Guidelines for the Perfect Goodbye - Chapter 46
He knew that he should remain remorseful.
He was clearly at fault…
Yet, he felt terrible.
‘Sure.’ Then what?
‘Sure.’ What’s next?
Was that all? Did she not have anything more to say to him?
She could have yelled, refused to forgive him, screamed loudly, cried, or hit him without mercy.
He would have accepted anything… just say it again.
“Want to hang out with me, Ulysses?”
Just like that.
But the Cecilia of his youth was long gone. The innocent Cecilia who would sneak glances at him and smile broadly when their eyes met…
Now, she wouldn’t even look at Ulysses first.
Why did that infuriate him so?
The fifteen-year-old Ulysses didn’t know the reason for his anger.
About two years later, the seventeen-year-old Ulysses found his answer.
‘That wasn’t forgiveness.’
It was anger because she hadn’t forgiven him.
Because she didn’t… care at all about him.
Ulysses somehow empathized with Nigel, despite having been tormented by him. Since he wasn’t deeply hurt by Nigel’s verbal abuse, calling it forgiveness seemed too grand, but he didn’t hold any grudges or hate towards him either.
But Cecilia was different. She still hadn’t forgiven him. She still held a grudge.
So, should he keep apologizing forever? Accept such curt responses hundreds of times?
…Really?
He didn’t thirst for others’ forgiveness. So, there was no reason for him to be so desperate for it.
Therefore, Ulysses remained assertive to himself to this day.
“Isn’t what I’ve done enough to atone for the mistakes of my childhood?”
“Really?”
Guinevere asked, her eyes curving like a crescent moon.
“Do you really think so?”
“Yes. This time, too, it was just what I saw, nothing more.”
“Yes, I raised you that way.”
You and that girl are different.
Guinevere had instilled in him a disdainful sense of superiority, in the same way of teaching a child who wouldn’t have known any better. She taught him to suppress his feelings and disregard them all.
And so, this was the result.
“You are my child. There’s no denying that.”
“……”
“Do not harbor resentment against me in the future.”
She had long been aware of Ulysses’s foolish sincerity, which even he himself had not noticed. Yet, she intended never to enlighten him about it until her dying day.
Better to suffer without knowing why for a lifetime. That would be the path to a smoother life.
Ulysses’s lips tightened. After a long pause, he said,
“Why would I resent you, Mother?”
With a voice filled with resignation, he let out a weary sigh.
“Even if there was something about you I should resent, it would still be my own burden to bear.”
“Yes.”
Guinevere agreed with pale lips.
“Yes. It’s all your burden, all of it…”
Regardless of how he was raised, what life he lived, and thus what kind of person he became.
“It’s all your burden, Ulysses.”
“……”
When he turned his gaze back to the window, only a lone blue satin ribbon remained in the garden.
***
The Coffret Manor, befitting an old country house, was filled with relics of the past that were no longer in use.
The current owner, Adam, had modernized the building’s interior completely, but he did not touch the paths leading through the garden and the estate.
The remnants of the past that remained became a sanctuary for the young Cecilia. Among them was a log cabin, barely holding its structure, reminiscent of ruins.
In the feudal lord era, when the Coffret House mostly employed its servants long-term, a hunter’s family had lived in that cabin. Their compensation was merely board and leftover clothing.
Nowadays, everyone was accustomed to securing jobs through agencies and working under contractual agreements with salaries. But in the past, servants were considered lowly, distinguished only as attendants or slaves.
They had no freedom to leave the estate. No freedom to change jobs, to travel, or even to buy clothes they liked.
As time passed and hunting within the estate became mere sport, hunting became a redundant occupation.
What became of those who were expelled?
Did they wander, lost after sudden dismissal, and perish? Or did they have no time to grieve, busy adapting to new jobs?
Or… did they gain a bit of freedom?
Cecilia often imagined the people who lived in this log cabin. She then thought of Lilith and reflected on herself.
Perhaps they did not perceive their expulsion as freedom. For those unaccustomed to independence, unwanted freedom was no different from abuse.
Her mother, too. Was it not that she bowed her head in fear of abandonment, while finding her confined reality unbearable?
The freedom that some yearn for was such a hollow illusion—and a cause of fear to others.
“Ah, here it is.”
She looked at the large oak tree situated in a corner of the log cabin.
Anticipating a thorough search of her personal belongings if suspicions of poison arose, she had hidden anything questionable here.
She dug deeply below using a planting spade secretly taken from the gardener’s shed. Beneath the hollow pit, there—the Palmascus potion and its antidote, which she had buried in this spot before.
