“……?”

In that moment, Jella’s eyes grew round.

“W-wait. You, that name……”

But her question was swallowed by his lips descending upon hers.

Her entire body felt as if it were heating up from the gentle movements exploring her mouth.

Her mind repeatedly flashed white, then dimmed.

When she regained her senses intermittently, Jella realized she was straddling his lap.

In her hazy consciousness, Jella slowly blinked.

Why am I… kissing him?

And this place… isn’t this my palace?

So five years ago, Jella Shunaibel’s…

Why am I… I am…

Ah, right, I came to see Niel Alpenhayer. Because he… has the heart…

To seduce him and find out the whereabouts of the heart. That’s why I kissed him first…

But why…

The arm firmly gripping her waist, the rough texture of the palm cradling her cheek…

This breath passing between their sealed lips…

Why does it feel so familiar? As if it’s not the first time…

After a while, their lips parted.

They stared at each other, exhaling rapid breaths between their trembling lips.

To Jella, this situation felt like a dream.

Niel Alpenhayer was looking at her with an unfamiliar expression.

He was looking at her with a strange face that combined chilling obsession, inexplicable tenderness, and a heat so intense it was painful.

The moment she faced that expression, she felt her heart strangely sink.

Was that man, a man capable of making such an expression?

As she stared blankly at his face thinking this.

Suddenly.

He abruptly embraced her tightly with both arms, as if to crush her.

Thud.

He dropped his head onto her shoulder and slowly opened his mouth.

“What you’re doing right now.”

His voice, low enough to send chills, tickled her ear.

“I know it’s a bit strange.”

The moment his green eyes, always so fresh, flashed with intense desire.

He set his teeth against her earlobe and whispered:

“You’re seducing me so clumsily, I just want to give in.”

***

“You like me, don’t you? Niel Alpenhayer.”

When she said that.

Niel stared at her blankly for a moment, like someone who had forgotten how to breathe.

I like you?

Yes. I like you.

I’ve liked you for a very long time, but it was a feeling that never reached you for even a moment.

“I like Your Highness.”

When he first confessed to her, what did she say?

“Suddenly?”

“I want to stay by Your Highness’s side for a long, long time, supporting you and living as your companion.”

Ah, yes. She had laughed as if she’d heard an amusing story and replied:

“What? Did Marquis Alpenhayer put you up to this?”

Gradually, after spending a long time by her side, he came to understand. In her mind, there was no premise that he could like her.

Despite him being her fiancé.

Although she was particularly perceptive and intelligent regarding other matters, she strangely never noticed his feelings.

At first, that fact made him sad and upset, but at some point, he got used to it.

If what she wanted was a fiancé who didn’t love her, Niel Alpenhayer was a man who could hide his feelings to match her wishes.

So it was an emotion deeply hidden and concealed.

A feeling he had ignored for a long time.

But becoming accustomed to it didn’t make it pleasant.

Occasionally, when he had to catch and hide the love flowing toward her in front of her, why were those fleeting moments so painful?

Because he loved her, Niel Alpenhayer had to suffer every moment by her side.

So why now, why was she bringing up emotions he had long ignored?

Niel hid his twisted thoughts and asked what she wanted.

Then she approached subtly, with clear provocative intent, and grabbed his chin.

She pressed down on his lower lip firmly and gave him a languid smile with her eyes. The gesture unmistakably seductive.

Each of her small movements made his heart pound violently. Above all, she was too close, and her fresh scent had been tickling his lungs since earlier.

It was a bit dangerous.

But concealing his seething emotions and wearing a gentle mask while feigning composure was what Niel Alpenhayer did best in the world.

He was in the middle of conversing with her, wearing an apparently undisturbed face with an elegant smile.

“Such praise should be directed at your knight, not me. Cail Aleret, your servant who thirsts for a word of praise from you.”

“…Ah, right. He exists, too.”

The moment she muttered as if she had forgotten his existence for a while, Niel realized more certainly.

She would never speak so lightly of her servant whom she valued so specially.

Though it was a miserable truth, seeing her mention that man so casually, Niel was convinced. Something was interfering with her mind.

‘What could it be?’

As Niel was seriously contemplating this.

Touch.

Something soft and moist touched his lips and pulled away.

‘……’

The thoughts complexly entangled in his mind evaporated instantly.

What just touched my lips?

Niel raised his trembling eyes and stared blankly at her. More precisely, at those red lips curved loosely toward him.

Could it be, those lips…

Then she leaned in closely, playfully placing her hand on his thigh.

Her disheveled appearance came into full view. It was dizzying.

But even more stimulating was the mischievous movement of her hand caressing him.

He swallowed hard, suppressing a low m*an that threatened to escape.

His heated Adam’s apple visibly undulated.

“See?”

She laughed again and tilted her head toward him, who was trying so hard to restrain himself.

She seemed to be whispering something, but his ears were ringing, and he couldn’t hear well.

Her lips playfully nibbled his lower lip, then tormented him by probing with something soft and supple.

Swish!

In an instant, amidst the seething emotions, Niel unconsciously grabbed her arms to stop her.

“Ha……”

He exhaled the breath he had been barely holding and steadied his breathing. He had almost unwittingly been swept away and devoured her…

“Niel?”

“……”

The desire he had been painfully suppressing immediately raised its head at the sweet voice calling him. D*mn it. Niel gritted his teeth and looked at her.

