Please Kill Me - Chapter 77
‘I don’t know exactly what happened, but…’
Yekaterina, although proficient in many fields, was admittedly ignorant about social affairs. Being a noble, she was privy to some gossip. But people rarely paid attention to what she considered inconsequential chatter.
And for Yekaterina, the stories of society were of no value.
‘Maybe I should have paid more attention.’
Then she might have known who Marina was and the relationship she had with Larisa. She might have understood why this apparent madwoman before her was so consumed with nostalgia.
The memories Larisa shared were beautiful, in a way. Like a village blanketed in freshly fallen snow, dazzling under the morning sun, they were strikingly vivid.
It was an affection Yekaterina had never experienced.
Thus, while others might have felt uncomfortable and excused themselves in such a situation, Yekaterina sat quietly, observing Larisa.
What does a dying person have in abundance if not time?
Yet above all, it was the pity she felt for the woman before her that made it hard for her to leave.
‘Pity, of all things?’
It was an uncharacteristic thought. Why did she find herself feeling compassion for others? No matter how beautiful and sparkling things were before her, her gaze didn’t linger on them. Yet, it seemed always to drift towards the faded and tarnished.
In the past, she might have thought it only natural for the weak to lose what they have. She did not spend time on such empathy.
To think of pitying herself was far from her mind, making it all the more perplexing.
Just then, as her thoughts reached this point, Larisa clapped her hands.
“But isn’t it funny, sister? We talked about leaving Ethiel together. One ended up in the palace, and the other in Rostislav.”
At this remark, Yekaterina’s expression subtly hardened.
Yekaterina doubted her ears.
“…Rostislav?”
“Huh?”
“Queen, did you just say Rostislav?”
At Yekaterina’s question, Larisa nodded slowly.
“Yes, Rostislav. Rostislav…”
Her murmuring voice gradually slowed, and eventually, it stopped completely.
A sharp silence fell, followed by a clear murmur.
“…Rostislav.”
Yekaterina turned her head to look at Larisa.
It wasn’t the mention of Rostislav that caught her attention—after all, it was a name she thought about and heard several times a day.
What made Yekaterina quickly turn was that Larisa’s voice had changed so dramatically, it could have been another person speaking.
The voice of someone cast to the bottom of reality, a voice laden with despair, had caught Yekaterina’s attention.
“Does the lady named Marina have a connection with Rostislav?”
At Yekaterina’s question, Larisa’s eyes turned towards her. Even as they faced each other, the focus that had been missing from Larisa’s blue eyes was now steady and assessing.
“…Did I call you Marina?”
“Yes.”
A look of disappointment crossed Larisa’s face at Yekaterina’s concise response, but that was all. There was no sign of confusion, as if such incidents were not unfamiliar to her.
Only then did Yekaterina truly face the bare essence of Larisa.
A woman without any madness or emotion, marked only by emptiness and regret.
“I dreamed I was meeting Sister Marina. It was a face I haven’t seen in a long time, perhaps half of it wasn’t even a dream…”
Larisa looked slightly fatigued. She seemed uninterested in who Yekaterina was or why she was there, or even why she herself was in this place.
“Sister Marina was Duchess Rostislav. Perhaps now it should be said that she was the former Duchess, as her son has likely succeeded…”
Mentioning a succession usually implied the predecessor’s death.
Larisa didn’t mention this part, but Yekaterina was already aware of the untold explanation.
She had heard about the death of the former Duke and Duchess of Rostislav from none other than Leonid.
– “They died in an accident, both of them.”
– “How?”
– “There was a fire.”
– “Did they both die at the same time?”
– “Father died at the scene. Mother, however”
Leonid’s explanation had been brief. Even stopped when he spoke of his mother.
But even after Larisa lost her sanity, the description of ‘Marina’, a person she still yearned for in her delirium, was enough.
Yekaterina’s curiosity was satisfied.
‘I wondered why this felt so familiar.’
The voice of Larisa, sobbing earlier, replayed in Yekaterina’s mind.
– “It’s all my fault… I should have died there too… Sister… Sister…”
The voice soaked in regret and mourning strangely felt familiar.
Not just the voice. The regret that colored Larisa’s face, the expression filled in emptiness. Once stripped of her madness, Larisa’s features bore a striking resemblance to Yekaterina’s.
Realizing this, Yekaterina felt the source of the strange compassion she had been experiencing. It showed her why she so uncharacteristically found the woman before her so pitiable.
