Claire stood for a long time in front of the door.
She knew the surgery had produced a result, yet she did not dare push it open.
She was afraid of seeing that Liz had not woken.
She was even more afraid that Liz would wake and look at her with strange, icy eyes.
Liz already knew the truth.
How would she see her now?
With anger?
With disappointment?
Or would she simply grow distant from this day on?
Claire drew a deep breath.
The air trembled in her chest.
At last she found the courage to push open the old wooden door.
The hinges gave a sharp creak that sounded especially harsh in the silence.
What met her eyes was pumpkin porridge spilled across the floor.
Ophelia stood to one side with her hands on her hips, sighing, her face full of exhaustion and helplessness.
When she saw Claire enter she simply walked out of the room without a word.
As she passed Claire she gave her shoulder a light pat.
Her lips moved as if she wanted to say something, but in the end she only shook her head.
Claire’s gaze moved slowly and finally settled on Liz, who sat on the bed staring out the window.
Liz’s back looked a little thin.
The glow of the streetlamp fell across her, outlining a faint halo.
“Liz… how do you feel?” Claire asked carefully.
Liz did not answer at once.
Her shoulders shifted slightly, as if she had been pulled from thought.
After a moment she turned her head and looked at Claire, her eyes a little empty.
“I’m still alive. Is that something you didn’t want to see?”
Liz’s tone was flat, yet Claire caught a trace of bitterness that was hard to notice.
“Don’t say that… I was really worried about you.”
Claire took a few steps forward, closer to the bed.
“Worried about me?”
Liz gave a light laugh that held no humor at all.
“If you really worried about me, you wouldn’t have kept hiding things from me the whole time.”
Claire’s lips moved.
She wanted to explain, yet did not know where to begin.
“From the very start I was kept in the dark. Princess Flora, how many more things are you still hiding from me?”
Claire lowered her head, unable to meet Liz’s eyes.
She knew this moment had come at last.
She said softly, “Liz, I… I didn’t mean to hide it from you. I just didn’t want you dragged into my trouble.”
“Didn’t want me dragged into your trouble? If I had known your identity from the beginning we could have made a better plan, and I wouldn’t be lying here! What did you take me for? Your sidekick?”
“No, Liz. I never thought that. I just… didn’t know how to say it.”
“You’re always like this, bottling everything up, never willing to trust me. I’ve always treated you as my everything. And you?”
Liz’s hands clenched the sheets tightly.
“I know I was wrong, Liz. I’m truly sorry.”
“What good is sorry? You could even give up your own identity for that impostor. Did you ever think about me?”
A flash of pain crossed Liz’s eyes.
“Liz, you don’t understand. Between her and me…”
“I don’t understand? I think you’ve had your head turned by her sweet talk! You’re the empire’s princess, yet you handed everything that belonged to you over to that impostor like a coward! Do you think she really loves you? She’s only using you, using you to get what she wants!”
Liz’s voice rose.
Her cheeks flushed faintly from emotion.
A sharp pain stabbed through Claire’s chest.
Her hand lifted on instinct.
A crisp crack echoed through the room.
Claire herself was stunned by what she had done.
Her hand hung in mid-air as she stared at the red mark slowly appearing on Liz’s face, her heart full of regret.
Liz froze as well.
She turned her head and looked at Claire in disbelief.
The anger in her eyes was instantly replaced by grief.
“Liz, I… I didn’t mean it.”
Claire’s voice trembled.
Her eyes had grown a little red.
Liz was silent for a while, then slowly turned her head away and would not look at Claire again.
The room fell into a deathly quiet.
Only the sound of their breathing intertwined.
“Leave. I don’t want to see you anymore,” Liz said softly.
Claire opened her mouth, wanting to say something, yet did not know how to begin.
She knew that no matter what she said, she could not make up for the harm she had done to Liz.
She turned silently and walked out of the room one heavy step at a time.
Ophelia was just outside the door.
She gave Claire’s shoulder a light pat.
“There’s a place I want to go. If you have time, come take a walk with me.”
Claire had no mood for wandering right now.
Worse, the wall around her secrets was already crumbling.
If she let Ophelia stay beside her any longer, she could not guarantee what she might say.
I should just say goodbye here, she thought.
They had always had their own things to busy themselves with.
It had always been that way.
In the end, however, she nodded.
They locked the door of the old warehouse and walked together down the narrow passage onto the street.
