Enrico slowly rose from his seat.

He walked around the table, stood next to Christina, and leaned his upper body slightly with one hand on the table. Christina’s body trembled with fear at the closer shadow.

“I-I’m sorry. I really made a mistake. I’ll kneel and apologize to Emilia. I’ll take any punishment you give! Ugh-!”

“Do you think this situation is child’s play? Even if that worm offered her life, it wouldn’t be enough for forgiveness, and you think just kneeling is enough?”

Enrico’s hand grabbed Christina’s hair and yanked it. Her head was lifted up with pain as if her hair would be pulled out.

Christina wanted to close her eyes at the gaze looking down on her as if crushing her. The emotionless purple eyes were filled with cruelty, as if they could easily twist her neck at any moment.

“…Please, spare me. Please spare me. Please. Sob sob.”

“To be honest, I was considering killing you right away.”

Enrico whispered in a low, scratchy voice. Christina sobbed, trembling as her neck bent further and further back painfully.

“But I thought it would be better to show you that living can be more painful than dying quickly.”

Thud, as if shaking off filth, his hand released her hair, causing Christina’s head to jerk forward. Christina could only take shallow breaths, frozen in her bowed position like a rigid person.

Enrico turned around slowly with a calm face as if nothing had happened, removing his gloves at a leisurely pace.

“Ah, right. Since it’s the last time, I’ll tell you why Peter Fureto confessed everything.”

She had hoped he would leave quickly, but strangely, hearing it was the “last time” sounded even more frightening. Christina looked at his feet turning back towards her with trembling eyes.

“He made an absurd promise to meet you if things went well……”

Thud, one black glove fell near her feet. Her head slowly lifted at his action of discarding it mercilessly, as if showing her own situation.

“That guy who claimed to love you so much apparently valued his own life more in the end.”

“……What?”

“He spilled everything about you right away at just the word ‘execution’, without much prompting.”

Christina’s eyes widened. Enrico’s face, biting his lips, was reflected in her intensely shaking yellow eyes.

It was just one chance, just one single opportunity she had given to that pathetic bastard who had annoyingly chased her for a long time, claiming she was all he had and he would do anything for her.

How dare he, how dare he…….

Red veins rose in Christina’s eyes as the tears she had been shedding continuously pooled and flowed down like tears of blood.

“No matter where you go, you’ll never be the best.”

As he took off and discarded the last glove, there was a thud, like the sound of a heart dropping. Christina stopped breathing abruptly, as if all functions had ceased.

Strangely, the words she had just heard resonated more powerfully than any others, making her feel like she was worth even less than that falling glove.

Because those words sounded like no matter how hard she tried, no matter what she did, she could never achieve what she wanted.

Those words, sounding as if her existence was no different from Peter’s, whom she had so despised, despite all her desperate struggles, cruelly butchered her heart.

“Try to do well in the labor camp. I’ve put in a special word for you.”

Enrico said dryly as he turned the doorknob. Light briefly seeped in as the door opened, but as soon as the dreaded back disappeared, a chilling darkness immediately took its place.

As Enrico came out into the hallway, Inspector Reid, who had been waiting in front of the door, bowed respectfully.

Enrico nodded slightly and slowly stepped forward, suddenly savoring the agonized screams and dull thuds of something hitting from beyond the door.

“Aaaaagh-!”

“Hey! Stop right now!”

Unlike Inspector Reid who hurriedly opened the door, Enrico’s face remained calm until he left the building. As if nothing had happened.

The wind occasionally tapped the half-drawn satin curtains, flowing into the room. Emilia quietly gazed at the blue curtains waving like waves, then lowered her legs from the bed.

As she carefully placed her feet down, her right ankle still ached a bit.

It was similar to the symptoms that sometimes appeared when she overexerted herself, so she roughly guessed it hadn’t worsened further. Usually, once the swelling subsided, it didn’t greatly hinder her dancing.

Emilia, who had been worried it might be a serious injury, let out a sigh of relief. Since she was usually confined to bed except when bathing or eating, her whole body ached more from boredom than pain.

The pain in her arm had also subsided compared to the first day and wasn’t so bad that she couldn’t move. It was just a tear, which was fortunate all things considered.

