Cedric wasn’t scared, but he deliberately put on a flustered expression. If someone smiled at a threat, they wouldn’t look like a normal person.

“I am Deborah John-”

Just as Cedric was about to say his prepared words.

Bang! Emma leaned forward, placing both hands on the table.

Emma said to Cedric, who naturally stepped back:

“What? You know Debbie?”

Before Cedric could answer, the people in the store started to stir.

“What? This well-groomed gentleman knows Debbie?”

A man holding a beer stuck close to Cedric and said:

“Debbie’s gone to Dover on an errand now? You can’t meet her!”

Emma’s son, a child playing in a corner of the store, added:

“That’s right! How did you know to look for her? Did you know her from before?”

Another middle-aged woman smiled subtly at Cedric and said:

“Yes, yes! How did you know to find her? Were you acquainted from before?”

Cedric became quite embarrassed by the continuous stream of strange, mistaken questions that followed. He had only mentioned the name “Deborah Johnson,” but why were they making such assumptions?

At that moment, a middle-aged man with forearms as thick as a person’s face slammed his empty beer mug on the table as if to break it and said:

“Everyone quiet!”

All fell silent and looked at him. Cedric did the same. Then the man with the fierce face, making it even fiercer, said:

“First, what’s your relationship with Debbie? What’s your job? And what about family relations?”

“……”

Cedric had to swallow the words “I’m sorry, but I haven’t even seen her face yet” and instead say a little late, “We have the same employer.”

The child cried loudly at the news that Deborah would be working in Dover for a while.

If it weren’t for the candy that the maid had insisted he take, he might still be wailing.

“Sniff.”

Cedric stroked the child’s head with a regretful smile. The adults didn’t cry like the child, but they looked just as disappointed.

It was Emma who lifted the sunken mood.

“Ah! Well, it’s good, isn’t it! You all knew that Debbie wasn’t the type to stay in a backwater place like this!”

“That’s right. When I first saw Debbie, I thought she was some noble lady.”

It wasn’t clothes smelling of fish, but it wasn’t expensive clothes either. Yet she looked like a noble lady.

[Pleased to meet you.]

That brief greeting, delivered with a gentle smile and careful manner, made them realize at once. This wasn’t just a person who looked impressive on the outside, but someone with real substance.

“I really couldn’t believe it. How Charles managed to bring home such a woman as his wife.”

Charles was a native of Bermers. When he was about fourteen, a violent storm took his parents.

Charles, who became alone overnight, left this village with tears barely dry on his face. He must have been sick of even looking at the sea that had finally taken his parents too.

“And we hadn’t seen him for over 10 years.”

Emma and the others occasionally thought of Charles. Is this guy alive? What on earth is he doing? Hopefully not living a life where he feels like jumping into the sea to die.

“But suddenly the guy came back to his hometown. And with a wife, no less.”

Charles said he had worked as an odd-job man at a small general store before returning. Deborah said she had worked at a factory near the general store.

“Even if they were nearby, it wasn’t the same workplace and they probably didn’t have many chances to meet, so I was curious how they met.”

Even now, the villagers don’t know how they ended up getting married, but they knew Charles’s heart all too well.

[Deborah is my destiny!]

Charles would often say that with a red face. The people who found this both annoying and cute pestered Charles, asking how exactly he met his destiny, but Charles never said a word.

“I wanted to ask Deborah too, but we were shy around her at that time.”

Cedric blinked slowly. You were shy? You who put your arm around my shoulder when we first met and talked about this and that?

‘I can’t believe it.’

But Emma continued to insist. That they were shy only with Deborah. Because Deborah was…

“Beautiful.”

“Pardon?”

“What, from your reaction, you really haven’t seen Deborah?”

Cedric nodded. Emma shook her head as if she felt sorry for Cedric and continued:

“She wasn’t just beautiful. She oozed class.”

She didn’t act particularly extravagantly or use special speech. No, rather, she approached us in a friendly and kind manner.

“Deborah’s hands, which unhesitatingly grasped our rough, fishy-smelling hands, were as calloused as ours.”

Nevertheless, Deborah exuded an unapproachable elegance. That’s why it was hard to get close to her.

“Charles even told Deborah not to work, saying he would treat her well.”

“He must have seen it somewhere.”

Charles really cherished Deborah. If the wind blew, would she fly away? If the sun was hot, would she be in pain? He did all the eye-roll-inducing things a newlywed groom would do at that time.

