Elena’s pupils dilated widely.

Her unfocused eyes stared blankly at me. I observed the scene with a slightly pleasant feeling.

“Wh-what is that……”

After a moment, Elena stammered her lips and barely managed to speak in a nonchalant voice.

“What kind of title is that, sister? It’s too vulgar.”

“Vulgar?”

I tilted my head slightly.

“You think so? Adultery is vulgar?”

“Of course!”

“Ah, I see. I thought…”

I leaned my head gently towards Elena and smiled brightly.

“You didn’t know.”

“……”

Elena’s eyes widened even more than before.

Her gaze quickly scanned my face. Her aimless eyes were tangled with confusion. Doubt, disbelief, anxiety.

“…What do you mean by that?”

“Hm? It’s exactly what I said.”

I smiled, curling up the corners of my eyes.

“It’s a better title because it’s vulgar. Don’t you know? Since ancient times, affairs of the heart have been the most intriguing subject for people.”

“……”

Elena frowned with a skeptical expression.

“Even so, how could you… come up with such an uncultured title.”

“Well, it’s not a bad idea.”

At that moment, Edward intervened with a sullen face, crossing his arms.

Elena turned to him with a startled expression.

“Brother!”

“What? Your sister’s not wrong. It’s certainly impactful. It’ll definitely create a buzz.”

“Buzz or not, it’s too strange a title!”

“You really don’t like it that much, Elena?”

I furrowed my brow to look concerned and said.

“Why don’t you try singing it once?”

“What? M-me?”

“Yes, of course.”

I smiled widely as if asking something obvious.

“You’re the prima soprano of our opera house, after all.”

Prima soprano. The protagonist and flower of the opera.

“Who else but you could sing this aria?”

“…I…”

Elena’s complexion turned pale by the second.

Edward raised one eyebrow as if to say why not just sing it already, and Lucas didn’t seem inclined to intervene either. He just scanned my expression here and there with slightly perplexed eyes.

I spoke, wearing a smile like a mask.

“No. I’m sorry, Elena.”

“…What?”

“It was unreasonable of me to ask you to sing a song that’s not even properly finished yet.”

Elena, who had been blank for a moment, soon raised her chin.

“Right, asking me to sing out of the blue?”

Thinking I had backed down, Elena, who quickly became haughty, said in a prim voice.

“That’s a very rude request. Do you think I’m some kind of clown-”

“When the entire opera is complete, I’ll ask you again then.”

“…W-what?”

I grasped Elena’s hands with both of mine. Elena looked at me, startled.

“I’d really like you to sing this aria I just improvised. I think I understand why men praise you as their muse.”

“Why… why are you acting like this?”

“It’s a strange feeling, Elena. The feeling of musical ideas rushing to come out…”

I turned to Edward and Lucas with a shy smile, like an excited girl.

“Um, may I go upstairs and start working right away? I think I might be able to come up with everything from the overture to the final aria in one sitting, just like the improvisation from earlier.”

“…Really? All of it?”

Greed quickly settled in Lucas’s eyes.

It seemed he quite liked the piece I had just played.

“Then, Ari, you’ll be in charge of this opera from start to finish.”

“My Lord!”

This time, Edward turned to Lucas with bulging eyes.

Lucas reprimanded Edward with a tired expression.

“There’s not much time left until the performance, and we don’t have a single properly completed piece yet, Count Lopez. Right?”

At those words, Edward couldn’t refute and just turned red in the face.

“After Ari composes everything, you can go over it once more and polish it up.”

“That’s… huh, really…”

Edward looked very dissatisfied but couldn’t disobey the words of the top investor any further.

I silently observed Edward and Elena for a moment.

Standing side by side, their faces turning red and blue simultaneously, they looked so similar, like twins.

Just like that time when they smiled side by side after I signed with my dying hand.

“My Lord! Are you really going to put on an opera about, about adultery?!”

“This performance is important, Elena.”

Lucas scolded Elena, who was protesting sharply like a cat, as if teaching a child.

“Word is going around that Dante Heigenberg is returning to the empire.”

“What? …Lord Dante?”

Elena’s eyes widened.

At the same time, I slowly swallowed my breath.

