Finally reassured, Tina quietly laid down the baby who had fallen asleep in her arms. Ailee’s existence was precisely why there was a crib in Nelie’s childless home. Soon she changed the subject.

“I’m planning onion stew for lunch.”

“Really? That sounds delicious.”

“Of course. Even if you say you’re better, you need to eat well to heal faster.”

“I’m so indebted to you.”

Tina, who became Nelie’s neighbor after moving to a nearby city, came running over several times a day like this to help with housework. Nelie kept all sorts of baby items in the house for Tina. So she could come with Ailee. When she expressed gratitude, Tina always waved it off.

“What’s that between us. Is your father doing better?”

“Yes. He walks more steadily than me. These days he seems to be visiting the city’s Printing Guild.”

“He’s in his prime. That’s really a good sign. If he joins the guild……”

“With the compensation money we got back… I think he’ll be able to open a printing house again.”

“Oh my. I should have known earlier. If I’d known such good news was coming, I would have made beef stew……”

“Miss Heich! Are you home!”

Tina and Nelie were in the middle of conversation. They heard knocking at the door. This time Tina moved quickly. When she opened the door, a postman stood there.

Hope faintly flickered in Nelie’s eyes seeing him. Tina also opened her eyes wide and urged the postman.

“What is it? A letter?”

“Yes. Well……”

“Quick, give it here! Thank you for your hard work!”

Tina quickly checked the envelope’s exterior and approached Nelie fluttering both hands.

“It’s from Tevant!”

“……!”

“Something’s finally come!”

Nelie’s heart thumped irregularly hearing Tina’s fuss.

‘Finally.’

Had a reply finally come from the Duke?

After regaining consciousness late due to suffering from fever along with her broken legs, Nelie had searched through all sorts of newspapers and cried for a very long time upon learning the Duke of Tevant wasn’t dead.

The vague, dizzying fear she had felt right before losing consciousness melted away like snow. She wanted to see him right away. Words of loving reproach seemed ready to flow out asking why he hadn’t contacted her while she was sick when he was fine.

However, articles appeared everywhere indicating he seemed quite badly injured, had been hospitalized in a large hospital in the capital and was recovering there. Only then did Nelie realize why he hadn’t contacted her. Not that he didn’t, but that he couldn’t.

She wanted to go see him herself. How badly was he injured? Was he better now? Remembering the lukewarm liquid she had felt trembling in the Duke’s embrace made her worry surge ahead.

But it was quite a long journey even by train to the capital. Much less a distance a patient with one leg completely broken and in splints could endure.

So Nelie wrote letters to the hospital in the capital whenever she missed the Duke while waiting for him all season. Sometimes full of hate, sometimes full of affection.

Since all she could do lying down all winter was read books or draw pictures, Nelie’s letters often included the sketches she drew. Pictures of children playing snowball fights, or quiet snowy mountain landscapes. Pictures of puppies playing in the snow and Tina sitting by the fireplace stroking her swollen belly expecting her baby soon.

Drawing such ordinary daily scenes made it feel like everything would return to normal soon. The Duke too would return naturally, like ordinary days.

However, none of the letters sent to the Duke had received replies.

Perhaps the Duke was sick that long, so Nelie always gathered and read Tevant-related newsletters. In case news about the Duke appeared somewhere. Sometimes she thought the postal trains or carriages couldn’t move because of snow piled everywhere.

But even after winter passed and spring came, still no reply came.

He said let’s marry. He said let’s start over from the beginning.

Just when longing was growing into resentment, a letter arrived from Tevant. Perhaps finally. It might be the Duke’s long-awaited letter.

How have you been? I haven’t been well. When I lie down to sleep at night, I keep sitting up groaning thinking of you bleeding. I became terribly scared you might have failed to save yourself after coming to save me. I spent a long time wondering why you weren’t replying if you were better now.

‘But now……”

Now those sleepless nights would end too. Pressing down her heart that felt ready to leap out of her throat, Nelie received the letter with trembling hands.

However, disappointment flickered across her face after barely opening the envelope and reading the first line. The spark of hope in her eyes quietly went out. Seeing that, Tina also sighed.

