The Villain’s Ending

Chapter 32

Coloring (14)

The cold morning air brushed against my cheek.

Beyond the stained-glass windows of the high ceiling, dawn was faintly breaking.

I looked beside me and saw Estelle sleeping, curled up.

The makeshift bed, made by pushing two long benches together, was too narrow for two adults. Inevitably, our bodies had to touch.

A few strands of her hair lay across my shirt.

Her soft, regular breathing could be heard.

I gently stroked her hair with my fingers for a moment, then slowly got up.

The benches creaked, but she didn't wake up.

I walked towards the altar.I knelt down and pretended to pray, just as Estelle had done last night. As I pondered what to wish for, I even doubted whether my plea to be sent back was truly sincere anymore, so I didn't utter a word.

It's hazy. A moderately sized laptop, a large iced coffee, and me, living there.

Perhaps living with Estelle had become as comfortable as living in that place.

"You're awake."

"Ah, yeah."

"Did spending a night in church make you suddenly sprout faith you never had?"

She was looking at me, her hair disheveled.

I didn't know when she had woken up, but she was neatly dressed in her priest's robes.

Her white priest's robes were bathed in the faint moonlight filtering through the stained-glass windows.

She looked like a ghost.

"Anyway, you don't have much time left before you're kicked out of that room."

Her voice was quiet.

But it was enough to break the silence of the church.

"In that case, let's just live together here."

I didn't answer.

I simply looked at her.

"Don't you want to?"

she asked.

I shook my head.

I looked at her for a moment.

Her red eyes glowed strangely in the morning light.

"No, I like it. But you'll provide meals, right?"

"Ah, if it's not enough, I'll just steal from the cathedral, so don't worry."

I had nowhere else to go anyway.

Since Levina had kicked me out, the name Edelgard meant nothing to me anymore.

My connection with Seraphina had already been severed long ago.

What difference does it make where I live?

And so, my peculiar cohabitation began.

It wasn't exactly something you'd call cohabitation.

Estelle's room was in the innermost part of the church's second floor.

The room was wider and cleaner than I expected.

But it felt somewhat empty.

An abstract drawing, as if scribbled by a child, hung on the wall.

The bookshelf contained more secular novels and poetry collections than theological texts.

Everything about it felt out of place for a Saintess's room.

She brought all my belongings from the room I used to stay in.

If Levina had known, she might have thrown a fit.

But she said nothing.

My space was a storeroom next to Estelle's room.

Perhaps Estelle had cleaned it, as there was a mix of old wood and faint incense smells.

With a moderately sized bed, a table, and drawers, it somewhat resembled a habitable space.

"Let's bring in a chair that's comfortable enough to lie down on."

"Honestly, long benches are uncomfortable."

She said, looking around the room.

She became involved in my life with utmost naturalness, sometimes like family, other times like a lover.

Mornings always began the same way.

The morning sunlight, filtering through the stained-glass windows, fell upon my eyelids.

Estelle would wake up first and wash, then I would.

Whether she used something with an apple scent when washing, the bathroom always smelled of apples.

Every day, I went downstairs to the first floor and brewed coffee.

Somehow, I felt I could finally understand why Seraphina used to come every morning to clean and make coffee for me.

It was the kind of feeling, perhaps, that one had to do something like this.

The old coffee beans I found in the church storeroom also had a rather nice aroma.

I poured coffee into two cups.

One as is, the other with plenty of sugar.

"Good morning."

Estelle ambled down, her face still heavy with sleep.

She sat down in front of me and took the sugared coffee I offered.

"Thank you."

We drank our coffee in silence.

Outside the window, students heading to the academy could be seen passing by.

Their lively figures felt like a scene from another world.

"Time for class."

Estelle said.

She drained her coffee in one gulp and stood up.

I also finished my coffee and followed her out.

As we stepped out of the church door, the cold morning air brushed against our cheeks.

We headed to the academy side by side.

It was always like that.

From some point on, we were always together.

Disregarding others' gazes.

At the academy, we were an odd presence.

The Saintess, revered by all, and a fallen noble, abandoned by his family.

It wasn't a particularly well-suited pair.

Students whispered every time they saw us.

Their gazes felt sharp.

But I didn't care.

Estelle seemed to feel the same.

She even seemed to enjoy such attention.

Sometimes she would deliberately walk closer to me, or even link arms.

Each time, the whispers around us grew louder.

"How could the Saintess be with such trash..."

"Shhh, they'll hear you."

"I heard he was completely cast out of the Edelgard family..."

"Yeah, but why would the Saintess..."

Such words seeped into my ears every time they passed.

Even if Estelle didn't, I let them slide.

When you've endured that kind of crap for years, you eventually get used to it.

At lunchtime, we met again.

Sitting on a quiet garden bench, we had a simple meal of bread and fruit.

When the meal was over, Estelle asked as always.

"Cigarette, want one?"

Estelle asked.

As always, she didn't ask my preference; she just naturally pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

I nodded silently.

She put a cigarette to my lips and lit it for me.

I took a deep drag.

Bitter smoke filled my lungs.

Between us, this kind of familiarity had taken root.

Without words, we knew what each other wanted.

It was comfortable, yet somehow peculiar.

A few days passed like that.

The same mornings, the same coffee, the same walks, the same cigarettes.

