Joy? Ecstasy? Fear? Or maybe a face filled with hope?

The two faced off in this way. The spring night wind blew.

Lennon’s fine hair fluttered. Aria couldn’t quite read his expression.

He murmured.

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

It was like a sigh.

“You’re not Miss Hilton, are you?”

His tone, which had been purely rational until a moment ago, was now somewhat agitated. His jaw trembled slightly. His eyes distorted.

Aria had spent over twenty years with Lennon but had never known he could make such a face.

Then, Aria’s body shook. It wasn’t her own will.

“Please say yes. Okay?”

Lennon’s hands were near her shoulders.

He wasn’t gripping hard.

Rather, it was a cautious attitude, like handling a fragile glass bottle.

“Please”

His desperate gaze pierced her.

A feeling that had been dormant deep in her heart was easily stirred by the sight of her desperate younger brother. It felt like someone was tightly gripping her heart.

“So, I am”

And she was about to confess, overwhelmed by emotion

when it happened.

“Ugh!”

Something blocked her voice before she could speak.

Aria’s mouth opened and closed, but the words she intended to say didn’t come out.

Lennon also noticed her anomaly. His eyes sharpened.

“Magic? Or a curse?”

“I, I don’t know.”

Her voice returned as the subject drifted away from her identity.

Reading the confusion in Aria’s eyes, he became serious.

“Yeah. It wouldn’t be easy to solve this. Sigh, there are no outstanding mages in the kingdom”

Whoosh.
As he looked elsewhere, he turned his gaze back to Aria.

“But that just now confirmed it for me.”

“……What do you mean?”

“You are Elodie. You’re definitely Elodie.”

So saying, he suddenly extended his arms and pulled Aria into a hug.

Aria, with her slender build, was swiftly enveloped in Lennon’s embrace.

Her view was obstructed, seeing only the white cravat of his shirt.

Yet sometimes, emotions can be felt without seeing.

Lennon’s body trembled finely. Aria heard his low sobs in her ear.

Lennon didn’t say anything, but he conveyed his heart through his entire body. Aria instinctively embraced his arms in return, intensifying the trembling.

Silence fell between the two.

But it wasn’t truly ‘silent.’

The rustling of leaves in the wind. The sound of tightly gripped fabric crinkling.

Intermingled with these sounds were sighs loaded with many emotions. After a while, Lennon sniffled.

Aria realized that the cravat she was gripping had become damp.

Since becoming this person, she had not cried.

It wasn’t because she wasn’t sad.

It was just that she didn’t want to show such a face in front of Bonita.

And… to Luke, who couldn’t recognize her.

As Aria almost tore Lennon’s shirt, he intermittently swallowing his saliva, started to speak intermittently.

“You have no idea… how much I missed you. You don’t know… what I’ve…”

He struggled to complete his sentences for a long while.

He couldn’t articulate what emotion to express now that he was certain. He had thought she was truly dead.

Now that he was sure, the longing that washed over him was like a tidal wave, almost as if his very existence might disappear.

“Elodie, I, I….”

He kept muttering “I…” like a fool, and then, finally, he managed to utter one sentence.

“…I missed you. Elodie.”