“He couldn’t have lied to me, could he?”

He had already felt uneasy after noticing strange traces on his way here. Trees appeared scorched and dried up as if there had been a fire. The weather wasn’t conducive to natural fires, and besides the burn marks, there were signs of combat involving multiple people, suggesting some dangerous incident had occurred recently.

The village and forest had been peacefully boring when he was young, so he couldn’t understand what was happening now. And on top of that, living thorn bushes? While suspecting he might have stumbled into some bizarre incident, Lime continued walking into the sunny forest since this was the most recent information he had about Olivia.

“The difference between how it looks from inside versus outside suggests there must be some mechanism here too… Ugh!”

While assessing his surroundings and walking toward the distant mansion whose roof was barely visible, Lime quickly leaped away from a powerful force flying at him from somewhere. The black energy barely grazed his shoulder before hitting a rock and shattering into nothing.

“How about greeting someone and talking first?”

“Those are pretty audacious words from an intruder who entered without permission.”

Alois appeared, riding the shadows, and muttered disdainfully. In the past, he might have simply scared off intruders who hadn’t attacked anything, but things were different now. The trespasser had broken through the thorn bushes that clearly rejected their entry, which alone provided sufficient justification for dealing with them however he wished. Additionally, the crime of interrupting his peaceful time with Olivia removed any hesitation from Alois’s decision to draw his sword.

“I was born a pacifist, but truly, life doesn’t help me maintain that in many ways.”

Lime shook his head gently while drawing his sword, which Alois casually ignored. He had never seen a truly gentle person among those who claimed to be pacifists, and as if to prove this point, Lime’s combat stance was naturally fluid.

“Leave quietly.”

As Alois spoke, blade-like shadows began forming around his sword, taking the same shape. Lime gulped dryly. He had prepared himself for an unusual opponent, but facing someone with special abilities beyond simple physical attacks made the confrontation even trickier. He wondered what kind of place this was to have such a formidable person. Lime clicked his tongue briefly as his gaze grew calm and cautious.

A deathly silence fell as if time had stopped. The two men locked eyes, not allowing each other the slightest opening. Then, when a gust of wind rustled the surrounding leaves with a swoosh, Alois swung his sword.

“Wait!”

At the voice that shouldn’t have been heard, both men simultaneously turned their heads, their built-up tension broken. Olivia, who had been told to hide quietly, stood blocking the dark blade flying toward Lime with a terrifying momentum. Both Alois who had swung the sword and Lime who stood behind Olivia wore expressions of shock.

“Olivia!”

“Move!”

In an instant, Alois vanished from where he stood and appeared just in time in front of Olivia, embracing her and rolling across the ground. When the master’s concentration broke, the blade lost its power, and Lime barely deflected it. The darkness that bounced into the air after hitting Lime’s sword shattered and dispersed when Alois clenched his fist. Only then did both men exhale sighs of relief.

“Do you carry a hundred lives with you or something?”

Alois’s voice contained an annoyed growl. Acknowledging that she had been too reckless this time, Olivia meekly accepted Alois’s touch as he examined her with a concerned expression. Nevertheless, she had no choice but to intervene this time. If it had been just an ordinary stranger, she would have stayed quiet as instructed, but that person was…

“Olivia!”

“Lime! How are you here?”

Like a large dog running to its owner, Lime excitedly rushed forward and embraced her. Having Olivia snatched from his arms, Alois watched the pair hugging and spinning around with half-lowered eyes. His expression was clearly displeased and he crossed his arms. Anyone could see he was quite unhappy, and the wrinkles between his eyebrows grew increasingly pronounced.

“You know each other?”

“This is Lime! My younger brother. Oh, did I never mention I have a brother?”

Of course she hadn’t. That’s because Alois had no interest in humans other than Olivia, so naturally, her brother had never been a topic of conversation between them. He only vaguely remembered hearing that her mother had been a healer.

“You know him?”

“Ah, this is Alois! He’s the owner of this forest and mansion.”

“The mansion’s owner, you mean the cursed duke?”

Olivia jabbed Lime’s side with her elbow at his overly direct expression. Lime put on an artificially apologetic smile and extended his hand to Alois first, who’s slanted gaze then fell on the outstretched hand. Despite Alois’s haughty attitude as he stood with arms crossed, showing no intention of taking the hand, Lime greeted him with a pure, bright smile and a nod.

