The Villainess was Loved

Chapter Sixty-Eight: When It Rains III

“Did I f**k him?”

“Did you f**k Rheyes?”

“So, let me get this straight, you know, for the sake of our friendship-”

“Don’t pull the friendship card on me right now. That’s not fair, Arusei.”

“You want to talk about fair!! To me!!”

“Oh yes, I have long understood your whole, ‘Boo-hoo! The world is against me’ persona, but that’s just it! That seems to be all you are about.”

“Then why in the hell are you asking me if I f*cked the first prince? Is that some sort of conversation starter? Is this your way of asking me if it should stick? Because I’ll tell you, it sucks.”

“I am asking this because I professed my love to you a mere five seconds ago, and you-!”

“Thank you? Is that what you want to hear? Do you want me to thank you for your confidence or stupidity? You know how this conversation will end, yet you still-”

“Believe that you will grant me a different answer? It's called hope; those in love often harbour it, but what would you know.”

Wreigner let out a scoff then paced around the spot he stood before continuing.

“‘Thank you’. Really, ‘thank you’? You would shut me down that way, Arusei?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Anything but ‘thank you’! Say you love me! Say you feel about me the way I do you.”

“So, lie? You want me to lie to you?”

His expression turned fragile as though one more cruel word uttered by me, in the name of being firm, would break him.

“ ‘Lie?’ I see how you look at me; I am not dumb or blind. I know you feel something for me; it might not be love, but it surely cannot be nothing!”

“Okay, say that what you are saying is true, say that I do perhaps l-like you, what then, do we hug, maybe kiss, hold each other through the night whispering sweet nothings, but the moment Regina walks in, we break apart? You turn your gaze to her and repeat the same words you carelessly spat at me?”

“Is this about her? You know I don’t like Regina; you are smart enough to know that!”

“Am I? Am I smart enough to know that? Everyone keeps saying the same nonsense to me, and when I turn my back-!”

“I am not everyone, and she is like a sister to me!”

“I don’t care!! I don’t care if she is like a cousin, an aunt, a grandmother or an uncle. I am not smart enough to deduce anything…when it comes to her!”

“Then listen to my words.”

Wreigner stalked to me, then pulled my hands in his.

I tried to pull away, but the fragility of the tone in which he whispered his following words stilled me.

“Arusei, I love you. I want to spend my eternity with you. I will neither hurt you nor betray you.”

‘I don’t believe you.’

The words hung ripe in my mind, but that would lead down a path that I don’t feel ready to discuss.

‘What the f**k Kat? Why did you encourage him to confess?’

“This is out of context. This is all out of context. I feel like we should just take a step back an-”

“Arusei-,”

His brown eyes were soft, warm and easily corruptive.

He was handsome in a boyish, innocent way… in the kind of way that gave me the urge to dominate him, but this is not the time for my hormones to kick in.

“Wreigner.”

“Give me a chance. We need not make anything official just, give me a chance, please, I beg of-”

“Wreigner, I slept with Rheyes.”

His sigh was less of exhaustion but more that meant to release pain welling in one’s chest.

“Why? Why would you- why would you sleep-.”

“Because I don’t love you.”

Despite the softness in which I whispered the words in, Wreigner dropped my hands to use his to block his ears, as though that would serve to erase what had been said.

“Lies.”

“Wreigner, listen to me-!”

“Lies! How can you, how can you give your body to everyone without it meaning anything!!”

“I thought it didn’t mean anything to you either. I thought we were the same!!”

“The same? The same??! Arusei, that was the best night of my life!! I think back on that night and imagine someday telling the story to…to our children! To our children and now you tell me that it really meant nothing to you?”

“Children? Are you crazy? Have you forgotten that you are an engaged man?!”

“I was engaged when you gave yourself to me!”

“I gave you nothing, but what you told me was comfort.”

“And him? What did you give the prince?”

“Wreigner…”

“What did you give him! Passion? Love? Oh, that man is too cruel to love anything!”

“I know that!”

“If you know that, then why not me!! Why can’t you choose me? Why can’t you have me, and I, you? Why not me? What is wrong with me?”

“Wreigner, stop!”

“I will leave the princess. She means nothing to me anyway; she was my brother’s fiance! I will cut Regina off, I-,”

“Wreigner, stop!”

“Am I unlovable, is that it, is my voice not deep enough, my power not enough, my tone not commanding enough? What? What is it!! What can I become that I am not already? What do you want me to do? Why can’t it be me? Wh-,”

“Because if I permit myself to love you, I will lose the ability to meet my gaze in the mirror! Okay?? Is that what you want to hear? Then that’s it!!”

“Wreigner, I can not love you because I know, no I expect that loving you, or any of the leads will tear me apart!”

An unwelcome tear poured from my eye at the rush of emotion flooding a truth I could never admit vocally.

“What? Lead? What does that mean?”

“I mean-"

I rolled my eyes at my outburst.

“I mean sons and daughters of prominent families. That is what I mean by lead.”

