Time of the Blind Beast - Chapter 77

Must’ve been a mistake.

He must’ve caught a visual illusion at a glance. It was a common enough occurrence—mistaking someone for a familiar face just because of a resemblance in one or two features.

That’s what he tried to believe as he brushed it off. But the impression left on his retina still nagged at him.

Merlot cautiously turned his head. As he composed himself and looked again through the bars—

The face of the woman lying near the bars held a look of surprise.

She had recognized him.

For a moment, Merlot nearly screamed.

…This made no sense.

A situation that never should have occurred was unfolding.

That woman lying there with disheveled chestnut hair, clutching a bloodstained blanket with skeletal, shriveled fingers, her complexion deathly pale as if she might collapse and die at any moment—

There was no way.

There was no way she could be Rose—the very woman Ezekiel had been so desperately searching for.

***

After the miscarriage, an unexpected change occurred around Lisanne. Not all the inmates changed their behavior, but a few of the women who had given birth themselves began to show subtle sympathy.

“You’re just going to leave a girl who lost a baby and is in bad shape like this? Come on, hand over something to cover her. If she dies after borrowing it, you can just take it back.”

A middle-aged woman snatched some filthy blankets from other inmates and wrapped them around Lisanne.

They no longer interfered with her during meal distribution either. The first bowl of soup—the only food that could still be eaten warm—was given to her. When bread or potatoes were served and she struggled to eat, someone would ladle extra soup into her bowl or trade their portion.

The first day she was able to wash herself, the women gathered around Lisanne. They were so used to life in the detention center that they knew exactly how to use the brief water supply time to the fullest. They undressed Lisanne and scrubbed her with the freezing water.

“Just think of it as washing off the worst of the filth. It’s winter anyway, so we can’t stay in the water long.”

“Still, it’s better than summer. In summer, the food spoils fast, the stench is unbearable, fleas spread, and all sorts of strange diseases go around. Honestly, summer is the worst time to be in here. Take away the cold, and winter’s actually the cleanest and most bearable.”

One of the women quickly took Lisanne’s clothes and scrubbed them furiously. The soap they were given was poor in quality, so the stained blood didn’t wash out completely, but it was still better than wearing filthy clothes.

“Try not to get these dirty again. Clothes are too precious here as it is. Tsk.”

Even while washing Lisanne and her clothes, the women busily finished their own washing.

While waiting for her clothes to dry, Lisanne wrapped herself tightly in the blankets and sat against the wall. Her strength hadn’t returned yet, but she couldn’t keep occupying the widest space and inconveniencing others forever.

She buried her face in her palm and coughed softly. Every cough sent a slicing pain through her throat, so she had to be extremely careful.

Unfortunately, it was winter, and colds were spreading. Even wrapped in layers of blankets, the detention center was bitterly cold. And since they all huddled together for warmth, one person’s cough easily spread to everyone by the next day.

“Drink it while it’s warm. There’s nothing else here that works like medicine.”

A middle-aged woman placed a lukewarm bowl of soup in front of Lisanne. Lisanne stared blankly at her, the same woman who had brought her blankets and food.

Sensing her gaze, the woman turned around.

“What?”

Lisanne hesitated. She wanted to ask why she was being helped, but there was no way to ask. Her voice still hadn’t returned, and the woman likely couldn’t read.

After a moment of thought, Lisanne pointed to herself. Then slowly gestured toward the soup and blanket.

“You’re asking why I’m helping you?”

The middle-aged woman surprisingly understood her simple gestures.

She shrugged. “You kind of look like my daughter.”

Ah… I see.

Lisanne nodded.

The woman was old enough to be her mother.

So she must’ve been reminded of her daughter.

“I don’t mean your face looks like hers.”

As Lisanne nodded in understanding and tried to warm her cold body with the lukewarm soup, the woman continued bluntly.

“My daughter also lost the baby in her belly. Got hit by her husband.”

Lisanne silently opened her mouth in shock.

“Aren’t you curious why I’m in here?”

Caught off guard, unsure how to react, Lisanne stared in confusion. The middle-aged woman gave a faint, crooked smile.

