All lives had the right to be respected, but three types of lives were exceptions. Bastards, twins, and damn Timeo Völlörban…… Bastards were originally treated as livestock raised by pleasure, and twins had an ominous origin story that if twins were born in a family, the entire lineage would be cut off, using the ignorant imperial people’s harm to the twin gods as pretext. Timeo was neither a bastard nor a twin, but had lived a life receiving contempt rather than respect from his brothers and father.

Timeo looked down at the monastery head’s crown, who had aged rapidly in recent years. The monastery head, who smiled awkwardly, embraced Timeo awkwardly but warmly.

“Timeo.”

“Yes.”

“You are a son raised by God and me. Remember that you’re different from them.”

As soon as Timeo separated from the monastery head’s embrace, he bowed his head respectfully to Timeo. The other priests who had come to see Timeo off did the same.

Timeo looked at the carriage engraved with the Völlörban crest with fresh eyes. Just as he was about to board the carriage, a slender arm suddenly protruded from the door. He lightly ignored the arm extended to him as if asking him to grab it. If he grabbed that, both of them would obviously tumble out of the carriage.

“Do you still think I’m a snot-nosed kid?”

“I know you’re younger than me.”

“It’s only a six-month difference.”

For someone who had actively courted Timeo, Phyllis was quiet inside the carriage. It must be because Timeo had firmly refused the marriage proposal.

The fastest route the coachman had explained was a path where only thick forests continued endlessly. Every time the carriage shook, Phyllis’s entire body also shook violently. Phyllis looked at Timeo, who sat arrogantly with his legs crossed in front of her. He wasn’t shaking much. He just looked at Phyllis as if she were a curious creature.

“Is it difficult?”

“……Not at all.”

Timeo felt the seat sink slightly downward. Phyllis had deliberately sat beside him. Though they weren’t even married, the sight of them sitting side by side was amusing, and just as he was about to speak, the carriage shook violently again as another rough road continued. Timeo caught both of Phyllis’s arms as she almost fell forward.

“A protest to change seats?”

“I felt bad because you kept fglancing at me.”

“When did you become so picky, when you were pestering me to marry you? Phyllis.”

“I wasn’t pestering.”

“Right, you shamelessly demanded.”

To someone who had pestered him about marriage for two days, Phyllis Menez was shamelessly saying she felt bad. When his shoulder naturally brushed against Phyllis, who had deliberately sat in the adjacent seat, Timeo leaned against the window. However, since there was nothing else to do but look at Phyllis, Timeo occasionally examined her pale complexion when she closed her eyes. For someone who had boldly claimed to be fine, her face was stiff. It would be quite an ordeal for a woman who had only traveled the capital’s well-maintained roads…… After brief hesitation and unilateral judgment, Timeo at least pushed back Phyllis’s hair that had fallen carelessly. He even picked up the shawl that had fallen to the carriage floor, rolled it up, and carefully placed it between Phyllis’s head and the backrest. Whether Timeo did this or not, Phyllis kept her eyes closed, and he too didn’t keep his gaze long on her white nape.

When young Timeo had been chased and cast out to Alzaz, there had been only personal belongings and young Timeo in the carriage. The carriage showed no mercy of stopping at inns. The coachman was blunt and Alzaz was so desolate it seemed like corpses rather than humans would live there.

Reflecting on that time, Timeo, who had leaned his head against the window, indifferently watched the dry branches scratching past the carriage. It was then that Phyllis spoke.

“Before we arrive…… I hope he’s already dead.”

Phyllis Menez sometimes thinks. Marcel Völlörban should have died much earlier, at a young age. Because Marcel didn’t die in time, his younger brother had to live like the dead, pretending to serve God in the unfamiliar Alzaz region, and she, Marcel’s fiancée……

†

Vesoul, Völlörban’s territory, was a damp and humid city due to dense forests and year-round downpours. Though anything planted in the ground grew well, they never grew vertically. The capital called Vesoul a ‘giant cemetery with only large scale,’ but since even commoners could easily create nice gardens, the city’s appearance wasn’t too bad. When they reached Völlörban Castle, which overlooked such city scenery at a glance, Timeo’s heart beat unpleasantly. Ten years ago, he had been exiled to Alzaz region almost like being abandoned for the crime of exposing his brother’s chronic illness to everyone. Back then he had been a young boy clumsy at defending himself, but now Timeo had become a robust young man of marriageable age.

Having travelled non-stop for six full hours, even his face, which was close to God’s masterpiece, was full of fatigue. However, even the handful of fatigue that had settled around his eyes was handsome, so Timeo exuded a somewhat melancholy atmosphere. The contrast and harmony between his firm chest revealed over the cassock that had dried and stuck to his body from sweat and travel fatigue, and his pitiful face.

