I Hoped You Weren't Alive At Times ✓

Ch 47

7.2 The Emperor Wants to Know the Empress (1)
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"What's going on?"

It was Karloi. Here she was, wandering around with Mary Ann, and she didn't even notice Karloi, who had come across the garden unknowingly.

"Oh, that's..."

Hearing Mary Ann blurring the end of her words, Karloi looked down with Yvonne's hands. He could see a palm of hers with a cloth wrapped around it, and a finger with a drop of blood on it.

He wonders why she gets hurt so much. He doesn't know if she just really wanted to hurt herself.

Karloi's heart has become stuffy. Emotions that would have been anger in the past are now hard to name. He couldn't get to know Yvonne more and more.

"Why, why don't you care so much of yourself?"

"What?"

"One day, it was your feet, one day, it was your hands, and then your fingers..."

Karloi muttered something in a suppressed voice and grabbed the cloth from Mary Ann's hand. Then he took Yvonne's hand and put a cloth around her finger. In a strange, embarrassing atmosphere, the handmaidens and servants kept their distance and stepped back for a while.

"Your Majesty, I will..."

"Why are you so reckless with your body?"

Karloi, who wrapped a cloth around her finger, similarly rubbed Yvonne's palm, covered with cloth. His eyes seemed to know that Yvonne stabbed herself in the palm of her hand. It seemed that Asher reported everything properly.

"I really don't know. You..."

Karloi was muttering to himself, his eyes staring straight at Yvonne. Yvonne tried to pull out her hand because she felt as hot as her face, but Karloi wouldn't let it go. The part he touched felt hot.

The sound of rain permeated like music. Seeing Karloi's eyes, Yvonne held her breath. She was afraid that if she breathed, it would sound too loud and unnatural like her heart. She felt strange because his eyes weren't as cold as they used to be. Would it feel like this if she walked through the past?

"Anyone who ignores the wounds on his body is somehow broken. But the Empress can't possibly do that. That can't be true. The Empress is so... A very strange person."

The whispering words were familiar. It was what Kal told Lilian Lou as a child. But she was not used to that attitude. It would have been easier for her to be angry. She sees herself with those eyes, with a voice like that... Is he even aware that he's talking like that?

She wondered now what she didn't wonder then.

"How did you know?"

(How did you know, when you were a child, that someone who ignores their wounds was unhealthy? How did you know what I didn't even know?)

He asked if no one recognized her wounds. She remembered Kal that mumbled resignation, as his body was tied up, saying that he was going to give up.

"Your Majesty."

Countless questions came to her mind but she couldn't get the words out. She couldn't ask the question with a casual expression and an indifferent voice. The answer was scary. If even Karloi wasn't happy, she couldn't afford it.

"...I went to the Empress' Palace and came here after taking a walk."

He couldn't have read Yvonne's mind, but instead of answering, Karloi said something else.

"Do you really want to take a walk like this on a rainy day?"

She remembered that there was a rumor in Purtu that Karloi hated rainy days.