Then one day, Estelle was busy from the morning, dressed in neat priest's robes different from her usual ones, her hair meticulously combed.

"Do you have somewhere you need to go?"

"Yeah, because of those damned old farts, I'll be back late tomorrow evening."

"I might not even be able to come back. Don't cry from loneliness just because I'm not here."

She said that and left the church alone.

I remained alone and cleared away the coffee cup she had left unfinished.

It was a sticky cup, with sugar dissolved in it.

That day, I was alone all day.

I went to the academy alone, attended classes alone, and ate lunch alone.

Everything felt awkward.

The fact that the seat beside me was empty felt surprisingly prominent.

Even the students' whispers seemed to sound sharper than usual.

After classes ended, I didn't return directly to the church.

I sat on an old bench near the academy's back gate and put a cigarette to my lips.

When Estelle wasn't around, I had to light it myself.

Somehow, I was clumsy at it.

The sun was setting.

The sky was dyed red, then slowly faded into darker, lighter hues.

It was then.

From behind, I heard someone call my name.

"Lavin."

It was a familiar voice, but one I didn't particularly want to hear.

I turned around.

Three people were standing there.

Standing with their backs to the setting sun, their faces weren't clearly visible.

However, it wasn't hard to know who they were.

The man on the left.

And the two people standing beside him.

Kyle, Seraphina, and that lady knight who witnessed me when Perion was killed.

"Ah, Seraphina. Long time no see. I missed you."

"But why bother coming with that friend, of all people? How annoying."

I casually stubbed out the cigarette in my hand on the ground.

It was a cigarette I hadn't even smoked halfway.

Kyle's face stiffened for a moment.

"Is that the only way you can talk?"

Kyle took a step forward and said.

"Do you know how worried Sera was about you?"

"She went to your room and found it empty, so she came looking for you..."

"Don't call her Sera, you worm-like commoner."

A slip of the tongue.

I shouldn't be the kind of narrow-minded person who gets angry over such things.

Now, I'm just as lowly, a worm-like commoner myself.

The regrettable part is that Kyle will always be the kind of person who rises, while I'm the kind of person who only has further to fall.

As if he knew it well himself, instead of getting angry, he looked at me with an almost pitiful gaze, as if I were a pathetic fool.

I have a revolver at my waist, but there'd be no point in taking it out.

"And it doesn't seem like you came here out of concern."

She had her head bowed.

Her long hair obscured her face, making it impossible to read her expression.

Her shoulders were trembling, ever so slightly.

"Seraphina."

I called her name.

Her shoulders flinched and stiffened.

She slowly raised her head.

"You're the one who came to find me, so why don't you say something?"

With those words, our gazes met.

Her eyes were bloodshot.

"...Lavin, I came here knowing everything."

"Knowing what?"

"That girl next to Kyle, you remember her face, don't you?"

"I don't know, it feels like I'm meeting her for the first time today."

I answered indifferently.

At that, the unnamed lady knight's face flushed crimson.

"Lavin Edelgard, you really...!"

Kyle stopped her.

And looked at me, saying.

"Lavin. By now, you must know why we came."

His voice was a little lower and calmer than before.

Thinking about it, if something truly fucked up had happened, Kyle wouldn't have come himself.

Some high-and-mighty lords would have brought fearsome soldiers to find me.

They probably don't know much.

They wouldn't know it was Estelle who was upstairs.

If they had known, they wouldn't have come to find a fool like me, who was cast out of his family and even had his engagement broken, first.

And of all days, it had to be on a day when Estelle wasn't around.

Therefore, a calm, composed, and rational conversation didn't seem like a good option.

"You all, especially Seraphina."

"No matter what I say, you're not going to believe me anyway."

"It's the same story as last time."

I decided to shift the conversation away from the story of the night out with Estelle, vaguely gloss over it, and instead bring up something emotional to deflect.

"These days, I've been spending my nights offering prayers of repentance with the Saintess."

"Diligently and faithfully, without missing a single day."

I took another cigarette from my pocket and put it to my lips.

"Or else you'll point fingers at me for things I didn't even do... Right."

"You've always been like that. You're the one who never changes."

"Now that we're even unengaged, what more do you want to do, Seraphina?"

I took a deep drag of smoke.

And slowly, exhaled.

"Do you even realize how rude it is to come looking for someone in the middle of the night, barely after breaking off your engagement, arm-in-arm with some pathetic stranger like a slut?"

Her face turned pale.

Kyle and the unnamed friend also seemed a little flustered as the conversation veered absurdly into a strange and sensitive direction that shouldn't be brought up carelessly.

"Now that you've managed to discard a worm like me, do you just want to flaunt it right in front of my face?"

"No, if you're going to hook up with someone, why don't you snag some high-class young master, why a commoner again, of all people?"

"Is it because he's good in bed, or is that just your type?"

Kyle's eyebrows twitched.

He clenched his fist.

But Seraphina, trembling beside him, grabbed his arm.

With that, the original conversation was roughly buried under emotions, and I turned my back and returned to the church.

No one bothered to come over and stop me.

I went up to the second floor, lingered in front of the church, then absentmindedly watched the three of them leave through the window, and found myself chuckling.

As expected, I didn't want to see Seraphina beside Kyle.