Feeling glad to see him made her sad, and Meliciel let her eyes drift endlessly.

“How do you know me?”

Kahar’s lips parted and his usual arrogant tone flowed out, and everything hurt like her whole body caught fire.

“If you called out to me, shouldn’t you state your business?”

It really is Kahar. That madman Kahar.

“Or is there some other reason you’re glaring at me like that?”

Even if this were an illusion. Even if it were a fake conjured by desperate longing, that would have been fine.

She bit down and held back tears, but they slid down her cheeks anyway. It must have been a physical reaction.

Meliciel didn’t take her eyes off him. Kahar’s gaze was deeper than before, his jaw sharper.

Had he lost a little weight?

She studied him, and Kahar tilted his head slightly.

“Ah, so now just anyone and everyone tries their luck.”

No matter how she tried to stop them, the tears wouldn’t.

“What to do? I don’t exactly have a handkerchief to spare.”

“…I don’t need anything like that.”

Kahar let out a low sigh and stared at Meliciel like he was trying to bore through her. It felt like he was giving her a chance.

She knew well enough that he was someone who wouldn’t exchange a word with people he had no interest in.

She needed to pull herself together. Meeting Kahar was, in a way, an opportunity.

An opportunity to meet the child again.

She knew it was foolish, but the enormous grief smothered any rational thought.

She felt like she had to hold onto Kahar. Like only then could the child come back.

But she was afraid that if she failed to catch his interest, he would simply leave, and she couldn’t bring herself to open her mouth.

Yet if she only hesitated, she would lose him again, just like before.

“…Excuse me.”

“Your Highness, excuse me. You have quite a variety of ways to address me.”

She never imagined she would meet him like this, so her mind was blank.

Meliciel bit her lip and shook her head. No. It might be better to step back than to ruin the opportunity.

“Never mind. I apologize for the intrus…”

At that moment, a rough hand grabbed the back of her neck.

“Ugh!”

The one who seized Meliciel’s cloak and spun her around was none other than Valt.

“Miss, I’ve been looking everywhere for you! Are you trying to watch me die?”

Whether from drink or not, Valt’s face was flushed red, his tunic hanging open to reveal a full view of his chest hair.

Wherever he’d been rolling around, his skin was blotched all over with lip marks.

“Let’s go! Quickly, let’s go.”

“That hurts. W-wait, let go of this.”

“Let’s go now! The sun is setting!”

Valt released her neck and grabbed Meliciel’s wrist with his rough hand and yanked.

When Meliciel quickly looked back, Kahar was nowhere to be seen.

Only the softly swaying blue canopy decorations remained.

Valt dragged her along urgently, like a man being chased, and headed straight for the carriage depot.

“Erik! Erik! Erik! I found the young lady!”

He called out loudly for Erik. Meliciel spotted Erik scrambling over from the other direction and twisted her wrist free from Valt.

“Teacher Valt, I can understand you if you use words. Forcing me like this…!”

“Are you out of your mind? Do you know who that was just now!”

He cut Meliciel off and beat his own chest in frustration.

“That was the Diozart family! Black hair and blue eyes! Most likely the Grand Duke himself!”

“…You knew?”

“You knew, she says. Don’t tell me the young lady also knew and did it on purpose…! Are you insane? Who do you think that is, and you were talking to him?”

“…I didn’t run into him on purpose.”

Why was he this angry?

She tried to argue that Valt’s attitude was uncalled for, but her words were cut off again.

“What if you make a mistake! If the Grand Duke finds out the young lady is the half-blood of the Chloe family, the marriage could fall through! And then a blade will come for my neck too!”

“I didn’t make any mistake.”

“Do you still not realize that your very existence is the mistake?”

…What?

The shocking words made Meliciel’s eyes waver endlessly.

“Ahem. This won’t do today. I’ll prepare the art supplies myself, so get back up the mountain for now.”

Seeing Valt’s outburst seemed to make Erik colder than before. He dragged the speechless Meliciel into the cargo wagon and began driving roughly.

When they arrived at the cottage, Erik spoke to Meliciel as she climbed out, his manner ice-cold.

“Stay inside and reflect on yourself.”

Erik slammed the cottage door so hard her head rattled.

