Please Kill Me - Chapter 163
If someone had heard her voice, they would undoubtedly think that Yekaterina was crying.
Although nothing flowed from her tear-stained face, that voice was almost akin to sobbing.
Leonid silently watched her before finally speaking up.
“Even with a knife in your hand, you can’t bring yourself to kill me. You said I meant nothing to you.”
“…That’s not true.”
“That’s a lie. You have a talent for deception.”
He couldn’t understand how she had managed to trick him so thoroughly and then leave. A grimace twisting his lips. It looked less like a smile and more like a distortion.
“If you can’t kill me or even let me die, you should be willing to take responsibility, Yekaterina.”
Finally, Leonid took hold of Yekaterina’s hand. Initially resting on her shoulder, his hand slowly trailed down her body, eventually gripping her wrist.
“I truly tried to let you go. Even when I felt I couldn’t live without you. All I could think was that I just couldn’t die… ”
The thought he had the most after Yekaterina left was that.
If only he had died when he fell from that cliff.
His longing for Yekaterina always ended in his own death since she had left him, having never wanted him.
Thus, his thoughts constantly circled back to the same place.
When he fell from that cliff that day, he should have held her and died.
At least then he wouldn’t have had to believe that she didn’t want him. He wouldn’t have to endure the pain of being without her, nor would he have had to realize that he was becoming a shell of a man without her.
Had he died then, she would have been in his arms until the very last moment.
So, he should have died back then.
She should have let him die then.
If not from the cliff, then at least on the terrace.
She shouldn’t have pulled him away from all those deaths.
The man standing before her was inherently someone far removed from being gentlemanly, and now he was only thinking about binding her wrists and locking her in his room.
She should have realized this sooner.
“Yekaterina.”
Gently calling her name, Leonid leaned his face against the hand he held. He pressed his lips to her palm and placed soft kisses on the tender pulse of her wrist. Despite the tumult within him, his attitude was excessively polite.
Perhaps it made him seem like someone with a clear mind.
Could she even dare to guess what thoughts were swirling behind that composed exterior?
Watching Leonid behave as if he had willingly put a collar around his own neck in front of Yekaterina, Yuri let out a small sigh inside.
‘Is this really the right thing to do…?’
Ever since Leonid discovered that Yekaterina had deceived him and vanished, he had acted as if he were completely unhinged.
He suddenly began purchasing powerful restraints embedded with the core of a monster and completely renovated a room. These were ideas that could only stem from someone truly losing their mind.
As a result, Olga, Vasily, and Yuri found themselves engaged in concerned conversations while observing Leonid’s frantic behavior.
— He said he would imprison Miss Yekaterina if he found her, but that was no metaphor, was it…?
— I consider it a reasonable response. After all, Miss Yekaterina is exceptionally skilled at escaping.
— That’s true. They say the surveillance was extremely strict during the hunting event, right? How did she manage to escape…?
— It seems she knocked out the guards outside the window and fled.
— …Y-yeah, that’s right.
Whenever the topic of Yekaterina’s escape during the hunting event came up, for some reason, Vasily would act as if something was slightly off, but the main subject always remained the same.
— Is it okay for him to be like this?
This was about Leonid’s unstable state of mind.
— He hasn’t slept properly and spent the whole night in the newly renovated room. I was curious about what he was doing, so I peeked in, but he was doing nothing at all.
— So?
— He just sat there… or stood and stared at the room.
Leonid’s bizarre behavior didn’t ease over time, and it scared those observing him.
This was particularly alarming since he had always been a well-mannered type of person who had never committed any kind of outrageous or erratic acts in his life.
The very thought of wanting to capture and confine someone who had already left was a clear sign of insanity.
It would be easier to accept if someone who was already acting irrationally acted like this, but Leonid was fundamentally a person made up of all things considered normal.
‘They say the one who loses their mind will be the most unhinged.’
Given how things had unfolded, how could Yuri possibly ignore Leonid’s threats? Yet, he still had no idea if what he was doing was right.
They say that giving candy to a crying child will make them stop crying, but what on earth could return Leonid to his former self?
His agitated expression showed no signs of changing even in front of Yekaterina.
His eyes, consumed by a deep sense of futility, merely stared at her with an intensity that seemed ready to swallow her whole.
If only he could unleash his anger or pour out his longing in an emotional response when faced with Yekaterina, it wouldn’t feel so unsettling.
Instead, his calm demeanor brought a strange sensation.
