Second Best

Heiner gazed at the calling card for a moment, yet showed surprisingly little reaction. He simply slipped it into his trouser pocket rather than his bag.

An uncomfortable silence settled between them. Fidgeting with her teacup, Annette finally opened her mouth, hesitant.

"…About Ansgar."

Heiner's hand, in the middle of returning his belongings to his bag, stilled for the briefest instant. Then, as if nothing had happened, he closed the bag with a natural motion and lifted his head.

"If I were to follow him."

Eyes lowered, Annette continued quietly.

"Could that become a second-best option for me? I'm not saying I will follow him. I simply… wanted to know what you thought."

"I have no idea what answer you're hoping to hear from me."

"Is there a royalist restoration faction in France?"

At the blunt question, Heiner's eyes narrowed slightly.

"Heiner, you know, don't you?"

"Did Ansgar Stetter say that to you? That there is a restoration faction in France, so you should come with him?"

"No. I thought of it myself. Ansgar only asked me to go with him."

"And while thinking that, what is your reason for asking me?"

"I'm informing you. That I have nothing to hide from you, and that I won't slip away after Ansgar in secret."

The content asserted her innocence, yet her voice held little urgency. On Heiner's face as he listened, no particular emotion rose.

"…Second best. It could be."

After a moment's thought, he spoke in a dry tone.

"In the past Ansgar Stetter harbored feelings for you, and he remains unmarried now. And if, as you suspect, there is a restoration faction in France, they would treat you with a fair amount of regard. But I can't guarantee it. Your reputation inside Padania is the worst, so they might decide you have little use."

Heiner paused briefly, then formed a smile without warmth.

"You said there was nowhere left to be happy, yet it seems a place has appeared that will take you in after all. Though it's a useless hypothesis either way."

"As I said, I won't follow Ansgar. My guess could be wrong. Only…"

Annette continued in a careful tone.

"Only if you happened not to know… that is, the possibility of a restoration faction inside France… I simply wanted to tell you. Of course, someone like you may already have known—"

"Telling me that brings you no benefit whatsoever."

His informer-like gray eyes slid slowly downward, then rose again. The ends of his hair, backlit, looked faintly yellowed.

Annette gave a bitter smile.

"Wasn't it for the sake of building a better world that you all worked so hard?"

Was the present world better than the one before? Annette could not feel it. The changed world had been far too cruel to her.

Yet people said the world had become much better, and would grow better still.

Then those words must be right. She was an unwise, foolish woman. She had never judged for herself, and even if she tried to judge now, that judgment would be the wrong one.

The things she had said to Annelie Engels had been sincere as well. Annette respected the cause of those who sought to change the world—even if that cause had been endlessly merciless toward her.

Even if she could never share it.

Feelings like vengeance or resentment had long since vanished. Like ashes left after a fire had burned itself out, they had become only old scars.

In the quiet, the sound of Heiner's breathing could be heard. Even and regular, like his temperament.

"…I never once asked you for that kind of agreement."

After a stretch of silence, Heiner set a hand on the blanket. Then he leaned his upper body closer to her. As his severe-looking face drew near, Annette shrank her shoulders a little.

A chill voice descended.

"Don't think about anything, Annette. Just live as things flow."

"…"

"That's what you're good at."

She was clearly the one being mocked, yet somehow Heiner wore the eyes of a man who had been wounded. He erased the look at once and spoke again with a face returned to cold clarity.

"I know better than you do how much Ansgar Stetter wanted you. If you hadn't married me, he would have become your husband. I do not believe what you say."

"I never loved him."

"Since when did the marriages of high-minded nobles rest on love alone?"

Heiner's words were not wrong. The two of them, who had loved each other and married after a courtship, had been the unusual case. In truth, even that had been a lie.

The tea had already gone cold. Annette murmured low.

"Whether you believe it or not, I mean it."

If following Ansgar was a second-best choice, she already knew what the best one was.

Two unreadable gazes tangled. Annette took another sip of tea, then set the cup on the side table.

"I'm tired. I want to sleep now."

As if to confirm whether the words were true, Heiner looked down at her face for a long moment. When Annette turned her head away, he withdrew his upper body.

