dmitry’s hand.
Crack.
Simultaneously, the ground beneath Leonid’s feet began to split and collapse.
“Regrettably, you, my father, and everyone else must die here.”
“You crazy bastard—!”
Dmitry Offenbach had never intended to help Leonid Rostislav. Realizing this a moment too late, Leonid cursed and spurred his horse, but there was no escape from the collapsing path.
To make matters worse, an arrow came flying from a blind spot.
“Gah!”
Fortunately, the arrow only struck his arm, but the impact caused him to lose his grip on the reins.
Leonid ended up being thrown from his struggling horse.
“Ugh!”
The pain felt like a kick to his gut. His ribs might have been broken, making it hard to breathe. Desperately, Leonid crawled like an animal, trying to find a way out on the crumbling ground.
His breaths came in gasps, his vision blurred, but he crawled inward, clinging to the hope of survival.
However, there was no escape.
Rumbling.
Rocks tumbled down the cliff, taking everything on top with them.
Leonid was consumed by the sensation of falling, a mix of helplessness and despair.
‘Am I really going to die this easily?’
At the thought of death, oddly, a face came to mind—a face that always spoke of death but never seemed to belong to someone who would die.
He recalled the words he had spoken to her.
— Let’s go back together.
For the first time, he felt regret about those words.
If they were to return together, he had to be there. How could he propose such a thing and fail to keep his word? At this rate, he’d be called a liar without any means to refute it.
‘…I have no choice.’
Unable to keep a single promise, he couldn’t expect to live long.
Leonid sensed the end approaching and closed his eyes as he fell. In that moment, he felt something grasp him.
“Hold on tight.”
A familiar, steady voice. Opening his eyes, he saw a familiar face amid the falling debris. Though the expression wasn’t one he’d seen before.
“…Yekaterina.”
Why are you here?
Can you even make that kind of face?
You said nothing meant anything to you.
He had things he wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come out. Through her streaming silver hair, he saw a face looking down at them from the ground above. Even though they were the ones falling, it was that face which looked like it had lost everything.
He didn’t understand, but he didn’t particularly want to know either.
Leonid closed his eyes again, pulling Yekaterina close with his injured arms.
“I thought I’d go to hell alone.”
What a way to die.
As the rocks filled his vision, soon their figures disappeared entirely beyond the cliff.
* * *
“When spring comes, some of this accursed snow will melt. There might even be some moss growing. The only downside is that it’s close to the contaminated land… but it’s quite livable. So,”
Let’s go back together.
When she realized Leonid wasn’t going to kill her, Yekaterina decided to do what she had consistently done since returning to the past.
‘I need to go to the hunting grounds.’
She planned to escape.
However, unlike when she escaped to save Vasily, this time it was a painful decision.
Yekaterina stayed at Rostislav to die, not to live.
But he asked her to go with him.
Where could she possibly go? She was a ghost of Offenbach.
Offenbach would never tolerate a traitor.
Maybe Rostislav could protect and hide her for a month, but they couldn’t do so forever.
No, even if they could, Yekaterina herself refused.
She would rather die.
She didn’t want to be a burden to Leonid. She already owed him a debt so great it seemed impossible to repay in her lifetime.
So was it his naive suggestion to go to Rostislav together that made her feel so troubled?
‘No.’
It wasn’t just that.
It was her own foolishness in not realizing until now that Leonid had no intention of killing her.
Why hadn’t she seen it before?
Leonid had always talked to her about the future.
— When you get better at riding, how about going out into the wilderness? It’s much easier to run there than in the forest.
— If you really wanted to die so easily, you should have found someone who could actually kill you. Because I can’t do that.
— Never leave without my permission again. And don’t try to die without my permission either.
