TTMLPTWW ~ Chapter 157

Fated Tragedy (fate drama)

Inside the castle walls, the dim interior of the underground catacombs.

Dawn was already breaking.

Count Queensguard rubbed the corner of his blood-smeared mouth, breathing heavily.

Fallen members of the Organization and blood-splattered walls—traces of a fierce battle remained everywhere.

Faced with skilled soldiers armed with weapons, the Organization had long since been dismantled.

“Hoo…”

Standing at the culmination of his long revenge, he swept back his grayish-gold hair and lowered his eyes.

Strike.

After striking a match and lighting a cigar, his dry gaze turned to Markiel, who was slumped against the wall.

Count Queensguard’s double-edged sword was embedded in Markiel’s chest.

“Hey, you loser punk.”

Feeling a slight dizziness from the cigar he hadn’t smoked in a long time, the Count slowly closed and opened his eyes.

Then, in a turbid voice tinged with weariness, he began.

“This old man will give you a piece of tedious advice. A guy like you, who lives without a clear purpose, can’t beat a guy who does. You’re easily swayed and hesitate at critical moments.”

Markiel, bloodied and leaning against the wall, managed a faint smile.

“…You’ve been dead for a long time too, ever since you died with the princess. Only your body is still alive.”

Markiel slowly raised a hand and pointed to the pocket of the Count’s suit vest.

“Just like that stopped pocket watch you always carry around.”

At that, the Count took out the pocket watch and opened it. Seeing that the glass face had been shattered by a bullet, he frowned slightly.

“You’re not wrong.”

Putting the pocket watch away, he approached Markiel and gripped the hilt of his sword.

“Since there’s no one to be angered by your death, this desperate revenge drama will finally come to an end. I wonder if you, the protagonist of this tragedy, were the one who wanted it to end.”

Srrk. The sword that had pierced Markiel’s body slowly began to withdraw.

The Count leaned in and whispered in his ear in a low voice.

“I know your life was shit. Enough to think of it as a wretched fate bestowed by a god trying to create a demon.”

“Ugh…”

Markiel flinched and coughed up blood.

“Unlike me, you’re lucky you can end it when you want.”

The Count muttered self-deprecatingly, then wiped his sword and turned away.

The sound of his dress shoes faded into the distance.

Left alone, Markiel stared blankly at the cool scenery of the underground crypt.

“…Not a bad place for a final act.”

He looked at the statue of an angel said to guide the dead.

It was a bizarre figure, with large wings gathered around its eyeball like a pinwheel.

“No matter how I look at it, it’s terrifying.”

The detonator for the high-explosive bomb that would destroy and incinerate this entire area was over there.

He had originally brought it in to blow up the capital, but for some reason, he hadn’t felt like it and had left it here.

‘Why was that again?’

Before, he wouldn’t have cared who died.

He mustered his remaining strength to get up, but he couldn’t go more than a few steps before collapsing.

“Ugh…”

There was no compelling reason to set off the explosion.

But there was no reason not to, either.

It had been a long time since he’d started thinking it was better for everyone to cry than for him to cry alone.

Just as he was about to try and get up again, a young man’s voice came from the direction of the exit passage.

“Are you all right?”

An officer with silver-white hair and blue eyes came running over urgently. It was Major Rodriguez, who had come here while searching the maze-like passages.

Seeing his appearance, Markiel’s eyes widened.

“An Esatain?”

To think that the last person he would see would be of the same ethnicity.

That aside, couldn’t this man even distinguish friend from foe?

Seeing Major Rodriguez’s genuine concern, Markiel let out a sneer.

“Cough.”

Helped up, Markiel leaned against the wall again and coughed up a large amount of blood.

The Major realized his time was short. And that someone had deliberately made him die slowly.

“I’m the head of this Organization.”

Markiel revealed his identity, but the Major’s expression didn’t change.

“Yes, it’s a pleasure to meet you for the first time.”

“I’m about to activate the detonator. Aren’t you going to kill me?”

At this, Major Rodriguez gave an awkward smile.

“The high-explosive bomb installed in the basement? It’s probably been dismantled by now.”

“…Wow.”

Markiel let out an empty sound of amazement.

