A Butterfly Through the Mist - Chapter 108

I see. Even earlier than I thought.

Tilia nodded as she sipped her wine.

Just as she had said a moment ago, Tilia believed his words without a hint of doubt.

Since the end of the first year. Since then. He had liked her.

With those words, the conversation briefly came to a halt. But their gazes remained locked.

In his constant, fervent stare, Tilia sensed a silent yearning. A desperate desire for an answer, for certainty, from her.

She wanted to tell him. That she, too, had cherished him in her heart. That she had chewed over and over her thoughts of him for the past three years.

If there was one man in this world she could love without despising, it would undoubtedly be him.

But her lips wouldn’t move, as though a heavy weight hung from her tongue.

It was a symptom of a chronic condition that Tilia had only just come to understand.

Until she realized her feelings for him, until she had someone she wanted to open her heart to, she hadn’t known.

How powerful the curse her dead mother had left behind was. How desperate the resolve she had repeated to herself in childhood to keep from dying had truly been.

Every time she tried to say “I love you,” her mother’s bruised face would flicker and vanish before her eyes. Every time she tried to believe in love, she remembered the little girl who had to stand at her mother’s funeral with the face of an adult.

And so, just like when she fumbled at the end of the letter, just like when she could only mouth the words in his drawing room, this time too, she could only twitch her tongue inside her mouth and, with resignation, lift her glass once more.

“Stop drinking.”

As if he’d never expected anything to begin with—or perhaps as if it didn’t matter—his calm and gentle voice drifted over.

“You’ll get drunk.”

“Why? Can’t I get drunk?”

The frustration she should have directed at herself lashed out at the wrong person. She snapped back with a hint of harshness, and Ilex furrowed his brow slightly as he smiled.

“No. You can’t.”

Then, as if the restriction didn’t apply to him, he casually lifted the glass beside him and brought it to his lips.

“If you get drunk, you might forget to lock your door again tonight.”

Tilia looked blankly at the man sitting across from her.

Even as he drank his wine, Ilex didn’t take his eyes off her.

She could see the red liquid sloshing as it entered his mouth. See the movement of his throat as he swallowed the intoxicating drink.

“…Why?”

He was the one drinking, yet it felt like she was the one getting drunk.

“Is it so wrong if a thief sneaks in?”

Ilex Davenport didn’t even know that she had forgotten to lock her door last night. His obliviousness stirred the courage curled up inside her heart.

Like liquid spilling from a shattered bottle, her feelings poured out of her mouth.

“What gets stolen is up to me.”

At her near-whisper, Ilex’s eyes narrowed. Then, as if to confirm something, he scanned her thoroughly.

She could feel his gaze brush over her eyes, her nose, her lips. And then, her neck, her collarbones, her chest… and even lower, to where something was hidden.

Even feeling that blatant gaze, Tilia didn’t shrink away or turn her head. Rather, she straightened her shoulders, as if inviting him to look more closely.

That’s when it happened.

Huff. A deep sigh burst out in front of her.

“Tilia.”

As if uncomfortable in his seat, he shifted slightly, set down his glass, and closed his eyes briefly before opening them again.

“There’s something I firmly decided a few years ago.”

As if speaking words that were hard to say, Ilex licked the inside of his cheek once and spoke quietly, “I don’t sleep with drunk women.”

“……”

“Whether it’s alcohol or drugs—if she’s not in her right mind, I won’t do it.”

At Ilex’s words, Tilia’s eyes slowly closed, then opened again.

From deep in her memory came the days of their youth when they had ravaged each other like mad.

Those lewd days and nights when it felt like they’d die if they couldn’t touch each other.

As if mirroring her emotional waves, her lashes trembled faintly. Beneath the table, her hand was already tearing at her nails. Her tongue, swollen with tension, felt as if it might block her throat.

But Tilia knew. If she let this moment slip by, she’d once again be left staring blankly at a dried-up fountain.

“You know, Ilex?”

After a brief struggle, the voice she managed to squeeze out trembled so pathetically, even to her own ears.