Annette rolled onto her side and lay down. Heiner extinguished the gas lamp, and darkness dropped over the room in an instant.

Behind her came the rustle of someone settling into bed. Annette closed her eyes and tried to sleep. The two bodies that did not touch cooled slowly, like the tea.

In the pale light of dawn, Heiner pushed himself upright in bed. Light seeping through the incompletely closed curtains washed the mattress in a wan glow.

Without a sound he drew back the covers and looked at the woman lying apart from him. Annette, who had seemed unable to fall asleep until late, was by now sunk deep in slumber.

Her face was buried in the quilt, body curled tightly. The white blanket rose and fell in small, regular breaths.

Without quite meaning to, Heiner leaned closer. Between her hair and the bedding, a cheek pale as blank paper was exposed.

He almost brought his hand to it, then stopped. With the hand he had withdrawn he scrubbed dryly over his face.

Uncomfortable. I should simply have taken a separate room…

Sharing a bed with Annette after so long. He had originally meant to take another room, yet for some reason he had felt uneasy.

Exactly what made him uneasy, even Heiner himself did not know.

He forced from his mind the image of the woman submerged in seawater. Rising from the bed without a sound, he walked toward the coat rack.

As he took a cigar from the inner pocket of his coat, Heiner's gaze suddenly fixed on one spot. The pocket of Annette's cardigan hanging beside it was bulging.

He drew out what was inside. Something flashed faintly in the dark. He thought it might be jewels, but looking closer he saw they were nothing but useless fragments.

What is all this trash?

So that was what she had been so earnestly gathering. Only this.

For some reason his mood soured. Heiner dumped them into the wastebasket and stepped out onto the balcony. In the open air his breathing grew a little freer.

Heiner could not remain long in dark, closed spaces. His condition had improved enough that it was no longer completely impossible, yet the sense of being driven onto the back foot mentally remained the same.

It was because of the memories of the torture chamber.

The only one who knew this fact was his psychiatrist. Everyone else who might have known had died long ago.

Cold night wind scattered his hair. Heiner stared at the sea sunk in darkness with the unlit cigar between his lips. From far off came the layered sound of waves breaking.

He was not a heavy smoker. It had been quite some time since he quit, yet when his mind grew tangled, holding a cigar between his teeth made his thoughts feel a little dulled. Even without lighting it.

Psychological, is it?

Heiner had seen many such psychological patterns. People who complained of pain in a leg amputated long ago. Or in wartime, when medicine ran short, those given fake pills who then truly believed the medicine was working.

He rolled his eyes downward to look at the cigar in his mouth. A pale brown stick came into view.

He had quit smoking six years earlier. The period when he began courting Annette. She had never shown any particular aversion to the smoke or the smell, yet he had voluntarily given up cigars.

Now there was no longer any need to look good for her, so no need to stay quit. Yet Heiner still could not bring himself to start again. Because…

The thought reached that far, and Heiner faintly frowned. He clicked his tongue softly and rested his arms on the railing.

"You must have found me truly ridiculous."

If only that had been the case, he would not have felt this filthy.

No matter how hard he dragged her down and trampled her—was the fact that she still looked so damnably noble your problem, or mine?

Heiner wore a bitter smile. He had wrestled with the question for a very long time and still could reach no conclusion.

Annette Valdemar.

You touch the lowest and most fragile part of me.

You make me endlessly wretched.

At the very least, this is your problem and your fault.

Heiner took the cigar from his mouth and straightened. He turned and stepped back into the room. After returning the cigar to the inner pocket of his coat, he looked for a moment into the wastebasket.

The things Annette had gathered had lost their sparkle and lay hushed in the dark.

"Anyway, my heart isn't particularly useful."

Your heart is not useless.

Heiner moved his lips silently.

He wanted her to feel the despair of a heart that would never be repaid. He wanted her to suffer over a reality she could not reach. And even so, he wanted her to be wretched because that heart would not fold.

Just as he once had.

So at least for Heiner, her heart was necessary.

With a sunken face he lifted his head. After confirming that Annette still slept, he quietly entered the bathroom.

When he turned the faucet, cold water poured out. He stood motionless for a while with his fingertips in the running stream.

It felt as though the trash she had picked up on the beach was rattling around inside his body.