Why can’t she be more stupid? Kaella thought she was stupid enough, but it seems she wasn’t stupid enough.

Even if she didn’t want to see it, it was so clear that she couldn’t help but notice. The emperor’s ‘frequent actions’ were something Kaella had already experienced, and Peon had experienced even more.

Just as Kaella had delivered the poison, Peon was punished by personally preparing and delivering a gun loaded before the regression. He couldn’t avoid it either.

He must have realized his mistake the moment he saw Ostein was there, after bringing the gun due to a sudden order. But like Kaella, he had no choice but to return.

Just as Kaella’s punishment was completed by seeing her husband come out staggering and vomiting blood, Peon’s punishment at the time was completed by marrying the dead Ostein’s daughter.

Realizing this immediately, Kaella felt resentful that Peon must have returned that terrible path helplessly while equally shocked. She felt so resentful.

“I don’t really care about elder brother’s circumstances. I don’t want to know, you were the same!”

So she didn’t ask him the same way. She never asked how he regressed, what happened when her father died. Like the cold and heartless Peon, she too never showed any interest.

“You said you kept me close because I was a dangerous spy, that’s why you married me, that you never trusted me! You said it was disgusting! So I don’t want to trust you either, that’s why I didn’t ask.”

Looking back, Peon was different from the first day of regression. He carefully looked after her one by one, and when he gained the legal right to look after her after marriage, he devoted extreme care.

Tender affection poured out like water every day, to the point where she would later take it for granted no matter how much she tried to stay alert.

Especially his extreme sensitivity about eating and waiting on her at every meal was a well-known fact among the employees of Lucenford Castle.

If Kaella refused to eat and tried to starve herself, Peon would use every means to feed her even just one bite.

So Kaella tried her hardest not to get used to that outpouring of affection, to the point of bleeding. She closed her heart and refused to answer when Peon asked about the regression. If she answered what she knew, Peon would tell what he knew.

Kaella’s curiosity would surely be interested in that answer, and the conversation would inevitably progress. If there were any inconsistencies, they would end up explaining. Then she would believe that explanation.

So she had to avoid the conversation itself, not say a single word. Kaella remained silent like that.

I never gave such an order to kill you like that. I’m sorry for being incompetent. I’m truly, sincerely sorry. But I really didn’t give such an order.

Ah, so that’s how it was. It wasn’t an order to starve me to death. She foolishly believed the words she extracted after scratching, shaking, and sharply attacking Peon. She unconsciously believed it even though she shouldn’t have believed such words.

She didn’t know how pathetic she was. Peon never trusted her until the end, so why should she trust him? It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair at all to Kaella who died of cold and starvation, shivering without anyone believing her even though she was innocent.

“I didn’t say anything and didn’t want to hear anything! I know! I know everything! I know I shouldn’t believe Beatrice’s words! It’s foolish to believe the words of someone who comes to mock and whisper before death!”

Beatrice wasn’t someone who would tell the truth even to a dying person. She knows. She shouldn’t believe the words of the suspicious Beatrice, unchanged before and after the regression. She shouldn’t believe Peon who apologizes after the regression either.

“But elder brother was still wrong.”

Tears poured down from her eyes. The flowing tears blocked her view, making it hard to see Peon clearly.

“You wronged me… If you did wrong, you should just keep doing wrong until the end!”

Everything should have been clearly divided into victims and perpetrators. The crime should be clear, and the consequences should be certain. There should be no contradictions like being both perpetrator and victim.

Especially solidarity as a victim who was equally wronged by the emperor, that should never exist.

“Why aren’t you an accomplice…”

Kaella gasped, about to say the terrible words asking why he wasn’t an accomplice with the emperor, why he didn’t join in killing her father.

“Why…”

Why were the reasons for hating, ignoring, and resenting Peon for life gradually disappearing? Why was she slowly understanding him as she got to know him? Why were her heart and head moving separately?

She hated it. She hated it so much. She didn’t want to feel any sense of kinship with Peon. She wanted to neglect him forever without any emotions, just the same.

“I am your perpetrator, Kaella. Nothing changes that.”

A large hand grabbed and pulled her before she could collapse on the carriage floor. A heavy voice spoke slowly.

“I am only thoroughly guilty to you. What I did doesn’t disappear or change. The past is clear, isn’t it? Four years is too long to forget.”

Even now, he is committing an unforgivable sin. Peon gently and slowly wiped his wife’s tear-stained eyes over and over. The one who desperately wanted to erase and change the past soothed her softly.

