Enrico was sitting beside the bed. She tried to move her lips to call him, but her voice wouldn’t come out, perhaps due to being in a deep sleep. When she coughed, showing discomfort, he picked up the kettle on the bedside table and poured water into a cup.

Emilia watched Enrico for a moment as he quickly brought the water glass to her mouth, then slowly swallowed the water. Seeing his gaze pause on her throat as she swallowed, she withdrew the glass.

“…What happened?”

Emilia asked in a low voice after clearing her throat.

“You hurt your shoulder area and arm a bit. Your right ankle is swollen, and they said you should get it examined later.”

At his words, her gaze turned towards her feet. She had been postponing the ankle examination, but it seems they finally checked it due to the accident before twisting it. It seems they want to check later if it’s just temporarily swollen, but feeling complicated as soon as she opened her eyes, she sighed.

“It won’t be a big problem. Don’t worry too much.”

It was an unexpectedly kind consolation. Unlike him, who is usually sensitive about his own physical condition, Emilia’s eyes belatedly focused precisely on Enrico. She hadn’t noticed at first glance, but he was still wearing his suit. Moreover, his deep purple eyes were flickering with a strange emotion.

Had he been by her side the whole time? Why? Her eyes filled with questions.

“I wanted to confirm you were awake.”

He said as if reading her thoughts. His lowered voice somehow sounded like a tickling whisper. Her heart beat strangely. She was confused whether it was beating from anxiety over his unfamiliar behavior or for some other reason.

‘Has he become more lenient after confirming I’m okay? After all, this accident wasn’t my fault. Ah… right, the accident.’

The ankle wasn’t the important thing right now.

“It was the lighting that fell, wasn’t it?”

Emilia blinked a few times before opening her mouth a beat late.

“Yes. They said there was something wrong with the string connecting the small lights. They’re checking, so I’ll let you know as soon as they investigate.”

It was obvious that the performance would have been halted anyway since the stage became a mess when the lighting fell, and the problem was why the lighting ended up like that.

Emilia recalled Christina looking at the ceiling before the performance. The clouded eyes that had sunk gloomily kept bothering her mind.

“…There was a staff member I asked to check the ceiling before the performance. I think it would be good to check with that person first.”

“You asked? Why suddenly?”

“I just had a bad feeling.”

His eyes flashed sharply for a moment.

“Why did you think that?”

“That’s…”

It could have just been her own feelings. Should someone be suspected for such a reason? As she hesitated, he gently stroked around her wrist, which he was still holding, with his thumb as if to soothe her.

“Even if it’s nothing, tell me honestly. It’s okay.”

“…It’s just, there’s someone among the ballerinas who seems to avoid me, and that person was looking at the ceiling before the performance.”

“Someone who avoids you? Since when?”

“I thought they might be keeping me in check because of the lead role issue, but recently they’ve been showing hostility more blatantly.”

“Then you should have told me. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“How could I say that? We’re not children…”

“It’s because you’re not children that you should say it. Don’t you know that woman who used to cling to the director also brought you down with that hostility?”

“…I know. But this is uncertain talk right now. It might not be true.”

Enrico inhaled at the emotion that somehow rose up, then closed his mouth tightly at the sight of her looking down with a dejected face. Strangely, the inside of his chest tingled.

Taking a moment to calm his excitement while catching his breath, he raised his hand and reached towards Emilia’s forehead. She looked at him with a surprised face.

“I’m not trying to blame you. It’s just that you shouldn’t be harmed, so… so I want you to be a bit wary of your surroundings.”

Her eyes blinked several times finely at his gentle touch stroking her hair.

“Tell me who that woman is. If I pass it on to the inspector in charge of the case, it will be helpful for the investigation.”

“…Ah.”

What kind of feeling was behind such a gentle touch? Could he care this much just because his possession was damaged?

Emilia, staring blankly at Enrico, bit her lower lip slightly with eyes that seemed to have many questions. Now was not the time to be shaken by the man in front of her. Barely suppressing the complicated feelings that were about to burst out, her mouth opened slowly again.

