Episode 53 (Helena’s POV): “My Everything”
“Mom, you’ll get to see Dad again soon. I’ll take care of Mary, so you and Dad can go out together, just the two of you!”
“Mary’s gonna be good with big brother!”
Standing on either side of her, the words from her son and daughter nearly brought her to tears — happiness and helplessness tangled together in equal measure.
About a month had passed since her husband died from a spreading illness.
More than anyone, she was the one who hadn’t managed to make peace with it.
(Getting to see him again, someone who’s dead… it’s like some kind of dream…)
Her hands and feet trembled with tension. Taking a deep breath, she slowly sank down to crouch on the floor.
Click — the door opened with a small sound.
Reddish-brown hair, sun-tanned skin, eyes with a slight upward slant.
No one would ever call him especially charming, by any honest measure. And yet she’d loved the way he smiled softly all the same.
Standing up in a rush, she went to him at a near-run.
Even up close, he looked exactly like the real thing.
“Helena. It’s been a while. And… I’m sorry.”
Kevin tilted his head and smiled, holding out his hand.
His voice, his gestures, the way he laughed — every bit of it was exactly as she remembered.
(No. If I see that face, I’ll, I’ll…)
The strength drained from her entire body all at once.
Kevin gently caught her as she nearly collapsed.
Behind him, Fiine’s figure blurred through her tears.
Magic that could bring back the dead for a single day — she’d wondered if it might all be some kind of scam.
And yet she’d chosen to place the commission regardless, because she’d wanted so desperately to see him again.
“Why, why…”
She knew she shouldn’t say it. She knew, and yet her mouth moved on its own.
Maybe it was the toll of holding herself together as a mother ever since he’d died, finally catching up with her.
The moment he stood in front of her, she found herself slipping back into something closer to a young girl’s heart.
“Why did you go and leave me behind…?”
Meeting Kevin had been an accident.
Back when he’d owned nothing more than a small plot of farmland, he’d traveled to the royal capital to sell vegetables, and happened to speak to Helena, then traveling herself.
Kevin, a poor farmer, and Helena, a sheltered daughter of a middle-class merchant father.
She’d known full well the difference in their stations — and yet, worn down by his earnest, persistent courting, she’d been the one to fall for him in the end.
To Helena, he had been her everything.
The first person she’d ever fallen in love with. The one who taught her how to defy her own parents on her own terms. The person she trusted more than anyone, the one she’d wanted to build a family with.
Don’t die before me, she used to say, half-joking.
Because she’d felt, somehow, that if he ever disappeared, she wouldn’t be able to stand on her own two feet properly again.
And yet, after his death, following after him had never once been an option.
Because of their precious children. The important things she and her beloved had built together.
“I didn’t want you to die, I didn’t want you to go…!! I’m lonely, I’m so lonely…”
Tears spilled without end.
As a mother, she didn’t want to show a pathetic side of herself. She wanted to be the one keeping her anxious children steady after losing their father.
“…Helena.”
(Because my body remembers — that if I cry, you’ll hold me gently.)
Wrapped in his strong arms, Helena cried for a while.
◆
“Mom. Go ahead and go out. I’ll watch Mary.”
“…Adam.”
“But come back before nighttime, okay? I’ve got things I need Dad to teach me.”
Leaving the children behind to go out with Kevin — what kind of parent did that make her?
A voice inside her head kept accusing her of exactly that.
And yet she couldn’t bring herself to resist the temptation standing right in front of her.
“…Let’s all eat dinner together as a family.”
Saying it in a trembling voice, the girl who called herself the magic doll shop’s assistant thumped her own chest with a bright smile.
“Leave the kids to me. I’ll watch them properly!”
I could’ve managed on my own, though, Adam grumbled, sulking.
Watching him, Kevin let out a soft chuckle.
“Alright. Adam, I’m counting on you for Mary. Your father’s got a date with your mother today.”
“Okay!”
Kevin ruffled Adam’s hair with his large hand.
Mary pushed her own head forward, demanding the same, and Kevin and Adam patted her head together at the same time.
(I never thought I’d get to see this sight again.)
Something so ordinary, and yet something lost forever.
Emotion welled up inside her. She wanted to rail against some unreasonable god, demanding to know why it had ever needed to be taken away at all.
“Helena. Shall we go?”
But right now, more than complaining, all she wanted was to lean on him completely, just this once.
“Yes…!!”
Answering loudly, Helena threw her arms around Kevin’s arm.