But more than any of that, Meliciel was too absorbed in the thought of having seen Kahar again to calm down at all.

She went up to the third-floor room and opened the window, but felt stifled and nauseated.

Then, all at once, she wanted to pour out all these tangled emotions and grief.

She pushed the small desk aside and stood facing the wall. Kahar’s powerful presence stirred her emotions, as though his very soul seeped into her depths.

It was the same as when she first met him.

The wonder of seeing something extraordinary, admiration, elation. And the envy and longing for what she could never have.

Meliciel reached for the flower dye made from crushed petals. She dipped her fingertips in and drew them out, letting the tears fall freely.

Before long, Meliciel began filling the wall with black, blue, and stinging cold colors.

She imagined shattering the paradise drenched entirely in Kahar’s colors, then shook her head.

What she wanted was not revenge against Kahar. It was his child, the star Lani lost.

She desperately wanted to meet the child again.

***

Kahar was on his way to the Chloe Ducal House to settle the marriage matter he could no longer put off. He made up his mind to accept the marriage the Emperor arranged.

In truth, marriage held no special meaning for him. If it would shut the Emperor’s mouth and wrap up a tiresome affair, he could spare his name to some nameless person, the way you’d hand over a calling card.

Without Lani, the position was meaningless anyway.

Kahar entered the Eclipse County two days ago, stopping there on his way to the Chloe Duchy.

The small city was in the middle of its summer festival. He gave the elite Bliber Knights, worn out from the long monster subjugation campaign, a sweet taste of rest, and was heading back to the inn alone.

Tchi flowers candy?

He spotted candy Lani loved and slowly drifted into the market.

Lately, as Kahar confirmed his engagement with the Chloe Ducal House, the number of nobles who refused to let go of their last hopes and sought brazen meetings with him increased.

To cut down on that nuisance, he removed the crest from his chest. Even if someone recognized him, he could simply dismiss them.

He savored the memory, recalling the time he attended a territory festival with Lani.

His steps stopped in front of a shop selling colorful canopy decorations. A fragment of memory drifted in.

“…Could you hand me my clothes over there?”

After the companion rite, she wrapped herself in the bed canopy and hesitated.

“Hmm. I’m not sure where your clothes ended up.”

In a mischievous mood, he teased her by not handing them over, and Lani, her face flushed like a peach, bit her lip, then let the canopy drop.

Then she walked out bare and drove him mad.

Kahar failed to protect someone precious enough to hold his life in her hands.

What use was power that moved the world?

He lost what truly mattered.

Kahar was bitterly mocking himself when he spotted a woman with a clear face emerging through the canopy decorations.

A glimpse of pink hair beneath a cloak. The woman seemed startled by Kahar’s sudden appearance too, and her eyes went wide.

For an instant, those large emerald eyes reminded him of Lani. It wasn’t just the eyes.

Her build, her age, her air were all similar to Lani’s. But that was all.

The woman glaring at him with tears running down her face looked like she wasn’t in her right mind.

Or maybe it was some other scheme he hadn’t figured out yet.

There were as many people who wanted to drive a blade into Kahar’s back as there were those who came with sweet pleas. Women who threw themselves at him with physical expectations were plentiful too.

Among them, women who grabbed his sleeve and wept were not unheard of.

So he assumed this woman was the same sort.

But he grew curious about what she would say, watching him with those desperate eyes.

Amusingly, the more he looked, the more she resembled Lani.

Was it because their eye color was similar?

The impression of her features and their overall harmony resembled Lani so closely that at some point Kahar caught himself swallowing a hollow breath and studying her intently.

But she was taken away by a man who appeared from somewhere.

He called her “Miss,” so she seemed to be a noble, but her appearance suggested a family of little standing.

“How tiresome.”

Kahar muttered, displeased that a stranger managed to enter a mind already full of nothing but thoughts of Lani.

***

Kahar stayed in the Eclipse County for several days.

On nights like tonight, when a full moon rose, Kahar grew irritable. The two moons that lit the empire’s nights waxed and waned at their own whim, making it difficult to predict exactly when a full moon would appear.

Though Lani’s divine power healed him, the killing sickness never fully subsided.