There are some things you just never expect, and forgiveness is one of those things. Raji knows himself better now than he once did, and he can barely believe the way that Shirayuki smiles at him, like everything in the past was so long gone, that she couldn't be bothered to think about it. It's like a cool glass of water, cold and soothing, and Raji is left dumbfounded.
She doesn't even pause to consider his once forced offer or the way that he failed to protect her, the night that Kazuki and Itoya kidnapped her. She doesn't even hold a hint of sadness, anger, or regret in her beautiful green eyes when she looks up at him.
She even calls Raji her friend, like everything that happened in the past is some distant memory, as if maybe what happened in the past was fiction. But Raji can't forget it. Can't forget how Shirayuki stood strong for Zen or how Zen came to tell Raji off, or how Shirayuki had pointed out to Raji that he could be different.
There are a sea of memories here, and Raji knows himself to be the thorn in all of them. And yet Shirayuki smiles at him like this, yet she's even willing to dance with him, to consider him a friend. All of this feels like too much, and Raji can't focus on the book in his hands anymore. The pages resting gingerly against his fingertips, like a memory just out of reach.
And when he looks over at her, Shirayuki's content. She's reading a book on herbology, eyes drawn into the page and so focused, that Raji nearly loses all of his nerves. Though just when he's prepared to try to go back to reading, which usually is much easier to focus on, Shirayuki looks up, concerned green eyes meet his brown ones.
Raji sighs. It's hard to find the right words, but these ones are probably as close as he can get to them. "I'm sorry." It's like a dramatic pulling from his chest, like a good chunk of his pride just fell down at his feet.
"For what?" Shirayuki looks up at him, and it's still a startled delight to realize that she has enough hair right now to be pulled up into the type of bun that it's fashioned in today, a thin one, because her hair is still nowhere near as long as it was before he met her.
"For everything." It's difficult, as difficult as pulling teeth, but he knows that he needs to say the words, to finally speak them, because it's hard to, and she definitely needs to hear them.
"For the past?" Shirayuki looks concerned, not like she's uncomfortable in this castle, the first time she's staying over since the kidnapping and for nowhere near as long, and not like she's thought any time recently about the ways in which he's wronged her.
"For the kidnapping, for not protecting you then, I mean? It's going to be my castle one day, and I couldn't keep a single person safe here, couldn't protect my dear friend." And suddenly dear feels like the wrong word, though he doesn't mean it in any way romantically, she's a friend that he cherishes, because she reached into his heart and found him redeemable to save. "For the time before... I mean, for almost forcing you to be my concubine." Those words burn like a fresh scar up his throat.
"I forgive you." And a weight drops from Raji's chest, and he's never known such happiness.