Please Kill Me - Chapter 62
Leonid’s face, cut as if by a sword, softened into gentle curves, reminiscent of the moment just before darkness swallowed the bedroom when she had left.
“I have come to bring you myself.”
“…You said you had many things to care about?”
“You’re one of those things.”
“Aren’t you angry?”
“Would you prefer that I were?”
Yekaterina kept silent instead of answering. She hadn’t exactly hoped he would be angry, but she had expected it, so she was at a loss.
As Yekaterina remained silent, Leonid shrugged as if it was nothing.
“There’s no need to waste emotions on something you don’t want. Come on. Let’s go back.”
“…Can I really go back? If I can go back… I don’t mind living in a prison.”
“What prison? Where else would you go if not back to Rostislav? Offenbach?”
“I can’t return to Offenbach. They don’t tolerate desertion.”
Yekaterina had left on her own and hadn’t returned for over a day. By now, that place had become unreachable for her. If she returned, a cage of monsters awaited her. Or perhaps she would be endlessly locked in a dark room.
One lucky fact was that Offenbach’s numerous torture techniques were useless before her. At the same time, because of this, Offenbach would never kill her easily.
No.
‘It would be more accurate to say they can’t.’
That was one misfortune for Yekaterina.
If they would simply allow her to die easily, she might consider returning. She couldn’t muster the courage to endure that horrific death again. Death itself wasn’t scary, but the idea of being twisted to death by the hand of the family she loved was frightening.
It was strange.
There was a place she had belonged to all her life.
“I… have nowhere to go.”
She had spent her entire life trying not to become a stranger. To think she would be a wanderer again.
It was ironic. Having lived well over twenty years, yet not finding a place for herself. Could this be because she was weak? Because it’s natural for the weak to suffer, is that it?
‘But I am strong.’
Stronger than anyone in Offenbach, with no worthy opponent, which is why she had come as far as Rostislav.
Then what exactly had she been fighting for all this time…?
“Come here.”
Leonid’s soft voice made Yekaterina look up.
“If you’ve been living by the survival of the fittest, then you should return to someone stronger than you. Wouldn’t that be logical?”
“…Can I really go back?”
“Of course.”
Leonid smiled and extended his hand.
She had no choice but to take it. Yekaterina walked slowly towards him and took Leonid’s hand.
She was about to take his hand when suddenly…
“…Yekaterina! Snap out of it!”
If Leonid’s form hadn’t twisted and another voice of his hadn’t echoed from somewhere else.
* * *
After intuitively feeling that Yekaterina had left.
Leonid tried his best to deny it.
It was just a window left open and the person who had been sleeping next to him was gone.
Except for the fact that the window had no reason to be open all night and Yekaterina never left the bedroom until Leonid woke up.
There seemed to be no real evidence.
However, before Leonid could start searching for Yekaterina, news of her absence began to come from various places.
“Sir, a horse from the stable has disappeared! It was always the one the guest used…!”
“There is something suspicious, sir! The back door is wide open!”
“Master, the gardener thinks he heard hoofbeats at dawn.”
“…D*mn it.”
Leonid was forced to accept that Yekaterina had left. And that she had been deceiving him all along.
Combining the situation with the missing items and the past few days, Leonid muttered bitterly.
“So, all that talk about not being able to ride a horse was a lie, then.”
“It seems so, given the circumstances.”
“S**t! She really fooled me cleanly.”
Unable to contain his anger, Leonid slammed his fist on the desk. Olga, who had just finished reporting, flinched, but that was of no concern to Leonid at the moment.
The anger burning inside his stomach refused to subside.
‘Just when I thought I could stop worrying.’
She just left?
It wasn’t that Leonid didn’t know Yekaterina could do something like this. After all, he was the one who had doubted her enough to keep her under surveillance all day. Surely he hadn’t missed this one thing.
If it had been any other time, Leonid might have clicked his tongue and shaken his head, realizing his predictions were correct. He wouldn’t have been angry like this.
Yet, the anger and sense of betrayal he felt probably stemmed from the trust he had placed in her.
He believed Yekaterina was settling well in Rostislav. That, like the care Leonid had for her, the time Yekaterina spent here was not worthless. That’s what Leonid thought. Yekaterina seemed to show that.
No, maybe if it weren’t for the conversation they had last night, he wouldn’t have felt such betrayal.
Her saying riding was fun, that it was the first time she saw him smile.
And then the first question that came from her.
-“I wonder if there’s anything else you care about besides me.”
Unintentionally, their relationship had deepened, but that was their first ‘real conversation.’
