“Family… game?”

His hand pressed gently down on Lanen’s knees. Lanen screamed inwardly at the sensation of fireworks going off in her legs.

But she curled her toes frantically and held on through sheer determination not to fall apart here and now.

“So you’re saying… you did think of me as family at some point. I thought you saw me as nothing but an enemy, or just a master you had to serve.”

“Is that really how I looked to you?”

“If it wasn’t that…”

‘If it wasn’t that, you would have had no reason to avoid me.’

The words that had surged up and nearly spilled out of Lanen’s mouth couldn’t quite reach their end, and she swallowed them back down.

Cedarwood looked quietly down at her, unable to speak.

Whenever one of these uncomfortable silences came, his young lady would always rattle on, filling the air with random trivia. As though she would die if anything serious crept in between them.

Cedarwood knew it was the strategy she used to sidestep difficult situations. It was exactly like releasing a flock of doves to ward off a bombing. Endearing, but ultimately ineffective.

At times like those, he would keep his mouth shut and read the room, and everything would return to normal.

The problem, then, was the opposite situation. When she went completely silent.

“My lady, I think you may be under a misapprehension. I have never once thought of you as family.”

Every time that happened, my lady always abandoned me.

Just like now.

“What…?”

For a moment, Lanen’s desperate fidgeting stopped at his words. She stared at him blankly.

“I made the effort because you wanted it, and I went along with it because you wished it. You know this, my lady. No matter how many times the two of us go around shouting ‘we’re family, we’re family’… there is no way for us to actually become family. You are of noble blood, and…”

His fingertips brushed down through Lanen’s hair.

“I am of low blood.”

Lanen’s heart dropped.

In the meantime, a bead of cold sweat traced down her cheek as she endured the numbness. It crossed her cheek like a tear and fell onto the back of his hand.

“You have never been family to me. Because I…”

Cedarwood looked at it, then wiped it away with his other hand.

It was clearly a casual, absentminded gesture. But Lanen had a habit of attaching meaning to his every small action, and she couldn’t help but glance at Cedarwood’s wrist.

“There is no way I could ever think of you that way.”

And there she came face to face with the terrible red scar left there long ago, because of her.

Ah. She came to a sudden realization, the way a person dreaming abruptly understands they are in a dream.

She had always had good instincts. And right now, after seeing his wrist, those instincts were screaming at her like a bolt of lightning.

He hates me. He did all of this because he hates me.

The young lady who had left an indelible mark of humiliation on him, who had kept him bound as a servant his entire life, and on top of that had pushed him off to war. He, no…

Cedarwood Carlisle hates Lanen Rockefeller.

Lanen had not yet realized that her instincts happened to carry roughly the same accuracy as a bolt of lightning striking a single ant out of a clear blue sky. She felt a tightness in her throat and lifted her head.

“Then… why did you bring me here?”

“……”

“At first I thought you brought me here because you were worried about me. That you heard I was going to have to go through with a marriage I didn’t want, and you panicked and acted before you thought. But then you went and made me a dead woman without my even knowing… I always thought we were closer than blood family, but now you’re telling me you never once thought of me as family.”

Lanen’s lips, murmuring quietly, began to tremble faintly.

“Then what are we, exactly? What is the reason you’ve tied me up here?”

They were master and servant, yes, but Lanen genuinely cherished and loved him. The reason she had always gone around declaring them family was because it held within it the grand ambition of one day making him her husband, entering him into the family register, and making him truly family.

But if that wasn’t what this was, then what had all that time been?

“Did you want revenge? Did you want to ruin my life? Because I kept you tied down as a servant all this time?”

“……”

“Do you hate me?”

Her vow never to cry in front of him, even if it killed her, meant nothing in the end, and a single tear slid down Lanen’s face.

Lanen sniffled, overcome by a grief she couldn’t quite name. At that, Cedarwood wiped her face with his sleeve. If blinking those eyes was temptation, then looking at him with eyes like that was practically incitement. That was what he thought.

“Do you remember the day you put a leash around my neck?”

“When.”

“The first time you ever refused me.”

Lanen furrowed her brows as though she didn’t know what he meant.

He had already known she wouldn’t remember. Without another word, Cedarwood got up and pulled over the tray he had left standing by the door.

“You said this, back then. ’I don’t really want to own you, so can’t you just live however you like?’”

“I said that?”

“Yes. You said that, and then you took the leash off my neck.”

Cedarwood pulled a small table over, set it down in front of her, and began arranging the finger foods on it.

“I know why. At the time, you felt it was too much to be responsible for a young servant’s life, so you let me go. But…”

She shouldn’t have done that.

Because she took the leash off that day, here he was, living exactly as he pleased.

“So, my lady, if you’re asking whether I wanted revenge, no. If you’re asking whether I wanted to ruin your life, honestly, a little. And if you’re asking whether it’s because I’ve spent my whole life tied to you…”

You let me go long ago, and I’m the one begging to be tied back.

‘But if I say that, my timid young lady will run.’

Every time he had been presumptuous enough to overstep, she had never been able to say a word, only flushed red with embarrassment.

And so Cedarwood hid his expression all the more, and simply shrugged.

“…You must be hungry. I prepared the things you like.”

There’s a sandwich with basil, and scones too. Oh, you said you’d been eating walnut pie so often lately that you were sick of it? So this time I made a pie with cinnamon and stewed apple instead. Cedarwood listed off what he had prepared one by one as he undid Lanen’s restraints.

“You always catch a cold around this time of year, so I warmed some wine too.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Eat even if you don’t want to. You need the energy to be angry at me.”

“……”

Even after her restraints were undone, Lanen sat in the chair and stared at the floor.