There were very few people who could dismantle a new, intricately designed high-explosive bomb.

Major Rodriguez smiled strangely, recalling Brigadier General Steve’s boasting.

“Princess Cynthia ordered us to check the underground passages, and as it happens, my superior is an explosives expert. I guess his self-praise about being an elite officer wasn’t a lie.”

Seriously, that woman has the worst luck.

Sighing, Markiel asked the Major.

“Where are you from, Officer?”

“I’m from a vassal state of the now-extinct Defeated Empire. We fled to the Federation before it was destroyed by the Empire’s invasion.”

The Major sat down next to him, as if to be his final conversation partner.

“If there’s anything you want to say, go ahead. I’ll listen.”

Markiel, who had been staring blankly at the angel statue, asked.

“What’s your name?”

“It’s Isaac Rodriguez.”

Wasn’t that the noble family that was massacred for funding the independence forces resisting the Defeated Empire?

Recalling the people being burned alive in the public square, Markiel slowly turned his head to look at him.

“How did you endure it? For me, just living was agony. The fate of the weak is in the hands of the wicked strong, isn’t it? Cruelly so.”

As an insignificant bug to be trampled on, as a toy for nobles with sordid hobbies, as a disposable pawn in war, as a man of the underground, he had only ever fallen.

This handsome officer had probably faced similar trials as an Esatain.

But he seemed different from Markiel, who was consumed by rage and wished only for destruction.

The Major, who had been rubbing his chin in thought, spoke.

“Hmm… I lost my family and felt the world’s discrimination to a sickening degree, but I still met kind people from time to time.”

Major Rodriguez took out a strawberry candy, handed it to him, and smiled.

“So I resolved to become a kind adult myself. Because I felt that a moment of kindness could save someone.”

Markiel unwrapped the candy, put it in his mouth, and looked at him.

To be able to be gentle in any situation, he must be a truly strong person.

In the end, it was someone’s affection that could both break a person and make them live.

Markiel thought of Masera, who had come to rescue Cynthia.

Is that the expression people make when they look at something they hold so dear?

‘So valuable that you’d give everything? Aren’t you afraid of losing it?’

He felt a surge of resentment, thinking of him, who had been just as unfortunate but had found something precious.

Savoring the sweet taste of the candy, Markiel showed a faint smile.

“…I think I had someone like that, too.”

“It was a lie too warm for me, so I had no choice but to deny it. She was the first person I treated with my heart, not my head.”

Unlike the others who had harbored desires for him and touched him carelessly, Helene had always maintained an appropriate distance and kept her boundaries.

She had not even accepted his secret proposal to become his lover.

“You like sweets, don’t you? Finish it before you go.”

And yet, every day she would prepare his favorite sweet snacks and, with her characteristically cold face, talk on and on as if dreaming of a ‘future where two people live together.’

She was the most elegant and beautiful snake in the world.

So much so that he wouldn’t have minded being coiled to death.

He recalled the delicate hands that always rested neatly on Helene’s lap.

Did I want to hold those hands?

Thud.

At last, his head slowly tilted to the side.

The candy rolled from his slightly parted lips.

Waking in the early dawn, Helene was enveloped in a strange emotion as she looked out the window.

The red aurora that had embroidered the night sky was fading in the approaching morning light.

She had dreamt a sweet yet sad dream.

An empty dream that ended the moment she awoke.

“If we meet again alive, please tell me what this feeling of mine that saved you is. I don’t really know. Because I’m broken.”

Only the feeling of being freed from something that had weighed heavily on her body, and a sweet whisper, remained.

“…”

A single morning star, drawing a tail of light as it fell, was reflected in Helene’s blue eyes as she continued to gaze out the window.

Sensing an eternal farewell, a tear streamed down her cheek.

“I will remember you, Markiel.”

“Here, I went through a lot of trouble to get this. Hydrangeas are your favorite flower, aren’t they, Princess Helene?”

Even if you are no longer in this world, I can love the good memories.

I can use the painful memories as a guidepost to move on to the next.

Just as Cynthia said, I am still alive.

“…May you be at peace.”

She let him go from the world, leaving behind not a trace of hatred or obsession.