"It's a long story… To put it simply, there was this one girl from a high-class noble family." My ears perked up, my sixth sense for romance tingling. Though from his voice, and his current condition… I could assume otherwise.
"I was with my old team I had been with for a decade. It was supposed to be a simple job. Protect an innocent lady." His voice shook.
"But, they only allowed me to get close to her. Guess they trusted me more. It soon became a really difficult job, I was basically glued to her, from waking her up, to sleeping at her bed foot. The rest of my men guarded from the surroundings." I could feel he was smiling while saying this. A nostalgic smile. So, my senses were right?
"She must be really powerful to have so much attention on her… safe too." I wondered aloud. Who the fuck could put someone like her in that much danger?
He didn't reply right away. "She had coldly rejected an insane prince of a foreign nation…" I felt a shiver down my spine; the venom on his tongue could be sensed.
"For God's sake, he even wanted to go to war with us. Purely for her! Talk about stupid." He jerked forward; I heard chains rattle, then the dull thud of a chair tipping. The sound that followed—laughter? The crazy kind one.
I wanted to say something, but opted for silence.
To think deeply on it, the world itself was retarded! Why the hell does a person have enough power to start wars for a girl?
"You must have even heard of the Ganchi incident?" He asked, still calming down from laughing.
"....Not really. Back home, I didn't have much access to information like this." I shrugged a lie.
He tapped his foot in understanding, "An entire village was bombed by the Isabella Empire. Though it all calmed down after our Velmoria Empire's retaliation.
But not his insanity... It couldn't be stopped. He kept at it."
…Uh, what? That was a lot to process.
At least I knew now where we were.
"She made me change her clothes, massage her back, tie her shoes..."
His voice faltered for a moment. "Sometimes... sometimes she'd just look at me and spit on my face, laughing... Like I was—"
He exhaled sharply, a sound between a sigh and a snarl.
"I hated myself for still following her around like a dog."
"You had no choice," I shook my head with a fire lighting in my eyes. "People confuse survival with submission. You survived. I am proud of you." I said some words of encouragement, genuinely wanting to help the guy. He went through a lot.
He froze, laughing, breaking the serious tone he'd built completely.
"???"
"Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for asking!" He said. What the fuck is wrong with him?
"Ha—hah—ah—ha! Hahaha—haa—hahh!" His lungs burned as he burst into the wildest laughter I had ever heard. Asking him that question really was a bad mistake.
"She was a noble! Yes, at the end of the day, she didn't care! She said she wanted to see forests, cities, and she didn't want to stay locked in her luxurious palace, oh, she had everything. But her wish was my will. So we travelled. Here and there, in the towns with disguises. Every one of my men from before meeting with that woman had perished after it. All the deaths were on her." He rambled on and on.
"Look Vanitas, it wasn't really your fault. It was hers, don't let the guilt eat you." I tried to calm him down.
"Every day could be our last, and I and her family warned her countless times, but she never listened." He laughed, ignoring what I said completely
"It was immature, idiotic, and evil as many people— be it my men, or civillians caught in cross fire. All dead. Needlessly so, but, it was…
…Really beautiful. She was perfect. Beautiful. Oh God."
...Yeah. He is insane.
"Just talking to her, listening to her thoughts… She didn't care about living or dying, hers or anyone else's. I envied that. I wanted to live like her. But I couldn't. Tied down by these stupid duties, rules, expectations… Like I said, I could've even killed the innocent civillians of race. I was that tied down. I was never really alive. She was alive."
I didn't even know what to say, but I felt a piercing pain in my heart. Worse than anything I had felt so far. That was the man hiding behind those strong words?
"I messed up. I fell in love with her. As a commoner, this was a death sentence.
But… it turned out, she loved me too. She loved me enough to let me be her first…
It was exactly like those books that we used to fantasize about.
But Reality was different from fantasy…
We ran. We really thought we could.
She smiled... gods, she smiled even when they found us.
Her mother didn't scream. Didn't cry.
She just... walked up, and... and stabbed her."
His voice twisted to horrible, sobby but laughing shouts. I was just lying there. Helpless, desperate, pitiful. Other holy knights, her guards, I was fighting all of them.
If someone found out that a noble woman fell in love with a commoner, that woman's reputation would've gone down the mud.
She got rid of the knights, her men, and everything in between…
Everyone was dead.
For me, death is too light in her eyes."
"So… I am here." He added calmly at the end.