Sella felt a little sorry for him and thought she should treat him well in exchange for skimming a bit of money.

“Well then, I’ll be on my way now.”

In any case, the clean deal was good. Sella, delighted with the 10 gallops left in hand, bowed politely and turned around.

It felt like the man’s gaze was following her back, but Sella came swiftly down the mountain without looking back, lest he change his mind about the price.

***

Rodiac watched the retreating figure of the woman disappearing quickly without looking back, like someone with fire under her.

He had known there were a few woodcutters’ lodges on this mountain. But to think she would mistake him for a woodcutter.

Was it because he had not a single decent piece of clothing left, having torn them all to shreds, and was wearing all manner of ill-fitting garments?

When the pain grew severe, he would routinely tear his clothes apart. It was fortunate when he only tore his clothes. There were many times he would badly self-harm his own body as well.

Since he had come to be shut away alone in this rural mountain without a single servant, Rodiac had handled nearly everything himself. But clothing alone was something he could not make himself. So in the end he had no choice but to go to the village to buy clothes.

The clothing shop he used was a place called “Bliss” in the village at the foot of the mountain. There was no particular reason for it, other than that it had relatively fewer people.

Rodiac would always place a large order for clothes of the same design there in advance, then visit periodically, collect only his clothes, and leave immediately. Going to places with people was thoroughly exhausting.

Today too, he had come out because it was a day to collect his clothes……

He had already been in a foul mood from running into someone on the way there. He had had no patience for listening to the woman’s chatter and had been about to tell her to get lost.

It was precisely because the madness seemed to be flaring up and pain was washing over him, sharpening his nerves to a razor’s edge, that there was a chance he might have thrown the woman to the bear that had conveniently appeared.

But the moment the woman grabbed his hand, his roiling insides instantly found their temperature again, and the pain that had always been with him vanished without a trace. Like a volcano on the verge of erupting in a burst of bubbling, suddenly becoming a dormant volcano that had ceased all activity in an instant.

It had been a pain that had continued for nearly ten years. And so the feeling of the pain vanishing without a trace the moment he touched the woman felt like the most exquisite pleasure.

A pleasure that felt like it would become an addiction after tasting it just once. That was why, even knowing the woman was looking at him strangely, he simply could not bring himself to let go of her hand.

“Cooler.”

So that woman was…… the very existence he had only ever heard of in words, a “Cooler.”

A “Cooler,” who was said to eliminate the pain that came as a side effect of his ability.

The fact that even holding hands for just a brief moment could produce that level of effect meant she possessed an ability of the highest order.

That was why he hadn’t wanted to let go of her hand. Far from letting go, to the point where if it meant he could keep feeling this way, the urge rose up in him to cut off the woman’s hand and keep it.

Of course, he absolutely must not do that.

He had let go of her hand with no other choice upon seeing the look in her eyes, but that single act of letting go had required more self-restraint than anything in the past several years.

That was why he had done it. He had let the woman go on mistaking him for a woodcutter.

To use the woman’s misunderstanding, and obtain the hand of that woman who could extinguish the fire burning inside him.

Rodiac looked down at his own hand.

A hand that still held a cool and refreshing sensation.

The feeling that the madness had been about to descend on him had also cleanly disappeared.

“Do you only place the order once a week?”

“Yes! It’s always been that way. And starting today, that’s my job!”

One week.

“That’s too long……”

Not knowing would have been one thing, but the pleasure tasted briefly was already tempting him like an addiction.

***

On the way back to the orphanage, Sella had bought snacks for the children and was trying to hide them away before reporting her return to the director.

But there was no need for that. It was because the director happened to be out of the orphanage.

“The director went to a clothing shop called ‘Bliss.'”

Patrick told her.

“Ah…….”

This village was quite far from the capital, and since it wasn’t a very large town, there was only one high-end dress shop: ‘Bliss.’

Because the prices were quite steep, Bliss’s main clientele were nobles, and among commoners, only the wealthy used that shop. The Orphanage Director skimped on money for firewood while sparing no expense on herself, which is why she patronized that pricey shop.

