Chapter 72: The Key of Reason.

Violet knows two endings brought by possessiveness.

One is, of course, the condemnation she herself experienced.
The other is the fate of a foolish woman who loved and longed for only one man until the moment she died.
A woman who kept hoping that if she fell ill, if her life was in danger, he might finally return.
In the end, not a shred of her feelings was ever returned; she simply died.
That is the image Violet has of her mother.

(The worst…)

Still lying on the bed, she pressed a hand to her forehead, forgetting even to sit up.
Her exhaustion hadn’t lifted at all; on the contrary, she felt heavier than before sleeping, as if she’d had a nightmare.
She couldn’t remember what she’d dreamed, fortunately… or perhaps unfortunately, but it must have been a fittingly awful one.

She was so used to headaches and stomach pains that she’d grown numb to them, but in exchange she now felt an unidentified pressure and lethargy more often.
Which was worse was hard to say.
Marin would insist both were poison to the body.

Dragging her body, now heavier with something other than weight, she staggered to the vanity.
The dizziness wasn’t just from waking up.
The restorative effects of sleep had apparently been crushed by nightmares.

“As I thought… my eyes are a little bloodshot.”

The face in the mirror looked worse than usual.
For a living person, she was far too bloodless; her already pale skin had lost even more color than yesterday.
Yet only her eyes were painfully red.
She had expected it from the heaviness she felt, but she had desperately hoped she was wrong.

The pallor could be hidden with makeup.
It would worry Marin, but Marin knew that poorly concealed lies hurt more.
And above all, Marin had probably already predicted this outcome.

The real problem was the other person, the one who knew Violet better than Violet herself, in some ways.

(Yulan will notice.)

Even the slightest change never escaped him.
Even without the bloodshot eyes, the thicker makeup would have given her away.

Normally she would only feel a little guilty for worrying him.
She could have smiled, said thank you and sorry, and he would reluctantly accept it.
Those exchanges had always saved her heart.
Normally.

“…”

A feeling she had never once harbored since the day they met.
Even when she pushed everyone else away, Yulan had always been the sole exception.

Now she was afraid to see Yulan.
Just imagining his smile brought back yesterday’s terror.

She was terrified that her desire might hurt him.

“What should I do…”

She clutched her head over the unsolvable problem and accomplished nothing until Marin came to call her.

×　×　×　×

Originally, Yulan didn’t visit Violet every single day.
He came often, yes, but he had his own circle of friends.
He had never said it aloud, but given his social skills it was easy to imagine.

During exam period he had been by her side almost daily, but now that it was over, things had returned to normal.

She had never expected to feel both relief and awkward guilt over that simple fact.
The Violet of yesterday would never have imagined it.

She let out a sigh far louder than intended, but she was alone here.

This gazebo, shaded by trees, was kept clean yet almost never used.
It was perpetually cool from lack of sunlight, and hard to spot, so many didn’t even know it existed.
The gazebo itself was beautiful, but the surrounding area was left natural.
From afar it looked lovely, but up close it didn’t invite approach.

She didn’t want to admit she had chosen it to avoid Yulan, but the moment she selected a rarely used, secluded spot, denial became impossible.

Right now, she simply wanted to be alone and sort out these feelings.

Guilt and self-loathing.
She had felt them countless times before, but this was surely the strongest yet.

(There’s no solution, is there…)

Nothing had actually happened.
She had merely noticed a bud of desire inside herself and fallen into despair on her own.
Before any solution, the only countermeasure was for Violet herself to be careful.

She absolutely did not want to avoid Yulan… or so she told herself.

“I relied on him too much…”

A self-mocking laugh slipped out and drifted through the empty space.
Her heart was apparently more exhausted than she realized; she leaned back against the bench and looked up.
The pure white ceiling blocked the sky.

The wind rustling the trees was, as expected, a little cold.
The moment the sun hid, everything darkened.

It felt exactly like a prison cell somewhere.

When she closed her eyes, the memories were still vivid.
Some parts were missing, but the vow she made that day, the regret, everything was carved into her chest and refused to fade.

But it still wasn’t enough.
Her resolve was still weak.
Desire wells up on its own; it doesn’t vanish just because she wishes it to.
That’s why she had to forge an ironclad reason to restrain it.

A single breath, opening her eyes, nothing in the world changes.
Mindsets shift easily, flow away easily.
If she wants to protect something precious, she has no choice but to cling to it desperately.

So that this feeling, this desire, never hurts that boy.

(I’ll do my best… absolutely.)

She would control it.
She would erase it.
Someday, without fail, she would make it disappear.

Clenching both fists in solemn oath, she pretended not to notice the faint ache that had begun to sprout.