And then she came again the next day. Composed as ever. In slightly tidier clothes.

“Let’s talk.”

Speaking in that calm voice, just like now.

“You’re late, my lady.”

He caught sight of her stepping into the room and pushed the past he had been turning over far back into the distance. Feron rose from the sofa and lifted Karin by the waist with ease.

“What are you doing? Put me down.”

“How am I supposed to hide how glad I am to see my wife?”

“We were just sitting across from each other eating dinner? Would you put me down?”

She snapped back in that prickly voice, but the hands coming up to his shoulders were far too natural.

He felt the lukewarm warmth she offered and set Karin down without resistance.

“Hmm…… Still fine right now. I thought you changed when the sun went down.”

She closed the distance on her toes and looked carefully at his face. She even placed her fingers on his eyelid and turned it back slightly.

“You don’t know why you change like that?”

“No.”

“What would you do if it happened suddenly in front of people? It didn’t seem like you could control it.”

So that was why she had come to his room.

Karin wobbled slightly, apparently finding it difficult to hold herself up on just the balls of her feet against the marble floor.

“I can feel a fever coming on beforehand, so I can tell in advance.”

He pulled her slight body, which he could lift with one arm, toward him and moved. He sat back down on the sofa he had just been occupying and settled her onto his lap.

“……”

“So you can get a closer look.”

He said it easily, watching her expression ask why he was doing something so out of character. She had been staring at him with a skeptical look, and she let out a soft breath.

“Then is there a way to fix it?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t have let you catch me.”

“So you’re saying you don’t know.”

“The frequency has gone down, at least.”

Her lips pursed into a small circle as she fell into thought. The thin stream of breath she let out stirred his bangs.

The soft scent of powder and a cool, clear rose fragrance.

A scent that suited her perfectly drifted out in a faint wave. He took in briefly the red of her lips, a shade that matched the color of Karin’s eyes.

“……”

“……”

“……Don’t.”

“Why?”

“I’m thinking.”

Her head turned away with a prim tilt, and her silver-thread hair rippled with it. Despite the excuse that she was thinking, her face looked quite flustered.

Her eyes, trembling in small movements, gave her away.

How unexpected.

The last time they had kissed was only a few days ago, and considering the years they had spent together, her reaction was genuinely unexpected.

But given that his manner was not what it used to be, her awkwardness was entirely understandable.

Which was exactly why he wanted to do something even more unexpected.

“My lady.”

“……Go ahead.”

It had been her belief that one should maintain eye contact when speaking with someone, yet she would not turn her head even at his call. Her instincts were as sharp as ever, then and now.

How did she know I was going to do something strange?

“Karin.”

He pulled away the thin shawl draped over her shoulders, and Karin startled. She turned her head sharply to look at him, then slowly narrowed her eyes.

“No. If you’re thinking of biting again……”

“I want to look at the wound.”

The hands Karin had thrown up to cover her shoulder gradually lost their tension. The bruised mark was healing, slowly but surely.

Different from the clear mark Karin had left on his arm.

“It’s healing well.”

“The physician said bruises take a long time to fade.”

“Did he? I held back, in my own way.”

“What kind of holding back leaves a person looking like……”

He showed her the bite mark on his forearm, and Karin’s protest cut off abruptly.

At a slight distance from each other, round scars were dotted in.

“It’s not the same as what someone else made.”

“Don’t tell me…… you did this as revenge? Because I did that back then, you’re now……”

“Hardly.”

The stiff dress that had been wrapped around her was sliding loose.

Naturally, since he had been untying the ribbon at her back while they talked. Karin did not seem to have noticed yet.

She had been sneaking glances at the mark on his forearm and lifted his robe.

Through the parted nightgown, the torn scar on his chest would have been visible.

The one she had made. No, the one he had forced her to make.

Karin seemed to recall that moment too, and her eyes creased.

“That one was unnecessary……”

“Unnecessary?”

“I didn’t want to do it! You used my hand, so every time I see it I feel……”

In short, it unsettled her. She did not finish the sentence, but Karin’s uncomfortable expression said it all.

The way she irritably pushed his lapel back down said the same.

