Knowing that the child who calmly accepts fate is burning black inside.

Knowing all too well that they’ve built the biggest wall to protect themselves.

Who could a child born with the divine mandate to kill their father and become emperor possibly resent?

So Ricardo did not meet the gaze of Pola and Gerald even once.

He refused to hear a single warm word from the father he might have to kill with his own hands. If he heard even one such word, how could he live the rest of his life?

Thus, the couple also did not approach the child carelessly.

Making excuses that the child didn’t want it.

“Still, we’re parents… We can’t give up.”

“You think the daughter of the Pennel family can do that?”

“Well, I can’t be sure. But.”

For the first time, Ricardo showed emotion.

In front of red and white blooming flowers.

Because of a woman whose cheeks were even redder.

Because of that woman he drew thousands of pictures of without even remembering.

Ricardo, who had returned, cried through his paintings instead. He only smiled, got angry, and frowned in the paintings. As if he only saw the world through that child.

Ricardo, who had no memories, barely managed to live like that.

Until he put on a mask as perfect and beautiful as now.

I thoroughly examined the room as large as our house in Lesotia.

One room was like a huge exhibition hall.

I was in all the frames on the walls and in the paintings on easels scattered on the floor.

No, to be precise, there was the young Lienne Lowy Pennel.

I recalled Ricardo walking towards me without hesitation even from afar on the day he came looking for me in Lesotia.

Ricardo’s low voice rang out like a warning to me as I stared blankly at the paintings.

“Don’t think anything strange.”

I answered as I stepped into the room.

“What strange thoughts did I have?”

He didn’t even think to stop me from entering as I pleased.

“Do you want to say not to attach meaning to things you don’t remember at all?”

In most of the paintings, I was smiling. Most of the moments that were only in my memory and not in Ricardo’s were actually like that.

On the night lightning struck, after I died and woke up again, I wasn’t very sad. When I opened my eyes, Ricardo was there, looking at me with an unharmed, uninjured face.

So this is how I smiled through his eyes. With such a consistently foolish face.

Some days I was smiling with a face full of injuries, and in some paintings I was smiling with my forehead deeply furrowed.

There were also some images of me crying, but I didn’t look particularly sad.

Passing by the easels lined up in front, Ricardo’s room was depicted. As if that time was unfolding before my eyes, I traced the empty space above the painting with my hand.

I was lying on the bed in the room. But there was no sign of Ricardo sharing the warmth with me.

As he said, he erased himself even from the fragments that remained only as scenes.

How petty.

“Yes.”

“Who… said what?”

Looking straight ahead, I saw the largest frame covered with a curtain. It was the painting hanging on the center wall directly facing the door.

“Can I look at this? Since it has no meaning anyway.”

He was silent for a moment, but soon replied as if spitting it out.

“Do as you please.”

Ignoring the breath lightly touching my nape, I reached out to lift the curtain. But no matter how much I stood on tiptoe, my hand couldn’t reach the top.

At that moment, his large body suddenly approached and fully touched my back. I froze, standing awkwardly. His long arm passed by my ear and grabbed the curtain of the painting. Ricardo’s body temperature was much hotter than I remembered.

“Just… some scenes suddenly came to mind. There has never been a single case in Dermeier history of a Rochester remembering even fragments of their past.”

The more carefully he lifted the curtain, the more uncontrollably my heart pounded. I couldn’t move a finger.

“I just found it a bit strange.”

It was a deathly quiet space where even my breathing seemed disruptive.

The brief coolness as his skin touched and left my back was almost unbearably dizzying.

For a moment, I wondered if I should ask him not to lift this curtain. I thought that after seeing this, I might look even more pitiful.

He was like a calm lake where no ripples formed no matter how many stones were thrown.

I impulsively grabbed his hand holding the curtain. Why did I feel so wronged?

As I grasped his hand, many words swirled in my mouth. I wanted to say that I had actually missed him a lot, that I needed assurance that he was doing well. But I held it in. Because there was no meaning between us.

When I let go of the hand I had grabbed, he moved again. With each of his movements, something hot welled up in my throat.

“So I wanted to record it. I mean…”

“It has no particular meaning, right?”

The low voice gently continuing by my ear was overwhelming, so I slightly twisted my body to escape from him. His hand lowering the curtain flinched momentarily, almost imperceptibly, but his subsequent actions were as natural as flowing water.

Soon the painting was fully revealed before my eyes.

“Ah…”

I couldn’t help but let out an exclamation. Ricardo was still a genius painter.

“You… like me, don’t you?”

Young Ricardo’s voice could be heard.

A windy hill, the very brief spring of the desert when the whole world turns green.

There was a huge tree with lush leaves drooping downwards. And I was standing in its shade. With my skirt fluttering in the direction the leaves were drooping.

“Why, why do you think that?”

“Am I wrong?”

It was the day he smiled at me for the first time, seeing my face turn red. Even if that smile resembled a sneer, a mischievous smile.

It was a hill with an open view overlooking the Pennel estate. It was a day so piercingly bright that you couldn’t see the sky after it had rained heavily the night before.

Ricardo had set out to draw with brush and paper, and I had followed him to the top of the hill.

Undoubtedly, it was the only childhood memory I longed for.

On days when it appeared even in dreams, I felt like I was walking on clouds all day.

The late spring of being 10 years old, beautiful because it was fleeting.

“Then, is it not okay for me to like you?”

I ended up covering my face with both hands and sinking down beneath them. I didn’t want to feel any more humiliated in front of this man who said it had no meaning since he had no memory, but…

“Do as you please.”

What could I do when the words Ricardo had left then crept into my ears again? Back then, I was just grinning at being allowed a one-sided love.

“Lady Pennel.”

Ricardo called me gently but mercilessly. I didn’t want any comfort from him now.

“We shouldn’t have met again.”

“What…?”

I put strength in my legs to stand up and patted my skirt.

“Didn’t you hear me well even though I spoke loudly? I said we shouldn’t have met again.”

It was ridiculous. Neither I wanted to meet again, nor did he want to meet me. So such regret was only fitting for someone who could have made a choice.

Nevertheless, it was easy to assume.

What if I hadn’t met you again?

I had imagined it before Ricardo came looking for me. That maybe we might pass by each other by chance at least once in our lives.

I thought that if I met him again, I might feel glad, happy, and maybe a little resentful. But nowhere in my imagination was there this kind of shitty feeling.

“If I had known that I… that is, the me who only remains as some scenes in the young lord’s mind… would be this pretty, it would have been much better not to meet.”

Ricardo made no reply to my rude tone and behavior. I managed to contain the emotion resembling shame well and stood firmly on my legs.

Then I turned towards him with that huge painting as a backdrop. Somehow, I felt like I was standing on soft soil rather than a cold marble floor. Perhaps that’s why courage welled up from nowhere.

“Please give me that painting.”

“What?”

“You don’t need it anyway, young lord.”

Besides, you didn’t even appear in that painting, and I was looking at empty space longingly.

“Please give it to me. When everything is over and you’ve achieved whatever you want.”

“…”

“I’ll take that painting and return to where I used to live.”

He looked at me on the hill for a long time. His eyes were so empty that I could hide my feelings a little too. It would have been useless to try to hide something in front of eyes that gauge the truth, but I had to make an effort. At any moment.

Just then, the sound of someone knocking on a door was heard from afar. It was coming from Ricardo’s bedroom door, not the room we were in.

Thanks to that, the cold air flowing between us two scattered. Ricardo bit his lip hard once and then let go, turning around as he was. After taking a few steps, when I didn’t follow, he stopped abruptly in place.