Your Eternal Lies - Chapter 77

After Epilogue: Once Again, Walpurgis Night (1)

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Ian Kerner hadn’t spoken to Emily in quite some time. Emily sat quietly in the living room, sipping her tea, and watched him and Rosen reunite for a while. But before he could greet her, she had left for Walpurgis, telling Rosen not to be late.

Emily would take Rosen to Primrose, and pick her up at exactly the same time the day after. Rosen begged her to let her stay a little later, but she always refused.

“Emily isn’t always that cold. I’m telling you.”

“…I know.”

“When I ask, she usually listens. It’s still a rule that I can only say one night, but if I convince Emily, I can stay for another day. Walpurgis isn’t that strict of an island.”

“One day is enough. It will take a little longer to come out more often.”

“Ian, are you sure you don’t mind? Is a day really enough?”

Rosen looked at him with sad eyes. He answered honestly.

“I didn’t say it was enough. I said I can wait.”

He kissed Rosen and nudged her, telling her to go back. Perhaps she saw it, because Emily raised her voice and called Rosen’s name. Over Rosen’s shoulder, he could see Emily glaring at him.

Rosen seemed troubled by Emily’s attitude towards him, but Ian understood how Emily felt.

After all, the first time Ian spoke to Emily was when Rosen came to Primrose for the fifth time. It was Emily, not Rosen, who was staring at him when he opened the front door that day. Emily pushed past him, who was frozen in embarrassment, into his house.

“Rosen will be here soon.”

“…Yes.”

“Shall we talk today? Just you and I.”

He nodded and went to the kitchen to prepare snacks. Just as Emily said, Rosen excitedly ran into his house a few minutes later. Perhaps her heart was in a hurry, as she opened the door with magic.

Rosen found him sitting across from Emily, and covered her mouth.

“Are you two finally talking?”

“Yes, Rosen. So would you mind going out for a minute?”

“Emily, what are you talking about?”

“What do you think I will say to Sir Kerner? He’s our hero. I just want to talk for a minute.”

Emily smiled like an angel. Rosen looked up. Ian nodded, saying it was okay. Rosen hesitated.

“Don’t say anything strange.”

She closed the door on her way out.

In the end, Ian was left alone with Emily in the dark kitchen.

“I’m Emily.”

“I am Ian Kerner.”

“Yes, I’ve heard a lot about you. You’re a very famous man.”

An awkward silence fell over the table. Ian suddenly missed Henry. Would it have been a little better if he had called him? Each person was good at different things, and Henry at least had a talent for thawing an icy atmosphere.

A woman shorter yet thinner than Rosen was staring at him with emerald green eyes. She didn’t look very happy. She looked, to put it bluntly, as if she was trying to find fault in him.

The attitude was not strange. Rosen and Emily were family. To Emily, Rosen was probably more like her daughter or her younger sister, since they had such a large age difference.

Her sister, who went to prison because of her b*stard husband, was seeing a man again. If he thought about it from her perspective, it was easy to see how the person sitting in front of him was feeling.

If it were him, it would have taken about a year to warm up to the man. He would have sat down, with a pistol on the table, fiddling with the gauge.

Fortunately, Emily didn’t have a pistol.

“Did you buy that plane in the garden with your own money?”

“Yes.”

“It must be expensive. Do you get a pension even after you retire?”

“…I have a pension and I have an inheritance. It’s not insufficient.”

Even when Ian stood in front of high-rank personnel, he wasn’t this nervous. He didn’t know why people were nervous in front of others in the first place. Some of the generals considered his attitude arrogant, while others liked it, calling him brave. Anyway, he always lived like that. He didn’t want to look good, and on the contrary, he didn’t want to stand in front of anyone.

Although top-down was the rule of the military, Air Force pilots were far more independent than other positions. A pilot with a certain level of skill was a valuable talent.

Now even the generals could not treat pilots carelessly. No matter what anyone said, the Air Force was the number one contributor to victory in the war. In fact, after the war, the status of the Air Force, which had been treated as a nuisance, rose dramatically.

But in front of Emily, for the first time in his life, Ian broke into a cold sweat without doing anything wrong. It was a very strange feeling.

“Would you like a drink?”

“I don’t like it, but I’ll drink with you if you want.”

He answered as carefully as possible. Emily shrugged her shoulders and pulled a drink from her bag, too large for the bag to hold.

“I’m glad you don’t like it. I have bad memories of drinking. Rosen too.”

“…I know.”

“Did Rosen tell you?”

Emily asked a question that omitted the subject. But Ian knew exactly what she was asking.

“Overall… I think I know.”

“Do you?”

With a strange question, his glass was filled with alcohol. Ian swallowed dryly and accepted the glass Emily handed him. Emily watched him empty the glass before she filled her own.

And the interrogation began. Ian was accustomed to interrogating and being interrogated due to his profession. But this was the first time he was so nervous.

“What are your hobbies?”

“Airplane repair. I was asked to do something else, so these days I also write pilot manuals.”

Emily looked at him with a bewildered expression, so Ian added more.

“I also read the newspaper.”

“Card games, gambling, horse racing… Don’t soldiers do this often?”

“I don’t play games because I’m not good at them.”

“You are a person who really doesn’t enjoy life… Thanks to Rosen, you must have lost all your friends because you were exiled.”

“I didn’t have a lot of friends to begin with. I also lived alone in a mansion on the mainland. Now… Henry Reville comes from time to time.”

“Didn’t you have any friends at the military academy?”

“Yes, but almost all of them died. During the war.”

Emily murmured, ‘Oh, my,’ and wrinkled her brows. He replied that it was all right.

Emily cleared her throat, trying to put on a cold expression again.

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