However, now I clearly knew my feelings. Inside me, Cedar and Grisha had different colors.

If I hadn’t known they were different before, I might not have noticed, but once I realized it, I couldn’t lump them together as the same thing.

“That’s not something I can control.”

“Nelly…”

At my answer, Grisha’s blue eyes rippled like a turbulent lake.

He lowered his gaze as if avoiding my eyes.

“…I’ll be going now.”

“Grisha.”

I wanted to tell Grisha how precious he was to me.

An existence more like a real brother than a real brother. A family-like existence that no one could replace. That was what Grisha was to me.

“Is that not enough?”

Grisha cut me off with a firm tone.

“Don’t say anything.”

“…”

The clever Grisha probably already knew what I was going to say.

I pressed my fingers against my throbbing forehead. A sigh escaped involuntarily.

“Ugh.”

It was clear that my half-hearted comfort of calling him family-like, if not a husband, had only hurt Grisha more.

But I had nothing else to say either.

How nice it would be if I could split myself in two and give a part to Grisha.

But even if I did that, it would end up hurting Grisha all the same.

My feelings for Grisha fell short of his expectations, so they would ultimately hurt him.

‘Well, that’s why it’s called emotions, because it can’t be controlled at will.’

After being emotionally drained, my body felt extremely tired too.

As I was letting out heavy sighs, I suddenly felt a trembling vibration from the egg. I opened my eyes wide.

“Are you comforting me? Thank you, Zeke.”

Just staying still like a stone and then moving a little like this really made it feel alive.

I stroked the egg with loving feelings. And suddenly I realized something I had forgotten.

‘Come to think of it, could it be that the magic potion didn’t work because I was holding Zeke? Zeke has been continuously absorbing my magic.’

But I couldn’t tell Grisha that fact. Because Grisha had hurried away.

Grisha, who had left Cedar’s mansion, had a drier expression than ever before.

A terrible self-loathing swirled in his inner thoughts.

‘I can’t accomplish anything properly. Maybe that’s why Nelly rejected me too. There’s no one in the world who likes an inadequate person.’

He felt as if his existence had been denied by the world.

The feeling that no one needed him, and no one loved him. He couldn’t escape from that swamp-like negative emotion.

Neither his family, nor Nelly, whom he wanted to become family with, had chosen him.

Grisha walked with heavy steps towards the meeting place.

Diana, who had arrived earlier and was drinking tea, frowned deeply upon seeing Grisha.

“Why do you come with such a gloomy face? It’s unpleasant.”

Seeing Diana, Grisha’s mood plummeted even further.

Wasn’t this problem something that wouldn’t have occurred if she hadn’t asked Cedar for a contract marriage with Nelly in the first place?

Nevertheless, the current situation of having to face this woman, as she was the only one left to use, was just unpleasant.

Grisha sat down opposite Diana and answered in a cold voice.

“It’s none of your concern, is it?”

“There’s no need to answer so curtly when I’m just showing concern, you know?”

“I said it’s noisy.”

Diana brushed back her luscious golden hair with an irritated hand. Most men were kind to Diana.

Except for just two people, Cedar and Grisha. That fact made Diana’s mood even more unpleasant.

“Everyone seems to have gone crazy. What’s so good about a silly woman like my sister…”

Grisha, not wanting to exchange any more words with Diana, wordlessly held out a vial.

It contained a transparent, jelly-like viscous liquid sprinkled with gold powder.

It was the same potion he had given to Nelly.

“This is the potion.”

“Oh ho.”

Diana shook the vial with interested eyes. She already knew what this potion was.

“So this is the love potion. If you drink this, you fall in love with the first person you meet?”

Grisha nodded slowly.

“That’s right.”

The potion Grisha had made was none other than a love potion.

It was classified as a mind-controlling drug for humans, so it shouldn’t be made carelessly.

The recipe was strictly kept in the forbidden section of the academy library, so it was extremely difficult to obtain it.

‘It’s on the condition of returning to the academy, but there’s no choice.’

It was obtained by a professor who was blinded by the desire to research magic circuits with Grisha, breaking the rules.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to make it.

