Erina couldn’t hide her laughter at the quacking voice she heard.

“Pfft.”

Perhaps thinking she couldn’t do anything about the upright Heila, Mirea kept calling out to the easy target Erina.

Seeing the flustered Mirea stumbling over her words, Erina couldn’t hold back the laughter that burst forth.

Her head, which had been dizzy with the future of ‘Erina Iolce’ lingering in her subconscious, seemed to lighten.

For Erina, enduring was nothing more than a natural action.

So it seemed she had thought that returning to this mansion and enduring the week ahead was simply what she had to do.

As always.

Just like every day she had experienced, she thought she had to endure it as if it were part of her daily routine.

Feiron’s contemptuous gaze, Mirea’s ridiculous behaviors, the servants’ dismissive attitudes.

But that wasn’t the case.

There was no need to stupidly endure.

She could voice her dislike of things she didn’t like, and refuse things she didn’t want to do.

Because she would soon be Medelia, not Iolce.

No, even if Erina herself couldn’t escape from being an Iolce, it seemed that wouldn’t have changed.

Voicing one’s dislike, opposition, or unwillingness to someone wasn’t the end of the world.

“A-are you mocking me right now?”

Mirea, intending to take out her anger on Erina, huffed and pushed Heila who was blocking her view.

But Heila stood firm without budging.

Unable to do anything and failing to move the wall-like Heila, Mirea screamed in frustration.

“Aaargh!”

“Lady Iolce, I’m sorry but you need to rest.”

“Move aside! I said move right now! Aaargh!”

Heila, who had been looking down, raised her head to look at Mirea.

“Y-you…!”

Mirea’s body could be seen trembling visibly.

“Heila, it’s okay.”

Erina said to Heila, still with a smile on her face.

Heila, not hiding her clear hostility, stared at Mirea for a long time before stepping aside.

Mirea, angered by the fact that she had been intimidated, glared at Erina with a reddened face.

Erina, combing her disheveled hair with her hand as she lay down, asked Mirea:

“What brings you here?”

“What brings me here?!”

After shouting loudly, then biting her lips while glancing at Heila, Mirea called for the maid standing outside the room.

“Come in!”

The maid, seemingly startled by the loud voice, entered with documents in hand, her body completely stiff.

When Mirea pointed at Erina with her chin, the maid placed the documents on Erina’s bed without even raising her head.

Upon making eye contact with Erina, the maid was startled and quickly left the room.

Erina glanced at the documents and couldn’t hide a smirk that escaped.

As always, they had come to notify her of matters requiring the approval of the Countess of Iolce and to ask for her seal.

“These are necessary for the National Founding Day preparations, so stamp them quickly.”

Erina picked up the documents to examine them.

A long list of unnecessary expenditures was written out.

The funny thing was that the list was twice as long compared to last year.

Upon careful examination, it wasn’t just Mirea’s items.

Rose Asila’s items were also included in the list.

Rose had even deliberately purchased her cosmetics and chemises here together with Mirea.

The intention behind it was obvious.

What did Rose Asila hope to achieve by openly indulging in luxury and shamelessly doing things only the Countess could do?

She must have wanted the stupid and unloved legal wife to know.

Her existence, her value, how great what she held in her hands was.

Erina couldn’t understand Rose at all, making such a fuss over a useless piece of emotion.

“Pfft.”

It wasn’t even funny.

After all, she was no different from a mistress, not the legal wife.

Erina deliberately fluttered the documents in her hand and looked at Mirea.

Mirea had been indulging in luxury beyond the limits of what the Countess of Iolce could spend since the easy target Erina became the Countess.

Knowing Mirea’s excessive spending, Feiron had not allocated more than a certain amount to prevent Mirea from being extravagant.

After learning that the pushover Erina had fallen out of Feiron’s favor, Mirea took it for granted to steal the money allocated to the Countess.

Erina had always wanted to tell Feiron, but Feiron, who had closed his ears due to misunderstanding, did not listen to her desperate voice.

So she gave up and lived enduring it.

But this time, Mirea’s extravagance had gone too far.

If all the items listed in the documents were to be covered by the money allocated to the Countess, Erina wouldn’t be able to buy anything.

In other words, they didn’t care whether Erina could prepare for the National Founding Day or not.

“Hurry up!”

Disliking Erina’s silent examination of the documents, Mirea urged her.

“I don’t want to.”

Erina answered as she stretched out her hand and threw the documents off the bed.

She smiled brightly at Mirea, who was frozen in shock and unable to say anything.

“I don’t want to, Lady Iolce.”

