I’m Done With Unrequited Love - Chapter 45

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Episode 45
“How old are you?”
I remember the first time I met Sarubia.
I remember her spirited face, the way she approached me with such natural warmth.
That day, I’d visited a jewelry shop in the Capital to buy a gift for my sister.
As I stood gazing at the brooches displayed in the showcase, a stranger—Sarubia, though I didn’t know it then—suddenly struck up a conversation.
Who would have expected someone to approach you unprompted in a shop where you’d gone to buy your sister a gift?
I was caught off guard.
And yet……
……
Her amber eyes, watching me, sparkled with anticipation.
There was no refusing to answer.
“I’ve just been admitted to university,” I said.
“Ah, so you’re twenty!”
I was indeed twenty, though I was hardly a first-year student.
I’d already graduated from Romen University two years prior and was on the cusp of early graduation.
But “just entered university” was an effective way to obscure my actual age.
Learning my age, Sarubia laughed aloud.
“You’re so young,” she said.
At that moment, I was nothing but a bookish scholar who had yet to fall in love.
High Society, the fashionable nobles of the day—none of it interested me, and I had even less regard for the Imperial House.
So it was hardly surprising that I didn’t recognize the face of the Imperial Princess Sarubia.
“Really quite young……”
And it seemed Sarubia had seen through my ignorance of her station.
At the time, I had no idea that this very ignorance was what had won her favor.
Later, Sarubia would reveal that she’d needed a friend who could meet her as one person to another.
So she’d hidden her identity and asked the question that followed.
“How old do you think I am?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’ve always wanted to ask someone that, and I’m lucky today! Most people I meet know my age even on first meeting.”
“……Twenty-two?”
At that, Sarubia broke into delighted laughter.
“I’m seven years older than you!”
In her laughter, there was a certain purity that shone through.
The pristine innocence of one untouched by worldly corruption.
One might call it immaturity, if one were being unkind.
But it could just as fairly be called the ingenuous charm of one whose time had not yet come.
And Sarubia seemed aware of this about herself, yet showed no inclination to change it.
“Adulthood is a word for those who have grown. And growth is a reward given only to those who have endured pain.”
That was something Sarubia had said to me later, after we’d learned each other’s true station and grown closer still.
“Fidellia, must a person grow as they live? Must they truly suffer through growth, become an adult? Must they?”
But that was no genuine question seeking my opinion.
“I want to remain a child. Forever.”
I asked Sarubia why.
And this was the answer that came back.
“I……”
In that moment, a faint anguish flickered across Sarubia’s face.
For an instant, her beautiful features twisted.
“I want to remain whole as myself.”
I understood then.
Was that why?
Was that why the loss between mother and daughter had come to pass?
I never blamed Sarubia for it. I harbored no resentment, no bitterness toward her.
Sarubia is thirty-one now.
And Kiara is eleven.
They are exactly twenty years apart.
Which is to say, Sarubia was twenty when she gave birth to Kiara.
“Ah, so you’re twenty!”
“You’re so young.”
“Really quite young……”
Looking at twenty-year-old me, Sarubia spoke those words. Along with a clouded smile.
Whether Sarubia had recalled her own twenty-year-old self in that moment, or hadn’t—it didn’t matter.
‘What mattered was whether that was true.’
And because it was, I couldn’t simply blame Sarubia for her pregnancy, her childbirth, her loss.
How much of her own will had truly gone into all of it?
“I never expected you to visit like this. An unforeseen meeting—you know I adore surprises like that. You know how I am.”
Sarubia, taking tea in the Reception Room, seemed in excellent spirits.
Despite a sudden visit that might have felt impolite.
“Did you come because you’re curious about pressing charges against Bruno? That matter’s still dragging on, so I’ve nothing new to tell you—what am I to do.”
Not a trace of displeasure showed on Sarubia’s face.
Clink. Sarubia set down her teacup.
“You look like you have something to say.”
“I do.”
“If you’d come purely because you wanted to see me, I’d be even happier than I am.”
“I apologize.”
From the moment I’d arrived at Sarubia’s Residence, my gaze had remained downcast.
“Why so deferential all of a sudden?”
A picture-perfect smile bloomed across Sarubia’s face.
A woman wrought, it seemed, from all the world’s innocence alone.
Her mere existence touched something in me—my guilt.
“May I ask something that might be presumptuous?”
“Presumptuous? Between us?”
“But this… hearing it might put you in a bad mood.”
“It’s fine. I’m the one who agreed to hear your question. If it puts me in a bad mood, that’s my responsibility.”
Her golden eyes gleamed with unconcealed curiosity.
Eyes I’d seen before, on someone else. Exactly the same.
“Have you… ever lost a child?”
The expression drained from the woman’s bright face.
…….
After a long silence, Sarubia asked:
“……Who told you?”
I hesitated briefly, then answered honestly.
“Jooshin.”
“So you don’t want to say.”
…….
Self-reproach washed over me.
‘See, she doesn’t believe me after all.’
“But it doesn’t matter. I don’t know how you found out, but given that no rumor has spread until now, I imagine none will in the future either. Bruno handles his affairs remarkably well.”
“……His Majesty?”
“Yes. Bruno was the one who took the child from me.”
My mouth fell open.
‘The Emperor himself was involved in this.’
I felt as though I were glimpsing the Imperial House’s deepest secrets.
……Then did Bruno send Kiara to the Orphanage?
“But don’t misunderstand. It wasn’t something taken from me. ……I gave her to him.”
So don’t treat me as a mother robbed of her child.
“I made that choice of my own free will, because I didn’t want to be anyone’s mother.”
‘Ah.’

Those words.
“Bruno took that newborn from me while I was suffering, saying he’d handle it himself. I trusted him, and that’s how I was able to live my whole life as a single woman.”
Just don’t kill her, I’d begged. The words, like a whisper, scattered into the distance.
Sarubia spoke too of how she’d come to have the child.
“There was a man I loved. A handsome young marquis, but he was shot dead and no longer in this world. Some wretch who claims to be the person who loves me most in the world killed him.”
“……What happened to that wretch?”
“The previous Emperor, in his fury, ordered his execution by firing squad, I believe.”
Not once had I ever seen a smile fade from Sarubia’s beautiful face.
Yet today, in this very moment, I witnessed it for the first time.
“But what matters now isn’t that.”
…….
“I think I understand now, Fidellia. Why you brought this up with me.”