“I told you to resent me diligently. Don’t cry. It’s not worth crying over.”

He spoke coldly as always, but his voice trembled faintly. Too many tears were flowing.

Exhaling hot breaths, her small chest heaved violently as if about to break, flushed with fever. No matter how sad, people don’t cry this much. They don’t wail to the point of death, twisting their whole body.

“It was me. I took everything from you, even death.”

He confessed his sins in detail as if in confession, with a pained expression. The pale Peon kept wiping his wife’s face. No matter how much he wiped, tears kept flowing.

“I won’t fulfill anything you wish for. I’ll keep you by my side and possess everything until your last breath.”

That was the sin he would continue to commit. He listed his sins as if giving reasons why Kaella shouldn’t cry. Yet the dense intensity of emotion felt in those words was suffocating.

“So don’t cry. It’s nothing.”

Her sobs started to hiccup, hiccup, as if she had lost her mind, choking on her breath. Peon slowly soothed his wife, who seemed ready to cry out all the tears she had held back for years.

“Kaella, please, don’t cry.”

But Kaella cried as if to death, seemingly unable to hear anything.

When the carriage arrived at the Duke of Lucenford’s townhouse, the Duke carried out the Duchess who had fainted from exhaustion after crying.

*

Her whole body felt like a blanket soaked in water, sagging heavily and being sucked down endlessly. It felt like being completely buried.

That’s why Kaella intentionally avoided tears. Others said they felt refreshed after a good cry, but she only felt dizzy and tired. It was a useless and tiring bodily byproduct. It was also a symbol of weakness, so she thought she could control herself not to shed tears.

Kaella barely lifted her heavy eyelids. Her limp body was wrapped in a warm and comfortable temperature, neither hot nor cold.

It wasn’t hard to find a small light in the dim room. A warm light was dimly lit so as not to disturb her eyes.

And at the end of that light, by the unlit fireplace with his back to the window, sat Peon looking at the bed.

Their eyes met but he didn’t say anything, and Kaella actually didn’t have the strength to speak. Her throat was very swollen from crying so much.

She blankly stared at her husband. His hair, which was short when they married, had grown a bit longer, making him look relaxed and at the same time decadent.

He had carelessly undone his clothes which he always wore neatly, with his sleeves rolled up and buttons undone to his chest.

The prominent veins on his exposed forearms, his firm neck and collarbone, and the chest muscles below – yes, it’s not just that he looks decadent, he is decadent.

“Let’s drink some water first.”

He had been waiting for a while, gauging whether Kaella had woken up or fallen asleep again, and finally judging that she had woken up, he got up. The low light cast a deep, huge shadow.

He was quite bulky and tall, so his shadow was large. Yet he moved silently, never once waking Kaella with noise.

The purple eyes that came close were dark. He wasn’t a man well-versed in the latest trendy Klein etiquette, but he had an elegant and sophisticated grace.

That grace wasn’t broken or erased even when he wielded a sword against monsters and barbarians in the rough north.

He used the oldest classic etiquette, and when he valued and respected old virtues considered outdated, they instantly shed the patina of time and were revived.

People despised Peon’s birth, but when he appeared, they envied everything about him. He was that kind of man.

“Drink just a little.”

A strong arm gently raised her with familiarity and brought water to her lips. She couldn’t refuse. Her throat was too parched. Peon habitually used the soothing word “little,” but he actually hoped she would drink a lot, and Kaella drank much more than he had thought. Thank goodness.

“Should I give you more?”

His asking voice was exceedingly gentle. Kaella shook her head. He didn’t urge her further and laid her back down. His touch was delicate as he carefully covered her up to her neck with the thin blanket. He clearly wasn’t someone to take care of others to this extent.

“Go.”

“Don’t push me away again, Kaella.”

At her habitual dismissal, Peon immediately frowned. The elegant man appeared calm and deep like a lake on the surface, but that lake was dyed pitch black, its insides completely invisible. An abyss rippled.

“What do you think I’ve been doing sitting in that chair all this time?”

I don’t know. He was always an unknowable existence that made her miserable. She wanted to catch his eye even a little, but those lofty eyes didn’t capture her. He was too high up to even look down at her. So I don’t know. I can’t know.

“I listened to your breathing and counted your pulse. There was nothing else I could do.”

He checked and checked again if she was alive, if her breath hadn’t stopped, if her pulse was regular. He had already spent many such nights long ago.

“When you would wake up, if you could wake up, I couldn’t think of anything else besides those two things. Don’t push me away after making me like this.”

