A Nightmare

Selene took a small breath.
Her grandmother had never pressured her about marriage in this way before.
Beatrix continued, her eyes lowered.
“The Ashcombe title lost its owner after Nicholas died. It can’t be left like this forever.”
“…There’s Uncle Orlando.”
At the name Orlando, Beatrix’s eyes instantly turned cold.
“You’re being childish.”
At the sharp rebuke, Selene felt like she had returned to being a child for the first time in a long time.
A child who was always nervous and withdrawn in front of her grandmother.
“The title will be inherited by your child. If you don’t want that, you can succeed it yourself.”
Selene let out a short cough.
Just the thought of it was horrifying.
If she were to succeed the ducal title, her days would be filled with outside work without a moment’s rest.
Dust would pile up on the lid of the piano she couldn’t open.
“If you don’t want to, then fulfill your responsibility.”
“…”
“Meeting a suitable man and getting married. The world is not a place you can live in alone. Even if you run away for now, you will eventually hit a wall.”
Selene silently drank her tea.
She wanted to take this opportunity to ask why she hated her uncle so much, but as a coldness appeared in her grandmother’s eyes, the words got stuck in her throat.
At Selene’s sudden silence, Beatrix’s gaze also softened a little.
She picked up her teacup again.
“If you dislike marriage so much, you should have just married Logan Pembroke.”
Logan Pembroke.
Selene’s ex-fiancé, childhood friend, and the legitimate eldest son of the grand ducal family.
Yes, he might have been the perfect marriage partner who would have saved Selene from this nagging.
But there was a very important flaw in their relationship.
“I don’t like him. You value love, grandmother.”
Her grandmother, an unexpected romantic, believed that a marriage without love was just a play that would eventually break.
Nevertheless, she had engaged the young Selene because of the persuasion of Selene’s father, Nicholas.
Her father was best friends with the Grand Duke of Pembroke.
“Logan Pembroke could have given you twice the love, so that doesn’t matter. A woman’s heart is bound to open up to a man’s pouring love.”
“…Do you think Logan loved me?”
Selene asked as if she had heard something bizarre.
At that question, Beatrix’s expression turned even worse.
“Are you being serious?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You really…”
Beatrix, who was muttering something with a dumbfounded face, touched her forehead with a deep sigh.
‘What on earth is wrong with her?’
Selene couldn’t understand Beatrix’s reaction, which seemed as if she had a sudden headache.
“…Forget it. It’s all my fault that you turned out like this.”
This time, it was closer to a lament than a scolding.
Selene found Beatrix, who had been spewing incomprehensible words for a while now, to be strange today.
But she thought that if she brought up the topics she had prepared here, the conversation would only get longer, so she chose to keep her mouth shut.
As if the silence helped, Beatrix soon composed herself and returned to her usual quiet and upright self.
Fortunately, the conversation flowed relatively normally after that.
For the most part, when Selene brought up the topics she had prepared, Beatrix would listen silently.
Beatrix, who had been silent all along, opened her mouth around the time Selene finished talking about the habits of moles, the fifth topic she had prepared, that is, when her grandmother checked the clock, which had passed for about an hour.
“You should leave early. Even if you leave now, you won’t arrive in Cantora until late in the evening.”
Selene got up from her seat without delay.
Others might think she was sending her granddaughter, whom she hadn’t seen in a long time, back too early, but both of them preferred this short meeting.
“You don’t have to see me out.”
Selene, considerate of Beatrix’s poor health, declined her offer to see her off.
“I’m not that weak.”
Beatrix, despite her pale face that didn’t suit the outdoors, walked out to where Selene’s car was parked.
“Stay safe and healthy. I’ll write to you.”
Like their blunt conversation, their farewell was also concise.
After saying goodbye, Selene was about to get into the car when Beatrix called her in a low voice.
“Selene.”
Selene looked at Beatrix.
Her face was as indifferent as usual, but her melted eyes were serious.
“Yes?”
“Don’t trust Orlando too much.”
Selene didn’t know what to say.
It was the first time her grandmother had said something like this.
Whenever the topic of Uncle Orlando came up, she was somehow subtly on edge.
But she had never talked about the reason in front of Evelyn or her, so all she could do was guess that something had happened between the two of them.
According to Evelyn, her uncle didn’t talk about their grandmother first either.
Selene, who was hesitating about what to say, brought up what was bothering her the most.
“Evelyn is the closest person to me.”
“I’m not talking about Evelyn. I’m talking about Orlando.”
Beatrix was talking as if the two were separate, but Uncle Orlando was Evelyn’s father.
They couldn’t be seen as completely separate.
“I don’t understand why you’re saying this, grandmother.”
Beatrix was silent.
As Selene had expected, she seemed to have no intention of explaining the reason.
Selene didn’t welcome this silence, but she had nothing to say since she was also the type to clam up like a shellfish when she didn’t want to talk about something.
“I’ll be going now, grandmother.”
In the end, Selene, who cut off the conversation, said goodbye again.
“Alright, it was enjoyable.”
At the reply that came back, Selene looked at Beatrix in wonder.
‘Really…?’
In Selene’s memory, only the Beatrix who seemed bored all along remained.
“Go on now. You’ll be late.”
“Yes.”
As Selene stood still without getting into the car, Beatrix urged her.
Coming to her senses, Selene got into the car.
The car started, but Beatrix stood there for a long time.
Selene silently watched her grandmother grow smaller in the side mirror.
While doubting the sincerity of Beatrix’s words that it was enjoyable, Selene found herself wondering what her grandmother did to pass the time in the annex where no one visited anymore.
In this quiet villa in the middle of a secluded forest, where nothing could be heard except the cries of animals, and where her son and daughter-in-law would no longer visit.
Selene gently closed her eyes at the fading green landscape.
The chirping of the nameless bird she had been hearing was getting farther away.

