Chapter 93
**CHAPTER TITLE: The Truth I Could No Longer Ignore**
I had been here before.
When I first entered the purifier’s quarters, I had seen walls that were so gorgeously decorated they hurt my eyes. The accommodations built by the Kingdom Alliance for the purifiers who carried away the kingdom’s bounty.
Naturally, this place was the most ornate, immaculate, and comfortable within the fortress.
The moment I stepped inside, Michael felt an instinctive discomfort settle in his chest.
The temple where he had once lived was grand, yes, thanks to the faith of its believers. But it had been devoid of any ornaments, austere and cramped.
‘Still… Irene must have been comfortable here.’
Even so lavish a place, her room would have been just as large and beautiful as the others.
While lost in that thought, he followed the maid.
Slowly, the scenery around him changed.
The bright, clean wallpaper gave way to narrower walls. The carpeted floor became creaking wooden boards. The windows that once flooded the room with light grew smaller and smaller. Beyond them, the vast fortress gardens were replaced by the bare wall of a side building.
Michael’s footsteps faltered as the view grew increasingly dilapidated.
Then a strange realization struck him.
This place… he had seen it before.
And he was standing in this very room.
From behind him, the maid spoke softly.
“The remaining luggage is almost nothing. There’s only this one small bag. If you wish to discard anything, we can—”
“There is nothing to discard.”
Discard? How could he possibly throw away anything she had touched?
Michael’s face remained cold as he spoke flatly.
The maid startled, stammering, and hurriedly offered to fetch him whatever he needed before fleeing the room.
Alone in the middle of the chamber, Michael looked around.
Because the room was so small, he could see everything by simply turning his head.
He understood now that this cramped space was not new to him.
‘That day…!’
He clamped his mouth shut.
The path had felt strangely familiar.
Why had he never remembered it until now?
‘That day… that room.’
He had been consumed by a feverish search for Irene, believing it a hallucination.
The room in his memory was this one. The hurried escape route he had taken after dressing—barely moments ago, that was the very path he had walked.
Michael had been completely unaware of this place until seconds earlier.
The shock of realizing the contract he had broken with Irene for the rest of his life—alongside the horror of the demonic energy that had once claimed him—had erased the memory from his mind.
“Quickly… clean… up…”
Shaken to the core, Michael muttered in a trembling voice.
Irene’s room was impeccably tidy.
The bedding on the bed was neatly folded. On the table sat a single flower that had clearly been placed there long ago, its stem snapped off and stuck into a cracked glass vase.
Apart from that, the room contained no decorations whatsoever.
And the air inside was so bitterly cold that his breath formed visible clouds whenever he exhaled.
If it were not for the faint light filtering through a palm-sized window, there would have been no warmth to be felt at all.
How could the room be this frigid when Irene had stayed here only yesterday?
Michael’s gaze moved to the neatly arranged bedding.
He reached out and touched the quilt.
It was clean, yet the hem was worn smooth from years of use.
But what truly unsettled him was the thickness of it.
The quilt she had covered herself with until yesterday was absurdly thin.
Even the temple’s adherents, who lived by the virtue of poverty, would not have used such a garment in this season.
And yet she had used it here.
For a long time Michael stared blankly at the quilt.
Then he turned away and opened her bag.
“Clothes… there should be some warm ones… somewhere…”
The words died on his lips.
Because the room contained almost nothing, the bag should have held something.
But when he opened it, the contents were no richer than the room itself.
A few thin garments. A small wallet. A bundle of papers. A worn book that looked as if it had been discarded. And a pair of old shoes wrapped carefully in cloth.
That was everything Irene had possessed.
Michael could not understand the situation at all.
Even if rations were scarce, the number of dungeons he had cleared was several times that of other knights.
So there was never any shortage of money.
Yet she had always been unusually sensitive about it.
Even if she had been driven by obsession, she would have been collecting to spend, not simply to hoard.
But she had never once appeared well-off.
Even in her final moments.
Back then, too overwhelmed to think, when he had embraced her freezing body at the dungeon entrance, she had worn clothes far too thin for the season.
So was he now searching the bag for even one thicker garment?
Because she had looked so terribly cold as she lay there.
Michael stared at the pitiful bag and murmured.
“…Why?”
Had she lived in a place like this?
Why had she not been in some splendid, beautiful residence like the other purifiers?
Why had she worn such a quilt and such thin clothes?
The belated questions kept rising in his mind.
