The merchant looked at the money in his pouch with satisfaction and nodded his head. Then, he continued to answer Eriel’s question.

“To begin with, there is no one around me who is physically intact. As for their mental state… it’s unspeakable. Have you ever heard of phantom pain? They say that even though an arm is missing, they continue to feel the pain from the moment it was severed. Most of them can’t even eat red foods like tomatoes or strawberries.”

The merchant frowned and gripped the wind-up doll again. With a creak, the doll began to play once more.

The music that flowed out was a mournful sound, like a person crying.

“In the border areas, there are also cases of civilians being spies. Sometimes, well-intentioned hospitality can cost the entire unit their lives.”

Eriel narrowed her eyes.

The battlefield was a far more miserable place than Eriel had imagined.

It seemed that even spending just a day or two in a place rife with suspicion and distrust would leave one’s mind desolate. And yet, Damian had spent nearly 10 years in such a place…

Eriel bit the tender flesh inside her mouth, forgetting the pain and applying force with a grunt.

The spreading taste of metallic blood made Eriel’s tongue bitter.

“Even if victorious, all that war brings is less pain than the defeated side. It seems that all those who participated in the war carry a bit of self-loathing and distrust towards humanity. It’s an inevitable wound. I can only hope that at least the price of victory will be a great comfort to the knights who participated.”

The merchant shook his head with a bitter smile.

At the same time, the wind-up stopped. As the mournful music ended, silence fell upon the store.

“…Ah.”

The merchant, who had been wiping the wind-up doll, suddenly raised his head at the eerily long silence.

It was because he belatedly realized that the noble lady in front of him was the wife of the hero who led the victory in the war, the Duchess of Genova. The cloth he had been using to wipe the doll slowly fell.

“Ah, that… uh…”

The merchant stuttered, unable to continue his words. It seemed as if cold sweat would drip from his wrinkled forehead at any moment.

Eriel let out a heavy sigh. Her expression that followed was not pleasant.

“I spoke too much for a mere merchant.”

“Not at all. Even if victorious, war is still war. …It was a good conversation to hear closely about the horrors of war.”

Eriel’s gaze lowered.

Eriel was not the only one who had heard the entire story.

Lucy, whose face had hardened, also had an unpleasant expression. Eriel stroked the child’s blonde hair and smiled.

“Lucy, shall we finish picking out the doll? How about the wind-up doll that Sir Kurt gifted you? Do you like it?”

At Eriel’s question, Lucy’s eyes slowly blinked.

“…Yes. I really like the music the doll plays too. And mom, I think this doll will do.”

Lucy pointed to the wind-up doll and smiled.

“Alright. Let’s go with this one.”

When Eriel nodded at the merchant, he quickly picked up the doll.

As if not wanting to miss the chance for a change of subject, the merchant’s hands moved faster.

“Ah, yes! Then I will wrap this up!”

As he hastily began to tie a red ribbon on the pink wrapping paper, Lucy quickly stood on her tiptoes and made a request to the merchant.

“I would prefer a different color instead of red, please.”

At Lucy’s words, the merchant lowered his gaze to the ribbon and nodded with a look of realization.

Then, he handed Lucy a beautifully wrapped gift box with a yellow ribbon instead of a red one.

“…Thank you for your purchase!”

The merchant bowed deeply.

*

“…Damian.”

Startled by Eriel’s voice calling him, Damian opened his eyes and quickly realized that this was a dream.

The Eriel in front of him was clearly a creation of his subconscious. Otherwise, Eriel’s voice couldn’t be this gentle.

The real Eriel was so disappointed in Damian that she wouldn’t wake him up so softly.

“…Damian?”

Damian simply blinked as he gazed into Eriel’s green eyes, not answering her call.

He felt anxious that if he answered carelessly, his dream might end.

Although he could meet Eriel’s eyes like this in the dream, reality was bleak.

His conversation with Eriel had ended on a bad note, and Damian had no idea how to resolve the issue with her.