Lucas, frowning deeply, spoke with a growl.

“Yes. They’ll probably put on another show in that ‘Paradise’ or whatever to welcome him back. With a stage plastered only with money, so vulgar… tsk!”

Lucas clicked his tongue in displeasure.

“We can’t let them steal the spotlight. This performance must be a hit. You know, that’s the only way we can put our stage on at the Empire’s Founding Festival at the Imperial Palace this time!”

“……”

“So, as Ari said, we need to create as much buzz as possible for this performance… Ari?”

“……”

“Ariana!”

“…Ah.”

It was only after a moment that I felt the hand shaking me. Lucas was looking down at me with a puzzled face.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Ah, …it’s nothing.”

Saying that, I shook my head.

Dante Heigenberg.

Keeping that name that had burrowed into my mind the moment I heard it in a corner of my thoughts.

“But is Lord Dante really returning to the empire?”

Elena asked in a subtle voice.

A tone as if she was just asking, without much interest. But at the end of that voice was a strange excitement.

Lucas, seemingly not noticing it, clicked his tongue roughly.

“Yes. He’ll probably bring a lot of bloodshed again. I heard he’s been slaughtering some barbarian tribes this time.”

“Oh my…”

“Our future sister-in-law, don’t you dare go anywhere near such a man.”

Lucas patted Elena’s head as if he were a caring guardian.

Elena rubbed her head against that palm like a puppy.

“I know. I hear his private life is just as depraved? They say he calls female singers to his bedroom every day.”

While observing that quite disgusting sight, I thought to myself.

‘Depraved, huh.’

It seems such rumors were indeed rampant around this time.

That Dante, who runs the pleasure house ‘Paradise’, drags different people to his bed every night. That he’s such a depraved and dissolute man.

‘From five years later, …slightly different rumors started to circulate though.’

“We can’t lose to such a vulgar person. This performance must succeed. You all understand, right?”

Lucas looked around at the three siblings with kind eyes.

“Prove to me that my insight in recognizing the potential of the Lopez Opera House wasn’t wrong.”

‘You mean, make sure the money you invested doesn’t go to waste.’

Swallowing a crooked smile, I smiled brightly.

“Of course, My Lord. I’ll do my best to compose as well.”

Your requiem.

After dismissing Sophie, I was completely alone.

Entering the room, I leaned against the door and slowly exhaled.

The reality I was standing on was still clear.

‘Did I really come back to the past?’

A phenomenon that can’t be explained by any common sense.

But I didn’t care even if it was just me going insane.

I couldn’t possibly rest in peace without taking revenge on my beloved family, even if it’s here.

So, surely, thoroughly…

‘I’ll make you fall into the abyss.’

I have talent.

The talent to write music that sells, the so-called ‘money-making chords’.

Countless nobles danced to the waltz I composed.

Even foreign royalty bought black market tickets to hear the opera I composed.

Every single note of the pieces I painfully created over the past five years was in my head.

‘I can create them again.’

I don’t need Edward’s arrangements or Elena’s singing voice.

These notes in my head were my only treasure.

‘But the problem is…’

Remembering the wall of reality, I bit my lip.

The empire’s laws were extremely conservative and didn’t recognize the personal property of unmarried women.

In the empire, wealth earned by women belongs to their husbands if they’re married, or to their fathers if they’re not.

Lucas said so too.

“Naive Ariana. Do you think you can have those precious compositions of yours recognized as your own if you divorce me?”

Those words were certainly true.

A situation where my compositions would belong to Lucas if I married him, or to Edward if I didn’t.

‘To overcome this…’

There was a simple solution.

Creating a new family. With a man who is neither Lucas nor Edward.

In other words, getting married again.

The name that had been lingering in my mind slipped out of my lips.

“Dante Heigenberg.”

A war hero soaked in blood and the owner of Paradise. The protagonist of depraved rumors who supposedly changes partners every night.

And…

“Why are you pouring gold into the mouths of those who don’t even recognize your worth?”

The man who suddenly came one night and whispered something no one else had ever said.

“Don’t be foolish, come to my side. You never know…”

“……”

“I might cherish you like a precious gem.”