“Y-you…”

“I don’t see why I should stamp these for you.”

“Right now!”

“If it’s so urgent, go ask the Count of Iolce for approval. Show him this excessively luxurious list.”

Feiron would definitely not approve.

Knowing the two people who always argued about Mirea’s excessive luxury, Erina knew he wouldn’t approve.

Then, did Feiron know?

Did he know that what Erina had been spending her monthly allowance on to the fullest was actually Mirea’s purchases?

He probably didn’t know.

Someone so dull and stupid that he couldn’t even control the coachman probably really didn’t know.

“Who knows. He might approve what Lady Rose Asila bought.”

Since he’s so desperate to give to Rose, he might pick out and approve only Rose’s items.

Mirea’s face turned bright red with shame.

She felt unbearably ashamed when her daughter-in-law said that while he might understand the mistress’s extravagance, he would never understand her mother’s extravagance.

Should we say it’s fortunate that she feels ashamed?

“Well, as you can see, I’m not feeling well and need to rest, so could you please leave?”

At her dismissal, the trembling Mirea picked up the documents thrown on the floor and fled from Erina’s room.

“Oh my.”

Heila sighed as she watched Mirea leave without even closing the door.

The maid who had been blankly staring inside from outside fled in fright as soon as she made eye contact with Heila.

“It seems running away is a daily occurrence for the Iolce family members.”

Mocking them, Heila closed the door and carefully laid Erina down.

“Now, the patient needs more rest.”

“Thank you, Heila.”

“It’s nothing. Just a maid doing her duty.”

The touch that stroked her forehead to check for fever and tucked in the blanket was unfamiliarly warm.

“Oh, and don’t worry about Revil. I’m taking good care of him.”

The attentive and kind Heila remembered and took care of Revil, whom Erina had been looking after until the end.

Fortunately, Revil’s room was not far away, so Heila had no difficulty taking care of the child.

Despite his young age, there wasn’t much to do for him.

Not only that, the child cleverly suppressed his presence in this suffocating household.

“Is Revil okay?”

“Of course. All that’s left is for Erina to get healthy quickly.”

As Heila said, Erina needed to get up from her bed healthy as soon as possible.

Feeling dizzy again from the medicine that had just taken effect, Erina thanked her and fell asleep.

Heila, feeling sorry for her, gently stroked her pale, bony hand.

Feiron sat alone in his study, tapping his finger on the desk as he fell into thought.

His father always told Feiron:

That love is beautiful and noble.

‘If true love comes to you, don’t hesitate to grab it.’

This was what his father, whom he could no longer see, used to tell Feiron all the time when he was alive.

It was like a concept that had been ingrained in him since childhood, almost like a belief.

So he held on without letting go.

When he met Rose, the moment the world was beautifully colored was so marvelous that he couldn’t help but fall in love at first sight.

The first love that came like a fever made him unable to do anything.

To the point where he completely forgot that he was married and that the reason he went to the orphanage was to find an heir.

Rose’s reaction was exactly the same as his.

She hesitated because he was married, but in the end, she took his hand.

Feeling like he couldn’t breathe without having her by his side, he returned to the Iolce mansion with Rose’s permission.

The moment he returned, he realized his mistake when he saw Erina facing the two of them with a pale face.

But that was it.

Erina was a person who was displeasing in every way.

From her greedy nature of indulging in luxury as soon as they got married, to her behavior of trying to get attention under the pretext of an heir while unilaterally demanding emotions.

At the beginning of their marriage, he watched her, thinking everything was a misunderstanding as she tried hard to communicate, but her words and actions were so different.

She said it was a misunderstanding, but she always indulged in luxury as if she had been waiting for it.

Feiron, who was repulsed by luxury because of his mother, closed his ears to Erina’s unchanged behavior even after several months.

He rejected and distanced himself from Erina, who begged for love and became obsessive.

Then suddenly, as if it had never happened, she changed.

The suffocating obsession disappeared and she acted like an ideal wife who respected her husband.

She accepted her cold husband’s disregard as if it were natural and obeyed her mother who used to shout at her when they met.

Somehow, that appearance was even more displeasing.

It seemed more fake than before, as if she was wearing an ill-fitting mask and acting.

So it seemed he didn’t consider Erina when bringing Rose to the mansion.

Because he didn’t feel the need to do so.

Of course, regardless of what kind of person Erina was, he wouldn’t have hesitated to bring Rose.

“But why…”

Feiron couldn’t understand why the image of Erina, weak and gasping for breath while unconscious, kept coming to mind, why that image kept gnawing at his thoughts.