“It’s Christina Firdana.”

“Alright. I’ll look into it, so just rest for now. It’s still dawn.”

Dawn? Being in bed, she couldn’t see outside, so she couldn’t gauge the time. Then had he been by her side until this hour? Emilia’s eyes somehow stung.

It felt as if emotions were carried on the surging waves, crashing over her. Feeling it was unbearable, she pulled the blanket up to the tip of her nose and murmured.

“…Thank you.”

And she pulled the blanket over her head as if avoiding his touch.

“I want to be alone now. You should rest too, Your Grace.”

His hand, pushed away, was still near her head and had stopped as if frozen. He said nothing for a moment at her words. As she kept her eyes tightly shut and didn’t remove the blanket in the uncomfortable silence, she finally heard him getting up from his seat.

“I’ll come in the morning.”

Following the low voice, she heard footsteps moving away. Emilia slowly pulled down the blanket and opened her eyes at the sound of the door closing quietly.

All that remained, as if to indicate he had been there until just now, was the faint heavy scent occasionally detected from him. Silence enveloped the room. Her hand, which had been holding the edge of the blanket, fell limply.

‘Is this just another whim too?’

Enrico always treated her as a work of art, but he did show peculiar kindness at times. However, because the kindness came from Enrico, she couldn’t let her guard down.

She tried to dismiss it each time as just an attachment to a cherished object and not give it meaning. But such kindness that seeps in when a person is weak was no different from a fatal poison.

‘Even though he’ll abandon me without looking back…’

When she first worried that he was a poisoned chalice, she shouldn’t have accepted it. Although she had no choice from the beginning, regret would surge like a tide whenever she felt her heart wavering towards him.

Even though it was a relationship where she always had to worry about becoming useless, she couldn’t live being swayed by his interests, crying and laughing. The heart that she had been trying to suppress and ignore each time showed signs of bursting as if it had reached its limit.

It wasn’t time to comfortably fall into emotions, but her heart flowing differently from her thoughts was even resentful. She twisted her body in frustration, felt pain in her arm, and twitched her left foot.

She belatedly realized she was barefoot from the feel of the sheets inside the blanket.

‘…Did he see?’

It felt like all the blood in her body was cooling. She became anxious that the flaw she least wanted revealed had been exposed.

‘There was no reaction at all. The doctor would have done the examination in the first place, so he wouldn’t have had time to see.’

It didn’t seem likely that he would have seen her feet being treated. No, it had to be that way. Emilia gazed at the ornate ceiling with desperate eyes. She always had to be beautiful on his stage.

The moment she didn’t satisfy him, this occasional kindness shown as if giving alms would end. No. He wouldn’t even look at her in the first place.

Without realizing that she was worrying more about her encounter with him ending than about the contract breaking, Emilia waited for morning with her constantly murmuring heart. Like someone hoping for Enrico to come again.

In just one day, the ballet company was turned upside down. It was shocking enough that a ballerina was injured in yesterday’s sudden accident, but today all schedules were suspended for the time being due to the police who barged in suspecting it was an intentional accident.

The dancers wondered what was going on as they watched the police interrogating everyone one by one about the situation that day. If there was an investigation, they thought it would be internal, but the police seemed to be including the dancers as subjects as well. The dancers whispered among themselves, wondering if there was something they didn’t know.

“Who could have done it? It seems like they’re suspecting us too, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. It doesn’t seem like they’re just asking. They’re asking about everything – if there was anything suspicious that day, what the relationships between dancers in the company have been like.”

“No, does that make sense? If someone deliberately made the lighting fall, the dancers would be exposed first. But the culprit did it despite taking that risk?”

“Exactly. It doesn’t make sense, but if there really is a culprit among the dancers… That culprit must be a real psycho. How could they do something that might endanger themselves too.”

“Then, did Emilia fall into that trap by chance? Or was she deliberately targeted?”

“We don’t know that far. But if the police are asking about relationships with Emilia too, she might have been targeted…? Ah, I don’t know. By the way, how’s Emilia? Juliana, have you heard anything?”