“But it was really nice to see.”

The way the two of them smiled wasn’t particularly grand or cool, but it was brilliant.

It was about 100 days after the two arrived in Bermers.

Charles, who had started learning fishing, saying he was a sea person after all upon returning to his hometown, went out to sea for the first time.

The sky was grayish, but the wind was fine, and it was a short trip. But when it was time to return, the boat carrying Charles didn’t appear, and when the boat returned late, Charles wasn’t on it.

“Sometimes unexpected gusts of wind blow at sea.”

Suddenly rising waves, sails turning terribly, anchors unable to exert force, everyone on that boat was in danger. But in the end, only one person fell into the sea and thus only one person didn’t return.

Deborah became a widow about 3 months after getting married. It was an incredibly vain thing. And Deborah couldn’t accept this vain thing with dignity.

“Because Debbie is an ordinary person.”

It seemed like she would die if left alone. Not in the sense that she would take her own life. Just, like snow melting away in spring, it seemed she would die very naturally.

“How can a person cry like that…”

At that time, Deborah did nothing but cry. Inside the house, sometimes in front of the sea in the early dawn.

There wasn’t much the villagers could do for Deborah.

Holding a proper funeral even without a body, forcibly raising Deborah and making her eat. Also, forcing her to come outside, giving her work to reduce her time to grieve.

“When lifting Deborah’s arm, it sometimes felt like forcibly lifting the arm of a corpse. But after a month, two months passed, she became human-like again.”

When a wholesaler made unreasonable demands, she was the first to roll up her sleeves and step forward. She was so good at talking and quick with money calculations that the wholesaler, who had been acting all high and mighty about handling money, became embarrassed and ran away.

“It was so satisfying.”

“It was!”

Deborah was really a smart person. Even when pointing out others’ mistakes, she didn’t hurt people’s feelings, so she was someone who led to results gently.

Because she was such a pretty and smart person, men who expressed their feelings to Deborah started to appear from time to time. Whenever that happened, the villagers rushed at those men.

“None of them were to our liking.”

“Right. The ones with money were either ugly or old, and the ones with decent faces had other flaws.”

Towards the villagers who got excited saying how could we give our Debbie to guys like you, Deborah smiled sheepishly.

[You don’t have to say that, I have no intention of meeting anyone else. How can a widow do that.]

While saying such frustrating things.

Unlike how prickly they were towards the guys who pestered Deborah, the villagers welcomed the idea of Deborah meeting someone new.

Their married life was only 3 months. Becoming a widow after just 3 months. Moreover, you have no idea how much we hated seeing Deborah walking around in black mourning clothes, talking about widow’s etiquette and whatnot.

“It’s not like Charles has any family. Bluntly speaking, even if she acted like an unmarried lady, there’s no one who would say anything, but Deborah, that stubborn one, wouldn’t listen to us.”

Even when we tried to stop her, beating our chests, she would just smile slightly and brush it off, her clothes always black. Whether she intended to complete the full 3 years or what.

“She’s quite a slippery one.”

“Is that so?”

When Cedric asked with a smile, Emma, who seemed to realize her mistake, waved her hands and said:

“I just said that, she’s not a person with a black heart. Rather, she’s someone who lives at a loss.”

“Yes. That’s what it seemed like.”

At Cedric’s response, everyone in the restaurant fixed their gaze on him. Despite the attention that was intense enough to make his skin tingle, Cedric didn’t lose his smile.

“No, how do you know that? You said earlier you haven’t even seen her face yet.”

“I heard it at Madam Saint’s house. That she tries to take on all the difficult tasks.”

“Ah. I see.”

Among the people nodding their heads, the one with the fiercest look clenched his fist and said:

“If you try to take advantage of Deborah’s nature, know that you’ll die by my hand!”

“Haha. I value my life, so that will absolutely never happen.”

After that, the villagers mixed threats and pleas, asking to take good care of Deborah.

“It’s good to work at Madam Saint’s house, but wouldn’t it be better to stay in the capital than in this rural backwater?”

They spoke as if working in the capital was some kind of luck. Of course, Zen was someone who paid wages more generously than anyone else, so in some sense it might be luck, but…

‘Apart from that, I wonder?’

It might be better to stay among people who love you. Because Zen wouldn’t treat her well.