Aveline stood there just as she had been when he ignored her and passed by.

Her face was pale as a sheet, but her clenched fists, flushed red as if all the blood in her body had rushed to them, trembled violently. Her wide, golden eyes glared at him with fierce condemnation.

But his anger was no less than hers.

“Follow me.”

Kazerre, exuding an icy chill, stepped closer to Aveline and left her with only those few words.

Then, just as he had come, he turned his back on her without looking back and walked away.

*

“Stop right there, Kazerre.”

“……”

“Kazerre Evuteren.”

Striding furiously down a secluded hallway away from the garden, Kazerre halted at the sharp voice that struck from behind.

One of the marquis’ servants, sensing the gravity of the situation, had already discreetly withdrawn.

Aveline, who had been hurrying after him, also came to an abrupt stop.

Even from a distance, he could see her chest heaving with rapid breaths.

Kazerre deliberately averted his gaze. The fact that he was instinctively concerned about her physical condition in this moment irritated him to no end.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“What the hell do I think I’m doing?”

Kazerre echoed, his voice ominous.

He hadn’t expected her to reflect on her actions easily, but this level of brazenness was beyond absurd.

His anger surged again before he even had the chance to calm down.

“That is exactly what I want to ask. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“What did I do that was so wrong? Because I hit Clonay Huster? Just because of that?”

“Just because? Did you just say ‘just because’?”

Kazerre, dumbfounded, asked again.

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing—how could she dismiss unprovoked violence against an innocent person as something so trivial?

But Aveline, as if she were the one being falsely accused, seethed and shouted.

“Yes! All because of that little girl, you’re humiliating me like this—how could you do this to me?”

“So what, I was supposed to take your side in that situation?”

“Of course! You—at the very least, you should always be on my side!”

“Hah.”

At this point, all he could do was let out a hollow laugh.

Her blatant entitlement, her expectation that he belonged to her without question, filled him with disgust. Even the slight tremor in her voice seemed nothing more than a calculated act to ensnare him.

Did Aveline truly not realize? That she was exhausting what little patience he had left for her?

How had things gotten so utterly ruined?

He couldn’t even pinpoint where things had gone so wrong between them.

Once, there was a time when Kazerre had tried to understand her.

Tried to find out what had happened to her in his absence. What had shaped her into this person. He had wanted to justify her wrongdoings, to make excuses on her behalf.

No—if he were honest, it was that he needed to understand her.

Because if he didn’t, he feared he would come to despise her beyond redemption.

But all he ever received in return was cold, mocking laughter.

‘That question again?’

‘……’

‘Only a foolish man would pester a lady with such things, Kazerre.’

She had scoffed at him as if he were a child who refused to grow up.

It was the first time since losing his father that he had felt utterly powerless and small.

‘I’ll say it again—I haven’t changed at all. I’ve simply grown older as time has passed, nothing more.’

Aveline had never needed his understanding.

She had merely smirked and declared that she had always been this way, as if his disappointment in her was amusing.

As if the betrayal he felt now was ridiculous.

She had made him give up on her. She had driven him to resignation, leaving him with no other choice.

And yet, now she wore a face as if she had been bitten by a dog she had raised, making it impossible not to let out a hollow laugh.

“No, I have never once intended to tolerate your unreasonable violence. And I never will.”

“And yet, you were the one who kept turning a blind eye to me. So why, why now all of a sudden…”

“I turned a blind eye to you? You misunderstood my disgust-driven distance that much?”

When Kazerre mercilessly rebuked her, Aveline’s already pale face turned even whiter.

She bit down hard on her lower lip. The veins on the back of her tightly clenched hands stood out in a stark blue.

But none of those signs mattered to him. Once Kazerre’s fury had ignited, there was no stopping it.

“And never again belittle Lady Huster like that. She is not someone you can treat so carelessly.”

“……”

“Nor anyone else…”

“Do you really not understand?”

Aveline’s words came out mixed with ragged breaths as if something were strangling her.

“All of this is because you…!”

Her voice, rising into a near scream, was abruptly cut off.

With the sudden break in sound, an awkward silence settled. But Aveline couldn’t bring herself to say the rest.

‘Because you are soft only when it comes to her, because you ignored everything else but shielded that woman—’

Even though she hadn’t spoken the words aloud yet, she already wanted to bite her tongue.

