To My First Love, With Regret - 63

The man showed no sign of surprise at running into her. Instead, he exuded an arrogant composure, as if he had been waiting for the exact moment Eve would descend to the lobby.

Is he stalking me now?

Eve was seized by a sense of crisis; her last sanctuary, the studio, was at risk of being occupied by Ethan Fairchild.

Should I move the studio? I have to hide the paintings first.

Fortunately, she hadn’t signed any of them. While her heart pulled her back toward the studio, Eve’s body moved in the opposite direction. Like a mother bird willingly throwing herself out as bait to lure a predator away from the nest, she headed as far from the studio as possible.

She ignored him coldly, her pace quick. But the short strides of a woman could not outrun the long legs of a man. Ethan caught up to her in a mere three steps, as if mocking his fleeing prey.

—I wonder why a Lady would come to this shabby hotel when she has a grand mansion right in front of her….

If Eve were to ask what he was doing there—though she never would—Ethan would have replied that he was meeting a client. It wasn’t a lie.

Earlier that day, while discussing important business in the first-floor cafe, he had seen Eve enter the hotel alone. The elevator she took stopped at the top floor, a floor with no cafes or restaurants.

She went to a guest room….

Did she have a secret lover? According to what Ethan had learned through experience, a burning, restless desire lived inside Evelyn Sherwood. There was no way she was handling that fierce fire alone. Surely, there was a man somewhere who received that passion.

I’d love to see the face of the bastard.

It felt like drinking a poisoned chalice of his own making, yet he couldn’t resist. Ethan had abandoned his business meeting and followed Eve to the top floor.

However, there was no room leaking the sound of her voice or the noises of a tryst. No lover appeared late to the meeting.

Above all, Eve herself didn’t come out. Not for half the day.

Ethan had waited persistently on the top floor even after the sun went down. Eve finally appeared only when he was forced to go down to the lobby to use the telephone. Alone.

What on earth did you do in a hotel room all day?

The unresolved question became an obsession, and the obsession led to action. Without hesitation, he reached out and wound his fingers through the hair of the woman who was walking away without so much as a glance.

Eve was horrified by the rude gesture, but before anger could take hold, a cold shiver of dread ran down her spine.

Ethan didn’t pull her hair violently. He simply gathered it gently and brought it to his nose. Then, like a hunting dog catching a scent to track an animal, he inhaled deeply.

Even in that moment, the man’s smoldering eyes pierced straight into Eve’s. It was a silent declaration of war: Whatever your secret is, I will dig it out.

Ethan’s brow furrowed sharply. Did he smell the paint and turpentine?

The moment Eve instinctively recoiled, her black hair slid through his fingers. But it was likely too late. Ethan was staring at her with eyes that were suspicious yet intrigued.

—Did you bathe in perfume…? At least your hair isn’t wet.

Eve let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, masking the sigh of relief with a dry chuckle. Fortunately, he didn’t know.

On the other hand, the chuckle was almost deserved. To think he suspected her of a secret tryst. She couldn’t understand the contradiction of this man who had abandoned her, yet still displayed such possessiveness.

She had to escape this confusing man immediately. Eve hurried toward the hotel’s main entrance where a taxi was waiting, but she was forced to stop. Ethan had leaned down, thrusting his face inches from her nose. He stared at her tenaciously with eyes full of a persistent, uncomfortable curiosity—one different from malice—and asked:

—But… have you been crying?

Ethan did not miss the way the woman’s eyes darted away like someone whose secret had been struck.

She really was crying.

From the moment she reappeared in the lobby, he had felt a sense of dissonance, a feeling that Eve was different from her usual self. Now that he looked closer, he saw it. The area around her eyes was red and raw.

To Ethan, Evelyn Sherwood was the most difficult contradiction to grasp. She was certainly a burning flame, yet she was colder than anyone else. Because of that, she was the being furthest removed from tears.

Such a woman had shed tears. Why? The trace of that weakness—something he had never seen before—stuck to Ethan’s mind like a parasite and refused to let go.

