To abandon family and status and go somewhere where no one knows Pernia…

“My lady, please wait a moment. Miss just spoke out of anger.”

“Duke, you be quiet. You’re partly responsible for Kayla’s bad behavior.”

At these words that hit the mark, Duke closed his mouth and could only look at me with pitying eyes.

Foolish Duke. If you had stayed quiet, you wouldn’t have been scolded by my mother and could have just let it pass.

What I’ve learned from years of experience is that there’s no way to stop my mother when she gets like this.

I just need to silently accept the ensuing lecture, endure the suffocating days, and it will naturally resolve itself—I just need to endure until then.

“Mother, I’ll walk on my own now, so please let go of my hand.”

“Trying to run away again? I can’t trust you anymore.”

“I told you it’s not like that. Mother, please.”

My mother, who has many demands for me but never grants a single thing I want.

I unintentionally grumbled out of frustration, and my mother, who had been walking quickly, suddenly stopped in her tracks.

She must be about to point out my non-submissive attitude.

It was an easily predictable scenario, but my mother, who turned her head toward me, seemed unable to utter a word, as if her lips had frozen, and she just stared with surprised eyes.

“Why are you here……”

As my mother, who had been frozen, opened her lips, the rough hand connecting us gradually loosened.

As I turned my head to see what was happening, my heart raced when my eyes met beautiful peridot ones.

“I apologize for being late.”

The apology contained such great sincerity for someone who had done nothing wrong that I couldn’t affirm or deny it, and just quietly observed his complexion.

His skin, always snow-white, looked almost pale today.

“Your cheek, is it alright?”

“It’s fine. It just grazed me.”

“It’s too red to say it merely grazed you.”

Hastily covering my cheek with my hand after being pointed out something I hadn’t noticed.

But the more I did so, the more carefully Ian examined the condition and gently caressed the stinging part.

His eyes, which always contained a relaxed smile and curved, were today deeply furrowed with anger and sorrow.

“Why were you just taking it again?”

“Mother hasn’t been in her right mind since our family fell. So I thought I should at least……”

“You say Baroness Pernia has become weak because of that day’s events, but the woman from back then and the one standing before me now haven’t changed one bit.”

When the old story came up, my body trembled involuntarily.

I knew he was targeting my mother, but I was close enough to be hit by the fragments.

As I hesitated to answer and stalled for time, Ian sighed and continued.

“In our first meeting, and in our last meeting. I’ve endured the Baroness insulting you so many times.”

“……”

“Will you stop me this time as well?”

I don’t know the extent of Ian’s patience, but as I just heard, he had to hide his displeasure and step back several times.

Not because of other circumstances, but solely because of my one word.

What would happen next if I were to release the leash of the white demon who was ready to tear apart enemies at any moment?

If I had used the white demon solely for my convenience, without being swayed by personal emotions, I wouldn’t have faced such difficulties in the first place.

It became clear from our conversation just now that I hadn’t looked into my own heart because I was too busy thinking about morality and common sense.

My mother didn’t go mad because our family collapsed or because my father went to prison.

She has maintained a clear mind from before I was born, after I was born, and until now, living according to actions that align with her own reason.

“Ian… there’s something I need you to do for me.”

After my thoughts concluded, what I needed to do became clear.

If I can’t discard it with my own strength, if I can’t cut it off, then I must use the best card in my hand.

“Whatever you say.”

“My mother… Baroness Pernia… make it so I never have to see her again.”

“As you command.”

The unleashed beast writhes with a more intense sense of liberation than ever before, and I turned my back, ignoring the small prey trembling before it.

It was the first time.

The first time I gave the white demon the order to ‘bite’ with my own lips.

***

Ian put me in the carriage first, saying he wanted to speak with my mother alone.

Was that consideration for me, or a meticulous decision to completely remove any support my mother might lean on?

After pondering for a while, I finally rose from my seat.

The only person who knew the answer was Ian, and there was no point in worrying about it alone without him here.

