A vague memory crossed his mind. A little boy with brown hair.

“Why was that kid?”

The Duke furrowed his brows as the image of the boy suddenly popped into his head. Then he noticed a candle stimulating his nose with a faint scent.

The black trace of a wick that seemed to have burned out overnight.

‘It must have been because of the candle.’

He remembered Lawrence saying that he had prepared a candle good for deep sleep.

“So, was it this candle that made my body feel light?”

He wondered if there might be another reason, but his mind was full of only a foggy sensation, like a fogcovered lake.

A nagging feeling that he had forgotten something important.

Valige, who had been sitting on the bed lost in thought for a while, got up.

“Then I’ll have to ask directly.”

Dressed, Valige left the room, and already people were busily starting their morning.

Looking randomly around the inn for someone he didn’t even know where to find, Valige grabbed a passing staff member.

“Hey, where is the smallbuilt staff member with brown hair?”

In response to Valige’s question, the staff member scratching his neck asked,

“There are too many staff members with brown hair, do you know the name by any chance?”

“The name……?”

The Duke then realized that he didn’t even know the boy’s name.

“The name… I don’t know. He was a boy with large glasses.”

“Hmm brown hair, small body, wearing glasses, a male staff member… You must be talking about Teo. He’s behind the building doing laundry… Huh?”

Valige had already left the spot before the staff member could finish speaking. For some reason, he felt he had to meet this employee named Teo as soon as possible.

Upon arriving at the back of the building with quick steps, he saw a small boy diligently moving among the white sheets spread out.

Watching the boy’s activity quietly, Valige was about to move again when his steps suddenly stopped.

Someone approached the boy. A stranger smiling warmly at the boy with a smile somehow familiar to him.

Seeing that, a familiar discomfort he had once felt washed over him.

(This is a time separator.)

Lina, who had been spreading bed sheets in the yard, sighed quietly.

“Yeah, this is done.”

She should have left from the moment she first encountered the Duke at the mansion. She had only corrected the wrong choice she made back then.

“Now, really alone again.”

He was the man who had loved her just as she was. Perhaps the first and the last.

He will never return.

A man like a sweet dream on a summer night.

At that moment, when a bitter smile bloomed on her lips, someone tapped her shoulder from behind.
“Theo, what’s going on?”

“Eren?”

He was the only staff member who treated her familiarly at the inn where they worked together.

“You seemed out of sorts earlier.”

“I’m just tired, we’ve been very busy lately.”

“I hear you’re on vacation starting tonight?”

“Ah.”

She had been so preoccupied with the Duke that she had forgotten.

‘It’s already the day of the full moon.’

Since today was the day of the full moon, Lina, who had taken her vacation in advance, was planning to leave the inn for about 3 days.

“No wonder the boss has been fretting, saying he couldn’t get you to do more work. He always acts like that before employees go on vacation. Or maybe, last time, he was furious because Thomas secretly stole some fruit from the kitchen and even lost his wig?”

“What? A wig?”

“You didn’t know? The boss’s hair is a wig. You haven’t worked here long enough to know that? The sight of the master without his wig.”

The hair was a wig. Lina had a whimsical and humorous imagination and was laughing softly when it happened.

“You look very amused?”

‘Duke?’

Lina, who had been talking to Eren, looked sharply at the Duke with a stiff expression as if she had heard something she should not have.

“You seem to talk well too?”

But Lina just stood there, not responding to Valige at all. Eren, who found this strange, called Lina with a ‘tap.’

“What’s the matter?”

‘It doesn’t make sense, why does he remember me…?’

She had erased her memory last night.

She had erased all memories related to herself, so naturally, she should not have been recognized by the inn staff.

‘But why!’

Lina looked into the Duke’s eyes, seemingly confused.

“You fell for it quite nicely, didn’t you?”

Eren, who sensed the strange atmosphere between the two, slowly backed away and said,

“That, now that I think of it, the boss was looking for me… I was out of my mind. Haha.”

With that, he disappeared quickly, leaving only Lina and Valige in the room.

“I wonder if the owner of this inn knows that his employee is lazing around instead of working.”

But Lina, still not recovered from the shock, could not answer his muttering question.

“What did you do in my room last night?”

“….”

And the silence continued.

“Why.”

Valige, annoyed that his words had been ignored three times already, took a big step toward Lina.

“It’s not that the voice that was coming out just fine until a while ago isn’t coming out now…”

Valige, tilting his head, flicked her hair as he muttered.

“Are you doing it on purpose?”