‘Still, I need to talk…’

I need to talk. I should ask what I want to ask and end this.

While she was encouraging herself this way, completely unexpected words followed.

“…She was my lover.”

She couldn’t comprehend what she had just heard.

‘What……’

Nelie’s mind momentarily refused to piece together the sentence she had just heard. Eventually, the strength in her knuckles gripping her arms turned them white. Her heart kept pounding, making her whole body vibrate.

‘Not just a mistress.’

But a lover.

The emotion that rose while turning over these incomprehensible words several times was closer to anger than joy or happiness. For a moment she felt happy, then sad for a moment, then for another moment……

‘It wasn’t just me who thought that way.’

He had also considered her his lover. Yet he spoke words as if they contained poison or blades. She couldn’t understand it at all. If he really cherished and liked her, why.

The “why” she had mulled over dozens of times on her way here surfaced again. She was so angry and upset she wanted to bring the books he had given her and hit him with them, but at the same time, the naive country girl inside her was jumping for joy. She was crying with happiness as if all the past sorrows had disappeared.

Not all of those times they shared laughter and bodies were lies and deception.

The times they walked home together like real lovers, the moments they kissed in the lazy afternoon studio, the times his moss-green eyes gazed at her softly.

So that person also felt for her……

The moment she thought of the next word, Annelie couldn’t bear it and jerked up from the wall she was leaning against. She needed time to think more. She needed time to scold the little country girl inside her who wanted to understand and accept all his cruel words just because he said he considered her a lover, and she needed to organize the questions tangled in her mind.

She still resented him. In fact, hearing such words only made her resent him more. The lovers Nelie had learned about weren’t like this. Weren’t lovers supposed to cherish each other, speak only sweet words, never fight, and always care for one another? He had been gentle with other women he met, even with Princess Lambert, who wasn’t even his real lover. On stage, he had been soft. Why was he only like this to her……

“Haah.”

Just as Annelie was taking steps while trying to hold back her increasingly hot head, someone kicked open the tavern door and rushed out.

“Damn it! Damn it!”

“……”

“Thata damn Duke Tevant!”

It was that man who had just been fighting with the Duke. Nelie finally recognized his face.

He was the man who had stood in front of Jerome at the party that day, most fervently denouncing her.

Their gazes met in the air.

“……”

“Ha!”

Benson couldn’t help but laugh bitterly when the people he had been thinking about in his head suddenly appeared in reality one after another.

“Is this a dream?”

He muttered and stepped toward the woman, and that mistress who had a face worth looking at flinched and stepped back.

“Not a mistress but a lover?”

“……”

“Bullshit!”

It was laughable. She must have seduced the Duke with that pretty face and body. And he lost to such a woman. Who knew women would be stronger than money.

“If I had known this would happen, I would have pushed a woman into the Duke’s bedroom too. Huh?”

He enjoyed watching the woman’s face grow pale with each word he spat out. While Benson deliberately approached her with a threatening posture, Nelie calmly rolled her eyes and scanned her surroundings.

‘What if I go into the tavern.’

The Duke was there, but so were other people. So it would be safe.

However, to do that, she had to pass directly in front of the man blocking her path. In this situation where the heavily drunk man who seemed blind to everything except her clearly wanted to grab her and do something unpleasant, it felt like a huge threat. Meanwhile, Nelie was already being pushed by the man, getting further and further from the tavern.

“…Help me!”

“You think anyone will listen? Huh?”

“Help me! Save me!”

She shouted with all her might, but it seemed her voice didn’t properly reach the tavern. No one came out or looked around. The music playing extra loud in the tavern to forget the earlier commotion and people’s boisterous laughter buried Nelie’s voice.

The occasional drunkards wandering the streets looked at them with bleary eyes, but these people who could barely stand straight didn’t seem likely to be of much help.

‘I should go back instead.’

Just when Nelie finally decided to run back the way she came, a thick arm reeking of alcohol flew toward her.

“Where do you think you’re going!”

“Ugh!”

The rough fingertips, nails not properly trimmed, scraped painfully across Nelie’s skin. The man’s eyes gleamed, seemingly feeling more excited by this.

‘Dangerous……!’

Instinctively sensing danger, Nelie unconsciously started running toward the abandoned houses scattered around. Not far from the tavern, there were houses waiting to be demolished for new construction and mountains of piled dirt everywhere.

Nelie opened the door of one of them and hurriedly jumped inside. It was a house with only the skeleton, some outer walls, and the roof remaining, almost completely demolished. Still, it was enough to hide from her pursuer.

The inside of the house she had rushed into was a mess, like a construction site. Construction materials and furniture left behind by people who had emptied and left the house were strewn about the floor haphazardly.

Click!

After blocking the door with one of the long pieces of wood lying around, Nelie backed away, trembling. Her heart felt like it was pounding in her ears. While she tried to catch her breath, waiting for signs of movement outside to disappear—

Bang!

An enormous noise struck her ears. It was a deafening sound that even drowned out the noise from the tavern.

“Come out! Damn wench! I said come out!”

Bang! Bang!

Nelie turned pale when she belatedly remembered the hammers and tools scattered around. If he were to break down the door with those things……

But something even worse happened first.

Crumble.

“Ah.”

The house, which was already practically demolished, started shaking from the impact. The wooden floor split for construction and the pillars stuck in the weakened ground also swayed unsteadily. Nelie trembled unconsciously when chunks of plaster fell from the second floor ceiling.

‘At this rate……’

Nelie’s instincts rang alarm bells. No. She needed to get out again. Get out of here, Annelie.

However, darkness overtook her faster than she could run.

* * *

Bang!

The moment the ominous sound echoed around, everyone gathered in the tavern looked outside at once. The heavy sound of something hitting a wall was followed by the sound of something collapsing.

The outside quickly turned into chaos. The screams of drunkards rushing like a tidal wave froze the air inside the tavern. Whatever happened, it seemed an accident had occurred.

“What……”

“Well, this is troublesome.”

The people gathered there made unpleasant expressions when incidents kept happening despite having the Duke in their presence. They feared the potential investment they might receive from the Duke could go wrong when bad things kept happening when they should be showing only good things.

‘They’re drinking tea before anyone has offered cake.’

Elroy calmly put down his newly received wine glass among them.

He had already said what he needed to say to the lord, and finished playing along with the terribly tasteless beer. He thought it rather fortunate that an incident occurred that could break up the gathering.

His mood was already bad enough, but that Academy student’s intrusion had made it even worse. Though the habitual dignity he had built up as a duke of a major city maintained his smooth exterior, inside he was rotting.

He felt tired. When that thought came, there was a face that came to mind. He wanted to go back and see Annelie’s face instead. Since he couldn’t stay here forever, he planned to memorize her face for as long as possible before going to Tevant and coming back again.

He would help find a house for the woman to move to, and find a doctor to exclusively attend to her father. Then she wouldn’t turn him away even if he came back again. By then, her heart might have softened a bit too.

While he was watching the beer particles swirling back and forth on the table with such thoughts, the tavern door burst open forcefully.

“So-someone please help!”

Several heavily drunk men came stumbling in, flailing their arms and legs. Some of them seemed to have sobered up from the shocking scene and were shouting with clear pronunciation.

“My lord! Outside… the house outside has collapsed!”

“The house?”

“Wasn’t that house meant to be demolished anyway?”

The lord and nobles waved their hands dismissively. It seemed one of the wooden buildings that had already been prepared for demolition had collapsed.

The fortunate thing was that it was a building meant to be demolished anyway, and because of that, there shouldn’t have been anyone left inside. There wasn’t much to deal with. They just needed to clear away the debris when the sun rose the next day.