“The first time… I really wasn’t in my right mind.”

She still couldn’t say “I love you.” She still couldn’t say “I want you.” But words weren’t the only way to convey one’s heart.

“The second time…”

Sometimes, simply stating a fact, or retracing a truth the other person didn’t know, is enough to convey one’s feelings.

“It was my will.”

With the end of Tilia’s words, silence settled over the greenhouse.

Occasionally, a breeze rushed in, rustling the leaves of green shrubs, but that was all—the green life incapable of laughter could not break the silence.

Tilia stared down at the table, focusing only on the erratic beating of her own heart.

On the white table were untouched dishes, all appetizingly arranged. Every single one was something she liked.

‘…Why is there no reaction?’

Tilia, who had been staring at the juicy red cross-section of the meat for a long while, bit her lip, feeling discomfort in the prolonged silence.

He should say something. If someone gathered the courage to speak, shouldn’t they be given an answer?

Growing anxious, she lifted her downcast eyelids in a moment of urgency.

And met eyes with a gaze that looked like it had lost all reason from long starvation.

At that moment, Tilia felt a sense of déjà vu.

That was definitely a look she had seen before. A danger she had definitely experienced before.

As she rifled through the past, Tilia easily found the origin of that déjà vu.

Yes. The day he was intoxicated by the holy water, in that bathroom. The moment right before he ravaged her—barely hanging on to his reason.

Ilex’s eyes now bore a distinct resemblance to the ferocity of that moment.

She could feel it. In those blue-gray eyes staring back at her, she was being dissected. In his mind, she was being chewed up and swallowed, like the slab of meat before them.

His reason was holding back his instincts by the thinnest thread.

But she could sense it—soon, even that would snap. That it would give way and break, after holding on for so long.

Imagination spread through their eye contact, like a contagious disease.

Tilia saw a hallucination, as if foreseeing what would soon happen.

He would stand up. He would sweep the dishes from the table, and then lay her on it instead.

She would no longer be a person, but a meal. Something delicious, to melt and be devoured by his hands, his mouth.

The moment his hot hand touched the buttons—and they popped off, betraying their duty to shield their owner—

Clatter. The sound of a chair moving rang like an alarm.

Tilia flinched and straightened her blurred gaze toward the front.

Ilex had pulled back from the table and was now covering his face with both hands, muttering something.

It sounded like a curse, or perhaps a verse from scripture—maybe a mix of both—as he repeated the phrase over and over. Soon after, he lowered his hands.

“Eat, Tilia.”

He spoke in a low murmur while gazing briefly downward, then slowly raised his eyelids.

“Chew it thoroughly.”

“……”

“So you won’t go hungry for a long time—eat well.”

Ilex’s incomprehensible words tensed Tilia, and as if determined to follow his own advice, he began cutting the meat.

Tilia stared blankly at him for a moment, then awkwardly picked up her knife under the pressure of his expectant gaze.

She cut the meat. Put it in her mouth. Chewed.

But even as she went through the act of stuffing food into her stomach, Tilia couldn’t taste anything. A strange premonition had wrapped around her, leaving no room for sensation.

***

After the completely bizarre dinner, Tilia returned to her room. Still feeling as if she were floating, she stood vacantly in the center of the room—and without realizing it, turned her head toward the door.

She remembered the expression he had worn when he walked her to her room just moments earlier.

“……”

Standing in front of the door, Ilex hadn’t said a word—just stared at her quietly.

No “sleep well,” no “see you tomorrow.”

He had only stared at her lips for a long time, then left in silence.

That calm retreating figure left behind an uncanny sense of danger in Tilia’s mind.

No way.

As she paced the room, restless and uneasy, she suddenly seemed to come to a realization and headed into the bathroom.

Her body felt like it was heating up.

She undressed from the cumbersome clothes wrapped around her. Peeled off the tight stockings that hugged her body. Took off the new lace underwear.

Now naked, not a thread on her, she stood facing the black glass.

In the surface that reflected her like a mirror stood a woman, trembling faintly.

A woman whose sensitive places were flushed red, as if expecting something.