Even If Your Regret Tries to Hold Me Back - Chapter 32

“What are you looking at so intently?”

For a moment, the fine hairs on the back of Helena’s neck stood on end, but she tried to answer calmly.

“A bluebird seemed to have lost its way, so I was giving it some directions.”

“……?”

Ian raised one eyebrow at her incomprehensible answer.

It was an expression Helena rarely saw, so she looked at his face longer than usual.

“……Is there something on my face?”

“No, I just… wanted to look at you.”

Though it was a straightforward, intuitive reason, Ian’s earlobes turned faintly red. He rubbed his eyebrow with his thumb knuckle as if trying to ease his embarrassment.

The paper bags hanging from his hand rustled as they bumped together with the movement. Helena’s gaze, which had been fixed on Ian, scattered.

‘He said he was stopping by the general store… Did he need so many things?’

Helena casually peered into the paper bags and spotted a long rolled parchment. Though he seemed to have bought other miscellaneous items to avoid suspicion, it was clearly a map.

Since she had the map of Futuo and had just given it to the man she’d met, that was likely a map of a different region.

Moreover, she had heard him tell the innkeeper this morning that he would only pay for one more night, whereas he usually paid for room rent in advance for several days at once.

‘Is he finally leaving?’

Helena fidgeted with her fingers while gripping her bag strap.

She should feel good about it, but she didn’t.

‘Surely he’s not planning to take me along when he leaves this place.’

This time she should feel bad about it, but she didn’t.

Without either of them speaking first, the two began walking toward the gathering storm clouds with the sunset at their backs. The inn lay beyond them.

Breathing in the increasingly thick scent of grass and earth, Helena glanced sideways at Ian.

His hands were full of paper bags containing the clothes and other items he’d bought today. Even after she had forcibly taken several bags from him, there were still many.

Perhaps misunderstanding her sideways glances, he extended his hand.

“It’s heavy after all, isn’t it? Give them back to me now.”

“Don’t treat me like I’m made of paper.”

“If you really were, I’d fold you up and carry you in my pocket.”

“Disgusting.”

Instead of responding further, he smiled softly. The paper bags eventually returned to his hands.

Helena suddenly became aware of his traces that had permeated her being.

The clothes she wore, the food she ate, the space she occupied, Basil’s painting, her stabilizing illusions.

Even the pace at which he walked to match her stride. All of it was his devotion and consideration.

Undeniably, he was the giver and she was the receiver.

She had at least given Eugene love in return, but now she couldn’t even do that.

‘This, this… is wrong.’

He had said they should help each other whenever they stumbled, but if she dug into his true intentions, it was merely a pretense to prevent her from making up her mind to die again.

‘How could I help him when I can’t even see my own path ahead?’

Helena chewed the inside of her mouth. The anxiety that had often troubled her since meeting him became even more certain.

No matter how much he tried to soothe and embrace her, this was her problem. Now that she had cleared away the emotions that had been clouded by the series of events, she could see the present clearly.

This insignificant peace and monotony was not hers. Her life had always been one where she would be swept away if she didn’t grit her teeth and endure.

To live as Eugene’s wife, she always had to endure the pain of cutting away parts of herself.

That’s why Helena couldn’t bear this situation where she only received without clear compensation.

‘No. Be more honest.’

To be precise, she couldn’t let herself go after allowing his intrusion, even for a moment.

She had to do something before being completely consumed. Helena didn’t want to create another Eugene, another Basil, another Walter in any form.

‘I mustn’t get used to this. He’s someone who will leave eventually.’

And unfortunately, the only way she knew to fix relationships was to sever them.

If she had set foot on an irreversible path, she could cut the path itself.

To prevent going any further.

****

Night had fallen. Eugene stood vacantly before the sea that was turning black.

As the sound of waves lapping built up layer by layer, someone’s afterimage grew darker too.

[Since Schone was drunk at the time, I don’t remember exactly…..but about ten days ago, as if possessed by something, she ran into the sea.]

The image of a woman slowly walking into the black sea kept flickering before his eyes.

So vivid it seemed he could catch her at any moment, but when he reached out, it would disappear. Not even her scent remained.

Only then would he realize it was a phantom.

‘Helena. Did you know such a day would come?’

Like waves that recede and surge back again, Eugene was in constant confrontation with the memories remaining within him.

‘Or… did you hope such a day would come?’

Eugene now habitually put a cigar in his mouth, something he had rarely touched before. When he lit it, a small flame flared in the darkness and died out.

His mind was uncharacteristically chaotic. Even after releasing smoke into the sea breeze several times, it wouldn’t easily settle.

He neither wanted to believe nor understand this situation.