—Why were you crying?

Eve ignored the question and tried to climb into the back seat of the taxi.

SLAM!

Ethan roughly slammed the door the taxi driver had opened, thwarting Eve’s escape. Blocking her remaining path of retreat, the man asked again in a voice that was unbelievably calm, yet carried a stubborn, persistent edge.

—Have you eaten dinner?

Ethan asked, even though he knew she hadn’t. Not a single room service cart had visited her floor, and the hotel restaurant’s lights had long since been extinguished.

—How about a drink instead?

He gestured with his chin toward the bar adjacent to the lobby. The woman didn’t answer; she simply stared at him. In that moment, Ethan felt a faint spark of excitement flicker within him.

For the first time in a very long while, those mysterious eyes—usually frosted over with hatred, contempt, or guardedness—held a different kind of light. A pure curiosity, as if asking, Why? This was Evelyn Sherwood wondering about him.

Yes, it was that exact look. The look of the woman Ethan had loved before he had been wretchedly abandoned.

Eve still seemed to be measuring him, but her guard lowered ever so slightly as she tested him with a question.

—Are you trying to comfort me?

—Yes.

Ethan gave a bitter smile. Comforting the woman who threw me away. To be this generous was his true nature, yet that woman and her family had trampled upon it and turned him into a monster. Nevertheless, Ethan Fairchild still knew how to show mercy.

But it was Eve’s arrogant retort that shattered Ethan’s self-indulgent moment.

—And how, exactly, are you supposed to be a comfort to me?

In an instant, the smile vanished from Ethan’s face.

—Ethan, what on earth made you think that looking at your face would make me feel better?

It would have been better if her voice had been laced with resentment. Instead, Eve spoke with a sense of pure, detached wonder—like a doctor observing the bizarre behavior of a psychiatric patient. That innocence stripped away Ethan’s shallow vanity in the most humiliating way possible.

—Yes, well… my apologies, Your damn Ladyship. I’m sorry for daring to thrust this lowly face of mine into your sight.

—That’s not what I meant.

Eve didn’t rise to his outburst. She merely sighed as if he were pathetic, making him feel like a fool.

—Humans think with themselves at the center of their own world.

Eve’s cold, clinical analysis was like placing Ethan on a freezing metal dissecting table. She didn’t give him a chance to flee; she sliced straight through his heart with a razor-sharp blade.

—I suppose seeing me makes you feel good?

Ethan couldn’t answer. Like a body pinned to that table with everything exposed, he couldn’t even reach out to stop her as she brushed past him and climbed into the taxi.

Before the door closed, the eyes that searched him one last time were once again filled with contempt.

Even after the taxi disappeared, Ethan couldn’t move for a long time. Her final question echoed in his ears like a curse.

I suppose seeing me makes you feel good?

Ethan rubbed his face roughly with one hand. But no matter how hard he rubbed, this wretched emotion wouldn’t wash away like a simple stain. It was a brand seared into a heart that even all his scars couldn’t cut out.

—God dammit….

In the end, Ethan Fairchild was nothing but a fool suffering from an incurable mental illness.

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By mid-July, the fields atop the White Cliffs had become a kingdom of wind.

The gusts were too fierce to fly a kite. Having given up on the endeavor, the man and the boy lay side-by-side in the middle of a sea of long grass that billowed like waves.

From here, the war felt like something happening in another world. Yet, in truth, this place was currently the eye of the storm—closer to the vortex of conflict than anywhere else.

BOOM!

As if answering Ethan’s thoughts, a sharp explosion of artillery tore through the silence. At the anti-aircraft battery in front of the castle—which looked as small as a toy from this distance—the men were in the middle of a heated drill.

The enemy is taking the long way around… coming across the entire continent?

Ethan was brooding over the incomprehensible orders arriving daily from high command when a single white dot appeared beyond their field of vision. It cut across the sky with a speed and directness that was far too deliberate to be a seagull.