“Ah, no. Nothing happened.”

As Kisa reflexively shook her head, Seiard quickly understood.

“I see. It must have been my misunderstanding. Somehow you looked uncomfortable.”

“No way. I’m just feeling good thinking that I’m finally breaking off the engagement. It’s really refreshing and satisfying…”

“Kisa?”

I can’t do it. I didn’t want to lie to someone who was sincerely concerned about her. Actually, Kisa began weakly.

“Actually, I’m not feeling very good. Of course, nothing special happened! I just broke off the engagement as Seiard knows, but I feel somewhat depressed.”

Her nervous hands fidgeted with the teacup handle.

“Why am I like this? I don’t understand my own feelings. Could it be, could it be…”

Do I still have lingering feelings for Daniel? She couldn’t bring herself to ask that question out loud. It wasn’t something to say to someone who had actively helped with the engagement termination.

Still, this clever man surely knew what words Kisa had swallowed. Kisa just stared intently at the innocent table.

In front of him, she was a sinner, and the pink tinge coloring her cheeks was a brand. Even if Seiard were to reproach her now for such weak words, she would have nothing to say.

“Raise your head, Kisa.”

However, the voice that penetrated her eardrums was as gentle as ever. When she raised her head to look, there was no trace of blame on his face.

“If you don’t mind, could you tell me specifically what has happened to you lately, and when this melancholy started? Unfortunately, I find it difficult to understand your state of mind just from what you said earlier.”

“…Is it okay?”

“Of course, you can refuse if you don’t want to. Forcing a story out of you would be improper.”

“No! It’s not that, I’m just worried I’m being too much of a burden on Seiard.”

“You can burden me with that kind of thing as much as you like. We’re going to be husband and wife soon, after all.”

“What?”

“Even if it’s a contract, if we have to match each other for a certain period of time, wouldn’t it be better to get to know each other well?”

Ah, so that’s what he meant. I overreacted to the word ‘husband and wife’ for no reason.

“We haven’t spent much time together, so we should have plenty of conversations from now on.”

In contrast to the composed Seiard, Kisa, whose throat had inexplicably gone dry, took a sip of the slightly cooled tea. Her face was still burning, but perhaps because something warm had gone down her throat, she felt somewhat more stable.

‘No, is it because of this person?’

He had a strange power that made her want to open up about her inner thoughts. What could be the reason? His seemingly tight-lipped nature? His kind heart? His intelligence that seemed capable of providing any answer? All were correct answers, yet all were also insufficient answers.

“So please, Kisa.”

He made Kisa open her mouth with all of that plus one unique characteristic.

“Tell me.”

This pressure. This was clearly a force that made others follow his will. It was so faint that anyone but Kisa, who had become sensitive to pressure due to her father’s disciplinary methods, might not have detected it.

When she felt a similar sensation before, she didn’t know why, but now that she knew his identity, it made sense. It was a characteristic he possessed as a member of the proud Hilan ducal family.

“A few days ago… Daniel came to see me.”

That pushed her back, so Kisa willingly unlocked the padlock on her mouth.

“On the day I sent the engagement termination letter to Rowens. I met Daniel in the reception room. I wanted to see his face directly and give him a piece of my mind.”

Moistening her throat with tea occasionally, she spilled out the details of what had happened that day as much as possible. Perhaps because of this, by the time she finished her story, she felt somewhat refreshed.

“So that’s what happened.”

Seiard, who had listened attentively without interrupting Kisa’s words once during the story, opened his mouth in a careful tone.

“Don’t you think you’ve been pushing yourself too hard all this time?”

“Pushing myself?”

“Yes, it’s not so unusual for someone who has been running towards a single goal to feel a sense of emptiness after achieving that goal.”

“Goal…”

“In Kisa’s case, the goal was breaking off the engagement, wasn’t it?”

Indeed, as he said, she had been entirely focused on breaking off the engagement for the past few days.

“Moreover, you had emotional issues with your former fiancé. This is just my guess, but it seems that in pursuing the goal of breaking off the engagement, you didn’t take enough care of your own feelings.”

“…”

She thought that might be true. Kisa looked back on her past self once. It’s not that she wasn’t hurt by Daniel’s betrayal.

However, at the moment she decided to break off the engagement, she resolved to put aside anything that wasn’t necessary for achieving her goal. Until now, she thought she had overcome the pain of heartbreak by doing so, but was that really the case?

No, it wasn’t overcoming, it was ignoring. She buried the pain of losing Daniel, harbored only resentment in her heart, and then devoted herself to breaking off the engagement.

