Chapter 77

Ashton’s words pushed Sabina back into a maze once again. But even Sabina could sense that what lay beyond the exit was not hope.

Sabina couldn’t understand why Ashton went so far to hide himself. Did he think parting with him would be nothing to Sabina? Was that why he thought talking about his illness was pointless?

Sabina’s umbrella tilted back. She stepped decisively into Ashton’s umbrella. Her own umbrella fell to the ground. Since she reached her arms out, Ashton, without meaning to, bent at the waist for her.

Their faces drew close. Sabina finally admitted that today’s sorrow wasn’t only because of her grandfather. She didn’t want to lose Ashton Bryant.

She was afraid of losing him.

He wasn’t nothing.

She wanted them to keep living together from here on.

It might not be love, but even so…….

Sabina wrapped her arms around his neck and asked,

“If your illness is something very important to me, will you be honest with me?”

Ashton seemed not to understand why. He only listened quietly to Sabina’s words.

“What if I love you? What if I take back what I said in the summer and, in the end, it comes to that?”

Sabina spoke very earnestly.

At that moment, something went wrong.

Ashton failed to keep his composure and froze. The response—muscles tightening and contracting—was so clear that Sabina instinctively sensed something was off. She tried to check Ashton’s face. But a large hand pulled Sabina’s back in, and she had no choice but to rest her chin on his shoulder.

Whether it was fortunate or unfortunate, she didn’t need to see his face.

Because Ashton’s voice shook mercilessly.

“That can’t be. You can’t love anyone. That’s not something controlled by your will……!”

It was a fierce denial.

As if Sabina’s words—that she loved him—were deeply wrong. As if he was certain of it……. No, as if Sabina must never love him.

It was a strange reaction.

Without thinking, Sabina asked,

“What do you mean?”

Only after speaking did Ashton seem to realize he had made a mistake. He hurriedly pulled Sabina out of his arms.

His flustered face was exposed as it was. It was the face of a clumsy boy. Sabina stared at his eyes. And so she could see where his gaze went.

At first, he checked Sabina’s face. It seemed he was trying to see what expression she was making. Then his gaze dropped to Sabina’s hands. Sabina didn’t know why. Next, his eyes rose back to Sabina’s face.

And then, so did his hand.

A clenched jaw, brows drawn tight with force.

Even Sabina, not someone with an especially sharp instinct, could tell that Ashton was dangerous right now.

In that moment, without thinking, she rewound time.

The time that had passed was sucked into her body. The chunk of time that had now been cut away would exist only inside her.

Sabina rewound, at most, five minutes.

She turned her head.

“Loss is a painful thing.”

Ashton couldn’t easily decide whether he should agree or not.

So he pretended not to hear, and only carefully wiped away Sabina’s tears.

Because Ashton was soon going to bring loss to Sabina, there was something contradictory about that comfort.

Both of them were thinking of Ashton’s illness.

But Sabina didn’t ask about the illness. She looked up at Ashton. She examined closely the tense expression—as if he didn’t know what she would say—and the somewhat darkened face.

In a trembling voice, she said,

“I want to go home. Will you take me?”

Ashton had no reason to refuse.

The umbrella she had dropped was neatly back in Sabina’s hand again. The vanished time had become her secret alone.

Sabina’s complexion was paler than usual and her manner stiff, but Ashton didn’t suspect a thing. He only thought Sabina was grieving because it was her grandfather’s Memorial Day.

It wasn’t only Ashton. Everyone at the memorial was the same.

Time magic was far too convenient, and Sabina was shocked because of that.

Her feelings were confused. She had violated the virtues a dangerous-attribute mage was supposed to have—virtues she had been taught hundreds, thousands of times at the Academy. But one thing was certain: she didn’t regret it.

And she didn’t hate Ashton, either.

All the way home, neither of them said a word. Ashton was being considerate of Sabina, and Sabina was lost in her own world.

The first to speak was Sabina, and she spoke at the front of D’Vialis mansion.

