Episode 19
“It has been a while, Your Majesty.”
“What? ‘It has been a while’? ‘Your Majesty’?”
“…Pardon?”
“You… you can say something so carefree at a time like this?”
At the king’s ferocious tone as he repeated my words, I tilted my head in confusion.
After all, I couldn’t even guess why the king had appeared before me.
“Your Majesty, why are you… acting like this?”
“You, really, truly…”
Even his lips trembled violently, just like his pointing finger.
“Is there truly no day left when I will see you again?”
Though it was a blunt question, the king seemed to struggle greatly to say it.
Speaking in roundabout ways, as if there was something he did not wish to acknowledge.
“Is it really true that there isn’t much time left?”
“…”
This, too, was truly strange.
Long ago, when was it?
Perhaps back when I lived in the slums.
In a book I read then, there was a protagonist who, despite being the one suffering from illness, apologized first, saying it was hard to tell their parents the name of their disease.
I remembered reading that monologue once.
Looking back, it was strange—there was no way an expensive book like that could have existed in the slums.
But whatever the case, it seemed this was such a moment for me now.
There was no need to say I was sorry. It would have no meaning anyway.
And yet, admitting it so easily to him, of all people—him, who was supposedly my father.
The one who, more than anyone, had been cold and cruel, the one who had brought me into this world—no words could come out.
Silence quickly turned into affirmation, and bloodshot veins appeared in the king’s eyes.
Abruptly, he turned sharply, toward the young maid who had always quietly knelt beside me.
A harsh shout followed.
“How dare you! Someone like you, how dare you—!”
“Your Majesty!”
With the savage force that looked ready to strangle the girl on the spot, I had to step in between them.
This child, after all, was a pitiful soul who could not yet handle the heavy responsibilities and duties placed upon her.
Because I knew that moment of confusion. Because I had to realize and overcome things on my own that no one ever taught me.
There were things I had to teach this child, carefully.
“She is still just a child. What wrong has she done?”
“You, you! Even now, in this situation—!”
The king’s lips turned blue, as if struck speechless facing me.
“Do you feel nothing? Even now, knowing that you are going to die?”
I could not understand at all.
What exactly was it that he wanted to convey to me?
As I simply looked at him, rough words followed.
“Can you even call yourself human?”
Those words struck a deep wound in me even now.
Perhaps the king himself realized it was a mistake the moment he spoke, for he fell silent.
Once the person who had been raging calmed down, only the quiet sobbing of the young maid could be heard.
The king averted his gaze, which had been staring blankly at me.
“Did you just ask if I am human?”
“…I misspoke.”
“Then, tell me. What exactly am I supposed to do now?”
In the rare silence of the king, it was I who could not endure.
“What words do you wish to hear from me, Your Majesty, that would satisfy you?”
“…What?”
“Do I truly appear to you as if I feel nothing?”
Had it been any other time, these words would never have escaped my lips, even if I spent my entire life.
The king’s eyes widened as he looked at me again.
I appealed to him.
If anything could change through such an appeal, I was willing.
“I… I want to live too. Even if just for one more minute, one more second.”
It was the most honest thing I had ever said in my life.
“But when I cry, despair, lose hope, and struggle—and nothing changes no matter what I do—what exactly am I supposed to do then?”
I truly wanted to know.
It was a question that would likely never be answered until the day I died.
I had simply been abandoned, and God had told me there was no other fate for me.
That was the end of it.
“Do you truly think I never tried to fight it?”
“You—!”
“When the reality given to me is nothing but that, when I am told that nothing can change—what exactly do you expect me to do?”
The king did not respond.
He merely stared at me with bloodshot eyes.
“You never taught me anything, yet you only tell me that I am wrong… What more, exactly, am I supposed to do here?”
I lifted my head, meeting his gaze challengingly.
“Then teach me.”
“…”
The king’s lips parted.
But still, no words came.
“I am the one who is suffering the most right now.”
Even if, in your eyes, I appear unaffected, even if I do not show it outwardly—
I am the one desperately struggling to live, despairing, and fighting against death.
