010

After all, people don’t get struck by lightning in the head and change overnight. It was already an unbelievable miracle that she had ventured outside the villa on her own.

As Sion absentmindedly perched on the desk while entertaining such trivial thoughts, he accidentally locked eyes with Agate when she turned her head.

“Ah……”

A sigh-like exclamation escaped his lips involuntarily. A servant sitting casually on a desk while his employer stood reading a book—if Adollo had seen this, he would have erupted in anger.

Normally, Sion would have calmly corrected his posture without showing any sign of embarrassment, but for some reason, he turned into a malfunctioning scarecrow whenever he became entangled with Agate.

Agate trapped him in her mysterious brown eyes and slowly approached. With the book still in hand.

Her approaching him first was an unfamiliar development. Who could be accustomed to it? In the past three years, Agate had likely never acknowledged another person, shown interest, or approached them first.

This miracle, which some might desperately wish for, was merely an annoying and troublesome anomaly to him. What happened after the miracle was far more important to Sion. This weak woman, barely a handful, possessed the power to plunge him into immediate difficulty with just a single word.

There was no rule against miracles happening consecutively. If those lips opened, what would be the first words they formed?

Having already corrected his posture, Sion presented the perfect butler image, but his invisible heart pounded wildly.

After analyzing and observing human nature to the point of weariness, Sion had developed a certain knack for predicting people’s next actions. But now he saw nothing.

She seemed determined to waste her precious life to the bitter end, so why now? Whether she would do something or nothing upon approaching him, why she kept her eyes fixed on him as she approached—if there was a trigger, he wanted to ignore it; if there was a reason, he didn’t want to think about it.

The lady, walking in a straight line, came to Sion’s side. He momentarily held his breath, fixing his gaze on her as she stood barely a hand’s width away.

Agate opened to the first blank page of the poetry book and grasped the quill pen lying on the desk. Her actions showed no hesitation, as if testing how much she could surprise him.

Holding the pen, Agate pressed the nib and began writing on the paper. Though slow due to her lack of strength, her handwriting was neat and unwavering.

Sion watched this sequence of events without blinking. Could anything be more astonishing than a doll coming to life? It was hard to believe that the woman writing before his eyes was the same one who had locked herself away from the world until just a day ago.

An unpleasant chill spread from his fingertips to his neck.

Before his curiosity could even reach what she was writing or why, the pen left her hand. Agate spread the book wide open and held it up for Sion to see. Her writing was very small.

The fragment of herself that Agate revealed to the world for the first time in three years was very small and quiet, yet very clear and distinct.

“……”

Looking at this line of text like Pandora’s box, Sion carefully sensed that he would never forget this moment.

[Do you think I’ve come to my senses?]

He blinked several times. But of course, the writing on the paper remained unchanged. Though his head felt as if struck by a hammer, he hadn’t forgotten how to read. Despite knowing four languages, the meaning of this brief sentence written in his native tongue didn’t immediately register.

If the lady were to speak one day—though he had never imagined such a thing—even after a hundred contemplations, he wouldn’t have thought she would say something like this.

Wasn’t this a bit harsh coming from someone who had been wallowing in depression? What exactly was contained in that inscrutable, musty inner world of hers?

When Sion’s clear green eyes revealed his confusion without filter, the lady seemed quite satisfied. Of course, her expression showed no emotion whatsoever. It was just a feeling.

The lady scribbled with the pen again, and soon tiny letters smaller than her pinky nail dominated his vision. Then the imaginary hammer that had struck him earlier reappeared.

[You told me to get a grip, didn’t you?]

“…Ha!”

Sion let out a laugh. It wasn’t that he failed to control himself by mistake. He had no intention of hiding this absurd emotion. Could it really be that her sudden change was due to those words of his? The trigger he had wanted to ignore branched out in his mind like twigs.

Even more unbelievable was that she had taken his words to heart, pondered them, and considered them, despite appearing not to have heard him at the time.

Making him repeat and worry about them too.

‘D*mn, I thought I was beneath her notice, but I was too complacent.’

He had thought everything was buried since the matter had been dropped at the time, but had those words been such a shock to this greenhouse rose? The doll had taken up the pen for revenge, using unbearable anger as her driving force.

‘So, is she trying to get me fired?’

Now she would write. She didn’t even need to go to the other servants. If she wrote just one line to Adollo about the outrageous words he had spat at the young lady, Sion would be stripped of his white gloves that very day.

Shaking his head, Sion exhaled a brief sigh and looked at Agate again. Her empty face contained no ulterior motives. He had no way of knowing why she was conveying these words to him or what reaction she wanted.

While he was torn between showing his true colors or continuing his half-baked butler act, Agate simply stared at him endlessly.

The lady’s expressionless face was difficult to define in a single way. Sometimes, sadness could be glimpsed in that perpetually expressionless face. Perhaps it appeared that way because he knew her circumstances.

Whether the melancholy he saw was real or merely a feeling wasn’t important, so he had never taken a step further from that question.

And now, that illusory sadness was staining her face like ink soaking into paper.

He wished it were just his imagination. She had no reason to show him such an expression.

Agate picked up the pen again. Sion’s gaze was drawn to her pen nib as if pulled by magnetism.

[I]

The lady’s pen, which had flowed smoothly without hesitation until now, this time seemed to stick to the paper, unable to advance to the second character. The nib, unable to find direction and stalled, began digging an ink well in the pristine white paper.

And the pen that had created a miracle did not produce another one.

* * *

‘Hey, will your fiancé come back if you pathetically mope around and burrow into the ground alone? Get a grip.’

I desperately wanted to ask that extremely rude man. It had to be him. I mistakenly thought I had the right to treat him carelessly since he had treated me carelessly.

To understand the meaning behind his words, it seemed I needed to open that white iron gate I had only been waiting for and step through it myself. So I did, and ridiculously enough, doing so revealed the answer that had been obscure.

And before I could feel relief at having my question answered, another question mark appeared.

I came to town. Though I seemed to have been here for quite some time, everything looked new to me. Of course—I had been shut up in the mansion since arriving.

Though not comparable to a major city, stepping out of the mansion where I always saw the same people, the crowd bustled. This alien sight itself, along with dynamic sounds never heard in my usually quiet world, various figures, and full-spectrum colors, ruthlessly invaded my senses without any consideration.

I wanted to step back, but my butler Adollo and that man were perfectly calm. This outing didn’t seem to stimulate them at all.

The mille-feuille Adollo would bring me—which I had never wondered where it came from or who made it—was displayed in the case, not just one but several in a row.

‘These people are the ones who made these desserts…’

I saw the pastry chefs greeting me one by one with much fuss. Why had I never once thought about it? I didn’t wonder about anything, to an extent I couldn’t understand myself.

It wasn’t as if Adollo had picked up mille-feuille that had fallen from the sky.

‘Bread and cakes are made in bakeries like this.’

As if learning a fact for the first time, Agate slowly recalled things she had known. Like waking from a very long sleep, her head throbbed, making her feel unwell.

Apart from that, the smell of freshly baked bread and the colorful, dainty, and intricately shaped desserts captivated her attention.

Come to think of it, I used to like such splendid and pretty desserts and enjoyed visiting bakeries and cafes.