It was a night of summer rain.
The drops of water, falling with a pitter-patter, tapped against the windowpane and flowed down, making the silent mansion feel like a damp cave.
Theron didn’t particularly dislike the rain, but he didn’t like days like this when it seemed to cover the entire city and cause a flood.
It was a perfect day for a damn memory to become a dream and torment him.
Sure enough, not long after he closed his eyes and fell asleep, he heard the sound of falling into water.
Splash!
In his dream, he was in a bathtub.
Ugh…
He was immediately out of breath.
A large man casting a shadow was pressing down on Theron’s neck in the water.
Gurgle, gurgle.
The bubbles that flowed out of his mouth along with the pressure on his neck were taking Theron’s life.
No matter how much he struggled, it was difficult to remove the thick hands of the adult man that were wrapped around the child’s neck like a snake.

“You useless brat, if you’re just going to be a freeloader, you might as well die!”

Theron vaguely saw the crazed eyes of the man, not even knowing what he was angry about, outside the bathtub he had fallen into.
His father, no, the man he hated to call that, often had those eyes.
Although he rarely tried to kill him like this.
‘Seeing that crazy man having another fit, did he drink? Or gamble? He shouldn’t have the money for drugs anymore…’
Unable to breathe in the water, Theron felt the last of his strength drain from his increasingly drowsy eyelids.

“Theron, run away!”

It was then that he suddenly came to his senses.
As his mother, whose face was already bruised beyond recognition from her husband’s indiscriminate violence, struck her husband’s head with a broom, the strength in the thick hands that were strangling him momentarily loosened.
Theron quickly bit the fingers that were strangling his neck.
The taste of blood mixed with the water from the bathtub that flooded his mouth.

“Aaargh!”

Completely freed from his hands, Theron jumped out of the bathtub that had been pulling him down like a swamp.
He had to leave the house quickly before that crazy man came to his senses.
But even as the dripping water blurred his chaotic vision, he saw his crying mother.
His mother was covering her mouth with her hand and crying uncontrollably.
Theron suddenly thought.
‘Are those tears out of fear of the father’s anger that would come back because of today’s events, or out of guilt for having condoned all this violence until now?’
‘Probably the former.’
‘If she were the type to feel guilt, she wouldn’t have left that piece of trash alone until I became like this.’
So, Theron ran out of the crappy house without looking back.
Of course, just because he had escaped the hellish house didn’t mean that paradise unfolded.
He was only 12 at the time.
The young and weak boy wandered the back alleys, got beaten up by gangsters, and lived like a beggar, rummaging through trash cans, before he was finally hired at a pub and started to barely make a living.
It was a dark backstory that people who only saw his glamorous side would never know.
‘Hmph.’
‘What a crappy dream.’
Theron, who woke up drenched in a cold sweat, immediately took a shower.
On a hot day like this, it would be nice to fill the bathtub with water and cool off, but he didn’t feel like it, perhaps because of that damn dream.
It was the same with going into deep water.
Shallow water was fine, but he couldn’t go into deep water where his face was submerged at all.
If his head was submerged, his body would stiffen up.
So, after a simple shower, he was working on the sofa when the sun started to rise outside the window, past dawn.
Theron looked at the brightening sky.
For a while, he hadn’t felt any particular emotion at the sight of the sunrise because he was busy dealing with work, not knowing if it was day or night, but today, this sky announcing the start of the day didn’t feel so bad.
It was probably because he was going to meet that woman after a long time.