Duke, Please Stop Because it Hurts
chapter-97

Plink plink.

Droplets of water began to fall onto the hem of her dress. Her fine cheeks were already stained with streaks of water while her purple eyes were infused with a fountain that one knew nothing of its own ends.

“Mo, Molitia?”

When Raven had suddenly felt embarrassed as he stuttered for the first time, Molitia straight away began to touch her cheek albeit blankly.

“Huh? Why…”

Raven wasn’t the only one who got surprised by her tears. Molitia—feeling puzzled by herself as well—immediately wiped them off with the back of her hand.

“Strangely—my tears…”

It flowed right out yet again, even when she wiped them off—over and over again.

“…it must have hurt more than I thought it’d be.”

Molitia tried her best to smile at Raven. Nevertheless, Molitia’s smile ended up distorted as her endless tears had smeared all over her cheeks and hands.

“Molitia.”

Raven’s extended hand eventually embraced her. While she was being enveloped within his broad chest and warmth, Molitia’s breath straight away stopped at that moment in time.

“You can cry.”

Raven whispered softly in her ear. His hand, which was impulsively embracing her grief, hesitated for a while before starting to pat her on the back.

“You don’t have to put up with it if it gets hard. You can just let yourself go in front of me. Don’t endure the pain by yourself.”

Her eyes, which were holding back her tears in desperation to Raven’s words, began to loosen themselves. Then, tears appeared to pour out continuously from her eyes as soon as her closed mouth parted slowly.

She never wanted to get sick. She never even wanted to be a burden towards her family and most importantly, she just wanted to be loved by her own family.

She had always hoped to see a flash of an amiable smile on her father, who was her flesh and blood—for once, at the very least. She had also hoped to talk honestly with her younger sister without the need to worry about it for once. Whenever she had to lay on bed while heaving such hot breaths suffered from the high fever, she still wanted to go to her family after she had gotten better the next day.

There was never even a single day when she didn’t blame herself for everything. Molitia had always incriminated herself as she felt indebted to her own family.

She condemned her fragile body, which had never been able to enjoy the warm sunshine during the day. And at night, she cursed that weak body of hers that would always catch a cold when it was exposed to just a little bit of the chilly air.

Her small shoulders shuddered ceaselessly. Strings of tears that had flowed once, kept on pouring like they were trying to capture all of her past days when she wasn’t able to cry.

“I, I…”

Molitia’s voice soon had pierced into Raven’s heart—painfully. What was so upsetting that forced this small body of hers to cry more than enough up to the point of dehydration.

Watching or even listening was just as excruciating like those agonizing cries. That small, husky yet elated voice of hers had already become as soft as possible. And the tears that welled up were of greater amounts that nothing could even overcome them at all.

“It’s okay. You can cry some more.”

“Oh, Raven…”

Molitia clutched on his back.

Perhaps one day, if she hadn’t gotten sick anymore, she thought that she might be eventually acknowledged by her own family. There was even a time when she actually had that kind of thought in mind.

She wasn’t even aware how much she had tried for that particular far future of hers. She had been in and out of her study room just to read books in order to find a way to improve her dire condition. Furthermore, Molitia had never let go of that book even when she was ill.

But nothing had changed. She never knew when she’d get better and to top it all, the price of the medicine was getting even higher. That perpetual vicious cycle was unbearably tragic.

For the first time ever, Molitia had leaned on a person and cried her eyes out.