“We almost had a misunderstanding if we’d continued fighting. I’m Lime Friche, Olivia’s younger brother.”

“……I don’t recall giving permission to invite your brother.”

Alois ignored Lime’s introduction and greeting, instead questioning Olivia who stood beside him. Lime shrugged and withdrew his hand. Curious about the duke’s question herself, Olivia stood by Alois’s side and looked at Lime with questioning eyes. As she moved closer, the duke’s irritated expression relaxed slightly.

“That’s right. I never mentioned it either, so how did you get here? And when did you return to the village?”

“You both seem to have many questions, but shouldn’t we talk inside rather than out here? Like over there?”

Lime pointed to the mansion’s roof. Alois had absolutely no intention of letting Lime into the mansion, but when Olivia took his hand and looked up at him with sparkling eyes…

“Haah.”

Right, it might be better to keep him in sight. Thinking it would be preferable to monitor them rather than letting them talk privately, Alois reluctantly led Lime to the mansion. Lime followed behind, humming happily. Between his seemingly carefree expressions of joy, Lime’s eyes darted about, keenly surveying the path to the mansion.

The forest animals began gathering at the mansion, curious about the new arrival. Lime was fascinated by the animals’ complete lack of fear toward humans, greeting each one with amazement. Though Alois was reluctant to admit it, the way Lime adored animals reminded him of Olivia, making him realize for the first time that they truly were siblings.

Leaving Lime to his fan meeting with four cats sitting in a row, Alois whispered quietly to Olivia.

“Can your brother understand animal speech too?”

“No! Can you keep it a secret that I can understand them?”

“Ah, so he doesn’t know about it.”

“Of course not. It’s my secret. The only people who know are you and me, Alois.”

She hadn’t told anyone for fear of being treated as strange, and somehow it had become a secret shared just between them. Both Olivia and Alois rather liked having this secret between them, and they quietly linked their pinky fingers behind their backs.

The doors to the long-unused banquet hall opened. The fact that he took them to the banquet hall rather than the reception room or bedroom was clearly intentional—the space was large with widely spaced chairs.

Alois sat at the head of the table, placed Olivia close beside him, and when Lime tried to sit next to her, he made him sit across from Olivia with one seat between them. Huh. At this blatant rejection, Lime pretended to bow his head while sitting down but let out a crooked smile. Though he thought it childish, he childishly felt annoyed.

“Do you know how shocked I was when I came home and heard you were missing?”

“Oh, is that what they’re saying in the village?”

“Yes. People say you disappeared and haven’t returned for a long time, and you haven’t replied to my messages for much longer. Can you imagine how surprised I was?”

“Mmm. I’m sorry.”

Hearing this, Olivia genuinely felt sorry and lowered her eyebrows, looking up with gentle eyes. Reminded of how she would become dejected like a scolded puppy whenever she felt guilty since childhood, Lime couldn’t press further and just smiled awkwardly.

“A child I met in the village said you were being held captive here, so I came looking just in case. But there seems to be a misunderstanding? You don’t look like you’ve been captured, so what’s going on?”

She wasn’t captured, but she was confined. She was confined, but she could freely roam the mansion and forest. Olivia frantically tried to think of how to explain this situation cleanly. The problem was that their relationship couldn’t be neatly explained with a single word, so no matter how much she thought about it, she couldn’t come up with a suitable answer.

“Well, I guess you could say I have a debt to repay to the duke, and I’m in the process of paying it back?”

Right? She sent a look asking for help, but Alois didn’t seem particularly pleased with her explanation and just turned away expressionlessly. Alois couldn’t think of a better way to put it either, but hearing it expressed in words made their relationship sound very bleak and insignificant, so he didn’t want to add anything.

“What did you borrow? Money? If it’s something like that, I can help pay it back.”

“I decline.”

The cold refusal cut off Lime’s offer before he could even finish. With such an obvious expression of discomfort, Lime couldn’t miss how much Alois wanted to get rid of him quickly. The way he expressed his rejection so forthrightly, without any schemes or tactics, made Lime feel distinctly that the other man already considered him far beneath his notice. Lime felt quite clearly disgusted, but having grown up in a different environment, he maintained a friendly smile on his face.

“It’s not something that can be repaid with money or anything like that, umm…… Anyway, that’s why I’m staying here for now.”