< — The Beginning and the End — > (5)
When Hugo returned to the mansion, it was already late into the night. He sat absentmindedly in his office for a while. He urged his brain to think but it refused to work properly. He didn’t know where he should start from.
‘The headache medicine. Yes…find out what happened with the headache medicine and then…’
After that was blank. His head was as empty as a blank sheet of paper. Nothing came up. He felt terribly helpless, like an abyss was slowly eaten away at him from his feet.
It was fear. His heart thumped with anxiety, growing louder by the minute and he felt suffocated. Even if he were about to die by having his limbs bound, stomach smashed, and heart ripped out, he would not be this scared.
Just thinking about the possibility of losing her filled Hugo with indescribable horror.
Hugo left his office at daybreak. He went into his wife’s bedroom, and stood idly by the bed, watching his wife who was sound asleep. He lifted the blanket, climbed onto the bed and pulled her into his chest. Her body was slightly hot due to her mild fever.
The happiness and despair filled his heart. He could not live if he lost her. He felt like his heart would explode and kill him.
[I have never said this, have I? Thank you for marrying me.]
“…Not at all. You fell into a terrible swamp.”
She went through all sorts of trouble to get a child that everyone else has, and the child she got with difficulty, became the main culprit eating away her life.
The only reason she had to go through things other people didn’t was because she was married to him.
She should not have come to see him that day. If they had lived without knowing each other…if that had happened, then she likely wouldn’t be facing such danger.
But if he had not met her, he would have lived with a frozen heart, watching a grey scenery for the rest of his life.[1]
‘I can’t let go.’
Even if he went back to the past right now, he had no confidence in being able to let her go. It was ugly selfishness.
“I love you.”
Hugo whispered in her ear and closed his tingling eyes. Heat rushed to his eyes and something hot flowed from his eyes. His chest felt like it was tightening, and his throat hurt like it was seizing up.
As he shed tears for the first time, Hugo recalled the description of the word, ‘cry’. It was a complex, intricate feeling that couldn’t be expressed with something as dry as ‘One cannot suppress their feelings and tears fall’.
* * *
Hugo spent the entire night wide-awake. He was thinking things over nonstop all night. The darkness withdrew, and the daybreak sun gradually brightened up the bedroom as he came to a conclusion after a long stretch of thought.
Lucia opened her eyes slightly earlier than usual this morning. She smiled, feeling the warmth against her back and the strong arms wrapped around her.
She shifted in her position and turned around to face him. When she met his gaze, she flashed a sweet smile and buried herself in his arms. His big hand found its way to her head and the feeling of his fingers combing through her hair was nice.
“Vivian. I think I have to go to the north.”
Lucia lifted her head in surprise. His eyes had a subdued feeling of gravity in them.
“It won’t take long. I’ll come back soon.”
“…Okay. It seems like an urgent matter.”
“I’m sorry I can’t be with you at a time like this.”
“It’s okay. There’s still a long way to go before the child arrives. You’ll be back before then, won’t you?”
Seeing his wife trying to shrug it off like everything was fine, Hugo hugged her and squeezed tightly. His wife who always said that things were okay and smiled prettily had not changed.
Although he was taken aback by her complaints and annoyance, on the other hand, he was happy about it. It meant that she relied on him that much.
Hugo thought that he needed to thoroughly dig through the family secret room in Roam again. It was his only hope. He had to find even the slightest clue there. Still holding her in his arms, Hugo’s eyes shone with resolve.
* * *
While her husband was away, Lucia tried to keep her mind and body in the best condition possible for the baby, at all times. And occasionally, she imagined various things, trying to solve the mystery of how she got pregnant.
“Milady. When did you start taking the headache medicine you were prescribed?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“There is something I need to look into.”
Lucia had a strange feeling.
“What is it that you need to look into?”
When Lucia kept inquiring, Jerome hesitated then said:
“Master ordered the investigation.”
‘The headache medicine…it’s related.’
Lucia sensed that her pregnancy and the headache medicine were related. Because the effect of her recent headache medicine was so good, Lucia knew exactly when she started taking it and clearly remembered who gave it to her.
‘The medicine Anna gave me…?”
Lucia was shocked to think that there was a problem with the headache medicine. She had faith in the doctor, Anna on a fundamental level. She believed that there was no way Anna would mix something into the medicine deliberately. So, she decided to call Anna and ask her personally.