Even if the Dawn Abandons You - Chapter 38

The method was highly systematic, like the intricate tactics of a cunning snake, making even the professors who were generally aligned with the aristocrats unable to favor them in the end.

Celine Châtelier’s splendid academic life even left a deep impression on the bourgeois students who were going to school while being subtly catered to the whims of the aristocrats. In just one semester after Catherine isolated her, Céline had become the focal point for the non-aristocratic students, gaining freedom even from the isolation that she had initially paid no mind to.

In the end, Catherine de Basbourg graduated without ever seeing Celine Châtelier succumb or crumble. On the day of her graduation, as Celine, the student representative, embraced the bouquet of flowers handed to her by Catherine, the representative of the graduates, she said, “Thanks to you, it was enjoyable, senior.” The misery had been Catherine’s share. So, Catherine never forgot Celine’s name.

Two years later, when Celine Châtelier was ceremoniously commissioned, Catherine, who was already a lieutenant due to an unprecedented rapid promotion as the Countess of Basbourg, and also as the right-hand of the prince, attempted to trample Celine with a malice incomparable to the innocence of their school days.

Yet, each attempt failed. Celine Châtelier possessed an unwavering tenacity like persistent weeds, and an inexplicable audacity that continued to grow even when trampled upon. Catherine, at times, found herself almost admiring it.

Interpreting it as her own greed for talent, there was a day when she held out her hand instead of poison to Celine for the first time. It was the day Catherine was promoted to colonel. Katrin declared to Celine that if she came under her, she would forget everything and lead her. Then Celine Chatelet replied with her characteristic relaxed and unlucky face.

“You don’t have to try to forget; it’s alright, Countess.”

Celine’s slight wistfulness and the subtle twitch of her brow when she referred to Catherine, not as the rank she had just received but as “Countess,” might have been a hint that Catherine should have picked up on. Celine Châtelier had been a republican for a very long time and that’s why she knew a subversive force like a spreading toxin would slowly infiltrate the military. And someday, that day would come.

If Catherine had realized it earlier and eliminated the possibility, maybe only a third of the officers would have joined the revolution. If that happened, the revolution might have failed, and Prince Henri too…

“Damn it!”

Catherine slammed the desk once more and cursed. She had killed Nicolas de Basbourg. She had killed her father. Yet, Celine Châtelier, who dragged her honorable blue-blooded dignity and her lofty self down to such a degrading extent, was truly exasperating.

“Are you okay?”

However, Ilya Belinski, the commanding officer of the 107th Magical Battalion, a general, who had left a contact note for the allies at the Basbourg Fortress, asked the clearly distraught allied commander in a stoic manner.

Katrin turned her indignant face around and looked at Ilya with a cold gaze. A wave of self-reproach for crumbling so pathetically in front of the allies’ contact note quickly surged, and she quickly regained her composure.

“It’s alright. You’re dismissed, General.”

“Understood.”

Catherine had thought of Ilya’s departure as a simple response to his query about her well-being. However, soon after, as if remembering something, she called out to Ilya.

“Just a moment.”

As Ilya was about to leave the room, he turned back once more.

“What is it?”

His voice, firm but with a well-educated Léans accent, smoothly flowed out of the man’s lips. Catherine decided to address the question that had been circling her mind since she first learned about Lieutenant Ilya Belinski, aiming to clear up the mystery.

“You’re a magician. Your battalion is also a magical one.”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“But why were you excluded from combat and assigned tasks like handling the contact notes at the fortress?”

Catherine preferred direct communication with the allies’ commander. So, in her eyes, Ilya Belinski and his battalion were nothing more than contact points, remnants abandoned at the Basbourg Fortress by the main forces of Kladiev.

She was curious about the reason why Kladiev’s forces had left Ilya Belinski, who was a magician, only to handle contact notes at the fortress. She thought there might be something he couldn’t speak of. However, the response came quickly, without any hesitation.

“I opposed the Belize bombing and received a three-month suspension and a prohibition order for deployment.”

He opposed the Belize bombing?

… Why?

“The land that was being destroyed wasn’t your homeland, but Léans. Why did you oppose it?”

“Because it was against the Ashbridge Convention.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“… Yes. That’s correct.”