He had never even imagined that he, of all people, would end up chasing Helena. The idea that she had truly left because she disliked being by his side was even more dreamlike.

The day her presence disappeared from the mansion became the kind of day that, from the moment he opened his eyes due to terrible nightmares, had to be entirely forgotten.

Eugene irritably ran his hand through his hair.

‘I shouldn’t have had to step forward like this in the first place.’

She should have been in his arms before he even extended them. She was someone who was always in her place.

She had always returned as if he were her final destination.

His resentful feelings were gradually tilting toward urgency. When the thought suddenly occurred to him that he might never find her like this, he even felt afraid.

‘How did I end up in such a state… Ha.’

The half-burned cigar fell buried in the sand. After grinding out the faintly glowing tip with his shoe, he turned around.

As if turning away from the black sea would also erase her phantom.

Not thinking about Helena anymore was all he could do for now.

****

Helena quietly began speaking between the sounds of their footsteps on the ground.

“You said you came looking for me because you owed me a debt.”

“……That’s correct.”

Ian answered, looking down at her. Helena briefly met his eyes before turning her head forward again.

“But don’t worry too much about old matters from the past. When I was little, I was foolish enough to share my bread with stray cats in the village, even while going hungry myself.”

“I thought that might be the case.”

Since it wasn’t the reaction she wanted, Helena became a little anxious. As if representing her feelings, the black storm clouds drew closer.

Under the darkening sky, Helena continued the conversation.

“You say you’re repaying a favor, but it probably wasn’t such a big deal. How great could something done by a ten-something-year-old have been?”

“…….”

“So what I’m saying is, there’s no need to continue like this.”

“What have I done?”

At that moment, Helena’s steps came to an abrupt halt.

His utterly nonchalant tone finally made her stop. Helena couldn’t believe his innocent face as he looked at her.

Was he really unaware, or was he pretending not to know?

“What have you done? Everything up until now. All these actions, whether surveillance, protection, or observation—I don’t know which.”

Her words quickened due to her deepening anxiety.

“Favor or whatever, it’s already enough. I’ve received more than my fair share at this point. The situation doesn’t look favorable either, so there’s no need for you to keep staying by my side.”

“It’s because I’m still insufficient. When I become sufficient, I’ll leave.”

But why, why.

“You can say such things easily because you don’t know. Everything’s tangled beyond repair and gone wrong, but there’s no way to untangle it, and far from having anyone to help, enemies surround me on all sides. You don’t know the feeling of being trapped in such perfect misfortune that you can’t even tell where it begins and ends.”

“Then do you think you know me?”

“I don’t want to know.”

“Why, because a woman thoroughly soaked in such feelings has no right to be understood by me?”

Won’t this person give me the answer I want to hear?

“Because you don’t need to deal with me!”

“And you have neither the right nor the need to decide that.”

Why won’t he say what I should naturally hear?

Why does he insist on digging through everything?

Helena poured out the rising heat through her trembling lips.

“Don’t try to understand. You and I can never be the same. If it were just a passing feeling for me, I wouldn’t have ended up in this state. But what do you think it’s like when such feelings become your life?”

“Don’t make arbitrary judgments either.”

“Then—no, now I’m just like misfortune itself. It’s not that unfortunate things happen to me because I have terrible luck, but that I was simply misfortune from the beginning. So—”

“So I should stop approaching you if I don’t want to become misfortunate too?”

“……!”

“I decide my own misfortune. Right now, leaving you would be my misfortune.”

No, no.

Helena let out a trembling breath. It seemed she was the only one being swept away by emotions again.

Having caused all this turmoil, he remained calm like the eye of a storm. Quietly dangerous.

Helena spread both arms and pointed at Ian in protest.

“Look at yourself right now. You didn’t come looking for me just to be my porter.”

“Then if I do something other than being a porter, can I stay by your side?”

“Are you joking?”

“Does it sound like a joke?”

Helena had no choice but to revise her assessment of him once again.

He truly had no words he couldn’t say, and with those words alone, he defeated people. She was beginning to resent her past self.

‘How did I get entangled with such a man?’

A dry sigh of defeat escaped her naturally. She needed to change her approach.

Helena swept up the hair covering the side of her forehead. It was where a scar about the length of a pinky finger’s joint was located.

“Do you see it? I don’t remember much from before I got injured as a child. And after twenty years—”

She hastily changed her words.

“—After what feels like twenty years to me, I don’t remember you at all.”

She couldn’t predict which way her feelings would lean in the future. She just hoped he would give up on her before it was too late.

So that she could forget him as a dream, as she had done until now.

But he seemed intent on carving his presence into her at every moment.

“It doesn’t matter.”

He insistently chose to become reality.