Perhaps due to the strong alcohol in the whiskey, his vision was blurry even though it was a dream.

Damian looked at Eriel’s slowly moving green eyes with a very eager heart as she called out to him.

He felt that everything would be alright as long as he was by Eriel’s side.

There was a sense of peace that he could only fully feel when he was with her. Damian didn’t want to lose his wife, who was like his own stabilizer.

Even if it became a shackle binding Eriel, Damian could never let go with his own hands.

“You must be very disappointed in me.”

Under the pretext of it being a dream, Damian carelessly spoke words that he would be too afraid to say to the real Eriel.

Since the Eriel in front of him was his subconscious creation, wouldn’t she give the answer he wanted to hear?

“…Yes.”

However, it seemed that even the Eriel in his subconscious wouldn’t lie.

Damian, who thought it was fortunate that this was a dream, let out a laugh. It was a short and intense one-hit.

An answer that clawed at Damian’s heart more than any other words. Yet, if it came from Eriel’s mouth, he had no choice but to be wounded.

“Do you find me untrustworthy, Damian?”

“How could that be?”

“Then why… don’t you tell me?”

Damian’s eyelids moved slowly.

It seemed that the brief meeting with the butler just before getting drunk had influenced his dream.

After all, the real Eriel had no idea about his condition.

“That’s a weight I have to bear. I want you to only see and hear beautiful things.”

Eriel’s eyes narrowed.

“How can a married couple only see and hear good things? Sadness is halved when shared.”

Damian smiled softly at the words that the real Eriel would truly say.

However, he did not respond to her words. It seemed that his subconscious was reflecting the real Eriel very well.

Damian sank back into his hazy consciousness.

*

“Sigh…”

Eriel sighed as she looked at Damian’s completely closed eyelids.

She had woken him up to go to bed, but Damian, who had opened his eyes, seemed to be unable to come to his senses for some reason, so she deliberately stayed still.

It seemed that he was not in his right mind, but it was undoubtedly an honest conversation.

Eriel’s head began to ache at Damian’s dual nature of wanting her to maintain her dignity as the Duchess and wanting to show her only beautiful things.

It was confusing, but both sides were Damian, and both seemed to be his true feelings.

Perhaps… all of this was due to his return from the war.

He would have killed and been killed in a short period of time, whether they were enemies or allies.

Wiping the blood-stained sword, suspecting the citizens in the border areas.

And then fighting again.

The layers of distrust and suspicion towards all of humanity. And the sense of futility he must have felt day by day as he watched his subordinates die would have filled every corner of his heart.

Damian’s actions of not sparing his own body for the sake of his subordinates were also his desire to see no more bloodshed.

In addition, it was also a sign of his fear of losing someone.

“Sigh…”

When anxious, one begins to crave affection, wanting to confirm it and becoming obsessed.

For him, the means to confirm Eriel’s affection was probably physical intimacy.

And what was more certain than physical intimacy… was placing Eriel under the Genova name.

What he had learned in the battlefield for 10 years, where only visible things could be trusted, was to seek something more reliable than words.

Eriel sighed once more at the situation she could neither rashly blame nor resolve.

Although she did not fully understand his condition, pretending to know hastily did not seem like a good method either.

After much contemplation, Eriel brought a blanket.

As she covered his body with the blanket, she straightened her bent waist.

She knew that going to bed and sleeping there would be much more comfortable and provide better sleep, but waking him up was not the only way Eriel could help him who had fallen asleep on the sofa.

Even if it was uncomfortable, silently supporting and helping him sleep in the place he chose.

Perhaps that was what he needed more right now.

Eriel quietly closed the bedroom door and came out.

In case he remembered the brief conversation with Eriel in the midst of the confusion, she wanted him to be able to dismiss it as a dream.

Just before entering Lucy’s room, Eriel left a short word to the maid.

“If he wakes up, tell him that I covered him with a blanket because the night was cold. And if he asks about my whereabouts, say that I went straight to Lucy’s room with her.”

“Yes, I understand.”