Just a Place Like This

Heiner's face was turned from the moon, so his expression was hard to read. For some reason, the moment Annette heard his voice, the strength left her legs.

Heiner caught her by both arms and held her steady as she staggered. Once she had more or less found her balance, he led her up onto dry land.

Standing on the sand, Annette carefully looked up at him.

In the moonlight, shadows cut along the high bridge of his nose. Pale and beautiful, he looked like a perfectly cast statue.

Receiving her gaze, tension entered his jaw. His gray eyes sank a shade deeper, as if settling into stillness. Annette spoke almost under her breath.

"You're late. I thought you'd come to catch me sooner."

"Put on your shoes and gather your things. At once."

Heiner ordered with a face gone completely hard. She gave a small nod and was about to move when she hesitated. Pain registered belatedly in her foot.

She must have stepped on something; blood was seeping through. Annette considered asking him to bring her shoes. Even so trivial a request was hard to voice.

Watching her, Heiner let out a somewhat irritable sigh.

"Stay right there."

He walked over to where her things lay, picked up the shoes and the paper bag, and held the bag out to her. Annette took it in a daze.

The next instant her body was lifted clean off the ground. Annette let out a short cry and clutched at his coat. Heiner was supporting her under the hips and knees with one arm.

"I can walk...!"

She cried out in fluster, but he made no reply. The seawater-soaked hem of her dress dampened his clothes as well.

"It's not as if I can't walk. Heiner, put me down."

Even after she said it several times, he gave no sign of having heard. At last she gave up and let the tension leave her body.

Holding Annette with one arm and her shoes in the other, Heiner left the beach at a swift pace. In the cold sea wind the moisture slowly dried.

The place he brought her to was a nearby hotel. Even at the entrance he showed no intention of setting her down. Annette twisted a little, trying to free herself.

"Put me down for real now. I'll put my shoes on—"

"Be still."

He cut her off in a grim voice.

Heiner's mood seemed thoroughly foul. Annette looked at the faint veins standing out on his neck and felt puzzled.

Is he angry because I ran away...? Why?

She had not expected anger from him. She had thought that if it were Heiner he would simply have his attendants seize her at once, issue a few warnings, and shut her in a room.

This time I might really end up locked in a mental hospital.

While Annette calmly anticipated what lay ahead, Heiner strode into the hotel.

Under the bright lights she buried her face against his chest, afraid someone might recognize her.

Heiner's distinctive heavy scent thickened all at once. Annette stayed still with her nose pressed into him. She felt his body stiffen faintly.

Heiner would dislike it, but there was nothing for it. He was the one who had refused her request to be set down. If he hated the closeness, he need only put her down.

Yet he only hardened his mouth a little; he did not set her down.

Having received the key to a vacant room at the front desk, Heiner boarded the elevator. They exchanged no conversation until they reached the room.

The moment he entered, Heiner roughly tossed the shoes aside. He snatched the paper bag from Annette and set it down as if throwing it. Her handbag, which had been inside, half spilled out.

Seeing that black handbag, Heiner frowned.

"What were you thinking, leaving that on the sand for someone to steal?"

"...You're right."

She had not thought of it. It was foolish, but it was true. Annette had never once considered that someone might "steal" her belongings.

Stealing another's things was an extremely uncultured and vulgar act. She had never even imagined such a thing. Having lacked for nothing, she had never had occasion to steal.

Moreover, Annette had always gone about with attendants. Of course they had watched her luggage. It was a detail she had never needed to concern herself with.

While she was lost in this belated realization and shock, Heiner carried her into the bathroom.

He pushed the tin bathtub against the wall and set Annette down inside it. She stood leaning against the wall, holding her injured foot slightly raised.

"...I'll wash myself."

At those words Heiner stared blankly at her face for a moment. Then he abruptly turned and left the bathroom. He did not close the door.

Annette hesitated briefly, then hiked up her skirt and washed only her legs and feet.