“So you will put me in a category, box me up with the generals when you know me! you know-.”

“Do you want me to specify?”

“Please, give me a specific reason. Your general ones seem aimed at tearing me apart! At making me feel as tho-”

“There was a time, or perhaps we can say that I had a dream. I had a dream that, more than anything, I craved love. In that dream, I believed that if I do this thing I did not want to do, if I change that thing I did not wish to change, if I become this other thing that I am not, I will finally be enough. So I did! I changed everything, even my manner of speech and guess what, I made friends.”

“All the friends I made were obsessed with one person in the friend group, which put a strain on us. However, I want to believe that they, my ‘friends’ maintained their persona’s around me because they trusted me. You were among them, by the way.”

“Do you want to know how the story ends?”

Wreigner didn’t nod, but he did not stop me either.

“The story ends with my head being chopped off at the guillotine then fed to the crows!! Before that, I cried to everyone in the ‘friend’ group! I wrote multiple letters! Sent thousands of messengers, requested plenty of visitations, all to ask if they could seek an appeal for my case so that more investigations could be done. But none gave me the time of day. Surprisingly, though, they all showed up during the execution, only for them to shake their head at my situation as if they were parents that did their best with me but inevitably failed because of my problematic mannerisms. Wreigner, I cannot love you.”

“What? What are you talking about? You cannot love me because of a dream! You know I cannot do that to you! When you call, I will always be there-,”

“I believed that! Gods, I did! But you weren’t there!”

“It was a dream!!”

“Then how comes it felt so real?”

Nothing but pants filled the room, a room that was yet to be soundproofed, so it was apparent all the workers in the house had heard our instability.

All this yelling, but in the end, nothing has been resolved.

Of course, saying ‘you abandoned me in a dream and thus I cannot love you’ makes me seem unreasonable but-

Shouldn’t it be enough that I have already expressed my disinterest in the matter?

“Gods! You shouldn’t have come here.”

It was my turn to pace, but again, that solved nothing.

“I can see my mistake as well.”

“You should go.”

“Because of a dream, you cannot love me? How should I be satisfied with that?”

“Wreigner, I am not asking you to be satisfied. I am telling you that is the one thing that remains at the back of my mind when we are alone, when I laugh at your jokes, or when we talk for hours about nothing. I can’t help but remind myself that you are not one made to be on my side.”

“It was a dream!!”

“One so real that if I don’t drink enough, I wake up screaming because I still cannot believe how stupid I was!”

“You are breaking my heart over a dream?”

“I am sorry.”

Wreigner placed a hand over his mouth and again sighed bitterly.

“I- The first prince won’t love you, you know.”

“I am not looking for love.”

“If you go to him, he will destroy your heart!”

“It has long been shattered.”

“So, you will go to him?”

“I will stay as I am. But we, as for us, I think we need some time apart.”

“Time apart?”

He repeated the words and chuckled as though it was something simply hilarious.

“That was the last guess of an answer I expected from you after confessing. I did not think you would be that cruel. I guess I am always underestimating you.”

I said nothing, and as though dissatisfied by that, Wreigner ran a hand through his hair, then finally, in a courageous, ‘f**k-it-all’ moment, he stalked to me then took my left hand.

“Arusei, I love you so much. So so much. I don’t know if you know this, but when you think, your thumb taps your forefinger repetitively, and when you laugh, you always throw your hair back. When you feel like sneezing, you rub the tip of your nose, and when you want to cry, you cover your mouth.”

My free hand reached my mouth.

I dropped the hand belatedly, then turned my gaze away.

“I love you, so I don’t know what I can say to make you look at me. This me, not the one who broke your heart in some dream, but the one standing bare before you, with nothing to hide, nothing to lose, begging you to see me, to give me a chance, please. Do not make me go back without my heart intact?”

‘This is unfair!’

‘Why would someone….’

‘Am I not allowed to be angry! Vengeful?’

‘Am I not allowed to break his heart to resemble mine?’

But no matter how much I wracked my brain.

The answer would not come.

“If I…if I let myself love you, I would hate myself. And if I hate myself, I will truly, have lost it all.”

My voice grew unsteady at the reply, perhaps early grieving because our friendship would change after this.

“You are breaking my heart.”

“I know, but it will heal.”

Wreigner scoffed, only this time; it was not out of disbelief or malice but to give way to fresh tears that were not even shed during his brother’s funeral.

He had his face buried in his hands for about twenty minutes, weeping. Before today, I had never seen a man in this world cry, none that was not weeping for Regina. None but Étienne, but then again, those could have been fake.

‘Hah…how sure am I that his, at this moment, are real?’

‘See Wreigner? I can’t even trust you…so how can I love you?’

‘All I long to do is wrap my arms around you and comfort you…perhaps even lie, that I can learn to love you, so how? How could you watch me walk to the guillotine and do nothing after calling me your friend?’

‘I don’t understand what love in this world is?’

‘But perhaps that is for the best.’