“I know that well. But I live by the principle of being kind to women and children first.”

“I’m a woman who killed a child. Kindness should be given with discernment.”

Holding a whole armful of heavy books, Iris turned her back and walked away from Joshua. She packed into her action the meaning that he should stop acknowledging her.

But whether he was oblivious or not, Joshua trailed after Iris like a puppy. Whenever Iris climbed the ladder to take books from high places, he beat her to it and took them down.

‘Did this man take my words in one ear and out the other….’

Fed up, Iris opened her mouth to say something. But the moment her eyes met Joshua’s, her words stuck in her throat on their own.

Since leaving prison, people regardless of age or gender looked at Iris like she was a monster. But Joshua’s gaze was slightly different.

The disgust Michael openly showed was nowhere to be found. His deep eyes were full of pure curiosity.

A gaze that said he wanted to know her more.

Such a look was so rare now that Iris was too flustered to tell Joshua to back away.

Joshua didn’t take his smile away even when he saw Iris’s blank expression crumbling fast. Handing her books, he kept looking for a chance to talk, and finally opened his mouth.

“You seem to like books, madam.”

“…Anyone who stays in prison long enough comes to like books. Reading is the only hobby you can have there.”

“May I ask how your leg came to be like that?”

“I fell down the stairs when I was young and hurt my leg. I didn’t get proper treatment then, so I ended up limping even after growing up.”

“I thought the ducal house of Oppenheimer always kept a doctor in residence. Was there no time to treat it separately?”

“No. That doctor just wasn’t very good.”

Iris’s lips drew a faint arc as she recalled her childhood. It was never a smile from fondness or joy for the past. Her smile was closer to a sneer.

Morning sunlight flooded in through the library’s huge windows. The sun lit Iris’s head, making her already unsightly white hair even brighter.

Joshua’s gaze lingered a very long time on her unnaturally bleached hair. Just as he was about to speak again, the sound of someone irritably knocking on a library shelf broke the silence first.

Iris and Joshua turned around at the same time.

Michael stood with his arms crossed, glaring at the two.

“You two look close.”

Michael’s steps toward Iris were fierce. At a glance, he seemed to be in a rather bad mood from the morning.

Cleanly ignoring even Joshua’s greeting, Michael pulled out a thick, heavy book and passed it to Iris. Iris took the book in confusion, just as he handed it over.

With this as the prelude, Michael’s spite began.

Iris’s arms were already full of the books she took down. But Michael kept browsing the shelves and pulling out only thick books. Then he piled them one by one onto Iris’s stack.

The stack’s height soon reached Iris’s eye level. When her arms, unable to bear the weight, began to tremble, Iris frowned and said,

“Lord Michael, it’s heavy.”

“Oh. Heavy?”

At that moment, an angelic smile formed at the corner of Michael’s mouth. Looking down at Iris with that beautiful smile, he blatantly set the thickest dictionary on top and said,

“Then this too. I’d like you to put them in my office.”

Lastly, he didn’t forget to take divorce papers from the inner pocket of his jacket and place them on top of the stack.

“If you have time, fill out the divorce papers too.”

Cold sweat slid down Iris’s temple. There was no way lame Iris could carry this heavy stack to Michael’s office.

But if she dropped the books here or refused to go to the office, Michael would surely torment her more persistently later. In the end, Iris limped toward Michael’s office.

She felt Joshua Fate’s worried gaze behind her. But until she left the library entirely, not once was a helping hand offered.

Unlike Iris, Michael, with both hands empty, followed her teasingly. Iris found the sound of a man’s footsteps right beside her terribly irritating, but she tried to remain silent.

Each time the high stack of books was about to collapse, Iris had to stop. When the books threatened to topple again and she stopped in the first-floor lobby of the mansion, Michael, unlike himself, spoke first.

“Every morning you brush that windowsill with your hand. Then you frown, looking at your dirtied fingertips.”

Michael’s fingertip pointed at the corridor window Iris checked every morning.

The window was dirty even at a glance from afar. No matter how many times she told the maids, that window only got dirtier, so now she could only think the maids were deliberately leaving that spot alone as a mess.

Irritation rose in her, but to live in this mansion she had to control her emotions at all costs. Iris tried to calm her seething insides and said,

“You know well. No matter how often I tell the maids to clean thoroughly, they never listen to me.”

“No one in this mansion acknowledges you as the lady of Hagbris. Serving a horrible woman like you as their madam, even I would refuse.”

“Even so, you and I are legally husband and wife anyway, Lord Michael…. Ah!”

In the middle of somehow barely answering Michael, Iris’s unsound left leg tangled with her right. Before she could even realize her vision was tilting, her body was colliding with the hard marble floor.

Thud. Her ears rang, and the high-piled books collapsed in a clatter.

Her whole body, sprawled shabbily in the mansion corridor, trembled. The pain covering her entire body left Iris unable to even think of picking up the books.

The elbow that hit the marble hurt like mad. It was fortunate she braced herself on the floor with her elbow while falling, because otherwise her head would have split open.

Throughout Iris’s agony, Michael simply looked down at her without any thought of helping her up. His beautiful face was empty, without a trace of emotion.

Then Michael’s chilly voice rang out above the crown of Iris’s head.

“Iris Oppenheimer, to me you’re like the dust on that windowsill. When it’s there, it bothers me, and it grates so much that I want to remove it. Even when I think I can bear you hanging around before my eyes, anger surges up.”

Though she vowed never to show tears in front of Michael Hagbris for any reason, heat rose in both her eyes on its own. Iris clenched her fists so hard her nails dug into her skin.

Iris lifted her head with difficulty. But the moment she opened her mouth, Michael was suddenly right before her eyes, and her breath caught so she couldn’t say a word.

Michael’s two golden eyes blazed fiercely. He sneered, finding her tear-brimmed eyes, ready to spill, ridiculous, and picked up the book that had rolled nearby.

Elias Hagbris.

Confirming the author of the book Iris chose, Michael let out a cold sneer again.

“Shameless. How dare a wretch like you read my father’s work?”

Michael’s angelic face twisted without hesitation. He wanted to grab Iris by the hair, but he clenched his fist and endured with all his might.

After breathing hot breaths for a long while looking at the book, Michael whispered in a voice lower than ever.

“Your family killed my father, Iris Oppenheimer. It means your father, Wilhelm Oppenheimer, intentionally murdered mine.”

“L-Lord Michael….”

“I’d like to kill you right now and take revenge for my father, but unlike certain people, I can’t commit murder.”

A single clear droplet finally rolled down over Iris’s eyes, red and about to burst. Michael looked at her tear with disgust, snorted, and flung away the book he was holding.