After that, Leandro shut himself away on the estate. Citing the need to recover, he took up running. Had he continued working at the Imperial Palace, he would never have escaped the whispers spreading through high society. Moreover, he was afraid that news of Larne would eventually reach him.

Nevertheless, he kept a careful watch on the movements of the House of Atrice, almost pathetically. Were they preparing for a funeral? Or were physicians still coming and going from the estate?

Had Larne already been buried?

He refused to let his mind dwell on that possibility.

It hurt less to believe that she was still alive.

If he was going to torment himself like this, caught between dread and hope, he should have listened to Aria until the very end. Regret came too late. He had turned away without hearing everything she had to say, and now it was impossible to undo.

‘I should have… asked to see Larne.’

Leandro relived the past over and over again.

From the moment he first met Larne at the masquerade ball, when she introduced herself as Aria, to Larne spiraling downwards after their marriage, he laid out every memory before him. He revisited, examined and turned them over in his mind, wounding himself repeatedly in the process.

Some memories were blurred at the edges.

The image of Larne smiling at him was the hardest to grasp.

Why could he only remember her anger, tears and shouting?

He was left with questions that had no answers. Yet he did not even know what he was truly searching for. What solution did he expect to find by examining Larne’s thoughts alone?

No matter how many days he spent tormenting himself, he would never find one.

In truth, this was not about finding a reason at all. Leandro no longer knew where things had first begun to fall apart.

When the sharp, relentless headache returned, he reached blindly across his desk. Several medicine bottles — too many to count — crashed to the floor. No matter how many pills he swallowed, the pounding in his skull refused to ease.

Logically, he knew it was unrealistic to expect relief while barely eating or sleeping. But he could not force himself to eat. He could not bring himself to lie down and rest.

Every moment felt like hell.

He was terrified that this hell would never end.

‘It really was a terminal illness. That’s why she…’

He didn’t know how he was supposed to feel.

Was he supposed to feel disgusted with Larne for choosing to stand by him even though she was facing death? Or should he pity her?

She had told him she loved him, yet she had lashed out at him so cruelly. He wanted to understand her motives and make sense of her contradictions. But if this was truly the end of the matter, then perhaps it would have been better never to have known at all.

Leandro closed his eyes.

In the darkness, he could see her ash-grey eyes before him — eyes that had always looked at him with a meaning he could never quite grasp.

Whenever their gazes met, his breath would falter. Something unnamed would swell inside his chest, tight and suffocating.

A bitter taste crept up his throat.

Lying there like a lifeless body, he forced himself to sit up and stumbled towards the bathroom. Despite having eaten nothing, he bent over and vomited violently, as if trying to expel something lodged deep within him — something that refused to leave.

‘She left because she was sick.’

The thought tore him apart.

It was a relief to believe that she had left because she despised him. Yet the possibility that Larne might die filled him with such sharp, maddening fear that he could barely endure it.

With each passing day, he felt himself sinking deeper into the mire.

Every morning and every night, he waited in dread, bracing himself for the moment the news of her death would reach him.

If only she had died at his side.

If he had seen her take her last breath, perhaps his heart might have found some fragile measure of peace. In a life so painfully short, what right did she have to leave someone to suffer like this?

Why hadn’t she loved him freely and openly until the very end?

Why had she left everything unfinished — both the beginning and the end — only to torment him in her absence?

And then, all at once, Leandro let out a hollow laugh.

The hypocrisy of his thoughts was unbearable.

“If you want to die, then die somewhere else. Just don’t die in front of me.”

He gave a bitter, hollow laugh at the cruelty of his own thoughts.

D*mn it!

He knew that if he wanted to end his torment, he would have to go to Larne. But he could not bring himself to do it.

He was afraid — afraid that she might already be gone from this world.

Leandro closed his eyes. His face was drawn and gaunt from days without proper sleep, and he looked utterly exhausted. He tried to force a smile, but gave up when he couldn’t manage it.

It was pointless.