‘This is all I have left to rely on now.’

Grisha’s eyes sank darkly.

Diana, who had been shaking the liquid cheerfully, looked at Grisha with sparkling eyes.

“It’s very useful. But do you have to drink this whole bottle? Isn’t one bottle too weak when there’s a chance of failure?”

Though she talked about failure, her true intentions were obvious.

It’s a potion that can make everyone who drinks it fall in love.

And people in love tend to become very foolish. The sound of her calculating how to manipulate people’s emotions was already loud.

Grisha felt disgusted seeing through her intentions so clearly.

And that feeling eventually spread to himself, who was handing over the potion to use her.

He felt like he had become the dirtiest person in the world.

Suppressing the urge to vomit, Grisha handed two more bottles to Diana.

“…Here are the extras. Use them as you like, except for one person.”

“Wow, how exciting.”

Diana quickly put them in her handbag. Then she tilted her head naturally and asked.

“Why are you taking such a roundabout way? Can’t you just make my sister drink the potion and be done with it?”

‘I already did.’

Grisha swallowed those words deep in his throat, unable to give that answer.

It would be a lie to say he hadn’t expected to see affection for him spreading in her eyes after drinking the potion.

But those expectations were cruelly shattered, and Nelly not only didn’t feel love but rejected his confession.

Grisha bit his lip.

‘In the end, I only saw the bottom of myself.’

Since there had been no errors when testing on ordinary people, it must have been because Nelly had a special constitution that it didn’t work.

It could be due to the magic depletion phenomenon that only she was experiencing, or it could be due to the high anti-magic power that great magicians possess.

Anyway, there was only one conclusion.

‘Shallow tricks don’t work on her.’

He had to make her love him on her own. It was a task more difficult than any other.

Breaking his silence, Diana stood up from her seat.

Having obtained even the love potion, she confirmed with a confident smile.

“Anyway, thank you. I won’t disappoint you. Look forward to it.”

It was an overly confident attitude, even though she had obtained the magic potion. Grisha frowned.

“…Aren’t you afraid?”

“Of what?”

“Even if you control someone’s heart with a potion, isn’t that not true affection?”

That was the reason Grisha fell into deep self-loathing even as he fed Nelly the love potion.

Even if he made her love him that way, could it be called true affection? Wouldn’t the false emotions created by the potion be even more empty?

Hearing Grisha’s rebuttal, Diana frowned as if she couldn’t understand him.

“So what? I’m a person who deserves to be loved anyway. Everything was originally mine.”

Whether to call it short-sighted or brazen.

But that confidence alone left a strange impression.

Diana looked down at Grisha with a haughty expression and said confidently.

“Don’t regret it later and beat the ground in disappointment. I’m a much better woman than my sister.”

Grisha sighed. And he retorted in a cold voice.

“Stop talking nonsense and leave quickly.”

“Tch.”

Diana, displeased that her proud self, loved by everyone in the world, didn’t work on Grisha, pouted her lips.

And as if she had no time to waste on Grisha, she grabbed her handbag and disappeared.

Her confident footsteps exuded an inexplicable self-assurance.

Grisha twisted his lips.

Despite likely facing difficulties in life after being retaliated against by Lady Briar, Diana’s attitude was confident.

That was probably possible because she had naturally monopolized her parents’ affection since birth.

To Grisha, who had always lived losing affection to Cedar, Diana’s demeanor stood out particularly.

‘Why are there people in the world who are loved and those who are not?’

Grisha’s blue eyes darkened.

‘Why does everyone choose my elder brother?’

When he met Nelly at the academy after fleeing from home, he finally found a place where he could stay comfortably. It was by Nelly’s side.

Even when he saw Nelly leave the academy as soon as she was recognized as a great magician because of her younger sibling, he thought the separation wouldn’t be too long.

Thinking about it now, he should have followed her then, regardless of being a magician or not.

He didn’t know she would go to someone else’s side so emptily.

And that it would be Cedar of all people.

‘It’s miserable and painful.’

Grisha buried his face in his palms.

He hated himself for constantly choosing the cowardly path, but he couldn’t give up the faint hope either.