Kazerre knew all too well that if he openly defended someone in front of Aveline, she would only torment that person more cruelly.

That was why he never directly intervened. Doing so would be like fanning the flames.

And yet, the same man who was rational enough to calculate that had lost his judgment in an instant and confronted her just because of that woman.

Did this utterly indifferent man truly not understand what that meant?

“…You were the one who made me this way.”

At some point, Aveline’s eyes had reddened. Her golden irises, welling with unshed tears, shimmered under the sunlight.

Her gaze was so heartrendingly sorrowful that it made him want to reach out and wipe away her tears.

But Kazerre’s expression remained utterly unmoved.

His violet eyes, brimming with impenetrable hostility, burned fiercely, like a knight eradicating his sworn enemy.

“Yes. It’s my fault.”

“……”

“I was far too lenient with you.”

Yes. How could he not bear some responsibility?

The fact that she continued trampling on others like this, cornering him, attributing all her cruel actions to him—perhaps, in the end, it was all because of him.

Because he had been too soft on Aveline Croeta.

“From now on, I won’t stand by and watch your atrocities any longer.”

“Kazerre.”

“If you act so viciously one more time, I will personally stop you.”

“Kazerre, please…”

Aveline’s voice was desperate, like someone teetering at the edge of a cliff, as if one more push would send her plummeting into the abyss.

But Kazerre deflected all of her desperation.

None of it reached him. Whether it was due to the fury that had surpassed his threshold, everything felt strangely surreal.

For the first time, he regretted it.

Meeting Aveline Croeta. Even though it hadn’t been his intention, he accepted her as his fate in the end.

It felt like sinking into a swamp. The more he stepped forward, the deeper he sank. Something thick and repulsive clung to him, persistently dragging him down.

The more he struggled, the more he was consumed by an inescapable sense of futility.

All of it was meaningless. The anger, enduring her tirades, clawing at each other with wounds—it was all just exhausting.

He no longer wanted to care about anything concerning her.

And yet, her trembling voice pierced through his ears before he could stop it.

“You know it, don’t you? I did it because I love you. Why can’t you understand?”

Ha. And now she called it love that she loved him.

In the end, the bitter laughter he had been suppressing spilled out.

How many times had she manipulated him with those words?

Like yanking a dog’s leash, she would seize him, bend him to her will, and then whisper softly, “It’s all because I love you.”

He was sick of it. Her so-called love, the voice that murmured it, the hands that reached for him under its guise, and finally, Aveline Croeta herself, smiling with that untouchable grace.

All of it tightened around his throat like an unrelenting noose.

There was nothing more terrifying to him than Aveline Croeta’s love.

“So, no matter what you do, I am supposed to accept it with open arms?”

“You could just continue as you always have. Why change because of her…”

“No, this has nothing to do with her.”

He no longer wanted to listen to Aveline’s pitiful excuses for love. He could no longer tolerate how she used it to justify ruining everything.

He had reached his limit.

“Because, in the end, not even for a single moment have I ever loved you.”

“……”

Kazerre’s voice was calm and steady, like water flowing through an underground stream as if he was merely stating an indisputable fact.

As if the world was only crumbling for her.

Aveline’s eyes shook violently. Those once bright and unwavering eyes, that had never hesitated no matter how misguided the path, grew murky.

Kazerre watched it all unfold with complete indifference.

Even her frailty disgusted him now.

“Go back and cool your head.”

Kazerre forced himself to summon what little patience he had left just to keep from despising her any further.

Though he had already long surpassed his limit, he endured her, out of sheer habit.

That realization made him feel yet another wave of revulsion, and so he added one final remark with a shudder of distaste.

“And don’t appear before me for a while. I don’t want to see you.”

“Kazerre…”

Calling out to him in anguish, her shoulders trembling, Aveline Croeta looked so frail and pitiful.

Even though she was the one at fault, it somehow felt as if he had become a heartless villain, mercilessly tormenting an innocent woman.

Whenever he clashed with her, Kazerre had to fight against this wretched, damnable feeling.

As if shaking off the remnants of his dissipating rage, he quickly turned away and walked forward.

As if cursed to turn into stone if he so much as looked back, his rigid, unwavering back never once glanced at the woman he left behind.