The surroundings instantly grew much noisier.
“Where are we going now?” Claire asked.
Ophelia pointed at the motorcycle parked by the curb.
Its lines were sleek; the black shell gave off a cold metallic sheen under the streetlamps.
“Wait by the bike for a minute. I need to grab something.”
“Where did the bike come from?” Claire looked at her.
“I requisitioned it from the Chamber when I went to send the blueprints just now. The plan’s already wrecked anyway. Leaving the funds unused would be a waste. Wait here a bit.”
Ophelia waved and walked toward the flower shop across the street.
A short while later she came out carrying two tightly wrapped bouquets.
They were white carnations, the flowers used to mourn the dead.
She fixed the bouquets to the bike, then took a helmet from the hook at the front and held it out to Claire.
Claire took it and put it on.
At the last moment she glanced once more at the empty alley.
The curtains of the room where Liz was had already been drawn.
Ophelia scooted forward to leave Claire enough room.
Claire braced a hand on her shoulder and swung herself lightly into place.
After a brief hesitation she rested one hand on Ophelia’s shoulder and the other on the side of the seat.
Just then the engine roar suddenly burst out.
The throttle had been slammed wide open.
The sudden acceleration made Claire instinctively wrap her arms around Ophelia’s waist.
The motorcycle shot forward.
The wind howled and lifted Claire’s bangs.
Fortunately the helmet held them in place so her hair did not fly into her eyes.
“The ride will be a little long,” Ophelia shouted, her voice scattered by the wind.
There was little traffic.
The scenery on both sides of the street whipped backward.
Once they left the bustling town, the quiet suburban road gave a feeling of clean loneliness.
Racing on a motorcycle was not a new experience for Claire.
The sticky, tangled thoughts of a moment ago were temporarily thrown behind her.
Her mood eased a little.
The gale of the high-speed run made her feel as if the wind had seized her whole body.
Everything seemed lighter.
And there was this perfectly measured cold that froze her fingers stiff.
Indeed, without this cold, without this thread of pain that seeped into the body, it would never have been enough.
Only with pain and punishment can I briefly forget the guilt and sorrow inside.
If someone as willful as Anne knew she thought this way, she would surely burst out laughing and say she was sick.
A limousine with its headlights on passed the motorcycle and vanished in the blink of an eye.
This noisy yet silent world seemed as if it would never change.
The speeding bike, the two of them with their hair streaming behind in the wind, the sky that was pitch-black yet still boundlessly wide, and gust after gust of lonely wind.
There was no need for words to hold anything together.
Here, now, only the world itself existed.
“Are we there yet?”
Claire turned her head slightly and leaned close to Ophelia’s ear so she could be heard.
Ophelia’s mouth curved up a little.
She said mysteriously, “What if I told you we’ve been on the destination the whole time?”
Claire was silent for a beat.
“…I kind of guessed. We really have been riding a long time. This feeling of the wind is pretty exhilarating.”
“I think so too. But there is still a destination, more or less. We’re almost there… Do you feel any better now?”
Ophelia asked as if in passing, glancing back a little to watch Claire’s expression.
“I already told you I feel exhilarated.”
Claire turned Ophelia’s head forward again.
Claire understood perfectly well that was not what the class monitor was asking.
She simply did not want to answer.
“That’s wonderful, then.”
This tacit pretense of talking past each other was the understanding she and the class monitor had always maintained.
Claire’s nose suddenly caught a subtle change.
The briny smell in the air was growing heavier.
The narrow mountain road wound and tightened between rock walls.
The trees along the sides gradually thinned.
Through gaps in the branches she could see the heaving sea under the starry sky, swallowing and throwing back silver foam.
She suddenly realized that in all these years she had never truly looked at the sea.
The sea at night was deeper than the night sky.
Only that dim line of surf kept surging back and forth without tiring.
Now and then a black wave would swallow the white light completely, yet whenever the crash of the surf sounded again the stubborn white line would reappear.
She understood the class monitor’s intention.
If she had been told the destination from the start, or learned the end point along the way, she would probably never have been able to quiet her heart and feel this ride.
For more than ten years she had hoarded every minute and every second like a miser.
Now she was unwilling to waste even a single second.
Yet what had all that frantic rushing actually bought?
Those plans she had exhausted herself making had, in the end, still turned to bubbles.
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