The atmosphere in the mansion was more solemn and quiet than ever before.

Especially inside the bedroom, which felt like the calm before a storm, there was an eerie atmosphere.

Clard was standing by the window without saying a word.

As always, his face, leaning slightly, was incomparably cleaner and at the same time paler than just a few months ago.

His sunken eyes under long eyelashes stared outside without blinking.

Butler Gustav checked the pocket watch he had kept in his front pocket.

It used to be the time when Clard’s eyes would flicker most sensitively, and when pain would overtake him like the sudden night sky, making it hard to tell if he was human or monster.

For that time to become so quiet like this.

But quiet did not mean peaceful.

Gustav watched Clard’s reaction while looking at the backs of the servants who had finally left the mansion with torches to find the lady, and the guards who had followed them.

Gustav ultimately couldn’t stop them.

“Your Highness.”

Gustav felt as if Clard was standing on a precarious cliff.

How much time had passed like that?

The precarious and cold silence was finally broken when the rain started pouring.

“Your Highness!”

It was because Clard Yufris, who had been quietly staring into the darkness, finally opened the bedroom door with his own hands and went outside.

The farthest the hired carriage could go was not far from the White Forest.

Yuan, having run out of money and sent the carriage away, kept walking and walking, recalling the priest’s testimony that he had only heard they were heading north.

‘Let’s live together for the rest of our lives.’
‘Wherever we go, I’ll definitely take you with me. So don’t think you’re alone.’

“Louise…”

Regret poured out with her white breath. Yuan’s mind went blank and she didn’t know what to do.

Even if it meant falling out of Clard’s favor, she should have at least mentioned Louise.

If she had known she would part with Louise so helplessly like this.

What was she so afraid of that she hid Louise?

“Louise!!”

Calling out to the deceased who wouldn’t answer.

Yuan wandered through the forest like a madwoman.

After one forest came another forest. A damn cold winter forest where the snow had not yet melted.

Yuan followed traces of unfamiliar carriages, unaware of the scratches forming on her hands and face as she went around.

It was only when she briefly regained her senses.

When the brilliant sunset light began to rush towards her over the unfamiliar forest.

“…Your Highness.”

Yuan suddenly thought of Clard.

The new shoes he had bought for her had fallen off somewhere, and she was now barefoot.

Only then did Yuan take a close look at her hands and feet. The sight of them swollen and red, about to burst from the cold, was pitiful.

Looking back the way she had come, the top of the black mansion could be faintly seen very, very far away.

Yuan hesitated for a moment.

It felt as if someone had poured boiling water from the crown of her head onto her frozen body.

Soon it will be dark.

No matter how much the time of pain had been delayed, when night falls deep, Clard will be immersed in pain.

She had firmly promised to go to his bedroom every day when the sun set…

She quickly wiped away the tears that were falling heavily.

‘Let’s come back tomorrow.’

Biting her lower lip until it bled, she took a rough breath between her parted lips and comforted herself.

What on earth would she do after wandering barefoot looking for Louise?

She should have brought more money to hire a carriage, and brought at least one guard with her to search.

If asked what she was looking for, what would she answer? She also had to come up with a miserable excuse overnight.

With anxiety grown as big as a mountain on her back, Yuan walked towards the black mansion, clenching her trembling jaw.

The soles of her feet stung as they scraped against the rough ground.

Every time a cool breeze cut through the forest, she flinched and looked back.

With each desperate turn of her head to see if a wagon carrying Louise might be passing nearby, disappointment dripped heavily.

Swoosh—

Yuan, who had been walking aimlessly on the still fluffy snow, stood under a tree for a long time to avoid the sudden downpour that came with the darkness.

The surroundings soon darkened to just before being engulfed by darkness, and the cold she hadn’t felt while acting half out of her mind came rushing in like waves.

The cold air seeped through her clothes, wet from the rain.

Yuan, crouching down and hugging herself in the chilling cold that made her teeth chatter, wiped her wet face and just shed tears.

Tears hanging from the tip of her nose wet the ground along with raindrops under her lowered head.

She had ruined everything.

She thought she had protected Louise from being handed over to the Peliesse family and from being burned, but that wasn’t the case.

How long had it been since she vowed not to stand by and watch Clard, her new family, suffer?

Far from taking him outside, she couldn’t even keep her promise.

‘No matter how much you try to run away, you’re still in the palm of my hand. How dare you run away without even being grateful?’
‘You crawled back on your own because you had nowhere to go, yet you act so high and mighty.’
‘Why don’t you try leaving again? As if anyone would come looking for you.’

Before manifesting her ability.

When she had briefly run away from the Peliesse mansion, unable to bear the mistreatment from her cousins.

That night when no one came looking for her.

That night when she gave up running away, led by Louise’s hand who finally came out looking for her with an ailing body after staying up all night.