“Ellin, I’m going to the garden for a moment. I’ll bathe afterward, so please prepare for that.”

“Yes, Miss.”

Ellin, who usually bombarded me with questions about what had happened outside whenever I returned from an outing, sensed the unusual atmosphere and kept her mouth shut.

The entire mansion was enveloped in a terrible silence, as if everything had died.

Relying on the dim light as I went outside, I saw a sky full of stars and beneath it, a single figure slowly walking toward me.

Brighter than anything, darker than anything.

The beast whose leash I had loosened was returning to its home.

“Why are you out here?”

“Oh, I just couldn’t sleep.”

It didn’t seem appropriate to say I couldn’t possibly sleep because I was worried about the two people who hadn’t returned until this late hour.

After all, I was the one who had caused this situation.

“If you had said you were waiting for me out here in the late night, I would have been so happy I could fly to the sky. What a pity.”

He put more emphasis on that single word “pity,” as if he truly meant it.

Being happy about trivial actions, getting angry over small matters, being jealous of casual relationships……

Only in front of me does he lose his composure, making even this dawn’s silence and the sparkle in his eyes seem mysterious.

“Aren’t you going to ask what happened?”

“I’m curious, but I don’t want to hear it.”

“Haha, a wise decision.”

Ian laughed hollowly as he smoothed my red hair that had been disheveled by the wind, his eyes crinkling.

“Baroness Pernia will never be able to return here again.”

“……”

“Do you think that’s cruel?”

What method could he possibly have used to make him bring up the word “cruel” himself?

Knowing he wasn’t someone who handled matters carelessly, I couldn’t dismiss his statement that my mother would never return here again as mere exaggeration.

If Ian declared it so firmly, it must be certain.

“I asked you to do it. I might feel a little guilty for a while, but I’ll be fine.”

Worried about how Ian would look at me, I finally turned my back to avoid his gaze.

I pretended to be nonchalant with my words, but I couldn’t hide my crumpled expression.

Anyone would be angry if I now regretted what I had asked for with my own mouth, especially the person who had to handle the aftermath.

Clearly, not seeing my mother anymore would be good for me, but it came with the enormous constraint of “forever.”

This wasn’t a simple matter to be happy about, like not seeing her for a while.

“Ha, really……”

“W-what’s suddenly wrong?”

Startled by the sudden warmth I felt on my back, I stiffened my neck, and the arms embracing my waist tightened their grip.

Ian seemed to enjoy my reaction and pressed his body closer, leaving me no room to escape.

“I can’t bear how adorable you are in your foolishness.”

Words I had heard before.

Just like that day when I had pondered the correlation between foolishness and adorableness but eventually gave up without figuring anything out.

Today too, I failed to find the connection between these two words and gave up.

“Are you making fun of my foolishness?”

“No, I’m saying that aspect of you is unbearably adorable.”

“As I always think, you really are a strange person.”

When I spoke my thoughts aloud, Ian simply laughed it off as if it were nothing.

His response was so relaxed, as if he had already seen through my thoughts long ago, that it made me a bit stubborn.

But for some reason, I felt like holding back my words right now and quietly affirming everything around me.

Like the moon that seemed unusually close, like the insects crying endlessly as if they would die soon, like the untrimmed grass that had suddenly grown tall.

The reason I paid more attention to such useless, fleeting things was probably because my day had been exceptionally exhausting.

“Won’t you give any reward to your faithful dog who successfully performed the ‘bite’ command for the first time today?”

“I’m sorry, but I have nothing to give.”

“Then would it be alright if I find something and take it on my own?”

These were also words I had heard before.

Previously, I had desperately tried to stop Ian, but now I felt indifferent and expressed my consent through silence.

Within his heated gaze, I saw myself fearlessly holding the white demon’s hand.

The moon stopped its journey, and the wind no longer interfered with us.

That night, our shadows on the mansion wall kissed each other without knowing shame.