Ivan’s eyes wavered. He looked at me with an expression still full of incomprehension and said.

“Did you…… save me?”

Before I could answer, Ivan’s eyes rolled back behind his eyelids and he lost consciousness again.

* * *

A short while later, at Rodion’s house.

Rodion was renting a house not far away, living alone. It was a two-story stone building with a small garden, and the exterior was quite beautiful.

But stepping inside, it was immediately apparent that this was not a home someone lived in regularly.

The furniture was sparse and the rooms felt bare, and a middle-aged woman who served as both cook and housekeeper was the only servant.

When we arrived at Rodion’s house, she was alone, busily sweeping and scrubbing a fireplace that already had not a speck of dust on it.

The moment Rodion laid Ivan down in the first-floor guest room, the doctor arrived. While the doctor examined the patient, I waited in the drawing room.

‘I hadn’t expected to meet Ivan so quickly. But more than that…… he seemed to remember me.’

In the novel it had been mentioned only in passing, but in truth Ivan and Katerina had known each other since childhood.

Yet in all my previous loops, Ivan and I had never had a conversation like this one. Ivan had always treated me with polite, businesslike formality, and I had assumed he had completely forgotten Katerina existed.

‘But that wasn’t it……’

Of course, even if he remembered their childhood, it wasn’t necessarily to my advantage. Those were Katerina’s memories, not mine, and since they weren’t in the novel, I had no way of knowing what they contained.

But what if there was something between the two of them that I didn’t know about?

‘This might turn out to be more complicated than I thought.’

Knock, knock.

“Katerina Vladimirovna.”

It was Rodion who opened the door and came in.

“……And Ivan Ivanovich?”

“He’s awake. His condition has stabilized as well. But he……”

“Is something wrong?”

“No. Nothing is wrong. It’s only that he wishes to see you. He says there is something he needs to discuss with you alone.”

‘So there is something after all.’

I stood up quickly to leave the drawing room. But Rodion didn’t move out of the way.

“What is it?”

Rodion looked as though he had something to say, but in the end he couldn’t bring himself to say it.

A moment later, guided by a servant, I entered the guest room to find Ivan sitting up against the headboard in what appeared to be a guest robe.

“……Forgive me for not rising, Katerina Vladimirovna. The doctor says I need to rest.”

“Don’t worry about it. How are you feeling?”

I pulled a chair to the bedside and sat down. Ivan’s face was pale. He worked his dry lips for a moment before finally speaking with some hesitation.

“Why did you save me?”

What kind of question was that? But before that.

“It wasn’t I who saved you……”

I was about to say ‘it was Rodion,’ when I stopped short.

‘Wait, isn’t this an opportunity?’

My goal, after all, was to make Ivan fall in love with me. Perhaps it was fine to leave intact his mistaken belief that I had pulled him from the river.

Rodion didn’t seem like the sort of person who would resent me for something like this, and the fact that he hadn’t told Ivan himself when he’d had the chance……

‘No. No.’

I changed my mind.

Building trust between us was far more important at this stage than raising his affection through a small lie like that.

“It wasn’t I who saved you. It was Rodion Nikolayevich.”

“……That officer from just now?”

“Yes. It would be good to thank him separately. But more importantly…… I was told you had something you needed to discuss with me alone?”

“Ah, that……”

Ivan let out a deep sigh.

“It seems there has been a misunderstanding, Katerina Vladimirovna. Forgive me. You asked me so many times, and yet……”

“Asked you?”

“In the letter you sent me. You asked me not to speak to you if we met again, and not to acknowledge it if you spoke to me. I thought you intended to sever all ties with me completely, and so I……”

A letter? Severing ties? What on earth was all this?

I kept my confusion hidden and quickly tried to piece things together in my mind.

A month ago would certainly have been before I transmigrated. The two of them had been promised to each other since early childhood, but after Katerina’s mother died, contact between the two families had all but ceased.

The original story contained almost no depiction of Ivan’s romantic history, and as far as I knew, marriages among the nobility were all loveless political arrangements, so it had never occurred to me that something might have passed between these two.

“Katerina Ivanovna, no…… Katya.”

Katya?

