Throughout the boat ride, my head was dizzy with worry about Earl Boston.

“Larien. Get some rest for a while.”

“…No. I’m fine.”

“I’ll look after Blanche. Go on.”

I eventually closed my eyes as Jade forcibly laid me down on the sofa.

How much time had passed?

Occasional loud noises rang out.

I opened my eyes to the sound of many people gathered and murmuring.

‘Why am I over there?’

I was greeting mourners in dark attire with a hardened expression.

Blanche, standing beside me, approached the coffin and placed a lily while crying.

“He looked healthy, I didn’t know he’d go so suddenly.”

“Indeed. It’s terrible.”

Following their regretful gazes, Earl Boston lay with his eyes closed in the coffin.

“Uncle!”

I suddenly sat up in shock. I was on the ship.

“Larien? What’s wrong?”

“Mother…?”

I realized from the worried looks of Jade and Blanche sitting on the sofa.

‘It was… a dream…’

Even recognizing it was a dream, it was too vivid to quell my anxiety.

After disembarking at Agriche Port and heading to the villa, Aaron was pacing in the hallway.

“Young Lady!”

“Aaron, what happened?”

“The Earl had heart disease. He had been showing symptoms of coughing up blood recently, but he came to Lecach to hide it.”

Heart disease.

It wasn’t just a simple cold.

‘I should have noticed earlier and stopped Uncle from leaving…’

He hadn’t left for Lecach to avoid spreading a cold, but to hide his symptoms of coughing up blood.

“He won’t last much longer. Please go in quickly.”

Aaron swallowed his tears and guided me to Diane’s childhood playroom.

“I’ll stay here with Blanche.”

Jade gestured for me to go in while hugging Blanche.

Entering the playroom, I saw Earl Boston sitting in an armchair, looking out the window.

He was holding a brush in his hand.

Beside him was an old easel, and on his lap was a palette with paint squeezed out.

His gaunt appearance, clutching his chest, made me realize how little time he had left.

Earl Boston barely exhaled the smallest breath.

There were no other sounds.

It was quiet. As if it were God’s will for him to pass peacefully, he was in silence.

“…Uncle. I’m here.”

As I approached calling him, Earl Boston turned his head.

“Larien…?”

Earl Boston’s eyes widened as he took me in, then immediately narrowed.

“Aaron contacted you, I see. I told him to keep quiet.”

“How long… were you planning to hide this from me?”

“…Larien.”

“You could have told me. Then I would have stayed with you longer. Why did you leave like that and show me this state? You said you’d return healthy…”

My voice rose, upset by his decision to hide it until the end.

“Larien. Don’t cry. Such a beautiful face shouldn’t be full of tears. I didn’t want to show you my weakening state. I didn’t want you to worry about me.”

Earl Boston’s gentle voice made my suppressed emotions burst forth.

“Larien. Would you bring a chair and sit in front of me? I’d like to paint you.”

I wanted to shout that this wasn’t the time for leisurely painting.

But perhaps because of Blanche’s words about painting a portrait to keep in memory forever.

I couldn’t refuse Earl Boston’s request to remember my appearance before he left.

I brought a chair and sat in front of him.

Sitting face to face, I could clearly see his struggling appearance.

“You’re even prettier up close like this.”

Earl Boston brushed back my disheveled hair with his bony hand.

“Can’t you stay by my side a little longer? If we look hard enough, wouldn’t there be a way to cure you? I won’t ask for much. Just a little, just a little bit…”

He smiled faintly as he dipped his brush in blue paint.

His slight smile was incomparably warm.

“I thought you had grown up, but you’re still a baby. Larien.”

“…A baby?”

“Yes. Even when you become a grandmother, you’ll still look like a baby in my eyes.”

Earl Boston showed me the blue paint and whispered.

“It’s a bright and vivid color, isn’t it? When I first met you as a newborn, I was delighted to see eyes the same color as this.”