“Will you kiss me?”

As she said it, she tilted the umbrella slightly.

When she had many thoughts, or when she’d gone through something overwhelming, asking for contact was something Sabina often did. Ashton, without suspicion, pressed his lips to hers.

Rain battered the umbrella. The kiss lasted a long time. It was careful and gentle. Ashton was clearly wanting Sabina. Since the kiss was meant to confirm that, Sabina was satisfied.

When she pulled her lips away, she whispered.

“I don’t love you.”

Ashton let out a small laugh.

“I know.”

His reaction was completely different from when she had said she loved him. Even as he answered that he already knew, a trace of relief passed through his eyes and expression. His manner, too, was very natural.

It was strange. He loved Sabina this much, yet he didn’t want that feeling to be returned.

The proposition that Sabina did not love Ashton seemed to be, for him, both a factual proposition and a normative one.

“I’ll go.”

If he was being so sweet because there was something he wanted to obtain from her, then it wouldn’t be bad for her to love him. But then why refuse love?

Ashton’s feelings were a contradiction.

‘Strange. Strange.’

Sabina took off her wet coat and went straight up to her bedroom. Still wearing the uncomfortable outing dress, she buried herself into the bed as if collapsing.

‘There’s nothing I really know about him.’

Sabina didn’t know what kind of desire he truly had. Because he had never shown it.

‘What do you truly want? What are you trying to get by becoming my lover, infiltrating noble society, and making yourself a major figure?’

A pale, smooth hand clawed at the blanket.

‘Who are you, pushing me to use magic? Why did you speak as if you knew me so well? Did we really meet for the first time?’

Her breathing grew short. Sabina squeezed her eyes shut.

‘Do you also have a dangerous purpose like Reyes Brinita? But if so, what is it?’

Inside the maze Ashton had pushed her into, Sabina wandered.

She lay face-down on the bed like the dead and thought for a long time.

The clues he had let slip were not few. But those clues were scattered here and there without context, and she couldn’t get any sense of where to begin touching them to piece them together.

Ashton made Sabina weak.

They hadn’t even known each other long, yet he pressed in intensely.

He urged her to use time magic.

He was taking a magical medicine with a complicated brewing process. If so, he would have learned some measure of magic-power control.

‘An unregistered attribute mage…….’

A crime that should be strictly punished, yet in Sabina’s heart, it felt strangely light.

From the beginning, Sabina hadn’t been this lenient about unregistered attribute mages. At some point, she had changed suddenly.

When was that?

She went over every memory she had—every memory—where the topic of an ‘unregistered attribute mage’ had come up.

‘Ah…….’

The day of Helio’s attribute test.

Marquis Meolin had been attacked by a mental-type mage, and the only mental-type mage in existence was Helio. Therefore, Sabina had assumed Helio had done it, and she tried to cover up the boy’s crime by sending Aleina Meolin abroad.

But the attribute test result was that Helio was an unawakened mage……. That was truly strange. That evening, over dinner with Ashton, Sabina had let slip that it seemed there might be an unregistered attribute mage.

At that moment, Ashton took off her gloves.

When their skin touched, she felt a stinging sensation. And the very next moment, the existence of an unregistered attribute mage became nothing to her. And the man who whispered that he was sorry.

Sabina realized it with a jolt.

At that moment, she had been put under magic.

He had interfered with her mind. Attribute magic like Helio’s.

And Sabina, without understanding anything, comforted him.

“Ah…….”

The clues that had been scattered everywhere began to snap together like magnets once a single causality aligned.

“Aah…….”

On the day of the Magic Research Achievement Presentation, Kenneth suddenly took Helio away. Sabina didn’t know what he did with Helio, because Helio didn’t tell her.

But when she went to fetch Helio again, the King had tossed out a remark.

「Like brothers?」

At the time, Sabina brushed it off as nothing. To her, the only odd thing had been that she thought Ashton and Kenneth looked more alike. But remembering those words now hit her with a completely different meaning.