Any further conversation seemed pointless, so Cedarwood rose from his spot.

“…Rest. I’ll come back later.”

After the door closed, the sound of the lock turning came from outside.

Left alone in the room with nothing but the dainty spread of food.

“Ha.”

Lanen let out the breath she had been struggling to hold in.

Sniff. But for all that deep breath, tears came streaming down belatedly anyway.

“What a bastard. He gives you the sickness but not the cure.”

I don’t need bread, she muttered, rubbing at her eyes roughly with her sleeve. But for all her complaining, her stomach lurched within seconds. She had been straining so hard to stay composed in front of him that her body was now crying out for something, anything, in delayed protest.

‘Honestly, whether it’s my stomach or my heart, this body of mine never listens to its owner.’

“…Right. Like Cedar said, crying, getting angry, you need energy for all of it.”

Lanen resigned herself and began eating a scone.

It tasted absolutely terrible.

Wasn’t it common sense that in a situation this hopeless, at least the food should be good?

“He put carrots in the scones again. Stuffing a few vegetables into bread doesn’t make it healthy.”

Even as she grumbled, tears streamed down her cheeks again.

Love had ended. Before it had even begun.

“…Awful man.”

Lanen sniffled and shoved the bread into her mouth. The scone had already tasted bad enough, but soaked in tears it was truly the worst thing she had ever eaten.

“What? Not family? Not a servant, not an enemy either, then what on earth are you. Then why were you so kind all this time, why were you so warm, why did you keep avoiding me, and on top of that…”

But what was even worse than all of that, for her, was this.

“If you’re asking whether I wanted revenge, no. If you’re asking whether I wanted to ruin your life, a little. And if you’re asking whether it’s because I’ve spent my whole life tied to you…”

The way he had looked at her, his face twisted, staring at her with what seemed like contempt, swallowing the rest of his words as though holding back his anger.

“Why do you have to be so d*mn handsome?”

That the cold face looking back at her was, infuriatingly, exactly her type.

⊹ ☼ ⊹

The day Lanen put a leash around Cedarwood’s neck. That day was the first day they became “family.”

That day, Lanen had tied a leash around Cedarwood’s neck and dragged him around the Manor, sending the household into shock, before getting a thorough scolding from the head butler.

“Sorry, apparently that’s only for animals. What else did they say? Don’t do anything so vulgar in the Rockefeller household? But where I grew up, when you had a ‘servant,’ this is just how you took them around.”

Lanen muttered as she untied the leash from Cedarwood’s neck.

Cedarwood himself, having been dragged around, had no particular feelings about it. He was used to being treated like livestock, and the boy had grown up in a place where servants were taken around that way too.

“I’m your property either way, my lady, so isn’t it fine for you to do as you like?”

“What? Property?”

Lanen echoed back at him with fresh surprise.

“I don’t especially want to own you… can’t you just live however you like?”

Oh. At her answer, Cedarwood blinked, looking for all the world like someone who had just been hit by a bird dropping out of nowhere.

“…Why?”

“Why? Because I’m busy enough just living my own life. You saw how small my bread was today. The servants are definitely cutting down my share of the meals. If I keep splitting it with you on top of that, I’ll starve to death before long.”

“…Is that really the reason?”

“Yes. What could possibly be more important than having enough to eat?”

“…What do you think a servant is, my lady?”

“Hmm… a friend who helps you steal vegetables?”

The Manor at dusk, quietly unhurried.

The girl and the boy passed the servants who acted as though they were invisible and headed toward the kitchen garden on the south side of the Manor.

Cedarwood watched Lanen walking a step ahead of him and scratched the back of his head.

So the reason his master was turning him away was because of food.

‘She doesn’t need to keep sharing with me anymore… does she still think I go around starving?’

His young lady apparently still didn’t know that among the servants he was called a ravenous dog.

They passed the grapevines growing thick and wild as weeds, and at last arrived at the far end of the kitchen garden. With dinner preparations in full swing, there was no one keeping watch over it.

Lanen checked their surroundings with the alertness of a nimble rabbit and grinned, showing the gap where her front tooth was missing.

“All right, Cedar. You go dig up the potatoes over there! I’ll pull up the cabbage and tomatoes. And if you bring back sprouted ones like last time, don’t even think about getting your share of the omelette!”

Ready, go! With that signal fired off like a shot, Lanen and Cedarwood darted busily back and forth across the kitchen garden.

Soon covered in dirt, they gathered an armful of vegetables each and scurried out of the garden.

They were exchanging glances and sneaking cautious looks around them when, from somewhere far off, the sound of a whistle drifted in on the wind. A shepherd’s.

Guilty feet have leaden soles, and a startled Lanen grabbed Cedarwood’s hand as he dawdled, claiming he was one potato short, and broke into a run.

“Run!”

Cedarwood looked down at their joined, dirty hands and blinked in the bright light.

They were running toward the sunset, and the whole world was dyed a deep orange. Rippling brown hair, ragged breathing, a dirt-covered young lady and her servant.

If the young lady’s strict governess had seen them like this, she would surely have clutched the back of her neck and fainted. Never mind the grass-stained, blotchy clothes, the young lady’s manner was far too undignified for someone of her station.

The girl and the boy, running hard, only stopped when they reached a gap in a secluded wall.

After catching their breath for a good while, they spread out what they had hidden in their arms on the ground.

Four potatoes, one cabbage, five tomatoes. Enough to fill you up just looking at them. Lanen wiped the dirt from a tomato with her sleeve and smiled with satisfaction.

“My lady.”

Just then, Cedarwood, who had been brushing the dirt from the hem of Lanen’s skirt, opened his mouth.

“Do you really not want to have me?”