Whether the elderly butler who had watched Timeo since he was in the cradle looked at the returned young master with disbelieving eyes and somewhat rudely examined him, from the moment he entered Marcel’s bedroom, Timeo had been captivated by one particular spot.

“Lady Menez, that person is……”

“A priest I called for prayer.”

Völlörban family’s old physician looked back and forth between Timeo and Phyllis with a troubled expression. As if he had no idea how to convey the final medical examination to a weak-hearted lady. The physician, who had been stunned after confirming with his own eyes Völlörban’s second son who had grown more handsomely than Marcel, gradually seemed not to know what he was saying. Though truly regrettable, the comfort that Marcel would find it difficult to survive today sounded sweeter to Phyllis than any other words. While the physician went to inform other family members of Marcel’s condition, Phyllis looked down at Marcel. Despite suddenly meeting his sick brother, Timeo was calm as if he had been practicing for this moment for a very long time.

As always, the first thing that caught the eye was the countless portraits. Anyone who filled wall surfaces densely with portraits of their fiancée must be either a mental patient or a highly developed abnormal s*xual deviant. In Marcel’s case, unfortunately, he was both. From the early summer when they were twelve, when the two had a considerably late engagement for Confère noble children, until now at twenty-two. Marcel had portraits of Phyllis painted without missing a single year.

Marcel threw everything within reach when his mood became unpleasant or when he went mad, so his room was rather simple. In other words, except for a very few pieces of furniture like the bed and nightstand, one entire wall was filled with pictures related to Phyllis. Marcel was a patient all year round, and outsiders who visited his bedroom rather than the reception room usually lost their words upon seeing Phyllis’s portraits densely decorating the wall. Without even knowing that those portraits weren’t Phyllis’s one-sided display of affection, but something Marcel had forced painters to create, they spread rumors like ‘Marquis Menez’s daughter’s obsession with her fiancée went beyond limits, so she hung her own face all over the wall of such a sick person,’ and ‘It seemed like those portraits stole away all of Lord Völlörban’s handful vitality.’

The window was half open. Phyllis approached the window with quick steps and somewhat irritably threw all the windows wide open. The room quickly became cool. Timeo just stood fixed in front of the countless portraits. Phyllis asked kindly with a voice that contrasted with her blunt face.

“Marcel, exactly when are you planning to die? I feel like I’ve heard for the ten thousandth time that you’ll find it hard to survive tonight.”

“……Phy, Phyllis.”

Marcel’s voice, cracked at the end like an old man’s, caught Phyllis’s attention. Phyllis looked down indifferently at her sick fiancé who was barely breathing in front of her. In contrast to how he had once embraced the struggling Phyllis who said she hated it and spun around the mansion disgracefully, Marcel looked like dried firewood. Phyllis removed a few strands of thin blonde hair stuck to his forehead with a couple of fingers, then vigorously rubbed her hands clean with a lace handkerchief. Marcel’s appearance, shrinking to avoid showing his gaunt body to his fiancée despite lacking the strength to lift his arms, was quite amusing.

Timeo also stared down at Marcel’s gaunt face, and their unfocused eyes briefly met. Phyllis watched the brothers’ dry reunion.

There was a time when ten-year-old Phyllis, after much deliberation with her small head, had concluded on Marcel. Marcel had already carried himself with dignity among the snot-nosed children. The noble beautiful boy of Völlörban with blonde hair and blue eyes was even sickly. From asthma and mild digestive disorders to various disease names that her small head couldn’t memorize, he was a sick child with everything, so he would have been like the soft fingers of Duke Völlörban, who had lost his wife not long ago. The light coughing that stimulated protective instincts and his doll-like appearance rather made Marcel Völlörban look like a skylark in the field. Everyone boasted that Völlörban’s eldest son would quickly shake off minor ailments when he grew up, but Phyllis immediately recognized it. That thing wouldn’t live long.

Contrary to such premonition, Marcel lived over ten more years, so Phyllis’s judgment had gone somewhat awry. Anyway, Phyllis became Marcel’s playmate, and after diligently traveling between Vesoul and Bagnole, by the time engagement talk came up between both families, she had become indifferent to Marcel. Because she thought this was enough. Phyllis absolutely needed a promised partner for the future, if only because of her promise with her father, Marquis Menez.

“Phyllis, Phyllis……”

“Sorry. I was distracted by something else.”

Actually, she wasn’t particularly sorry either.

“Why, why did you, bring that bastard, that bastard…… Did you, consistently, conspire with, with him? Pretending to be, aloof alone, behind the scenes, committing all sorts of, sinister acts……”

As expected, he was a loudmouth until his dying day. Having said many words at once, Marcel coughed up a fit.