Chapter 55: Dreams are illusions.

The crease between his brows, the drooping corners of his eyes that looked as if they had given up, the lips pressed together as though holding something back;
Yulan was swaying, wavering, looking for all the world like he was hurt.
There were no tears in his eyes, but the surface looked cracked and dry, as if it might flake away and start crying at any moment.

What had done this to him?

“Yulan…?”

The boy standing there when she turned was not wrapped in his usual gentle aura.
He felt like a dark, stagnant back alley after the rain; damp, smoky, suffocating.

“Did I… manage to help you at all?”

Even so, he tried desperately to smile through the tattered mask.
He was strangling himself with his own hands, yet still forcing the words out.
How was that any different from crying?

To Violet, he looked as though he might shatter at any second.

She thought: Yulan is going to break.

“…!”

She knew she had to say something, but she didn’t know what.
The wound was right there in front of her, yet she couldn’t find the blade that had made it.

She could press her hands over it and try to stop the bleeding, but would that even mean anything?
Wouldn’t wrapping a bandage over an embedded thorn only let it fester?

What words could possibly reach him?

“…I was happy.”

“…!”

His lips were clenched so tightly she could almost hear the grind of teeth.
It was only a matter of time before they gave way and blood welled up.

She didn’t want to hurt him, yet she was the one making him wear that face; the realization crushed something deep inside her.
She was bad at talking to people, terrible at choosing words.

Conveying what she wanted to say was so impossibly hard.

“What made me happy was everything you did for me, Yulan.”

Today had been wonderful because Yulan had given her the chance.
The productive studying, the unexpected side of an unexpected person, the light spring in her step; everything had come from him.

Talking naturally with Claudia had indeed been a relief, but the feeling wasn’t quite happiness.

The source of her joy, her fun, her smiles; all of it was Yulan.

Please don’t smile with that sad, pained face.

“You were thinking of me, weren’t you? You wanted to help me.”

Thank you.
For caring about me, for wanting to support me, for wanting to be useful to me.

“Thank you. Because of you, I’ll have good dreams tonight.”

She still didn’t know if her words would reach him.
She had so little experience with someone acting purely for her sake, with no obligation or ulterior motive.

And she had never once thanked anyone for it.

She had been too busy drowning in her own misfortune, too busy playing the tragic victim to ever consider the people who cared for her.

She had never realized that a simple “thank you” could feel this light.

And yet it still wasn’t enough.
She wanted to cram every piled-up feeling, every swirling thought, into those words.
Five syllables were far too few.

Yet until today, she had never known that “thank you” could be the only thing she could find.

“Thank you.”

She stepped in front of him and looked straight into those trembling golden eyes.

They were probably a color Yulan himself didn’t particularly like.
Even if he didn’t hate them, he couldn’t possibly feel no discomfort at all.
She knew another person who wore gold that loudly declared supremacy.

Claudia Aclis.
The prince of her girlhood dreams.
The first love she had believed would save her.

To the old Violet, that gold had been his color alone; the radiant hue of a prince’s crown, the color of the unreachable summit.
She had learned in a prison cell that dreams were only dreams, and to everyone but her they were nothing more than delusions.

She had been an idiot.
Even thinking about her past self made her want to laugh in disgust.
She had seen nothing but him.
Nothing but his color.

She was sick of how narrow her vision had been.

When all along, right here, so close, someone had been reaching out; someone who would accept her hand if she only extended it.

She should have realized much sooner that this was such a gentle, sun-like color.

“This is your color, Yulan.”