She… she was looking at him, blinking her round eyes.

Did she know that expression drove him crazy?

If she was doing this knowingly, it was really… cruel.

In an instant, something snapped inside him.

She seemed frightened by his suddenly changed demeanor and tried to back away.

After making me like this, you’re trying to escape?

At that moment, an unbearable feeling surged within him.

Niel gently grabbed the back of her head as she tried to flee and bumped his forehead against her round forehead.

That pretty and wicked face that kept driving him crazy filled his entire vision. It was his limit.

“Your oppa.”

The voice that flowed between his lips was rough, as if it weren’t his own.

“Told you that’s not how you kiss.”

“What…?”

“Who taught you so clumsily? Your pretty childhood friend? Or that handsome slave you cherished?”

He was angry at her clumsy seduction. At least he had never taught her so awkwardly.

“No, I…”

She tried to refute with a perplexed expression, but he couldn’t hear. His entire mind was captivated by the movement of those red lips, unable to think of anything else.

So he covered those red eyes still staring at him and whispered in her ear:

“You should close your eyes, Ga-eul.”

She seemed to be saying something to him, shaking her eyes vigorously, but Niel, who had reached his limit long ago, swallowed her without any concession.

Everything from her red lips to her breath escaping between them, to every strand of her lovely voice.

The fire that started between their touching lips spread throughout his body through his blood vessels.

It was hot.

Their intertwined breaths, their bodies embraced without gap, their hearts beating loudly against their pressed chests, everything was scorchingly hot.

In that seething kiss, Niel thought:

It would be fine to be consumed and melted by this blazing fire.

In that pain where his heart ached from the intense heat, Niel also thought:

If you are my last, if I can turn to ashes in your flames that consume me. That wouldn’t be so bad… Ga-eul.

It was a world where God was dead and gone. But if there was one thing he wished to pray for.

It was to die a little before her.

Twice.

He had already seen her death twice.

Even though he had experienced it once, her second death tried to break him again, but even then, he was still a man who couldn’t fall.

So, without even a brief mourning, he had to stand up again.

Ga-eul, he had to swallow his grief while regretting not being able to call that name more often.

Ga-eul.

Ga-eul.

Ga-eul…

At the end of the long kiss, their lips parted.

A distant color was spreading in her eyes as they faced each other.

Niel embraced her body tightly.

Why was her body, softly crushed in his arms, so lovely?

“What you’re doing right now, I know it’s a bit strange.”

Yes. There was definitely something strange about her.

But while those clumsy seductions that she would never do normally irritated Niel’s mood.

“You’re seducing me so clumsily.”

At the same time, it was unbearably cute…

“I just want to give in.”

He said this as he bit Jella’s earlobe.

“Ah……”

She let out a shallow m*an at the pain spreading over her tender skin.

“You know what?”

Niel chuckled softly and caressed her reddened earlobe.

“There’s a mole here.”

“……?”

Jella’s body suddenly stiffened.

She had heard a similar story somewhere before.

A very long time ago.

“There’s a mole here.”

“A mole?”

“Yes, here. It’s pretty, Ga-eul.”

When she was Kim Ga-eul.

She had a mole on the inside of her left earlobe, in a position difficult to discover unless one looked carefully.

As she remembered a fact she had forgotten for a long time, Jella’s eyes shook violently.

‘It’s not just the face that’s similar, but even the mole is in the same place?’

If that’s the case, there’s no other explanation than Kim Ga-eul and Jella Irene having the same body.

‘Moreover, he just now… knew there was a mole without even looking properly.’

How many times had she met Niel in this body? They certainly weren’t close enough to show the inside of her earlobe where the mole was barely visible.

The moment she realized this, her heart sank.

“You should close your eyes, Ga-eul.”

Just before, in the midst of the hot passion enveloping her, she thought she had misheard.

Because there was no way Niel would know that name.

But perhaps she hadn’t misheard.

She needed to ask.

That voice just now, that tone. And that name he called me.

What’s going on? Why do you… act as if you know me, Kim Ga-eul?

“I’ve always wanted to bite it whenever I saw it, but now that I have, it’s turning red…”

He whispered as he gently scratched her earlobe.

“It makes me feel strange because it’s so pretty.”

“…You.”

Jella swallowed hard, her eyes trembling.

“Do you know Kim Ga-eul?”

“Is that important to you right now?”

He retorted as he lowered his lips along the line of her neck.

The hot sensation blooming on her skin made her toes curl involuntarily.

A shiver ran down her spine at the touch of his hand stroking her back.

-That’s not what’s important right now. You need to captivate that man and find the whereabouts of the heart.

The voice echoing in her head was commanding her not to push him away but to accept him.

For a moment, she felt the urge to pretend not to know and be swept away by those words, but…

Swish!

Jella pushed his body away and roughly grabbed his collar.

“Yes, it is important. Tell me now.”

“…Unexpected.”

Niel curled his lips sardonically and replied in a slightly mocking tone.

“I thought you had something else important to you.”

“What…?”

“You’ve been digging up feelings I’ve hidden for a long time, and there’s something you’re trying to get even by kissing a man you don’t like.”

At the phrase ‘a man you don’t like,’ Niel’s pale green eyes sank coldly.

He knew.

That this heat burning him to the core was, in fact, all a false deception.

She does not love him.

At most, she keeps him by her side out of necessity.

That was the eternal truth he had realized after guarding the place beside her for a very long time.