Again. Meliciel’s sobbing voice drifted through the door.

The first time he learned of her sleepwalking was at the forest lodging they stopped at on the way to the Grand Ducal Castle.

“Is it sleepwalking?”

“Yes. However, the young lady’s symptoms are not something that can be treated with medication. The mental anguish she has suppressed is manifesting as sleepwalking.”

Huby offered his assessment of the condition in a somber voice.

“The young lady will recover once her mind is at ease.”

He carefully pushed the door open, leaned against the doorframe, and looked toward Meliciel’s bed.

“Baby, baby…… my baby.”

Baby? It was a word he never heard from her lips before.

That was when Kahar’s well-formed face twisted.

“Ron…… Ron!”

The translucent bed curtain was pulled aside, and Meliciel emerged from within. Her eyes held no light as she walked toward him, stumbling.

Hazy and unfocused, as though to say she wasn’t in her right mind, she stared into empty air. She staggered forward and stopped in front of Kahar.

Usually she would collapse before reaching this point, or spin in circles where she stood.

“Who are you looking for?”

Whether she heard Kahar’s low voice or not, she reached out and gripped his robe tightly.

“Have you perhaps……”

Meliciel’s voice was thick with tears.

“Seen a baby?”

“……What?”

“Here…… it was here. It was here.”

“What baby?”

For a moment, he thought Meliciel’s eyes went clear, but perhaps it was his imagination.

She wrung out her trembling voice.

“Ours……”

“Ours?”

“Ours, our baby.”

Kahar couldn’t say a word for a moment.

“……”

Something clamped around his throat, and his chest suddenly tightened with a hollow ache.

A distant chill swept over him, like something important was slipping away.

Clear tears streamed without pause down Meliciel’s pale cheeks.

“It was here……”

She suddenly crumpled to the floor.

“What do you mean it was here?”

“……The baby, the baby.”

She seemed to have spent the last of her strength, and as she began to fall backward, Kahar caught her quickly and pulled her into his arms.

“Meliciel.”

Whether she fainted or not, she closed her eyes and didn’t move.

Our baby, could it possibly be that Ron’s, or whatever his name was, child……

“D*mn it.”

He was thinking too far ahead. But every detail nagged at him in a strangely unsettling way.

Kahar carried Meliciel and found the bed. He set her down on the soft sheets and was about to rise when a small hand gripping his robe refused to let go.

“Don’t…… go.”

“What are you doing?”

“Don’t go. Don’t go…… don’t leave me here alone.”

Meliciel muttered softly and gripped Kahar’s robe even tighter.

“Ha……”

A bitter breath slipped through Kahar’s lips.

“You know you’re driving me absolutely mad, right?”

Whether she fell back asleep, Meliciel gave no answer. Kahar swallowed a curse and lay down beside her. The trembling body burrowed straight into his arms.

Burying her face in his chest, Meliciel sobbed. She cried even in her sleep.

She cried like that every night.

***

It was a morning that carried the fresh smell of early dawn. Sensing the slightly cool air, she woke from sleep.

Meliciel lifted her heavy eyelids. Lately she felt like she was sleeping deeply.

Maybe it was Huby’s prescribed medicine.

Even so, she shifted her still-tired body, and felt something heavy pressing against her back. Meliciel stiffened and slowly tried moving her arm.

What is this? Something heavy was draped over her arm.

Something heavy……? A person’s arm?

“Wh, who’s there?”

Too startled to even scream, Meliciel asked in a whisper.

“Who is it……?”

Meliciel strained and pushed the arm away, and the thick arm pinning her small body began to slide off slowly.

Free at last, Meliciel sat up quickly and looked down.

She suspected it, but still.

“Grand Duke?”

Kahar lay in the space beside Meliciel. He pushed his eyelids open slowly, with a faintly put-upon air.

The sight of Kahar looking up at her with such ease made her breath catch entirely.

How on earth did this happen?

When someone is too shocked, words apparently don’t come out well. Meliciel’s lips just kept opening and closing soundlessly.

“Why are you up already? It still seems like the middle of the night.”

The man’s low voice, slightly rough with sleep, brought her back to her senses a little.

Flustered, Meliciel fumbled for words.

“Why exactly are we in the same bed…… like this?”

“Don’t you remember?”

Kahar said it as though it were nothing and propped his head on his arm. Lying on his side, he was perfectly at ease.

“What is it I’m supposed to remember……?”