Along with the flying criticism, she was reminded of her past family members who didn’t even think of looking for her.

It was a horrible and frightening memory.

Perhaps she was being punished for hiding Louise.

Perhaps she was paying dearly for the sins she had postponed, saying just one more day, just one more day.

Yuan buried her reddened nose between her knees as she hugged them.

Hot tears wet her cheeks and knees.

‘So this is how it ends up.’

In the new home she had.

Only being a burden to Clard. Unable to keep her promises.

Unable to even protect Louise.

Like this, in this forest where no one is looking for her…

When she first passed through this white forest and arrived at the black mansion.

When she waited for Clard in the carriage until she was on the brink of death.

Was the dream she had then a premonition?

The image of herself dying with Louise in the white forest flowed like water in her mind.

It was then.

“Yuan Peliesse!”

A man’s voice was heard from far away, like an auditory hallucination.

The raindrops began to beat the ground more fiercely.

Yuan raised her trembling body and came out a little from under the tree where she had been avoiding the rain.

Through the densely lined fir trees, a tall man was approaching her relentlessly.

“Your Highness…?”

It was Clard Yufris, as drenched as she was.

It wasn’t just his clothes that were disheveled.

Yuan blinked her blurry eyes several times and stared at the approaching man.

It wasn’t his usual stiff cheeks or twisted lips.

It was an unfamiliar appearance with a completely disheveled face and bloodshot eyes.

Yuan felt both relief and fear at the same time.

As she got closer to Clard, she couldn’t stop her voice from coming out sorrowfully.

She babbled with a half-dazed face.

“Sister, sister has disappeared, Your Highness.”

All reason was paralyzed and the anxiety she had been holding back burst out uncontrollably as soon as she saw him.

The boundary between what she should say and what she shouldn’t say crumbled, and only childish complaints and anxiety poured out as if a child had met their father.

“I’m sure I buried her well… but sister is gone.”

Clard came closer.

Yuan reached out to Clard through the falling rain, rambling like a sinner making a confession or a woman who had lost her mind.

“Someone dug up sister. Who on earth could have dug her up? They said she went that way, that way. Where could ‘that way’ be? Is it really north?”

Suddenly, fear filled Yuan’s eyes as she kept spouting words without pause.

Yuan finally grabbed the hem of his clothes standing in front of her and begged for forgiveness. It was because she remembered again that she hadn’t kept her promise to him either.

“Your Highness… Your Highness. The sun has set… So—”

I came back.

I was so scared.

I was afraid that if I didn’t chase after sister now, I might never see her again.

As it got dark, I couldn’t move my feet anymore.

I couldn’t just leave because I know how much pain you would be in.

Even though I might never see sister again!

And there I was, thinking such thoughts…

Clard watched her pour out words without thinking for a while, then grabbed her hand that was holding onto his clothes.

Then he silently pulled her strongly and embraced her.

Yuan stiffened like a pillar of salt in his cold embrace.

The tears that hadn’t quite fallen yet seeped into his chest.

“I’m sorry.”

…Did I hear that wrong?

“I’m sorry.”

Yuan stayed stiff for a long time, only raising her head when he apologized once more in a rough voice.

His jawbone was protruding prominently on his chin as he gritted his teeth and pulled her into an embrace.

Clard pulled Yuan closer, as if he didn’t want to show her his face.

And he whispered to her, who was dazedly nestled in his arms.

“I buried your sister in a good place.”

Everything went white before her eyes for a moment.

Her head turned white hot and her tongue stiffened.

A choked voice poured out from her chest that had suddenly become as hot as if it held fire.

“Why. Why didn’t you tell me? Why!”

Sorrowful cries poured into Clard’s chest.

“How shocked I was. How much I—”

“I’m sorry. I was going to tell you.”

“How much I— How much I—”

Yuan finally crumbled.

She weakly pounded Clard’s broad chest with her fists.

The more she did so, Clard quietly took the blows while embracing Yuan.

Her resentment, pouring out like blood, was buried in the sound of rain.

Clard just repeated that he was sorry until she exhausted herself and loosened her fists on her own.

In the end, Yuan’s sorrowful resentment, after wandering everywhere, turned towards Clard himself.

“Even when I begged, pleaded, and threatened you to come outside like that, you wouldn’t come out.”

Her rounded forehead bumped against Clard’s chest along with her small clenched fists.

“If you were going to come out like this, like this…”

“You weren’t coming back.”

Clard quietly answered her accusation, which was close to a childish tantrum to release her tired and exhausted feelings.

“You.”

Yuan held her breath and looked up at him.

His deeply sunken eyes revealed the light that had been hiding in them and stared at her intently.

“You left on your own and didn’t come back even after the sun set. Even though you said you would come when the sun sets.”