Every time she woke up after sleeping for a long time, he was right by her side. Kaella bluntly said to the man who had developed a habit of checking her pulse first whenever he held her hand.

“You’re shameless.”

“I’m hurt that you’re only realizing now. Are you that uninterested in me?”

The lord of the north had changed quite a lot. His personality had become much cheekier.

“Why have you changed so much?”

“Changed? I’ve always been like this.”

Kaella stared at him blankly. Since when? Liar.

“…I found my original personality after regressing.”

Peon corrected himself under her steady gaze.

“I found it faster thanks to you.”

What exactly did she do? That’s pure nonsense.

“Right, you’re not at fault. It’s my fault for being swayed by you.”

Swayed? That was news to her, making Kaella’s eyes widen.

“Why do you look so clueless? You know how I beg you like a dog, trembling.”

One who has only loved unrequitedly recognizes their kind. Their gaze never leaves, circling around nearby, and that terrible disease where one’s heart soars to the sky’s peak and plummets to the ground at a fragment of a smile, a momentary glance.

Peon frantically scraped together memories of Kaella, who had suffered just like him from this wretchedness that tore at his brain and carved out his heart, and this love he simply couldn’t take his eyes off of.

The man who was desperately clinging to memories of being loved despite cruelly ignoring her was now looking at her with the same eyes Kaella once looked at him with.

“You made even my revenge so troublesome and bothersome. No, not just revenge, but everything of mine was pushed back in priority behind you.”

There are many ways to take revenge. Whatever the method, as long as the goal is achieved. It’s enough if the other person suffers satisfactorily. The dragon’s way is easy, simple, and can be carried out immediately.

But the human way is troublesome, annoying, and takes a long time. Peon chose the most human method among them. The decision was made in the audience chamber.

He saw the future and knew that revenge following the dragon’s way would only end up tormenting Kaella more.

But the human way had several major drawbacks. He had to show the shameful sight of drinking poison in front of Kaella. It must have been a big shock for his small, young wife.

Just seeing that proud young lady crouched down trembling at the entrance to the monster’s garden was enough to tell. He’s still a lousy husband. To show such a pitiful sight.

“I find myself ridiculous, how much more absurd must I seem to you.”

“D-don’t say such strange things.”

His muttered self-deprecation sounded strange to Kaella’s ears. That was an odd thing to say. It couldn’t be. Peon was someone she had unilaterally longed for from beginning to end. There was no way they could have faced each other. She wasn’t foolish enough to still dream vain dreams.

“What happened today, you just let it happen, didn’t you? You did it deliberately in front of me, didn’t you?”

“I could have stopped it.”

He readily admitted.

“But I left it be because you would dislike it if I did. You feel at ease when I pretend to be human, don’t you?”

“…Since when did you know?”

“When you entered the garden entrance. I’m always aware of your presence.”

She hesitated, and hesitated, then asked her husband who answered readily.

“Didn’t you know our father was in the monster’s garden?”

She finally asked about what happened when he passed away.

“I didn’t know.”

He said simply, but didn’t add any unnecessary words. He only answered exactly what was asked.

“What happened?”

“At that time, I requested a private audience to offer gifts and ask for help to support Lucenford, but they said it wasn’t possible. Since you’re an illegitimate child, they told me to just show my face during a brief vacant time and leave, so I said I understood. Who was with the emperor, I only found out when I went there.”

“…How convenient. How nice.”

A weak voice mumbled in the darkness. It was such a faint voice that it was worrying, as if it might fade away at any moment.

“I didn’t even have a chance to say such things, but you had a chance to explain. How convenient.”

She didn’t wish to be believed, but rather wished she had been given the right to speak in the first place. The man who had never listened to her words from beginning to end, even if it was due to brainwashing by a taboo, knew well what he had done wrong.

“Why did you let me know?”

Going round and round, back to that question again.

“You could have tried your hardest to keep me from knowing, couldn’t you?”

“How do you know if my words are lies or not? Don’t believe me, Kaella. Doubt everything.”

“The very fact that you made me doubt irritates me.”

Peon laughed. He laughed faintly alone in the darkness.

“I’m glad you say that.”

Kaella couldn’t hold back and abruptly sat up. But perhaps due to having just barely woken up after collapsing from dehydration, she felt dizzy. Peon lightly caught and embraced her as she staggered.

“Kaella. Doubt, and ponder. About what to do.”

He whispered as he gently laid down her weak, useless body.

“That will make you live and move, even if just for a moment.”

That alone was enough.