Living Inside the Painting
"……What did you just say?"
Thud—
As the tangled knot of thread finally came loose, I understood at last what this familiarity, lingering since the very beginning, truly was.
I'm inside the painting.
And yet my grip on reality still dragged along the floor.
"Something that impossible couldn't actually—"
Camille's large hand settled over the back of mine as I murmured, drawn by the warmth of that touch, I came back to myself as though surfacing from deep water — and found those familiar, gentle eyes fixed entirely on me.
"Your longing made a miracle."
"A… miracle?"
"Do you really need to think so hard about it? Whatever the reason, here I am — alive, in front of you."
And then he gave me the words I had wanted most of all to hear.
"Aub. You are my salvation."
"……I'm… your salvation?"
"Yes."
His voice seeped slowly into my ears.
"So don't think about anything. Just stay here and play with me."
By the time I gathered my wits, he had somehow already wrapped his arms around my shoulders from behind. Just as I tried to summon every last shred of wariness, a low voice spilled from lips pressed close against my ear.
"Forget the outside world. All you need to focus on is the two of us."
The sweetness of it clouded my mind all over again.
"There's still so much we haven't tried together."
"Ah…."
Camille drew me up from my seat and, taking my hand in his, led me outside.
A wide field of flowers stretched before us. A cool wind scattered my hair, and Camille's back, walking ahead with my hand in his, filled my entire vision.
"You love flowers, don't you?"
He glanced back suddenly, the corners of his eyes curving as he murmured, "We'll stay together here in our own greenhouse, for the rest of our lives."
"In our own… greenhouse…."
For someone who had never once imagined a future with another person, those words were like sugar dissolving on the tip of my tongue.
No — in truth, it wasn't even a question worth deliberating.
Who in the real world has ever needed me?
If not Camille, then who, exactly?
Right. There was no reason to go back.
There's no need to think about anything else. I just have to stay here, like Camille says.
I strolled through the flower field at his side. The scenery was more beautiful than anything I could have believed I'd painted myself.
"Far better than reality, isn't it?"
"……Yes. It's like a dream."
"Then enjoy it freely. Everything here exists for you."
Camille approached with a smile as radiant as the blossoms, plucked a single wildflower, and carefully tucked it into my hair.
"You look beautiful."
But wait — has he always spoken so casually with me?
"Aub, come here."
That fleeting doubt was washed away almost before it formed, and I, as if enchanted, willingly followed wherever Camille led.
The previous Duke Ortega had two sons.
Camille, the eldest, born of his wife Belladonna. And Claude, the illegitimate son born of a maid's body.
The difference in their ages was a mere two years. So it went without saying that Belladonna, upon learning of Claude's existence, flew into a towering rage — no one needed to witness it to imagine.
And just as surely, Claude earned Belladonna's hatred, and at the age of eight he was sent away to the Western Territory.
For Claude, who had grown up there all those years, he had never entertained a single hope of returning to the main house.
…Not until the day his own half-brother, Camille Ortega, died on the day of his coming-of-age ceremony.
"Do not presume you will inherit this family."
His mother, whom he faced for the first time in years, had withered like an old tree drained of every drop of moisture. Even so, her eyes still smoldered with a vicious, poisonous resentment.
"I summoned you here for one reason only — I needed an insurance policy to carry me through an unsettled period. You have exactly one duty. Stay out of trouble, and live like a dead man. Nothing more."
"Ha…."
"Otherwise I will cast you back to the Western Territory. Do you understand?"
Claude let out a sigh, dragged a rough hand through his black hair, and slumped back against his chair.
"Yes."
A careless, throwaway answer. He said nothing more, merely turning his gaze to the window as though the sight of her wearied him.
Not that I ever hoped for anything — but I didn't expect her to be quite so shameless.
His eyes were far sharper than Camille's had ever been, and now, like a golden rose frozen before it could bloom, they sank cold and still.
Life in the Western Territory hadn't been so terrible for Claude.
Oh, in the beginning he'd been scorned for his illegitimate blood, but before long he had firmly established himself as the young lord of the region, and his days there were busy ones.
Of all times to summon me — the busiest season of the year — and then tell me to do nothing but sit here and rot.