Ilya’s response was straightforward and clear. However, the short silence before his final answer seemed almost audacious, as if it were asking, “Why did the Countess accept the bombing?” Catherine’s mood turned sour, and she ordered Ilya Belinski to withdraw.

The night at the fortress was growing deeper.

? ? ?

As if he were about to share an extraordinary story, Leonard argued strongly for them to change seats, but once he entered the room, he didn’t begin talking right away. However, Anais neither urged him nor even thought of doing so. She merely hoped that the conversation, which seemed to have taken control away from her and given it to Leonard even before it started, wouldn’t probe her deep-seated vulnerabilities that she could never reveal to him.

And just when the silence seemed too long, Leonard slowly opened his mouth.

“Why didn’t you wait for me?”

It was a bottomless question, but Anais could understand what he was talking about.

‘I swear on my honor as the Prince of the Léans Empire, a direct descendant of the founder Antoine I, and the Duke of Pyrenees-Roger. I’ll become the emperor of this country, and I’ll make sure you never go through something like this again.’

‘So don’t cry and wait.’

That pledge on that day was just as unforgettable for Anais Bellamarte as it was for Leonard Antoine de Charleroi. At the age of twenty, he had pledged his every precious and noble honor to her. He had asked her not to cry and to wait. The weight of that pledge on her captured hands, the plea to wait, was never light or trivial. Yet, if the world on that day had been cruel to Leonard in ways he didn’t even realize, it was because Anais had already made up her mind during that moment’s resoluteness.

Indeed, during the days of her imprisonment, Anais Belmartier had already decided that if she miraculously survived, she would join the revolutionary forces. Her resolute mindset remained unchanged even after she learned how hard Leonard had worked to save her life. There was a slight sense of obligation there. Maybe trusting and waiting for Leonard who had saved her was the reasonable thing to do.

But Anais wasn’t one to easily change a decision she had made. And more than the gratitude or sense of obligation she felt towards Leonard, what she felt for the students who had cried out that Frederic never helped them, even as they were tortured and died in the underground cells, was deeper and heavier.

The belief of those who overcame rifles, torture, and death was transmitted to her loud and clear, riding the cold walls of the underground cells, dressed in the clothes of tortured screams. In the days spent with her freedom of movement suppressed, she realized how precious the blue sky outside her world was to her. She realized how unreasonable the world would be if crying out for that much precious freedom was not a crime that could be born as a human being, and that people could inflict such pain on people by making it a crime. The world is so dark and especially harsh to those with convictions. This couldn’t go on.

Whenever she heard the laughter of the Crown Prince, who occasionally descends into the dungeon and watches the torture of students, Anais will resent a world where people like Prince Henri are given the right to torture and shoot students his own age without any restrictions just by birth. I had no choice but to.

He asked why she didn’t wait for him.

If she hadn’t even entertained the thought of waiting for him, it would have been a lie. At least for that moment of the pledge, she had been shaken as well. Without doing anything, by living in her own garden of peace, shutting herself in, waiting for him felt like it could change the world. She was convinced that the world he was so bent on creating, one where Leonard Antoine de de Charleroi would sacrifice himself, would be much better than the present one. But, however. However, that world…

“It didn’t seem like the world I wanted.”

There will still be an emperor and nobility in Léans. Leonar would likely be a good person and would undoubtedly become an excellent emperor unlike his father or brother. However, what if all of that ended with just his efforts? What if, with the passage of time, he changed? If his children or descendants followed the path of Antoine XIII and Prince Henri once more?

In other words, in the underground cells or in the Beauharnais Auditorium, while helping the students, while conversing with them, or even long before that, as she mingled with students who cried out for republicanism, Anais came to agree that it was not Antoine XIII as an individual who was wrong, but the regime of Leáns itself.

So, the truth was, regardless of how much Leonard might make Leáns a better country to live in, or how good of an emperor he became, the future would not look very beautiful to Anais. She never longed for a paradise where an absolute ruler looked down on them. She never wished for a world paved with flowers by Leonard just for her. Rather, in her eyes, the path of thorns they would walk on together, barefoot, was more alluring. Anais gladly entrusted her life to that temptation, even if the world was as dark as this.