It Seems Like The Infamous Trash Can is Right Here! - Chapter 160
I couldn’t help but laugh.
As if Lionel had the time to go book shopping right now. And here he was, taking even this nonsense seriously.
I only said it to deflect, to keep him from noticing what I was really feeling.
“Why are you laughing?”
He spoke in a low voice, gently wrapping an arm around my waist.
“I’m quite serious, you know.”
“Why? You haven’t even read it.”
“Well, no. But…”
He leaned down to meet my eyes.
“In the memories I recovered, as I suspected… we were lovers. But the memory isn’t whole. It’s driving me mad, this uncertainty. I imagine you must feel the same.”
“…What if we let the past stay in the past? Can’t we just start over? You and me.”
As I listened to him speak, the selfish thought I’d been holding back slipped from me without warning.
He just looked at me quietly for a while, then leaned in and pressed a gentle kiss to the corner of my eye.
“Shall I, then? If you truly want me to stop… perhaps that’s what I should do.”
He was serious. It didn’t sound like something said just to appease me.
I bit hard into the inside of my cheek and dropped my gaze.
“You’re being fooled right now, but… the truth is, I’m a really awful, selfish person. I probably hurt you all the time, for no reason.”
Just thinking about the vision, about the way I’d flung those cruel words at Lionel and left him bleeding… it made my chest throb again.
“When you remember everything… you might come to hate the sight of me.”
The words barely made it out before they dissolved into silence.
‘Why… why won’t he say anything?’
The longer it dragged on, the more anxious I became. And then, unable to bear it, I finally lifted my head to face him.
That’s when I saw it.
He was looking at me with a strange expression, something between a smile and a grimace, impossible to read.
Even after our eyes met, he didn’t speak. Instead, he slowly straightened the back he’d been keeping lowered throughout our conversation.
“…I wish it were that simple.”
His words came as a murmur, soft as a sigh or a breath of resignation.
“What frightens me more… is this feeling that just keeps growing, with no end in sight.”
Me too.
That was why I was scared as well.
Because I already loved him this much, and it was only going to deepen.
“What should I do, then? Serenia… I’ll follow your lead.”
He was placing the decision in my hands.
I opened my mouth, but instead of answering, I pressed my face into his chest.
The truth was, I’d already known the answer from the very beginning.
It couldn’t be coincidence that Lionel was regaining his lost memories through my divine power.
‘There must be a clue hidden inside them. A key to halting the regressions and restoring time to its natural flow.’
If I want to find that answer, I have to piece together the whole puzzle.
And if Lionel ends up resenting me in the process? Then I’ll bear it. I have to.
If he ends up hating me, says he can’t stand the sight of me? Then I’ll wait, until his anger fades.
I couldn’t stop helping him just because I was afraid of paying the price for what I’d done. I couldn’t leave him trapped in the pain of endless regressions.
We made that promise, didn’t we? Right from the start.
Even if the worst should come to pass, even if, in the end, everything is fixed and we still have to part ways, it would be nothing compared to the sorrow and pain he’s endured because of me.
