Chapter 310: The Same Answer Again
To be honest, Armand didn’t want Evelia to worry.
He always kept a somewhat optimistic view about his health, thinking, Maybe it’ll get better after winter passes, and in the meantime, he would try to think of ways to improve things.
Maybe out of selfishness, Armand didn’t want to say too much. Who doesn’t have selfish thoughts? Armand wasn’t a perfect person.
Even though many people praised him as the captain of the Royal Knights, he still had his own selfish ideas.
In fact, if it hadn’t been for that one close friend back then, he might’ve ended up as a coward. Maybe even hiding in some remote village under a false name, spending the rest of his life in some forgotten corner of the world.
As for now... perhaps what he was doing could also be called cowardly.
He was afraid that if he told Evelia the truth, he’d become a burden to her. That was the reason he didn’t want to marry in the first place. He was scared of becoming a burden to someone else.
And now, because of the love he had longed for, he had become the kind of person he hated most.
Even though he had made up his mind, ‘Even if I die, I want to give Evelia freedom.’ Armand still sometimes clung to a tiny hope, What if... he still have a chance...?
No, there’s no point hiding it anymore.
From the look on Evelia’s face, she probably already knew.
“...Eve...”
Armand wiped his nose. The red blood stained his white sleeve. He seemed to be thinking hard about how to explain the situation. Evelia sat quietly beside him, watching him hesitate, waiting for him to speak.
“...Sorry. I don’t know how to say this. It’s just... my body isn’t doing so well right now?”
Even as he said it, Armand wasn’t confident. He didn’t know how to put it in a softer way, something Evelia could take more easily.
“—I know, Mr. Armand.”
Evelia reached out and pressed a tissue against his nose. As the red spread across the paper from his nosebleed, her eyes showed the same kind of heaviness Armand had seen before in her gaze.
“...You know?”
“Mhm, I know, Mr. Armand...”
Evelia tightly held his hand, looking even more nervous than he was.
She had already noticed all the strange things about him.
He would sit silently in one place, lost in thought, not responding even when someone called him, just staring blankly into a corner.
Sometimes he would look around in confusion, and after a moment of panic and hesitation, he would quickly fix his expression and then... he would start indirectly asking about the date and time.
And lately, this had been happening more and more often. Evelia even once gave him the wrong date on purpose, and Armand didn’t correct her. He just went along with what she said.
He didn’t notice it himself... because he had simply forgotten.
He forgot how many times it had happened. He forgot how many times he had asked those same questions.
What he had forgotten was far more than he realized.
And...
“How did you... know?”
In that moment, as he saw the calm and unsurprised look on Evelia’s face, Armand suddenly had a bold guess.
Armand’s heart started beating faster, and even his breathing began to tremble with nervousness.
It was just a feeling, a gut instinct, but damn it, he knew from experience that his instincts were always scarily accurate when it came to bad things.
“……”
Evelia stayed silent for a moment, and that made Armand feel like his heart had jumped into his throat.
He would rather believe that maybe the old butler had seen how close the two of them had become and told Evelia everything, than think that—
“Because you told me before… about your health…”
—Ah, damn it. Seriously, why do I keep guessing right?
The moment Evelia said it, Armand felt like he couldn’t breathe. His heart, which had been hanging by a thread, suddenly dropped heavily.
If he was understanding things right, it meant that at some point in the past… he had already told her about this.
He didn’t remember exactly what he had said, but it must have been something about his condition.
He didn’t even remember when he chose to open up, when he told Evelia about what was happening to his body.
And yet here he was, still trying to keep it a secret… when Evelia had already known all along.
It made sense that he had done it, told her, because he knew that one day, he would have to. Just like now, when there was no choice left, when he had to be honest with her.
But had it really gotten this bad?
Had he already forgotten something so important?
Winter hadn’t even fully arrived yet. It was still just late autumn.
Sure, during the battle in the Far East last time, he had experienced confusion and memory loss because of his injuries and the cold… but that had been under extreme conditions. Compared to that time, his current life wasn’t nearly as bad.
And yet, the symptoms now were starting to feel just like back then.
In just one year… had his body really gotten this much worse?
“I’m sorry, Eve. I just…”
Armand apologized instinctively. The sudden shock left him unsure of what to say. He could only cover his face with both hands, his arms resting heavily on his legs under the weight of it all.
“Mr. Armand, I’m right here. So you don’t need to worry.”
Evelia gently pried open his cold, stiff fingers and looked into his eyes. Eyes full of helplessness hiding behind his hands.
He had once believed that he would never look at anyone like this again… but somehow, with Evelia, he had already broken many of the things he thought were impossible.
“Even if you forgot, it’s okay. You told me before, if you could just make it through winter, you’d be fine.”
That sounded like something he would say.
When speaking to others, he always focused on “the best possible outcome,” and to make that happen, he would carry everyone’s expectations on his back and fight to make that possibility come true alone.
“So I’ll take good care of you. I’ll help you get through this winter. You’ll get better. So, Mr. Armand, you don’t need to worry.”
“Eve…”
“You once asked me… if, after learning all this, I’d think of you as a burden. You even said you’d already planned a way out for me if that happened… If you’ve forgotten what I answered back then, then I’ll just say it again—”
Evelia softly reached out and wiped the corner of Armand’s eyes with her fingers. She gently held his face, guiding his gaze to meet hers, firm and unwavering.
“—I will never leave you. I’ll be with you, together… as we welcome our spring.”