“……I see.”

“How strange. Why do you look like that? You were curious, weren’t you? About my birth mother, my birth father, things like that.”

Adeline had once been desperately curious, but the memory of those days when she had only watched for signs of his displeasure, too afraid to ask, came back to her, and the light faded from her green eyes.

“I was, back then. But it no longer means anything to me now.”

Kailen stepped slightly around Adeline, who stood there motionless, and drew back the curtain in front of him. Adeline continued, saying that everything felt meaningless now.

“You lived all this time without giving me any meaning either. After everything has come to this, why would I be any different.”

Beneath a clear blue sky, the low hills blazed with color. At the far edge of the scene, rich with the feel of late autumn, stood a faint two-story detached house. Kailen looked at the reddish-brown house, which could not compare to the grand mansion he lived in, yet did not look shabby either, and his lips parted.

“Meaningless…… Yes…… All of my family met their ends without meaning, in a truly wretched way. At the hands of William Rosenthal.”

Adeline, standing with her back to him, turned her brow in puzzlement.

“……”

“Do you see that red house at the far end?”

Adeline, who had been silently still, turned around slowly. Then she looked at the faint two-story house toward which Kailen’s gaze was directed.

“That is the house where I lived as Kailen Faust, with my father Josef Faust, my mother, and my brother Cedric.”

Kailen gazed at the same house as Adeline and began to speak of a story long buried, and his face was as quiet as the autumn scenery below.

“My father was not a particularly good parent. But even a parent like that was still someone my brother Cedric and I needed, young as we were.”

Kailen brought out his old circumstances one by one, that he himself was from Krauben, that his father had been a businessman who ran a factory complex, and that the whole family had fallen into ruin because his father had become consumed by Enlightenment ideals late in life and neglected the family. Adeline could not bring herself to look at his face as he spoke.

“……”

“Under the system at the time, a father singing of a world where all are equal would have been a great irritant to those in power. So they branded him a person of interest…… Though honestly, that part was his own doing.”

Kailen spoke of his father with something like mockery, a man who had failed to grasp reality and endangered his family with empty dreams, then brought up William again.

William, in order to purge his father and a few others who displeased him, had drawn in a rival company that had long envied the Fausts. Then he had pinned a preposterous false charge on Josef Faust, claiming he was manufacturing narcotics that the state had banned.

Adeline kept her gaze fixed on the red house outside the window.

“……What is the point of this story? Are you telling me to remember that I am a Rosenthal, of the same blood as William? That my bloodline has committed a great sin against you, and I should at least understand that now.”

“More or less, yes, something like that.”

“I see…… I was ignorant all this time. Hearing it now, the tragedy your family suffered is immense. I am sorry too.”

In truth, Kailen had not brought up his past because the grief of his family’s tragedy was so raw that he could not bear to keep it inside. He had laid out those long-buried, sordid stories out of a cruel desire, knowing his wife Adeline’s tender nature well, hoping that the guilt would bring her to her knees on her own and keep her at his side forever, just as she was now.

“But William is not my parent…… He is not my father…… What does he truly have to do with me…… I did not care if the whole world threw stones at me for being born of Rosenthal blood. Even so, I thought I had done what I could for you…… So this was the reason none of it was ever enough. I am sorry, since you say it is all my fault.”

Adeline, who had been staring blankly out the window and murmuring to herself, tilted her head up slightly.

“But William, that man is my enemy too. He killed my father.”

I saw it. William killed my father’s personal physician. Even after the man begged for his life and promised to stay silent, he killed him. The attendants and ladies-in-waiting, all of them together with the doctor. It was red everywhere, like blood flowing in rivers. The blood that ran was truly beyond words.

Adeline trembled all over, shaking as though seized by a chill, and her face went pale.

“……”

Kailen too had anticipated, to some degree, the atrocities William was capable of. But he was hearing these specific details for the first time. His throat bobbed as he struggled to keep his expression from twisting against his will.

The tips of Adeline’s lashes were faintly wet as she swallowed her tears to the very end.

As sharp as she could make herself, his wife was a woman soft by nature. He kept pressing on her sympathy, her guilt, things like that.

“So you want to say that William is your enemy, and that what was done to frame your father was not something your father did?”

“……”

“Later, I looked into you. I heard you were treated quite poorly in Grofen. But do you know something, Adeline? When you were boarding that lavish ship bound for Grofen, I was boarding a smuggling vessel with only my mother, not knowing whether my family was alive or dead. And in the corner of that cargo hold reeking of rot, I spent a full four months wasting away.”

“……”

“Still making that face, wondering why any of this is your family’s fault.”

“I understand. Stop talking. I understand what you mean now.”

Adeline bit down on her lip, and she looked as though every drop of blood had drained from her body. But his cruel lips, aimed at her, did not stop.

“Why is your father without fault? He sat in that seat called king and was incompetent. When you sit above others’ heads, being incompetent is a sin, Adeline. It was because he was incompetent that a man of such monstrous evil was able to seize all power from him.”

“……”

Adeline’s eyes reddened deeply, saying without words that she no longer wanted to hear anything he had to say. She still held her wet eyes wide open, but the trembling at the corners of her eyes and lips was something she could never hide.

Poor thing, how could anyone be so transparent?

What am I to do with you?

“Yes, my father’s sins are great. But Leopold is different. Leopold truly is different. He did not commit such great sins. Unlike your father.”

Kailen grabbed Adeline’s wrist as she cast her eyes downward. He lifted the slender wrist wrapped in white bandages and gave a bitter smile.

“Leopold this, Leopold that. Does it pain you so much that Leopold died? Enough to want to end your own life and follow him? Did you really go so far as to hurt yourself out of pity for him? How dare you.”

“……What I do with my own body is my own business. What does it have to do with you.”

“What does it have to do with me? You are still legally my wife. So it does.”

Ha, Leopold. Kailen murmured the name and scoffed.

“From where I stand, it looks like he lived quite well and enjoyed plenty while he was alive. He even had two children. That is a life fully lived.”

Adeline denied it, but at least to Kailen, Leopold had committed a sin worthy of death. He remembered how utterly absurd he had found it when he first heard the reason Leopold had secretly returned to the country.

His subordinate had told him that the reason Leopold had come back this time was because of his sister, Adeline. That Leopold had thought her situation looked precarious and had intended to take her away to a foreign country.

Unbelievable…… what a grand ambition.

He had tried to spirit you away from me. How reckless, both of them, brother and sister alike.

Kailen had not driven Leopold to his death, but Leopold had dared to try to take his wife from him, and for that sin, Kailen had genuinely thought he deserved to die, which was why he had not extended a hand when Leopold was imprisoned.

At Kailen’s tone, mocking Leopold, and his cold smile, Adeline’s wet eyes flew wide open. Her lips, exhaling in short, ragged breaths, moved wordlessly for a long moment.

“You…… really……”

“Yes, Adeline. Let’s say you’re right, that Leopold did not sin enough to deserve death. Then what sin did Cedric Faust commit?”

It was an undeniable fact that the misfortunes that had befallen his family had added hardship to his life, but Kailen did not feel his parents’ deaths with any particular anguish. Only Cedric, his brother’s senseless death, left something of a bitter ache even in Kailen.

“My brother Cedric had even less sin than your brother. Because when Cedric was dragged off to the detention camp, he was only sixteen years old.”