Acidity of Regret Ch 81
- Feb 3
- 7 min read
As if the destination had been decided from the very beginning, the carriage departed as soon as they boarded.
[Vanessa] "Where are we going?"
[Helia] "To the border. His Highness the Crown Prince is waiting for you there."
Hayden...
Her throat tightened as she imagined with what heart he must be waiting for her. Even without love, he was someone she always felt grateful toward, so she felt an unwarranted sense of guilt.
[Vanessa] "I see."
After the short exchange of question and answer ended, a strange silence settled between the two.
Vanessa blinked slowly.
It was true she had desperately hoped for someone to come, but honestly, Helia Quasar had not been among the options she considered.
Before the regression, Helia had tormented her, and even after, she wasn't exactly a welcome presence. Yet, when Vanessa encountered her face outside the bedroom door, she couldn't help but feel a surge of gladness rising to the top of her head.
[Vanessa] "Thank you, Lady Quasar."
In the past, whenever she faced Helia, memories of deeds the current Helia wouldn't even know she had committed often surfaced. The memory of being shunned by everyone and becoming a cold outcast in the Duchy's banquet hall. The humiliation she suffered back then was a stain that wouldn't easily disappear, no matter how hard she tried to wipe it away.
But the gladness and relief she felt today seemed to have erased some of that stain. For the first time, Helia didn't feel unpleasant.
At the sincere words of gratitude, Helia paused for a moment before clenching her hands tight.
[Helia] "I'm telling you clearly, I didn't help because I like you. I did it to achieve my love. If you marry the Grand Duke, I won't even have a chance to try."
Although she spoke smoothly, as if it were a prepared excuse, the tips of her ears burned red, betraying the embarrassment she couldn't hide.
[Helia] "Above all, my brother insisted that we had to get you out."
[Vanessa] "Count Quasar did?"
[Helia] "Yes. As soon as he heard the news that you were missing in the Empire, he seemed to guess it was the Grand Duke's doing. Seeing as he headed straight for the Grand Duke's castle the moment he returned to the Duchy."
Helia looked out the carriage window beyond the curtain.
[Helia] "And even to me, that felt right. He is someone who has never once been swayed by personal feelings since ascending to the position of Grand Duke..."
Being close to him, they seemed to have noticed quickly and sharply that Declan’s mental state and judgment were deteriorating to the point where those around him had to intervene.
[Helia] "I can't believe that someone who grew up watching the catastrophe of a one-sided marriage closer than anyone else would dare to do something like this."
Her tone, clicking her tongue, was clearly fed up.
And that was something Vanessa, the person involved, agreed with as well. He hadn't been like this from the start. Even when she first returned to the past, he possessed enough reason to distinguish right from wrong. Even if he acted out when things didn't go his way, he knew how to keep a certain line. But gradually, he failed to distinguish boundaries, acted as he pleased, and eventually...
It was solely her existence, her efforts to paint a future different from before the regression, that had caused him to become captive to instinct and impulse.
[Helia] "Honestly, I felt like you were deceiving me—no, no matter how I looked at it, Declan seemed to treat you specially, so I didn't feel good about it. My pride was hurt, so I wasn't going to ask... but at this point, I can't let it pass without asking."
She curled the hands resting on her skirt into fists and asked.
[Helia] "What on earth is the relationship between you two?"
It was a relationship where the answer to that question didn't come to mind immediately. A relationship where all sorts of emotions were so tangled that she didn't even know where to begin unraveling them. A complex relationship that couldn't be easily defined by any single word.
However, she could say at least this one thing clearly.
[Vanessa] "Our existence to each other... results in nothing but wounds."
[Helia] "......"
[Vanessa] "That is why we shouldn't be together."
To Declan, she was merely a byproduct of his inferiority complex—something he felt he must possess because Hayden had tried to. And to Vanessa, he was an existence that reminded her only of all kinds of pain and fear. Neither purpose nor emotion. It was a blocked relationship where nothing connected at the right time.
Helia stared blankly at Vanessa sitting opposite her.
As if to signify the unwanted trip to the Duchy and the unwanted marriage, her once bright face had become gaunt. A precarious atmosphere, as if she would collapse at the slightest touch.
On that face, enduring as if barely standing one step before a cliff, lay a gloom that Helia couldn't easily fathom. That expression, close to resignation, supported her vague statement that it "results in nothing but wounds."
Vanessa was struggling to endure Declan. So Helia had no choice but to shut her mouth.
Amid the continuing silence, Vanessa looked out the window.
The carriage raced endlessly, cutting through landscapes of various colors. The background passing quickly between the fluttering curtains brushed against her retina.
[Vanessal "…..."
Her pupils, which had been blankly taking it in, suddenly flinched.
