Microscopes and Canvases - Chapter 51

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Episode 51
A sleepless night, unable to find rest.
After tossing and turning for what felt like hours, her restless mind refusing to settle, Beatrice finally threw off her blankets and rose from bed.
In the deep hours before dawn, when all were asleep, the storage door to the Attic opened without a sound. Beatrice set a candle on the windowsill, dragged out a large Wooden Box from the corner, and settled herself before it.
Before the box bearing the grand crest of Saint Mary’s Boarding School, Beatrice closed her eyes as though offering a moment of silent prayer.
Then she gently lifted the heavy lid. Inside lay faded Envelopes bound together with twine, packed densely one upon another. The scent of dry paper mingled with the faint, lingering fragrance of a Lavender Sachet placed carefully among them.
She had never told anyone, but the truth was that Beatrice often took out these letters to read them.
Reading them with resentment, reading them with reproach, sometimes cursing and railing against them—yet handling them so carefully, afraid the paper might tear or the creases might fray.
She knew it was a strange habit.
Not only could she not discard the letters of a traitor, but she kept returning to them, poring over the same words again and again, year after year.
Anyone who saw her would call her mad, but even she could not help herself. Now he felt like a sworn enemy, but back then—at least to the Romeo of those days—he had been the one person in the world who truly understood her. Her only friend. Her only love.
Still, it had been quite some time since she’d last done this. Just as she had abandoned the Greenhouse Atelier, this attic room too had been neglected by her attention for years.
That was probably because…
Patrick Bennett had taken Romeo’s place.
Beatrice found a familiar Envelope and drew it out. She knew the contents so well that she could recite them without even unfolding the letter inside.
…
I had a Reading Test today, and I chose Shakespeare’s Eighteenth Sonnet to recite. The one you love so much.
Especially that line you mentioned—”The summer’s lease hath all too short a date…”
You said the Summer Holiday is so fleeting that before you can blink, you’re thrust back into that hellish school.
I felt exactly the same way.
…
But things are different now. Once, I lived for the Summer Holiday alone, but now the holiday makes me ache. Because our letters must cease.
…
Of all things, the very poem Patrick and I recited together today was this one. Could fate be this cruel?
As Beatrice recalled fifteen-year-old Romeo, she reached for the next Envelope. Sixteen-year-old Romeo’s handwriting had grown more refined, more assured.
…
You wrote that in your last letter, didn’t you?
That you wanted to belong somewhere. You desire freedom, yet the more you dream of it, the more lonely you become. It may sound strange, but whenever I feel lonely, I think of you. It makes me able to endure.
Sometimes I’ve imagined it—that someday when we’re grown, you and I could write together, paint together, read books and talk. Could such a day ever come?
Because the letter carried the sweet, earnest dreams of childhood, Beatrice let out a bitter laugh.
Well, Romeo.
It’s not impossible. Just that the person isn’t you.
These days, she shares a room with someone. A room with a Microscope on one desk and an Easel on the other. A room where they each pursue their own work, sharing a single Teapot between them.
Something strange tightened in her chest. She quickly drew out another Envelope.
Beatrice sighed softly even before reading it. Of course—it had to be this one.
Winter of her seventeenth year, perhaps? When the feelings of two people who had begun to cross a line were slowly ripening into something deeper.
…When I’m grown, someday I’ll ask you to dance at a Ball. Then we’ll dance through the night.
Even a tedious Ball would become a special evening with you there. By then, perhaps we could even risk a kiss, hidden from everyone’s eyes.
Wait—have you ever kissed before?
I know it’s not proper to ask a lady such a thing. But you’re my closest friend. What can I do when I’m curious?
…
You see, Beatrice, if I were ever to kiss someone…
…
I’d want my first to be you.
Romeo.
Even after reading it hundreds of times, her ears still burned at that final line. Seventeen-year-old Beatrice Somerset had stayed awake the entire night after receiving this letter.
She barely remembered what she’d written in reply.
Something about being curious about the taste of his lips too, some foolish nonsense like that, probably.
They had exchanged such mortifying letters, yet she never learned Romeo’s true name—all because of the Reading Club’s secret rules.
Members were forbidden from revealing their real identities until graduation, a measure meant to protect those in the club.
In an elite Boarding School where contact between boys and girls was so strictly forbidden that exposure meant immediate expulsion, such precautions were necessary.
Beatrice carefully returned the letters to their order and closed the lid. Click—the lock fastened with a soft sound that echoed lowly in the dark Attic.
Perhaps it was a blessing. If she had known Romeo’s name, things might have become far worse.
The parting had already been so brutally sordid and contemptible; if she had known his name, she couldn’t answer for what she might have done.
“Ah…”
That bastard. Romeo, both loved and despised.
A long sigh settled low on the attic floor. So tonight she had inevitably read his letters again…
Yet something was strange.
Tonight, her heart was not as troubled as it once would have been. She found she could let the childhood memories, the silly history of it all, simply pass by.
This morning, when she had crumbled before Etienne Morel’s letter, Patrick had been at her side. Asking nothing, simply waiting, emptying his entire day for her. Now that she knew that steadiness…
Perhaps, in time, she might find some distance between herself and Romeo as well.
Back then, she and Romeo had both been far too young.
At seventeen, she had known that fear—perhaps he had too. A handful of letters exchanged, and already the stigma would cling; her entire future reputation could crumble in their world. It was too great a burden for a boy and girl to bear.
Far too great.
Of course, this didn’t mean she forgave Romeo. That was an entirely separate matter. Yet⋯.
Somehow she had already turned twenty-five.
It felt wasteful to remain trapped in old wounds when the present moment, when her present self, mattered so much. And besides, she now had something Romeo could never give her—a cherished friend whose steadiness ran deeper than his ever could.
It was all right now.
Beatrice ran her palm across the lid of the wooden box in farewell, then tapped it lightly—tap, tap—and rose from where she knelt.
“Farewell, Romeo. I think I can live without you now.”
She gathered the candle from the windowsill, and the attic sank back into darkness. Her footsteps on the stairs were noticeably lighter than when she had climbed up.
Back in her room, Beatrice cradled Patrick’s Poetry Collection against her chest and burrowed beneath the quilts. This book had not come from Romeo—it had come from Patrick Bennett.
As she turned the first page, the crisp scent of new paper rose up to meet her.
The verses had been a kind of obsession during her desperate first love, committed nearly to memory—but now she read them through Patrick’s eyes, felt them with Patrick’s heart.
Before long, the weight of the day’s fatigue washed over her like an incoming tide, and somewhere in those pages, Beatrice slipped into sleep.
Through a gap in the curtains, the first pale light of a summer dawn had begun to creep in.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————