Irritation seethed in his chest.
The fields had to be tilled before spring came. Once the ground hardened over winter had been broken apart again, the season for sowing seed would arrive before long. And to be dragged away at such a crucial time, only to be used like a dog guarding an empty estate!
City folk. Every last one of them is exactly like this.
Claude wanted nothing more than to flip the table and go home, but he couldn't. Belladonna had made her threat plain: defy her orders, and the funding to the Western Territory would be cut off.
Camille's death — I'd wager it was this woman's doing as well.
Claude slid her an openly derisive glance, making no effort whatsoever to hide his expression.
The frosty standoff between mother and son, reunited after so long, was abruptly shattered by a commotion from the corridor.
"What is the meaning of this?"
"F-forgive me, my lady. One of the maids has suddenly started causing a scene—"
"I have an urgent message for Lady Belladonna! It will only take a moment!"
"H-how can you—! I said you cannot go in there!"
"Iik, move! Lady Belladonna! Lady Belladonna!"
From among the maids trying to bar the way, one burst through with her hair in complete disarray. On closer look, she was missing a shoe.
"And who might you be?"
Belladonna narrowed her eyes at the maid who had dared interrupt, her gaze glacial. But the girl paid that icy stare no mind and dropped to her knees, shouting with every ounce of strength she had left.
"The Madam — the Madam has vanished!"
The Madam?
Claude, who had been observing the scene with idle interest, raised an eyebrow.
Come to think of it, I did hear that my brother had taken a wife.
For all that he carried the Ortega name, not a single marriage offer had ever circulated around Camille, so Claude had assumed the man would live out his days beneath Belladonna's skirts. The sudden news of a wedding had struck him as genuinely strange.
"He — he was always in the atelier, but when I went this morning, he wasn't there—!"
Watching her trembling on the verge of tears, Claude frowned.
The brother dead, and now his wife vanished.
"Well, that's convenient. I was just wondering how to dispose of something that has no further use."
And then Belladonna, just as expected, without sparing the girl so much as a glance. A perfect three-part harmony.
This household never changes.
Claude swallowed his curse.
"……I beg your pardon?"
At his mother's flat words, the maid's eyes went wide with shock.
"If she has not returned within the week, clear out her room."
"W-wait a moment. How can you say such a—!"
"Evelyn. Remove her."
At the name, the woman standing behind Belladonna bowed her head in silence.
"Lady Belladonna!"
The maid was seized by the others and dragged bodily from the room. The way she kept shouting to the very end, even through that frosty indifference — young as she was, she was a fairly capable girl.
Meanwhile, Belladonna took a sip of her tea and spoke again.
"A room has been prepared for you in the annex. The place you stayed as a child will suit you better, I imagine?"
…Right. We were still in the middle of that conversation. The absurdity of watching his mother erase a maid from existence mid-sentence wrung a bitter laugh out of him.
"Ah, that cramped little room."
At the defiant reply, Belladonna's fingertips paused for just a moment.
"……And yet I thought that at eighteen, you might have grown somewhat more mature. I was mistaken."
"I grew up without parents. You know that better than anyone."
"We would do best not to cross paths. Take your meals separately, in your room."
"I intended to do exactly that. I have a delicate stomach."
The distance between them was a chasm that no bridge would ever span.
Claude rose from his seat wearing a sour smile, and looked down at his mother without so much as bowing his head.
"Still, you're remarkable, Mother. Your talent for throwing people away is as consistent now as it ever was."
"……"
"Let's see how long you can keep living like that."
He left those cold words behind like a declaration of war. And to the retreating figure of her departing son, Belladonna never once turned her eyes.
I began living inside the painting with Camille.
How many days has it been already?
The thought drifted through my mind now and then, but there was no need to count. Reality no longer mattered to me.
"Aub! Look at this — there are flowers blooming on the trees too!"
"How pretty."
"Shall we walk all the way to the edge today?"
"Yes."
Camille was there beside me.
His smiling at me, his speaking to me, his reaching out his hand to me — that alone was enough. As if it were the very reason I existed at all.
I'm happy. I wish this moment could last forever.
Forgetting, even, that earnest wishes like that had always betrayed me — I prayed anyway.