What a greedy director. Ah……! Come to think of it, didn’t Kesseleia say earlier that she was going there too?

A lot of people are going to ‘Bliss’ today.

Bliss is……

“Ah! Bliss!”

Something she had forgotten suddenly came to mind. The place where the female lead and the villain male lead first met.

In the original novel, Kesseleia orders a dress for her debutante at the imperial palace banquet held after her twentieth birthday. The name of that dress shop was ‘Bliss,’ and it was right there that she first meets the villain male lead, the deposed Crown Prince Rodiac Pestrik Gunter.

Come to think of it, didn’t Kesseleia say earlier that she was going to try on a dress? Good heavens! Was today the day?

If Kesseleia really met that one, Rodiac, today……

A sudden wave of goosebumps washed over her.

That would mean the villain male lead’s massacre to claim the female lead was about to begin.

No……!

She felt she had to go right away and get Betty out of there.

However, Sella, who had been about to rush to Betty, ran straight into the Director at the orphanage entrance.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“I, Director, I’m sorry, but would it be alright if I went back for a moment to see my sister Betty? There are still a few things I need to ask her about!”

“Betty is in no position to see you right now, so don’t even think about going to that house!”

“What do you mean?”

“That stupid girl, Betty, caused an enormous accident! She’d barely even started working there. What an idiot.”

An accident?

The word ‘accident’ suddenly brought a wave of anxiety crashing over her.

“What happened?”

“Miss Kesseleia had ordered a dress for the banquet being held at the imperial palace in the capital, and that foolish Betty accidentally tore it. They say it was a dress with an enormous amount of lace in it. To cause such a huge accident the moment she started working as a maid.”

“But how…… why on earth would the lace tear?”

“Apparently, the lace was very dense and elaborate. It seems it got caught on something while they were putting it on and taking it off, and when Betty tried to work it free herself, something went wrong and all the threads came undone at once. She should have waited until a staff member arrived. That Betty, she’s just so inflexibly diligent, you know. Why did she have to go and stick her nose in, sticking her nose in!”

“Ah…….”

Sella couldn’t even respond properly to the Director’s words.

The debutante dress, the torn lace…… Because that was an episode between the female lead and the male lead.

Her head was spinning.

How did this happen?

In the original novel, Kesseleia had a considerably expensive dress made for her debutante. And when she went to try on the finished dress one last time before picking it up, Rodiac, whom she encountered there, tears the lace of her dress. Kesseleia had the bad luck of getting caught up in the male lead’s sudden fit of madness.

But why would my sister be the one to tear it? Why has the situation changed like this? Has something been twisted?

But what reason would there be for it to be twisted?

She had entered this world, yes, but she was simply living quietly, shut away in the orphanage with no connection to any of them whatsoever.

So there was no way she could have influenced the progression of the novel. The sister who tore the lace, Betty, was originally a person of this world.

“By any chance, did Kesseleia happen to meet a man there?”

She, an orphan who had no way of knowing about the deposed Crown Prince, couldn’t exactly ask whether the ‘deposed Crown Prince’ had appeared at Bliss.

“What?”

The Director raised one eyebrow as if to say, what kind of nonsense is this.

“When the lace of the dress tore, was there really no one nearby besides my sister Betty?”

“Are you thinking this wasn’t an accident your sister caused? What are you writing, a novel? A man, of all things!”

She didn’t meet him?

What’s going on? The torn dress is the very link that entangles the villain male lead and the female lead.

Although Rodiac did tear Kesseleia’s dress, his madness subsides the moment he sees her. And from that moment on, he becomes immediately obsessed with Kesseleia.

Whether his madness calms when he meets the woman he loves, or what.

There must have been an explanation for that phenomenon or correlation somewhere…… but she had only read it loosely, focusing on the scenes because word had spread that it was a great source of those, and on top of that, she hadn’t even finished reading it, so she had no way of knowing.