“I killed that bastard. Instead of my daughter.”

This time, she was truly speechless. Lisanne thought, just this once, it was a good thing her voice couldn’t come out. If she could speak, she would’ve been wracking her brain over what to say.

She could only imagine the festering heartache of a mother who had avenged her daughter and grandchild by killing her son-in-law, only to end up imprisoned. It made her chest ache. Lisanne pressed her parched lips together over and over again.

The woman gave a dry chuckle. “What, you’re worrying about me now? I’m doing fine here, healthy enough to survive and probably end up in a labor camp. But you—Valdemaira won’t ever let you live.”

She knew. She knew that very well.

Lisanne silently lowered her gaze.

“Now that you’re clean, I can finally see you properly. You’re young and quite pretty. You looked so much like a ghost before, I couldn’t even tell what you looked like.”

Another woman naturally chimed in. “Right? You’re about twenty or so, yeah?”

When Lisanne nodded, sighs echoed from all around.

“What a waste of youth. You don’t seem like a bad kid either—quiet temperament, nothing off about you. If you’d just lived an ordinary life, you could’ve done just fine. But then you went and got tangled up with Valdemaira… Did you really love him or something?”

Love.

Love…

Lisanne gripped the chipped soup bowl tightly with both hands.

Love…

“Do you know who ruined my eyes?”

It had been a mistake from the very beginning.

“All you have to do is give me your heart. Just like now.”

Even so, at some point, her heart had started racing uncontrollably.

“When my sight returns, the first thing I’ll see will be your face.”

And even when drowning in bottomless fear…

“Meeting you was the greatest fortune of my life.”

By the time she realized it, she was already in too deep. Caught in an emotional mire.

If she were to confess honestly, she once wished—selfishly—that she could stay by his side as Rose, even if she could never reclaim her real name.

“Must be Akenaus’s child, huh?”

That’s why she was being punished.

“You probably had grand dreams because of that pregnancy. Too bad they won’t come true.”

She cried a lot that day.

She hadn’t cried when she drank the poison, nor when she lost the child—though she groaned from the pain, not a single tear had fallen. But that day, all the emotions she had been holding in burst uncontrollably, even surprising herself.

She didn’t know why it happened. She had tried to push the memory away, but the tears caught like barbs in her throat again. Lisanne swallowed back the lump of tears pressing against her windpipe.

The taste of tears was bitter and metallic. It churned her stomach. Ezekiel must have felt disgusted seeing her that day too.

“What, are you crying?”

“She must’ve really loved him. I mean, why else would an unmarried girl end up pregnant?”

“Tch, she must be young. She had no idea what reality is. Everyone knows the eldest Valdemaira is a notorious womanizer—what were you thinking falling for him?”

Reproaches poured in noisily. Lisanne quickly wiped her burning eyes with the back of her hand.

Now wasn’t the time to cry. If she cried here, then the man she loved would be mistaken for Akenaus Valdemaira.

She couldn’t let that happen. The man she had truly loved was nothing like Akenaus Valdemaira. He was someone who never bowed to his brother’s injustice, someone proud and confident in his own strength, someone who had loved her gently across the bounds of status.

“You still don’t get it, do you? A guy like him would never die in a place like this. He’s a noble Valdemaira. If he dies, it’ll be quietly within his family. But nobodies like you—you’re dragged here and vanish without a trace.”

“Even if you’d had the baby, would a grand family like that ever acknowledge your bloodline? They’d just get rid of you both.”

“That day, I didn’t even realize you were pregnant. You didn’t have time to get attached, so what are you crying for?”

The words were harsh, but Lisanne knew they were meant as consolation in their own way.

She leaned her fevered head against the wall.

Just like the child she hadn’t realized was there until after it was gone, some emotions are only understood once they pass.

Happiness, especially.

Only in hindsight did she realize just how happy that time had been. She hadn’t recognized it while living through it, but looking back, she finally saw it.

Why hadn’t she known then?

That the days at the northern mansion—when she could still love him—were the last happiness she would ever be given.