“Why are you up?”

The door suddenly flung open. Emilia’s gaze, which had been looking down at her feet, snapped up. There stood Enrico, looking at her with slightly narrowed brows.

“Ah……”

Emilia hurriedly searched for her slippers and slipped her feet into them. Perhaps because she put a bit of pressure on her ankle, a brief pain shot through. As she staggered, trying to balance on her other foot, a hand grabbing her waist was faster than that.

“What are you doing? Didn’t I tell you not to get up?”

“……I felt stuffy. I wanted to sit by the window at least.”

“Then I’ll open the window more.”

Fortunately, Enrico didn’t seem to have noticed her foot, or at least showed no reaction to it. He just kept his hand on her waist, as if only concerned about her movement.

“No, it’s fine. I just wanted to sit in a chair for a bit. But the robe……”

Enrico looked down at her intently, then lowered his other arm towards her legs. She stared at him in surprise as he suddenly bent down, then her whole body tensed as she was lifted up.

He carried her without a word. Throughout the walk to the table by the window, she couldn’t say anything either. She just opened and closed her mouth slightly, only regaining her senses after he set her down in the chair.

Belatedly, her face grew hot.

When dancing, she had no problem with skinship with male dancers who would lift her into the air without hesitation, but just being carried by Enrico made her heart race as if it were malfunctioning.

‘You’ve really gone crazy, Emilia.’

She chided herself inwardly, as if scolding someone else, squeezing her eyes shut at her suddenly wildly beating heart.

This kindness would end one day for no reason anyway, so getting swept up in emotions like this would lead nowhere.

If he found out, he would either use it as another weakness to control her, or discard her as troublesome. It would clearly be one of the two.

Emilia took a calm deep breath while seated in the chair and opened her eyes.

“Here’s the robe. Ah, should I have put it on you before you sat down?”

“No! It’s fine……”

In the meantime, he had retrieved a robe that had been hanging somewhere and returned to her. The robe with large white flowers painted on it settled on her shoulders.

“Thank you.”

At her soft voice, he nodded and sat down next to her instead of across from her. He had naturally sat down in the middle of the table, though she wasn’t sure when he had brought and pulled up the chair. He was looking down at her intently.

The breeze could be seen gently caressing his slightly damp hair.

‘……He’s already showered?’

As soon as she had opened her eyes in the morning, Zabeta had mentioned Enrico without being asked, saying he had gone out early and explaining why he couldn’t visit in the morning. At the time, she had thought he must be busy, wondering why Zabeta was telling her this, before belatedly remembering his words that he would come in the morning.

Perhaps he had an unexpectedly generous side towards sick people.

She tried her best not to take his kindness at face value.

And now, seeing him come like this in a simple outfit of just a white shirt and black pants, she swallowed dryly, thinking he must just have some business to attend to.

‘But he came back early. It’s just past lunchtime.’

Another breeze blew in. This time it was a pleasant breeze mixed with the scent of sunlight and greenery. Emilia tucked her slightly swaying hair behind her ear and looked out the window.

In the distance, a large fountain was spraying water magnificently, as if scattering sparkling light.

Enrico, who had been quietly gazing at Emilia’s soft-looking cheeks and fluttering eyelashes, slowly opened his mouth.

“I heard you didn’t eat much lunch.”

Her eyes turned back to him. An inexplicable sense of satisfaction spread from deep in his chest as the slight tension in his mouth loosened.

“Being in the room all the time, I don’t feel hungry. I should move around a bit……”

“You’ve moved around a lot until now, so think of this as taking a little rest.”

“Still…… Ah, what happened with the performance?”

“It was canceled, and the culprit has been caught.”

“……What? The culprit?”

Her back straightened at the unexpected words. Her upper body even leaned slightly towards him, causing him to gently grasp her shoulder as if to calm her.

His hand that had rested on her round shoulder slid down smoothly and stopped just above her elbow.

“Yes.”

Enrico stayed like that for a moment, then very slowly removed his hand. Emilia’s gaze briefly flicked to that hand, but as if she had to immediately spill out what needed to be said, she blurted out:

“How in just one day…… So who did it?”

“As you suspected, it was Christina Firdana’s doing.”