The area in front of the transfer gate was quite crowded.

When the Kirusha mission set out, a considerable number of people left together. Now it was time for them to return.

Families and loved ones came out to celebrate the homecoming, waiting with aching hearts for the faces they missed to appear.

“It’s time.”

The person in charge stood and rang a silver bell as they called out.

Before the words even finished, the transfer array engraved along the edge of the gate activated.

Like a stone thrown into still water, waves of magical energy spread outward and a blue light rippled brightly.

The pulses grew larger until they surged like a mysterious curtain. Then, with a fierce whooooo of wind, a tremendous gust burst forth.

“Ugh!”

“Watch out!”

Those waiting instinctively grabbed at their clothes. Dresses and cloaks billowed, hats flipped, and hair whipped sharply in every direction.

Small pebbles and dust on the ground flew up into the air all at once.

The wind that swept through the area faded, and the atmosphere slowly settled.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

One by one, human shadows began to walk out from inside the gate.

The blurry figures took on clear shapes in the sunlight.

Everyone searched for the person they were waiting for.

Some were spotted first from the other side; others ran forward and threw themselves into waiting arms.

Urgent calls of names and questions about how someone had been rang out here and there. Some people, overwhelmed with emotion, were in tears.

The surroundings quickly grew chaotic and loud.

Rather than getting swept up in the heated atmosphere and stumbling around in confusion, Dorothy held her ground and stayed where she was.

Experience told her that when things got this crowded, both sides moving at once made it easy to miss each other. She trusted that sharp-eyed Caden would find his way to her on his own, and decided to wait.

The bouquet she held was the largest and most vivid in color. From a distance, it looked like a great tree standing alone in a low thicket.

Caden would read the message right away: ‘I brought you a big bouquet, just the way you like it.’

“Dorothy.”

“Cay….”

She gave a faint “Hm?” in response.

The moment she turned around at the sound of her name, her mind went completely blank.

The man in front of her was, well.

Unfamiliar.

‘Different. Too different.’

The skin that was once as white as Dorothy’s own, inherited from Marchioness Bessler, was now bronzed from the blazing desert sun, a healthy wheat color. And he was taller, his shoulders broader and squarer.

Still lean and long in build, but the boyish air was gone. He no longer felt like a boy.

A beat later, Dorothy spotted an unfamiliar scar beneath Caden’s right eye. A hook-shaped scar with a reddish tinge, thin and sharp, cut horizontally across his skin.

A pointed question slipped out before she could stop it.

“You got hurt?”

The moment she said it, Dorothy felt a pang of regret.

She wasn’t trying to scold him. Who wouldn’t feel deflated hearing words of reproach the moment they returned?

What mattered was that he completed the mission and came back safely, and everything else could be heard in due time.

And yet here she was, bringing up something upsetting the moment they met.

She meant to welcome him more warmly than ever before.

“Oh, this.”

But Caden himself didn’t seem particularly bothered.

He rubbed the scar beneath his eye with his thumb.

“I went and put myself at the front and got hit by a sandworm.”

“…….”

“Pretty stupid, right? You told me so many times not to push forward…. Sorry.”

Caden took her hand.

“But after I got this injury, I never let my guard down again, and I was careful not to get hurt.”

It was just that one time early on, he said, when impatience and inexperience combined and led to a bad call. After that, he never acted recklessly again. Caden repeated it more than once.

“You’re really not hurt anywhere else?”

“No, no.”

Then Caden narrowed his long, deep-set eyes and smiled with just his eyes.

When he smiled, the scar curved into the shape of a crescent moon. It drew the eye, looking almost like a sweet dimple carved beside his eye.

“Will you forgive me?”

Caden asked in a deliberately pleading tone.

Eyes opened just a little too wide, the corners of his mouth tilted with mischief.

The old Caden suddenly surfaced from beneath the version of him that seemed so changed.

Dorothy pressed her lips tightly together. Her heart pounded out of her control.

‘How can he do this?’

The steadiness that came from knowing someone for so many years, and a fresh flutter born from the side of him that felt like a stranger, swirled together in a disorienting mix.

The combined sensation was contradictory.

But at the same time, it was frighteningly captivating and hit with explosive force.

“…J, just this once.”

Dorothy grumbled and pushed the bouquet into Caden’s arms.

The heavy, colorful thing settled full and snug against his chest.

Caden let out a small sound of surprise. The pink gerberas were still fresh, not a single leaf damaged.

“Did you grow these in your greenhouse?”

“Yeah.”

He remembered her mentioning before he left for Kirusha that she was going to build a magical greenhouse at the suburban house.

It was unexpected. They exchanged letters from time to time, but she never brought up the greenhouse specifically, so she assumed he forgot about it long ago.

“Do you like it?”

“Of course.”

The easy, unhurried exchange, passing the small and trivial details of daily life back and forth like old friends, was the same as before.

But only Dorothy herself knew how hard she was working to maintain that ‘natural’ and ‘easy’ atmosphere.

Like a swan that must paddle furiously beneath the surface, out of sight, in order to glide gracefully above it, Dorothy was straining with everything she had to find her way back to her usual pace.

She kept feeling a creeping unease. She felt herself being pulled, without meaning to, into the strange and intense current Caden seemed to generate.

Dorothy carefully asked herself.

Am I uncomfortable?

‘No. It’s not that I’m uncomfortable….’

Not that, but she was unsettled.

All this time, Caden was someone Dorothy felt completely at ease with.

She never once lost her own pace or rhythm around him. She never felt nervous, flustered, or swept away by impulse.

Even during adolescence, when people were said to be most vulnerable and easily shaken. For this to happen now, being swept up by Caden, was far too strange.

Dorothy cut off the thought. She resolved to shake off this discomfort cleanly by pulling one of her usual silly pranks.

“And another thing.”

She puffed up her chest with the swagger of an arrogant rooster. When a family member gave a heartfelt and expensive gift, it was only right to make a little show of it.

“Yours is the biggest.”

“Oh….”

For better or worse, Dorothy didn’t notice that when she said it, Caden’s turquoise eyes darkened, taking on a color as thick and viscous as pitch.

“The bouquet, I mean. Look around. There’s nothing here as big as yours!”

“Mm, yeah.”

Caden crinkled the corners of his eyes and let out a dry laugh.

Dorothy caught sight of the Marquis and Marchioness and her cheeks brightened.

“Oh, over here! Over here! I found Cay!”

Her eyes met those of the Marquis and Marchioness of Bessler, who were searching for Caden in the distance, and she bounced on her heels and waved her arm with great enthusiasm.

“…….”

Caden watched Dorothy with an expression that was difficult to read. Something that looked like elation, and something that looked like suppression, all tangled together in a complicated look.

But he quickly composed his expression completely.

Caden waved the hand not holding the bouquet, just as Dorothy was doing, and called out in greeting.

“Mother, Father. I’m home.”