Judging by the open door, that seemed to be what he meant. Besides, with no hot water a full bath looked difficult anyway.

The sand and clotted blood washed away in the water. The wound was deeper than she had thought. Once she confirmed it with her eyes, the pain she had forgotten came flooding back. Annette deliberately turned her gaze away from the injury.

From the entrance of the room outside she heard Heiner speaking with someone. It seemed to be his attendant. Annette hastily dried herself with a towel.

When she came out of the bathroom, Heiner had already lit the kerosene stove and even laid out the first-aid kit. He gestured with his eyes for her to come sit.

As Annette carefully sat on the bed, Heiner examined the wound on her foot with a silent face. The hand that cradled her foot felt especially large and hot.

Annette found the situation somehow so embarrassing she could hardly bear it.

They were husband and wife, yet they had never once properly faced each other's bodies. It was only a foot, but it was mortifying all the same.

Heiner's face remained hard. The sequence of disinfecting the wound, applying medicine, and wrapping the bandage looked as familiar as an old habit.

As he tied off the bandage, Heiner spoke in a cold tone.

"Just what were you thinking."

"..."

"Was coming to a place like this so important that you had to give your attendants the slip?"

"..."

"Why—did you arrange to meet Ansgar Stetter here?"

Heiner, kneeling on one knee on the floor, looked up at her with eyes full of anger. Yet there was no force at all in the hand holding her small foot.

"...A place like this."

Annette quietly opened her mouth.

"You're right. Just a place like this."

Their locked gazes sent a small ripple through the air. Annette tilted her head.

"I found myself wondering why I should need your permission to come to just a place like this."

"Permission or not, have you forgotten you're the wife of the supreme commander? Wandering around without attendants—are you in your right mind?"

"That's why I said we should divorce. Because I don't want to be the supreme commander's wife anymore."

"So this was your act of rebellion for a divorce?"

"Not exactly. I just... wanted to see the sea."

Heiner let out a hollow breath and set her foot down on the floor.

"Well, it didn't seem like you simply came to look."

"..."

"Were you planning to go swimming in the sea at this hour of night?"

"Th—!"

Annette opened her mouth at random, but no suitable answer came to mind. She closed her mouth again in the end.

Annette herself did not really know why she had done it. It was not as if she had intended to drown right then and there. But whether she had intended to live... she was not sure of that either.

"...I just wanted to soak my legs, that's all."

After some thought, Annette simply answered that way. She felt no reason to explain to him her present mood, her feelings, the chaos in her head.

Heiner lifted one corner of his mouth with an expression of some unfathomable obstinacy.

"Of course."

He spoke slowly, as if convincing himself.

"You're afraid of so many things. Afraid of the dark, afraid of high places... afraid of water."

Annette quietly looked at him. Heiner's words were half right and half wrong.

She was still afraid of many things. But the examples he had mentioned belonged to the past.

Annette no longer feared the dark. Now she preferred dark places to bright ones—places where no one could see her.

She no longer feared high places either. Seeing how she had gone into the water earlier without much hesitation, she must have stopped fearing water as well.

What the present Annette feared was of a somewhat different kind.

"You're afraid of all sorts of trifling things... yet you don't worry in the least about what might happen to you without attendants. Every time it's like this, I've always hated you."

"..."

"That naive thinking of yours that can't even entertain the possibility someone might steal your things—"

"..."

"The world has changed, but you are the same. Infuriatingly so—you've changed not at all. You're still that disgusting woman from back then."

Heiner finished speaking as if chewing each word and spitting it out. Even after pouring it all out, his face was not the least bit relieved.

What a long-held grudge this must be, Annette thought blankly. One side of her chest ached as if something had gnawed it away, yet her mind remained calm, as if broken.

Annette reflected anew. How long had his hatred lasted? Exactly when had it begun? From the first moment we saw each other? Or even before we knew of each other's existence?

"...Heiner."

And after all—

"I must have amused you."

Looking at my love, what on earth had he been thinking?