She didn’t want to admit the fact that she was suffering from a sense of loss over losing a man who had called her stupid. Therefore, it was an inevitable result that the buried pain would crawl out once she achieved her goal and somewhat satisfied her desire to get back at Daniel.

After all, Daniel had occupied an important part of Kisa’s life for more than a decade.

Cutting him out was no different from cutting out a significant portion of her life.

Perhaps what troubled Kisa was not so much the fact of losing Daniel, but that the time and memories entangled with him had turned to dust and scattered.

She thought of Teddy Sam. It was simply a teddy bear that Daniel had gifted, but at the same time, it was a friend who had been responsible for young Kisa’s every night.

When such a Sam was trampled under merciless feet, it dug up even the grave in her heart. The pain was liberated, so to speak.

“I think you’re right. No, you are right.”

Kisa met Seiard’s gaze with eyes full of certainty.

“Thanks to you, I feel genuinely lighthearted.”

Strangely enough, it felt comfortable when she admitted the truth that she couldn’t simply rejoice in breaking off the engagement. The inward disappointment seems to have been one of the culprits that had been troubling Kisa until yesterday and today.

To realize this only now. For many years, emotions for her were something to be endlessly suppressed, cut, and controlled, not the voice of the heart to be accepted as it is.

That’s how the Count had taught her, and his teachings were everything to Kisa, but Seiard brought a fresh wind. It was already the third fresh wind.

First, he told her that her mind wasn’t on the bad side, second, he helped Kisa and brought about the engagement termination, and lastly, he gave her a great realization.

“It’s nothing. I’m glad I could be of help.”

Yet Seiard responded humbly, and Kisa, surprised by this, poured out even more praise.

“How did you come to have such insight?”

“It’s not something that can be called insight.”

“Come on, you hit the nail on the head about my feelings.”

“I just read books incessantly at the monastery instead of praying as told, so I became proficient in miscellaneous knowledge. At best, you could call me a closet sage.”

Even the nickname he used to lower himself sounded like a cool title to Kisa’s ears.

“Then there…”

She closed her mouth as she was about to ask about his life in the monastery without realizing it.

“Why did you stop?”

“Well, I was curious about what kind of books you read there.”

“Ah, I read quite a lot, whatever I could get my hands on, without discriminating by type.”

He mentioned a few book titles that Kisa might know, but she was too busy swallowing a sigh of relief to fully concentrate on his words.

‘I guess talking about the monastery would be a bit…’

He spent half his life there, but strictly speaking, wasn’t he driven out of his family?

It was quite common for sons of the head of the family who were not heirs to devote themselves to religion, but usually they left the family around the time they were fully grown, according to their own choice.

But unfortunately, in the Kingdom of Sorbi, there had been a custom from ancient times to view the younger of twins as ominous.

A certain legend that had been passed down in this land even before the kingdom was founded was the fundamental cause of this long-standing evil custom.

According to this legend, the identity of the younger of twins is said to be a demon. It’s quite a creepy story that a demon enters the womb of a pregnant woman to mimic the fetus exactly in order to bring humans to ruin.

The demon born this way lives an ordinary life, and then one day reveals its true colors, driving the humans who were its family until just a moment ago into a pit of misfortune. Then, watching this scene, it laughs heartily before returning to the world of demons.

Anyway, because of this unpleasant legend, twins born and raised in the regions where the legend has been passed down, including Sorbi, have suffered severe persecution.

It is said that in ancient times, terrible acts such as killing newborn babies occurred, but fortunately, these days, with the development of medical technology and the overall increase in people’s knowledge level, such barbaric incidents are hard to find.

Still, once rooted, perceptions are fearsome things, and there still existed views that did not regard twins favorably.

In particular, the Hilan ducal family, which values tradition, is said to have sent the twin brother of the firstborn son, whom they had obtained after a long wait, to a monastery even before he came of age. That was Seiard Hilan, soon to be Kisa’s new fiancé.

‘I feel wronged on his behalf. It’s not Seiard’s fault that he was born a twin.’

As Kisa was staring at Seiard sitting across from her, thinking such thoughts.

“Kisa.”

He suddenly grabbed her wrist. Truly startling, probably the first physical contact with him, Kisa tried to pull her wrist away, but the entangled hand did not let her go.

“You haven’t been listening to me for a while, have you?”

“I, I was listening!”

“Liar.”

His well-shaped lips curved crookedly.

“Your pulse has quickened.”