Guidelines for the Perfect Goodbye - Chapter 299
If not for those bizarre and grotesque dreams, he might have gone to see her a bit sooner.
At first, those dreams had put him at ease and made him look forward to seeing her, but as time went on, they began to hold him back. As he began to remember the end of the nightmares, guilt lingered long after.
Logan’s dreams grew more detailed each time they repeated. As befitted the term ‘dream’, scattered fragments were tossed together haphazardly, but they gradually fell into place, arranging the world in chronological order.
A world that the current Logan Harper could not remember.
A world where Cecilia loved him, and where he, in turn, fell helplessly in love with that Cecilia.
In that world, the two of them made all sorts of promises to each other as if they were already a married couple. After the ceremony, let’s go traveling. Let’s go wherever we please, see much, experience much.
Since Cecilia said she wanted to eat a lot of delicious things, he spent a whole month planning a gourmet trip. He wanted to make her happy somehow, a woman who had spent her whole life trapped in a small mansion.
Once we get married. As soon as we’re married—
……But before the wedding could happen, an incident occurred.
Cecilia died.
Just a few days before the wedding.
The cause of death was unknown. Until the woman who claimed to be her birth mother came to him, wailing over the body and refusing to let go, he hadn’t even considered the possibility that Cecilia had been murdered.
“Louise Cléon. That woman killed my daughter.”
It was a statement that was hard to grasp at first. Louise Cléon was the confidante of Caroline Lasphilla, and Caroline was Cecilia’s older half-sister. Even if Cecilia were to die, neither of those women stood to gain anything.
Lilith offered an explanation.
“Louise Cléon isn’t Caroline’s person……”
Countess Bernarda Lasphilla was the one who had planned everything.
“She wanted to ruin me. Because the Count loved me…… She pretended otherwise, but in the shadows, she was consumed with jealousy.”
Logan, who could not understand people who created incidents out of emotion, did not find her words convincing. There seemed to be many contradictions, and plenty of reasons to argue, but he did not say anything unnecessary.
He himself was in a state barely distinguishable from ruin.
“You should have killed me! Me, not her! It’s not like it was that child’s choice to be my daughter……!”
Perhaps that would have been for the best. He found himself thinking a terribly rude thought. If she were the one to die, Cecilia would also surely have been wracked with pain, just as she was now.
And yet, he still wanted her to live. Selfishly, even if she had to live in pain for the rest of her life, he wanted her by his side.
Time that had spilled could not be turned back. Even if Lilith were to die now, Cecilia would not return. Both Logan and Lilith knew that already.
However, Lilith was a mother who, in many ways, was relentless. After months of seclusion, she finally found a way.
“There’s a way.”
A way to bring Cecilia back? Such a thing did not exist. Unless one were a god, it would be impossible to bring the dead back to life.
“……If the price is paid, it’s possible to turn back time, she said.”
The woman, who had come from the gypsy village, was already half out of her mind.
“I’ll turn it all back. Everything, everything……”
The mother of the dead girl left those words as her final testament and disappeared.
* * *
Shhk. His vision flipped and flickered.
Logan found himself once more at the moment he first met Cecilia.
Forgetting everything, knowing nothing.
Logan Harper fell in love with Cecilia all over again.
Once again, the wedding approached.
A few days before the ceremony, a woman worn out by fatigue came to see him. It was Lilith Dust, Cecilia’s birth mother.
According to Cecilia, Lilith had been a very beautiful and clever woman just a few years earlier.
Now, she looked no different from an old crone worn down by time. There were shadows under her eyes, and her face was deeply wrinkled. She looked twice her actual age. Her undecorated hair was wild and disheveled.
He’d heard that she’d been abandoned long ago by Count Lasphilla and had been living in seclusion on a rural farm.
Yet here she was, having walked all that distance to see him. Was she here to check out the person her child was marrying? Logan greeted her politely.
The woman waved him off, as if she needed nothing.
“I came because I have something to say.”
“Please, go ahead. Anything.”
“You…… in this life as well, do you love her?”
“In this life as well?”
The words were meaningful, but what followed left no room for denial, so he nodded.
“That’s good. Truly…… thank goodness……”
Suddenly, the woman clutched her stomach. As she seemed to be in pain, he tried to call for a doctor, but she refused. She said it wasn’t a sickness that could be cured with medicine.