“Not from the Duke?”

“…No.”

“Then where is this from?”

Nelie shook her head lightly indicating she didn’t know and looked at the letter. The letter was full of foreign language and it was difficult to understand what was written.

But from the handwriting and quite formal style, she could tell it was either quite an official document or came from a high institution. For a moment she wondered if it came by mistake, but some printed letters here and there looked familiar.

“This seems to be saying your name though?”

“Hmm.”

Even in foreign language, the printed letters for names looked quite similar. Clearly it was a letter addressed to Annelie Heich but that was all.

“Really, it’s not a letter from where we want.”

“……”

“Then why was Tevant written?”

“Maybe… it’s a letter from abroad that came through Tevant.”

“Ah, it’s a letter we can’t even read anyway.”

“…There should be someone around who can read it.”

“What about that friend who visited? Jerome. Don’t they learn foreign languages at the Academy?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Then we can ask him. If it was urgent they would have attached a translation.”

Tina blamed the letter needlessly and returned to the kitchen. Nelie slowly walked back to the easel.

“……”

As she sat down, she noticed the pigment she had been grinding in oil earlier. It was one of the gifts the Duke had brought along with books during his brief stay at Nelie’s house. Since she had spent the entire winter painting, she had used much more than usual and was running low. Somehow, that felt both precious and regretful.

‘If he doesn’t come by the time I use up this pigment.’

What would happen then?

What if the paintings she drew hoping everything would return to normal made things return to a different normal?

What if she returned to being the daughter of a printing house in the countryside, and he returned to being the Duke of Tevant? What if they returned to their previous ordinary days like nothing had happened……

Before the scattered white flower buds, Nelie moved her brush sparingly with the pigment.

But no matter how much she conserved it, she couldn’t stop the pigment from decreasing.

Once for mixing the color of the blue spring sky, once for adding blue shadows on the baby’s face sleeping in evening light, once for coloring children’s blue dresses playing heedless of spring rain, once more for painting the blue bouquet held by a young man waiting for his lover in the square in front.

All the world’s blue resided in the pigment the Duke had given. Sometimes it revealed deeper colors mixing with the light green trees in the background. Nelie gazed for a very long time at those mixing colors and her particularly rough brush strokes in those parts.

By the time the pigment finally ran low, even the flowers that had bloomed so abundantly were falling. Jerome, busy with Academy’s graduation exams, sent a reply saying he would translate the letter Nelie sent instead of coming himself.

Still no reply came from the Duke. Her heart felt stifled. Should she go herself once his rehabilitation ended? Or……

‘Should I end it?’

Mixing the last remaining pigment with oil and varnish, Nelie suddenly looked up at the sky. The piercingly blue sky looked spiteful.

Because she had to use all the remaining pigment to paint this sky. Every continuing brush stroke felt completely precious.

Still she didn’t stop her hand. If she stubbornly stopped here, then it would remain as an even bigger lingering attachment weighing on her heart. Unlike when she had forced herself to shake off her lingering feelings for the Duke before, this attachment would clearly become a huge boulder crushing her.

“You were bad.”

She muttered that gathering her last remaining sigh.

“What was bad how?”

Nelie briefly froze hearing that long-awaited voice from behind. Whether the voice she heard was real, if she was hearing things.

“Tell me, Annelie.”

“……”

“How shall I make it up to you.”

That annoying way of speaking proved it was him.

With that thought, Annelie slowly turned around. The Duke walked toward her from not far away.

The Duke rushed straight from the hospital, wearing a fancy coat carelessly over patient clothes instead of his uniform, his slightly grown-out hair unkempt. He came running in a disheveled state, without his usual attendants, still wearing a splint on one arm even after an entire season had passed.

“I came running right when I regained consciousness.”

“……”

“Am I not too late?”

Yet he was still her beautiful duke.

“What’s with that appearance?”

Nelie smiled brightly and reached out to the Duke. The Duke approached without hesitation and embraced her. The blue, blue sky no longer looked hateful.

A few days later, a congratulatory letter arrived from Jerome saying that foreign gallery had sent the letter written in foreign language with an offer to buy Nelie’s paintings.