She tried not to look, but Kahar’s state of dress caught her eye. His loosely tied robe was impossible to ignore.

In short, Kahar had most of his upper body exposed. The robe barely covered his arms, with the front completely fallen open.

The sash that should have been tied at his waist hung loose and free, sprawled openly across the sheets.

Meliciel’s deep green eyes slowly traveled downward.

This was purely to confirm what state he was in when he invaded her bed.

So this was a perfectly justified look.

Thanks to the sheet barely clinging to his waist, the important parts weren’t visible, but……

The taut muscles of his lower abdomen, the veins trailing below his navel, the faint beginning of something private, all of it was dimly visible.

Her eyelids trembled.

“Quite curious, aren’t we.”

Kahar threw the sheet aside pointedly, and Meliciel reflexively squeezed her eyes shut.

“P, put something on right now.”

“If you’re curious, I’ll show you.”

“I’m not curious. Please put your clothes on properly.”

“The young lady herself doesn’t seem to be in a particularly ladylike state.”

What?

Meliciel startled and quickly opened her eyes to check herself. The fabric of her long-sleeved nightgown was thicker than an ordinary chemise.

Her legs were slightly exposed, but she was wearing her ordinary nightgown, neatly and without any disarray.

Realizing she was tricked, Meliciel looked at Kahar with a pout.

“Stop teasing.”

Even as she said it, she made a deliberate effort not to let her gaze drift below his waist. Knowing full well she was trying, Kahar let out a quiet laugh.

“Why exactly are you here?”

“If we’re assigning blame, the young lady’s sleepwalking is the cause.”

“Sleepwalking…… has it been bad lately?”

Whatever she did must have been quite something for Kahar to be here.

“I’m not a doctor so I can’t say for certain, but you did look unsettled.”

“Even so, I don’t understand why you’re lying in my bed.”

Meliciel quietly pulled the sheet over and covered herself carefully. Since he showed no intention of covering himself, someone had to do it.

It wasn’t yet the time to be lying in the same bed as Kahar, watching the pale morning light filter in.

She was also in the middle of step 4 right now……

Right, her head was half-paralyzed from the shock.

She never imagined in her wildest dreams she would wake up in the same bed as Kahar, so the bewilderment was unavoidable.

“Why did we fall asleep together?”

She asked, and he recounted the previous night with an indifferent air, as though it were nothing.

“I came into your room because you seemed to be sleepwalking, and after that, the young lady held on and wouldn’t let me leave, so, as you can see, here I am.”

“I held onto you? That’s a lie, you’re teasing me again.”

“You don’t see the dark circles under my eyes from not being able to sleep because of someone?”

Meliciel quickly checked under his eyes, but there were no dark circles to speak of.

His whites did look slightly reddened, but since he was a demon of a man to begin with, there was no way to tell what his normal state looked like.

“So, what’s this about a baby?”

Kahar asked in the same languid position. For a moment, Meliciel hoped she misheard.

“You were looking for a baby.”

“……A baby?”

The corners of Meliciel’s lips stiffened slightly. Did sleepwalking also include saying anything at all?

She should have been more careful.

“I’ve heard the Ron or Ran business so many times I’m used to it, but the baby talk was new.”

Time seemed to stop with a sharp click.

“Did I…… say something like that? Out loud?”

“Quite desperately. Like you were carrying that Ron or Ran person’s child.”

Kahar’s pupils reflected her without filter. Meliciel quietly clenched her fist under the sheets.

Good heavens.

She never anticipated a situation like this either.

Huby told her that while her sleepwalking symptoms did manifest, she wouldn’t run out of her bedroom or anything of the sort, so it would be fine.

So she never expected she would speak the words inside her aloud in the middle of the night.

She never expected Kahar to come to her bedroom in the middle of the night at all.

Meliciel slowly moved her eyes and gathered her thoughts. The longer she took, the more suspicious Kahar would become.

Fortunately, the time she needed to prepare an excuse wasn’t very long.

“First of all, Ron is a friend who died.”

“A friend?”

Somehow Kahar seemed less focused on Ron being dead and more focused on the word “friend.”

“Yes. A friend. He died tragically…… a friend I miss.”

“Go on, tell me more.”

“As you know, I was always bedridden because of my weak body. Ron kept me company during those times. He was a page boy.”

She made it up roughly along similar lines, and the lies came out more smoothly than she expected.

“And the baby…… I think I was probably talking about a doll Ron gave me as a gift.”