I looked up to find Ivan watching me. His deep green eyes shimmered like something from a dream. And then, remarkably, he reached out a cold hand.

‘……What?’

He cupped my cheek. And looking at me with sorrowful eyes, he whispered.

“Will you forgive me?”

I froze entirely.

Forgive him? And more to the point, Katya? Were we close enough for pet names?

In all the lives I had lived as Katerina, there had never been contact this intimate. Ivan’s sudden change left me considerably thrown.

I swallowed quietly.

If something had truly passed between Ivan and Katerina, I needed to tread carefully. A single wrong word could raise suspicions that could never be undone.

“Katya?”

He asked again when I didn’t answer. I took a small breath and gently pushed Ivan’s hand away, then spoke.

“I’m not…… quite sure I understand, Ivan Ivanovich. What is it you want me to forgive?”

When I asked as though nothing were wrong, Ivan immediately dropped his gaze.

“Right…… It’s too late to bring this up now, I suppose. But believe me in just one thing, Katya. That I truly…… regret what happened that day. I lacked the courage to say it until now, but…… I always wanted to apologize.”

That day?

Ivan continued with a pained expression.

“If you want…… yes, if you truly want it, I’ll release you from the engagement.”

“……Release me?”

“Yes, wasn’t that what you wanted? Even though it would tear my heart apart……”

His golden lashes trembled.

This was a disaster. I had no idea what any of this meant. So the reason Ivan had been cold to me all this time wasn’t simply because we were strangers to each other, but because there had been some conflict between them?

“And if you want……”

Ivan let out a long, pained sigh.

“You may go to him whenever you wish.”

“To him……?”

Ivan smiled faintly.

“Yes, I’m not a fool. The one you love isn’t me…… it’s him. Samsonov, isn’t it?”

A new name.

Fortunately, I had a rough sense of what was going on. So before I transmigrated, Katerina had apparently fallen in love with someone other than her fiancé Ivan.

Ivan had known this and had been cold to Katerina ever since. And thanks to this unexpected dramatic reunion in the current loop, I had come face to face with an Ivan who still had feelings left.

‘Maybe this will work out more easily than I thought……’

It was a completely unexpected situation, but I couldn’t let such a rare opportunity slip away.

“Ivan Ivanovich.”

I moved closer to Ivan and held out a hand. He took it without a moment’s hesitation. Still holding my gaze, he pressed his smooth cheek against the back of my hand.

I said quietly.

“It’s all a misunderstanding.”

“……What?”

“I have never loved Samsonov. My heart has always……”

“Wait, Katya, what did you say?”

“Oh…… my heart has always……”

“No, not that part. Before that. You said it was all a misunderstanding?”

Ivan lifted his head sharply. The soft warmth in his eyes was gone entirely.

“You mean you never resented me?”

Ivan let go of my hand. He gave a short, disbelieving laugh.

“Then…… then what was that letter? Don’t tell me…… was it all…… a joke?”

“A joke? Ivan Ivanovich, why would you say it like……”

“Huh? Oh……”

After a long silence, Ivan put on a manufactured smile and said.

“It’s nothing. It’s just…… I seem to have made rather a fool of myself……”

Wait, was this……

Someone knocked at the door just then, and Ivan fell silent at once.

“Are you finished talking?”

It was Rodion. He had apparently been worried about me.

“I’m…… fine……”

I answered in a half-daze, and Rodion’s brow furrowed slightly.

“Katerina Vladimirovna, I think I ought to see you home. The sun goes down quickly this time of year.”

Then Rodion looked at Ivan and said.

“You’d be better off resting here. I can call a carriage if you’d like, but the doctor said going out in your condition would do you no good.”

It was a little surprising that he spoke down to Ivan so naturally, but I let it pass. As far as I could recall, Ivan was two years younger than Katerina, and Rodion, an army captain, would be three or four years older.

Ivan looked at me then. His eyes were asking for my opinion. I nodded without thinking.

Staying here was probably better for Ivan. At the Ivanov residence right now, there was no servant or maid to look after him.

“Then I’ll impose on you for a few days.”

Ivan said this and gave me a light smile. As though nothing had happened, as though all the commotion of a moment ago had been a dream.