The endless view of the forest, and the mountain range casting shadows over it as if to protect it, was pitch black. It wasn't strange, given that the feast of coniferous trees making up the majority of the Duchy was a dark green so deep it looked black from a distance.
The problem wasn't the color. It was because the pitch-black mountain range, clumped together like a massive lump, seemed to be wriggling and moving. It was a scene so foreign that it felt wrong to call it a natural phenomenon.
She rubbed her slowly blinking eyes with her hand. And when she opened her closed eyes to look again, the strange fluctuation had vanished without a trace, as if it were an illusion.
Did I... see it wrong?
She could have dismissed it as such, but feeling strangely eerie, she slightly parted the curtain.
[Helia] "Lady Rohawk, just in case, keep the curtain closed."
[Vanessa] "Ah, yes."
But due to Helia’s stern warning, she lost the chance to examine it closely.
True. This isn't the time for that.
The reality of her situation—escaping from Declan—suddenly hit home painfully. Her interest in what lay beyond the window naturally faded as anxiety flared up again.
It was while they were running for a long time along the bumpy road.
Thud—!
Suddenly, their bodies lurched forward as the carriage came to an abrupt halt.
Neigh.
The loud, chaotic cries of the horses pierced through the carriage walls. Vanessa, having fallen off the seat, sat on the floor and looked up.
Helia, who had barely managed to grab the assist handle, hurriedly opened the window connecting to the driver's seat.
[Helia] "What is going on?"
However, there was no answer. Looking up at the driver's seat, the coachman was nowhere to be seen.
Goosebumps rose as if bugs were crawling up her spine. Helia looked back at Vanessa with bewildered eyes.
The next moment, Bang—!
The closed door shook violently. The shoulders of the two women flinched simultaneously. Helia grabbed the door handle tightly, sensing an ominous current.
But after a few intense blows, the handle shattered, and the carriage door was forcibly opened by an external force.
And in the place she looked, a man stood towering like a demon.
He had thought it strange all along.
Just as Julian knew him well as a close friend, he understood Julian just as well. Since he wasn't the type to leave loose ends, Julian never dragged out the reason for a meeting.
So, for him to come abruptly and try his hardest to hold him back, all while trying not to reveal his intent, inevitably aroused suspicion.
In truth, the effort was quite subtle, but perhaps because his nerves had been incredibly sharp these past few days due to Vanessa, he was able to notice it without difficulty.
The wedding, decided entirely by his own judgment and will, was just around the corner.
Strangely, even as the day to completely bind Vanessa approached, his ominous feeling showed no sign of fading. That nauseating sensation from the past washed over him again, thrashing his heart.
Even at this very moment. The anxious, parched feeling that she would disappear if he just blinked grew worse and worse.
Just as he was thinking something was wrong, his intuition bristled the moment he saw Shiron open the office door and enter. His loyal knight wasn't foolish enough to interrupt his time with a friend, so it meant something significant enough to warrant such rudeness had occurred.
[Julian] "Do you intend to follow in the former Grand Duke's footsteps?"
He shouted, trying to stop him as he attempted to rush out immediately. His desperate voice carried both pity and rebuke.
Shaking off that poignant grip, Declan returned a gaze that was nothing short of ferocious. He wanted to snap back with something, anything, but the imagination that she might be leaving even during this moment of meaningless argument burned his insides dry.
In the end, he resorted to using force against Julian, who tried to stop him again and again, and left the office.
It can't be. She can absolutely never escape my hands.
And the moment he discovered the empty bedroom and the unlocked shackle, contrary to his expectations, something in his precarious reason snapped.
[Declan] "......Ha."
After wiping his face with dry hands, his dizzy head cleared a little. But since what settled over it was only the wicked desire that he 'must catch her,' it was closer to cloudy than clear.
The pursuit was easy. This rough and barren land was in the palm of his hand.
Choosing the mountain path over the neatly paved road was clearly for the purpose of avoiding pursuit.
However, in the Duchy where the Grand Duke's power and military force reached, there was nothing he couldn't catch. Therefore, predicting where the carriage carrying Vanessa would appear, and entering the path early to block its course at the right timing, was also easy.
The mountain paths he had roamed, like eating meals to dispose of monsters, were familiar enough to walk with his eyes closed.
The coachman, turning pale at the sight of the sudden intruder, had his mouth covered by Shiron before he could even make a sound.
Declan ordered the retreat cut off first, then opened the carriage door.
Clunk.
However, faced with the door that wouldn't open as if locked from the inside, his fuse burned short. By the time he came to his senses, he was already kicking the door with a bang, bang.
When the fragile handle shattered, he finally threw open the loosened door. He faced his bride, who was sitting on the floor, looking up at him.
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