If she had wanted to, divorce would have been nothing at all, yet she had never let go of him until the end. Even after his death.

“What do you mean? Won?”

Like this. It was a distant memory she would not even recall, but he had lived bound to it until the day he died.

Instead of answering her question faithfully, he pulled the ribbon hanging at the edge of her waist.

The dress wrapped around Karin loosened and fell open.

“……”

She let out a short breath, her expression saying she could not believe this, and tilted her head at that contrary angle.

“What are you doing?”

“Hm?”

The curve of his lips was so unfamiliar it bordered on unsettling, so Karin covered his smiling mouth with her hand.

With his mouth hidden, his eyes crinkled at the corners instead.

Between knowing about the old scar and various other circumstances, she had concluded this man was her husband.

But strange details kept surfacing one after another. That was why she had come to him for one final confirmation.

“Why use this method to check? This tiresome way that anyone could know.”

“……”

“There’s something more certain. Something only the two of us could know.”

Right. That.

That was indeed why she had come here.

But she had not wanted to see Feron catch on and act smug about it.

“……Revolting.”

“That’s a bit much.”

Karin suppressed the urge to cover Feron’s face with something and lifted her hand from his mumbling mouth.

“Those eyes. Can’t you do something about them?”

“They haven’t changed right now.”

“No, that’s not what I mean…… Haa. Never mind.”

He gave her back a light pat. She looked tired somehow. Karin’s brow creased when he rested his chin against the curve of her chest.

Her face said she could not get used to this at all.

“You’re really acting strange. Let go now. I need to get to the bed.”

The dry voice pointing toward the bed was the same as on that wedding night when she had invoked obligation.

She was sighing heavily with someone right in front of her. She clearly had no interest in any of this.

“Karin.”

“Fine. You can carry me then. My legs suddenly have no strength……”

She did not explicitly blame him, but he had likely played no small part in her exhaustion.

The dress hanging half off her seemed to bother her, and she reached to gather the loose fabric.

Karin pulled the dress off over her head and regulated her breathing with the look of someone who felt considerably better.

“Aren’t you going to?”

It might have seemed forward in another light, but between them it was meaningless.

It was not an area where sentiment applied.

They had been together enough times to know each other’s bodies thoroughly, yet they had never shared anything that could be called emotional exchange. It had only ever been a process of relieving each other’s messy desires.

The physical was familiar, but there was no intersection of feeling. So now he wanted to try the opposite.

“……What are you doing?”

Karin was someone who grew uncomfortable with nothing more than a prolonged gaze.

They needed to go a little slower. Had they not always rushed to get everything over with before.

But his resolve proved hollow the moment their faces drew close.

Karin pulled her waist back. The fingers pushing against his shoulder put in force.

“Why are you pulling away?”

“Just…… I’ll come back tomorrow. Your condition today……”

She twisted her upper body to the side, apparently trying to get down to the floor. He kept hold of her waist and she kicked her legs. His wife, as ever, had no tolerance for this sort of thing.

He pulled her close, this woman doing everything she could to turn away from him. He simply held her. This kind of contact was unfamiliar.

“……I think I really have gone mad.”

Karin recoiled at the warmth of Feron’s body wrapped entirely around her.

“We need moments like this sometimes.”

“That’s not the point, it’s that I’m getting goosebumps……? Did your head get damaged along with your eyes?”

Karin muttered, looking at the dark head of hair beside her.

She truly could not get used to his behavior. She would rather he be openly crude than whatever this was. This was no way for grown people to act.

Something somewhere kept itching without end, and her stomach felt unsettled in an unpleasant way. She had not eaten much, too distracted to focus on the meal.

If she had to put a name to it, her relationship with Feron had been like combat. Give one, take one.

So it was not care or love, but more the form of trading blows in a fight.

When he hurt her, she hurt Feron back in equal measure, and when he was forceful, she put Feron beneath her and ground him down.

When he shoved her thighs up without warning, she dragged his head down below her navel.

They had lived every day like that, waging war.

And now this ticklish, crawling contact.

“I really think I might be sick.”

She barely managed to free her arm from where it was trapped in his embrace and pressed it over her mouth, and Feron burst out laughing.

The vibration that spread from his chest rippled through her, near her heart, and faded.