“My lady.”

He bounced his knee lightly, the way one might soothe a child settled on a thigh. He pulled her closer at the waist and spoke.

“There’s something that will please you.”

One eyebrow lifted in question. But the peach-colored eyes beneath it held a flicker of curiosity.

Karin asked.

“What is it?”

“That wager from back then. Perhaps wager is the wrong word for it. Stubbornness, then.”

Feron let the amusement show, watching Karin’s face say she had no idea what he meant.

“Let’s talk.”

That was what she had said when she came to his room.

The Karin of the past had looked at him and let the words out like a sigh.

“You…… why did you choose me, of all people?”

Even she could not make sense of it.

As she herself had said, one gesture from him had turned her life upside down.

And the person who had done it showed not a shred of interest. Not even the bare minimum of sincerity.

Anyone watching would have thought it was Karin, coming to him every day, who had wanted this marriage.

“No reason.”

“……”

“You looked easy to break.”

He had no intention of hiding what he felt, nor any particular desire to explain himself.

It had been a wrong-headed purpose from the start. What other excuse was needed?

“……”

“……”

His indifferent reply left her in thought for a long moment before she rose from the table. The fingertips braced against the table looked as though they were seething. That may have been only how it appeared to him.

“Good choice.”

He tilted his head at her puzzling words.

“That’s how it is with anything. It’s only interesting when it’s difficult. Why you chose me…… I understand perfectly.”

The slender fingers at their tips lifted from the table. She straightened her posture and looked down at him, the same way she had in the garden that day.

With contempt. The way one looks at a creature of no consequence.

Yes. It was that look he had never been able to forget that had brought him to this moment. Seeing it again brought the feeling from that day back in full.

“So did you succeed? Do you think I broke the way you wanted?”

Her voice cut straight through something. Her face in the low light was breathtakingly beautiful. Even the faint smile she wore.

“I’m sorry to say I have no intention of that whatsoever.”

It was a movement like a flower petal. Carried on a breeze, a swaying feminine form drew close to his side. Karin’s hand came to rest on his shoulder.

“You can’t have me.”

The quiet certainty in that whisper was maddening.

“Instead, I’ll change you. Until you can’t even remember what that vermin-like life of yours used to feel like.”

“……”

“You’d prefer that too, wouldn’t you?”

It was a remark both tender and insufferably arrogant.

Tap tap. She patted his shoulder as though to make sure he understood, then moved away from him.

And true to her word, she began to steer him. He took his resistance to that as a new purpose.

And so they had lived until now, two parallel lines that never quite met.

Neither one ever bent their will. That remained true even when his heart had begun to turn toward Karin.

“You won, my lady.”

But now that he had come back to life, he had to admit it.

All of it was inside him now. The lives of countless people, inscribed in his mind.

An elderly gentleman taking a child under his care. Hundreds, thousands of people looking up at him. Coveting treasure.

Or the image of someone lost in pleasure, and someone else slowly drawing their last breath in a place where the only thing in sight was mold.

He had sat at the highest seat, and he had crawled along the floor in the filthiest of places.

So these were the memories of all those this formless monster had consumed over the years.

He had come to know how to carry himself as a nobleman, and how to play the fool. He could recite the language of places he had never once set foot in.

He had come to understand the depths of art, and to think about emotion with far greater richness.

Through the eyes of a young boy, or as a white-haired sage.

Laughably, every one of those enlightenments had belonged to this monster.

Now he had swallowed it whole and made it his own flesh.

To put it plainly, the him of today could become whatever Karin wanted.

He could change. Not whine about it like a child.

Seen through his current eyes, he had been nothing but an ignorant man, just as Karin had said.

His knowledge had been narrow. His vision, even narrower.

When the only thing ever in front of him had been the scattered pieces of people cut down at random, how could he have ever thought to broaden it.

But the same had been true of Karin. Karin, too, had lived seeing only a narrow slice of the world.

Unlike him, through beautiful and noble things. Through things perfectly arranged.

If there was one difference between her and him, it was that Karin’s endurance had been longer.

That was why she had not abandoned him.