As a pair, he could have asked anything he wanted.
Or even without being paired, a passing acquaintance would have allowed him to ask such a question.
Yet despite holding those suspicions, he had never once questioned Irene.
Now he knew why.
He had simply not wanted to know her better.
Even from afar, she had held his gaze and his heart captive.
After clearing the dungeons, whenever she coughed once on the return journey, Michael would lie awake worrying that she might be coming down with a cold.
Once, before sleep, he had even forgotten his prayers.
That was why he had desperately tried not to care.
Because even the smallest fact about her could steal every thought from him.
The fear of that knowledge had terrified him.
His heart had already been taken by her beyond his control.
So it was no wonder that discovering even one small detail about her had made him act like an idiot.
That was why he had deliberately asked nothing…
‘When I returned to the fortress, I told myself I would ask soon.’
The memory surfaced—the restlessness that had gripped him alone on the way back.
Throughout the journey, he had been trying to figure out exactly what to say to her.
He wanted to tell her, please… please allow me to form feelings for you.
And he wanted to be allowed to learn more about her.
In truth, there had been so many things he wanted to ask.
What she liked, what she disliked, what she wanted to do.
Now those questions floated uselessly inside him, without place to go.
That was when—
“Is this the lady’s room?”
From far down the hallway came the rough voice of a man and the maid’s hesitant reply.
Wondering if they were here for another purpose, the voices grew closer.
Moments later, a man in servant’s livery burst into Irene’s room.
“Huh… what?”
He startled at the sight of Michael standing inside.
Though Michael had not known, this man was the count’s servant.
He was the one who always came to the temple to threaten Irene.
The servant scanned Michael from head to toe, trying to identify him.
Clearly a knight, no matter who looked at him.
If he had still been wearing the temple knight’s uniform, the servant would have recognized him.
But after leaving the temple, he now wore plain clothes.
The servant, not knowing this famous knight, spotted the bag in Michael’s hand and shouted.
“Who are you?! That girl Irene’s money belongs to us!”
“…What?”
Michael murmured, but the servant ignored him and snatched the bag.
In truth, the servant had been on edge the entire journey.
A letter had come informing him that the remaining body fee would be paid.
He had been preparing to arrive at the fortress slowly, but another letter arrived.
He wanted to pay the remaining fee more slowly.
He would pay it all, just give him a little more time.
Naturally, the count had jumped at the letter.
“Suddenly unable to pay money you promised?! Clearly trying to divert it somewhere! Go at once and catch her before she runs off!”
Because it might splash on him unnecessarily, the servant had raced to the fortress like a madman.
Then he had searched for Irene, fearing she might have fled.
“Irene Rodiam? The purifier who died this morning?”
At the news of her death, the servant asked without even offering a prayer for the dead.
“Then where is her belongings?”
The money he had planned to repay might still be in her bag.
Hurrying to the room with that thought, he found a stranger rummaging through Irene’s luggage.
The servant frantically searched the bag. But the money pouch he expected was nowhere to be seen.
“Damn it!”
He hurled the bag into the corner and shouted at Michael.
“Money! Where’s the money!”
“…What?”
“Irene’s money! Her body fee is still here!”
“…Body fee?”
“Damn it, stop pretending not to know. If you already stole it—”
“Kyaaah!”
The servant could not finish his sentence.
Because Michael had grabbed him by the throat and lifted him into the air.
“Body fee, you say.”
A low, cracking voice emerged.
“Tell me what you’re talking about. Right now.”
“Kyaa— th-that’s…”
After a long moment, Michael hurled the struggling servant through the doorway.
The hand that had held him trembled violently.
In this dreary room without her, Michael had finally learned everything.
Why she had clung to him and begged him to save her at the Night of the Contract.
Why she had been so sensitive about money.
Why, despite taking all that wealth, she possessed not a single warm garment.
It was far too late.
* * *
“Mm…”
Irene, who had fallen asleep, felt something drop onto the back of her hand.
Her eyes fluttered open.
After several blinks, her blurry vision slowly sharpened.
A moment later, Irene’s eyes widened in shock.
Michael, sitting right in front of her, holding her hand…
“Michael?”
Tears were streaming silently down his face.
His expression was terribly distorted, as if he had been burdened with a sin he could never repay.
He pressed his face into her palm and spoke.
“I’m sorry.”
Me.
The foolish me.
The one who had turned a blind eye to you, foolishly.
I only learned everything far too late.
But there was more to what he had learned than that.