Did I learn nothing, you ask?
No, I had learned something, at least.
That a life approaching its end would never return.
That the morning sunlight and the moonlight of night, which everyone else could see, would soon no longer be within my reach.
This spring would be my last.
The coming early summer, too, would be my last.
From the sweltering late summer to the freezing winter, I would not be there to share in it. Even the roses my husband had once plucked for me—I would never be able to hold them again.
At my words, the king’s hand trembled violently.
It contrasted with me, standing frozen in place, staring at him as if nailed down.
The king’s hand slowly swam through the air.
It drew closer, slowly, as if to reach me, but at a certain point—
As if there was a distance he could not cross, it stopped.
“I…”
His arm, powerless, dropped to the floor.
He clutched his face as if in pain.
Through the gaps in his hands, I saw his wrinkled cheeks quiver.
“How am I supposed to atone for the sins I’ve committed against you…?”
The words were so unexpected that I doubted my ears for a moment.
Even as I tell you this now, I still can’t believe what I heard.
“…Huh?”
At last, the king’s head dropped heavily toward the floor.
“How… how am I supposed to atone…”
His faint, despairing mutter faded into the distance.
There was no statement that felt less fitting for the king I knew.
“There are two greatest punishments given to parents: one is when their child falls ill… and the other is when their child departs this world before they do. Do you… know that?”
I blinked once, then muttered stupidly.
“Did you… not hate me?”
The words you once hurled at me still ring clear in my ears. Those unhealed wounds still sting.
Still, with his head hanging low, he cried out as if in agony.
“Hate, love, dislike—it doesn’t matter!”
“You once said I was your only stain.”
Those unforgettable words, those cold words that soaked me through, echoed in my ears again.
“You also said you could never give me your affection.”
“…Do you think such things can be controlled by human will?”
The king lifted his head sharply once more.
“From the day you were born until now, there has never been a place where you stayed that I do not remember.”
“You say things I cannot believe. Where… was I ever meant to feel such feelings from you?”
“Where were you meant to feel it? You don’t even remember, do you? The time I came looking for you in the slums!”
Had such a thing happened?
As I foolishly searched my memory, the king continued.
“You wouldn’t know. Even when you were just a baby… even when I sat you on my knee, you never once smiled at me. Unlike your mother, who could melt people with her soft voice and gentle manner.”
The first thing that came to mind was how shameless it was for him to mention Mother with that mouth of his.
“Watching you, I learned that children are far different from what one imagines. I also learned from you that a person’s heart cannot be controlled at will.”
I could no longer bear to listen as he continued to speak.
A nauseating, revolting feeling rose violently from within me.
It made me feel sick, it made my skin crawl.
It was a dark, black emotion I could never understand—nor did I ever want to try to understand.
“The more I tried to hate you, the more you stayed on my mind; the more I repeated to myself that I could never give you affection, the more it grew.”
“…”
“I didn’t want to care about someone like you! I hated how you constantly dragged out my wretched past!”
His shout exploded in the room like a ringing echo.
The king let out a deep sigh, then looked at me with tearful eyes.
“And yet, you… you were my only remaining blood.”
His voice broke off, as if his breath was caught in his throat.
“Your hair color resembles mine, your gaze resembles your mother’s… your nose is mine, your lips too, your voice too… Seeing those things…”
Something fell down the king’s rough cheeks—something I thought would never fall.
It dripped down his chin and shattered against the floor.
“How could you be so lovable, even when you gave me nothing… how could something like this exist in this world? It shouldn’t have been this way. You were only an illegitimate child…”
His whisper, close to self-mockery, continued.
“Every time I looked at you… I had to swallow my words.”
The words, heavy with tears, shattered in my ears.
“My daughter.”
My daughter,
Even so, you are my father,
The father who gave me not a single good memory, the only blood relative I have.
The words I thought I would never hear in my lifetime brushed past my ears, and in that moment, tears I had been holding back since I first faced the king finally rolled down my cheeks.
Why—
Why is it only now?