Karin realized, with a start, that she had never heard Feron laugh like this before.

The expression that had always been set and rigid. The right eyebrow that always arched up.

The rare smiles she had seen were the kind that carried a clear edge to them…… but this laugh now was rather bright, was it not.

She was not the sort of person to complain while listening to someone’s genuine laughter, so Karin simply held her tongue.

“I’m going to do it like this every time from now on.”

“……Oh……”

She did not know whether to be glad or to feel sorry for herself, knowing she would be subjected to this torment on a regular basis.

“The time spent holding each other’s gaze will be longer than the time spent holding each other. The time spent sharing each other’s day will be more than the time spent kissing.”

“……What book have you been reading?”

“You caught me.”

It was something he had dug out of someone’s memory stored inside him, so calling it a book was fair enough.

“So a treasury of knowledge can ruin a person too…… You ought to throw it out right now.”

Karin’s murmur, something close to a lament, brushed pleasantly against his nape. It was because the body he had pulled close was pressed too near.

His warmth gradually transferred to her body, which ran cooler than his.

“We’re starting over from the beginning. It’s a fitting time, having died and come back.”

“My……”

The fact that dying and coming back was not a figure of speech left Karin looking appalled, but she stopped short at the word “beginning.”

Beginning.

Most of her beginnings had been ruined by Feron.

From the first kiss that girls typically looked forward to, through various other things, there had been nothing but unpleasant impressions.

Even beyond physical contact, everything he had given her had been a first, and unpleasant.

Being looked down on by another person. Becoming the target of n*ked contempt. Receiving a resentful gaze. Someone daring not to follow her word.

Beyond those, listing the hardships she had endured because of Feron could fill an entire night.

‘And now what? Starting over from the beginning?’

A beginning was a beginning precisely because it was a beginning. The word “again” could not attach itself to “beginning.”

Even if the bizarre event of him dying and coming back to life, leaving behind a perfectly intact body, had truly occurred.

“I have no idea what book you’ve been reading, but I can’t play along with your sentiments.”

“……”

“A beginning doesn’t repeat itself, to begin with.”

It was the kind of thing that felt more sincere for being cold.

Feron was glad, in that moment, that he was holding Karin.

If he met those indifferent eyes of hers, he would want to give up the way he always had. Give up, settle, and end up losing himself again like a child throwing a fit.

“That’s exactly why I’m going to try it differently. From a different angle.”

Out of his mouth came a remarkably composed argument, nothing like the self-recrimination churning inside him.

An ancient monster that had lived for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years could apparently find answers even in moments like this.

“What does that mean?”

“Something like this.”

With some relief that a guide to living had come into his hands, Feron pressed his lips to Karin’s forehead.

He met her flustered gaze and brought his lips down along the bridge of her nose.

Last, he lingered over the slightly parted red petals of her lips.

“Word games.”

“We’ve never done it like this before, have we?”

Feron’s looks, the one thing Karin was willing to acknowledge, were working hard.

It was an attractive smile that had not appeared once in five years of marriage.

A gaze laden with clear intent to draw her in settled over her face, one feature at a time.

“……Haa. Fine. Let’s call it that.”

Karin gave up arguing and let herself go.

Thinking of it as just another strange kind of madness, it was not impossible to understand.

Had her capacity for tolerance not widened to near-saintly proportions thanks to Feron.

“Look over here.”

She had let her gaze wander elsewhere, and Feron went ahead and tilted her chin toward him.

She could manage the rest somehow, but that soft manner and that look were the problem.

Meeting his eyes made her keep wanting to twist away. Eventually it even stopped her breath.

A person of noble standing could not go so far as to stamp her feet, so she held her breath instead.

“We have a long way to go.”

He let out the words like a sigh, and broke into an open smile.

Feron slipped his hand under her knees, which had gone stiff by now, and rose from the sofa.

Held in his arms, Karin felt a brief flicker of relief as his steps turned toward the bed.

‘Right. Better to just finish quickly……’

But Feron did not meet her expectations.

They were lying down, certainly…… and she was being held, certainly…… and the area of their bodies touching was not so different from usual…… but this position was far too wholesome. It was not behavior that suited them.

“We’re sleeping like this tonight.”