What reached his ears was the sound of Tanya crying. Mrs. Lien was beside her trying to calm her down, but she too looked at a loss.

Sensing the disarray in the room, Kailen spoke without even catching his breath.

“So, she went to try on clothes and then suddenly vanished?”

Tanya nodded, her face a mess. The words wouldn’t come out properly, and she finally broke into sobs again.

“The madam said she was just going to the powder room for a moment, just a moment…… It did seem like she was taking too long to come back, but……”

Before those words even reached their end, Kailen’s jaw locked shut.

He didn’t need to hear any more of the explanation. He turned around. Tanya’s crying grew louder behind him, but the sound was already losing its meaning.

He stepped outside and drew in a breath of cold air. Then he walked into his office.

He had never imagined a situation like this, and he couldn’t quite figure out where to begin or how to handle it.

Only anger rose up first.

But he soon steadied his composure and thought slowly.

They had said Adeline hadn’t taken any particular luggage with her.

She likely had almost no valuables on her that she could sell anywhere.

This was not a planned escape. It was an impulsive decision. Without a doubt.

‘She couldn’t have gone far.’

Just then, a call came in from Collen. Kailen picked up the receiver in a hurry, and a rather welcome piece of news reached his ears.

– Kailen, there’s a record of a train ticket purchase at the train station.

“Then start the search from there. Right now.”

He issued the order and hung up immediately, then moved himself.

He gathered every person available to him and focused all efforts on finding Adeline.

Before long, records of trains, carriages, and port entries and exits from the time she had disappeared all came together in his hands.

However, Adeline’s trail extended from the train station to the harbor, and then went cold at the harbor.

“It appears the madam did arrive at the harbor, but there are no records after that. We confirmed that all ship reservations were full at the time she would have arrived. We also confirmed she does not appear on the official boarding manifest.”

Kailen gave no reaction as he listened to the person reporting to him.

He simply turned over the documents stacked on the table one by one. Departure points, stopovers, destinations. The clearly organized text only made his eyes swim.

Then one line caught his eye.

Bound for Aurelia……

Among the passenger ships that had been about to depart when Adeline arrived at the harbor, there had been one heading there.

At that moment, Kailen drew in a short breath.

Kailen pressed a hand to his forehead. His fingertips dug in with force and his temple throbbed.

“…… D*mn it.”

A low curse slipped out.

He rose from his chair and grabbed his coat.

So she went and made it all the way there.

Vardi, the head butler, stepped forward quickly when he saw Kailen come rushing out of the room.

“Master, your escort……”

“Not necessary.”

Kailen cut him off, his mind already elsewhere.

“I’m not going anywhere particularly dangerous, so I don’t need to bring anyone.”

Besides, there was no way he could let anyone see Adeline in what was sure to be a sorry state.

Kailen headed straight for the nearest harbor. Fortunately, a ship with a direct route to Aurelia that day was still available.

He boarded alone. Standing on the deck, the sea breeze tugged at the hem of his coat. As the lights of the harbor grew distant, Kailen’s face remained set and rigid.

* * *

The light of dusk stretched long along the outer walls of the academy buildings. The air, still holding the heat that had built up through the day, was thick and humid.

Kailen yanked his tie loose roughly, the way he used to when the stuffiness got to him during his academy days, and walked on.

Where Adeline would go here was obvious. There was no need to think hard about it. He only had to go through the places where the two of them had crossed paths back then.

He hadn’t particularly been living with those days on his mind, yet his body moved on its own.

The reading room of the public library, the ruins of the old foundation. He walked past even the lake behind the west building, where no one went anymore.

How many years had passed, and yet somehow not even the pebbles underfoot had changed.

A hollow laugh escaped him at the thought of what significance something so trivial could possibly hold.

And then, finally, in front of the long-abandoned old greenhouse.

Just as he had expected……

Kailen spotted a woman sitting forlornly on a rust-spotted bench with peeling paint, and ran a hand roughly through his disheveled hair.

He took a few more steps and stopped, looking down at her.

Where on earth did she find something that shabby to put on.

The unremarkable summer skirt and low shoes were no different from what ordinary people passing by on the street might wear. But by Kailen’s standards, it looked so wretchedly plain on Adeline that it grated on him.

Come to think of it, there was something in that pale hand of hers.

“……”

A sandwich. The kind of sandwich they sold at the common hall cafe, and a glass of lemonade.

It brought to mind the sandwich Adeline had made herself early in their marriage. And the fact that he had thrown it in the trash without a second thought.

His stomach suddenly turned.

He couldn’t tell whether it was because he found it absurd that she was still holding onto that, or simply because he was exhausted.

Kailen rubbed his temple and slowly approached the bench. He had come close enough that she would see him the moment she looked up, and still Adeline hadn’t noticed his presence.

She had taken a bite of the sandwich and was chewing away with a blank look on her face.

“Are you out of your mind?”

The words came out before he could think. Adeline’s head lifted at the familiar voice. Her face was still blank.

“……”

“You……”

Kailen looked down at her, his face like a ruin on the verge of collapse. The voice that forced its way past his lips was rough, like the scrape of metal.

“Are you actually out of your mind? Looking like this, here of all places…… without a word……”

“……”

“Are you doing this to make a fool of me?”

He had been throwing out words at random for a while, with the wordless woman in front of him, before he dimly realized just how much of a wreck he was himself.

His own head seemed just as broken as the woman before him. Broken, and then some.

“Please stop making things difficult for people. Don’t go creating trouble just because you’re caught up in your own feelings.”

Still no response came back.

A ‘yes,’ or an ‘alright,’ or at the very least some kind of outburst.

But she chose none of those.

Kailen felt like he was truly losing his mind because of this pale, blank woman who looked like a glass doll that could shatter at any moment. Whether that was why, his anger refused to settle. If anything, it surged higher.

“Right, so does sitting here moping like this make you feel better? I was wondering what you came all the way here for. Ha…… were you reliving old memories or something?”

Adeline finished chewing and swallowed the last of the bite of sandwich she had been working on, and her lips slowly parted.

“I just…… I just felt suffocated, that’s all. I didn’t do this to make a fool of you.”

Kailen stared at Adeline as she murmured calmly with that pale, blank face, then let out a short sigh and turned his head to the side.

“You used to say you wanted to live somewhere other than Varsen. You turned me down, though. So I just came here on my own.”

Adeline, thinking she had said what she needed to say, took a sip of the lemonade beside her. Then she wrapped the half-eaten sandwich back in its napkin and tucked it into the paper bag. She picked up the paper bag and the half-finished bottle of lemonade, stood up from the bench, and said,

“I was going to go back soon anyway.”

I’m leaving now.

Adeline had walked a couple of steps ahead of Kailen, who stood there without moving, and turned only her head. With a look that said ‘what are you standing there for,’ she blinked once and asked,

“But I didn’t expect you to come. What brings a busy person all the way out here.”

What a waste……

Adeline murmured that and turned to walk forward again.

* * *

The abdicated William was, in plain terms, only slightly better off than someone who had been thrown out.

He had stepped down from the throne, but he had not been cast aside entirely. He had simply been moved to a secondary palace while maintaining the dignity befitting a member of the royal family.

Security was lax, but access was controlled, and attendants and a physician had been assigned, yet there were no visitors. It was too courteous to call confinement, and too isolated to call protection.

Perhaps if this kind of life had lasted only a day or two, it would have been bearable.

But for a man who had lived as king, that time was long and humiliating.