He said he was glad to see blue in the bloodline of Boston, which had been tiresome with only pink.

“When you were 5, I had trouble trying to paint you because you couldn’t sit still. Now it’s easy to paint you.”

The restless child he spoke of wasn’t me, but Larien.

I felt a strange sense of defiance.

“…Uncle. How would you feel if I wasn’t the real Larien?”

I didn’t want to be Larien to him until the very end.

“You’re saying strange things.”

“It’s not just a joke.”

He looked at me and let out a long groan.

“Hmm. You seem unfamiliar with stories from before you were 7.”

“…Pardon?”

“When you were 7, you fell into the lake. When I heard you had woken up and rushed over, your speech, gait, and favorite snacks were all different.”

He thought I had lost my memories from the point I possessed Larien.

“Your father tried to hide it from me, so I pretended not to know, but I realized you had lost all your previous memories.”

‘It’s enough that you see Larien and me differently after age 7.’

I decided not to be greedy for more. It would only hinder our conversation now.

“Since then, you didn’t come to the Boston estate, so I regretted having few chances to interact.”

“…I’m sorry.”

He shook his head as he squeezed out new light brown paint.

“It was like you became a different child, but it was alright. Nothing changes even if you don’t remember. You’ve spent a lot of time with me until now.”

The Larien that Earl Boston remembered, and the one who spent time with him, was me.

That was enough. I would be captured in the portrait he was painting now.

“Larien, I remember the day you came to me asking for help. I’m relieved that Blanche will grow up clinging to you.”

When Blanche was in the womb, he said he wanted to raise her as a child who would cling and act spoiled.

‘He remembered what he said then and still kept it in his heart.’

He coughed into a handkerchief, spitting out dark blood.

“…I’m sorry. I wanted to stay by your and Blanche’s side for a long time…”

“Uncle!”

I sensed Earl Boston’s final moments.

“I hope you won’t be too sad. Everyone dies, after all.”

I regretted the past days I had lightly brushed off, busy with the situation at hand.

“If I had known just a little sooner… Could I have stopped it?”

“Don’t… blame yourself. It’s not your fault.”

His breathing became rapid.

“I was happy in my old age because of you and Blanche. After losing Diane, I had no will to live…”

He reminisced about the time before I came.

“I could face Rachel, and I wouldn’t have to hear Diane’s nagging about why I came so soon.”

He told me that after losing Diane, he had wanted to follow her in death.

He revealed that he found hope to live on when I came asking for help, sharing a story he hadn’t told until now.

“So I was grateful that you came to me for help then. Even though I didn’t do much, you thought of me in your difficult moments…”

Earl Boston tried to grip the brush, not wanting to let it go.

“Oh my. It seems I still don’t want to go, seeing how I’m holding on. I still want to be behind you.”

Even while suffering in agony, he only worried about me until the end.

“I’m worried if Blanche might be in danger due to her divine power, and if you’ll have too hard a time. Still, it’s better than losing a daughter twice.”

I disliked how he worried about Blanche while thinking of me who would be in pain.

If this was the end, he should have looked back on the life he had lived.

“Thinking about it, I wonder. If I was a good father to you. I’m sorry.”

The apology for not being a good father was heartbreaking.

“Forgive this departing father… I promise to watch over you in any form.”

All my fathers abandoned me, but Earl Boston considered me his daughter.

“Uncle, I…”

I had never had a father even once.

“I didn’t know what a father was. I thought I didn’t need one. Because I never had one from the start.”

Earl Boston’s warm gaze fell on me.

“You showed me. How reassuring it is to have a father. How much I wanted to hear these words from a father.”

“…I should have loved you more.”

Thud-

Earl Boston’s hand that dropped the brush fell through the air.

The pained expression gradually faded away.

“…Uncle?”

There was no answer.

I very slowly rested my face on Earl Boston’s knee.

“Next time… I want to really be your daughter.”

“…”

“Fa, ther.”

Even at the first utterance of the word father, the departed did not return.