He had said he liked her. He had said he loved her.

If this was her punishment for failing to recognize her at first and for hurting her without understanding, then she had succeeded.

Because now, Leandro was merely existing, not truly living.

Yet he could not even bring himself to die.

***

Although he had returned after crushing the rebellion, the Marquis did not look like a victor. In fact, he resembled a soldier who had lost everything.

A bleak, lifeless air clung to the estate. Much time had passed since Leandro started shutting himself away at home, yet the place still felt uninhabited — hollow and abandoned. He never left his bedroom, leaving the servants with nothing to do. The situation was eerily similar to the long periods when he had been stationed at the frontier, when his absence had turned the estate into little more than an empty shell.

“Your Excellency, how much longer will this go on?”

Calverst pushed open the bedroom door, only to recoil at the sharp stench of alcohol in the air. His eyes dropped to the bottles and medicine vials scattered across the floor, and he bit down on his lip, struggling to hide his dismay.

“Your Excellency, has something happened?”

He sighed as he looked at the gaunt face of Leandro.

There was no answer.

It was the first time he had ever seen Leandro looking so broken.

Just looking at him, clinging to his sorrow as though the world had ended, made it difficult to breathe. After a moment, Calverst spoke slowly.

He would be breaking his promise to Milady, but life had to go on.

“…We found a diary in milady’s room. If Your Excellency promises to eat properly and stop drinking, I will give it to you.”

Only then did Leandro react.

“You’ve been hiding it until now?”

The words were sharp — far too harsh for someone worried about him — but Calverst preferred them to the corpse-like stillness he had endured until then.

“You might not remember, but I found it yesterday when Your Excellency ordered Milady’s room to be cleared.”

Calverst lied calmly. He had found the diary some time ago. However, it contained details of Larne’s death, and he had not been able to bring himself to show it to him.

“…Did I.”

Leandro let out a slow, unsteady breath and forced himself to stand up. He could not remember when he had started drinking or how much he had consumed.

In truth, he no longer knew how the days were passing.

Each one dragged on endlessly.

The thought of the woman he loved dying — only to deny it, and then deny it again — was nothing but torment.

Did Larne know he would suffer like this when he was forced to confront her death? Had she left because she feared it would destroy him?

But such considerations meant nothing once death became a reality.

He regretted every moment he had failed to treat her kindly. The thought that they would never spend any more time together was unbearable. He had no confidence that he could survive in a world without Larne.

From the moment he allowed himself to acknowledge her death, he had become a defeated soldier.

He had seen countless people die on the battlefield. And yet, Larne’s death refused to feel real.

He could not accept it.

Instead, it filled him with fear.

Leandro’s gaze slowly lowered to the diary in Calverst’s hands.

“Give it to me.”

“Please eat first, Your Excellency. I will give you the diary afterward.”

After washing up, Leandro ate the soup that Calverst had prepared in silence. It did not go down easily, but he had no choice if he wanted the diary.

Only once Calverst was sure that the bowl was completely empty did he hand it over and quietly withdraw.

The very first page spoke of Larne’s death.

[Death.]

Leandro turned the page slowly.

[Blanche Syndrome.
— A disease that claims one’s life within two years of reaching adulthood.
— Its symptoms are hair that turns white and colorless ash-gray eyes.
I will die soon.]

Leandro clenched his fist when he saw the tear stains scattered across the page.

He turned the pages one after another. With each one, chaotic and hurried handwriting leapt into view. It felt as though Larne’s pain had seeped into every letter, tearing at Leandro’s heart.

Each time he turned a page, it was like driving a blade into his own chest.

His breathing became uneven, then ragged.

The emotions she had written down while facing her own death were laid bare before him. And they were terrifyingly similar to his own feelings at that moment.

Unsteady on his feet, he forced himself to stand up straight.

When Calverst saw Leandro step out of the bedroom, he froze with surprise.

“I’m going to the Atrice ducal estate.”

He informed Calverst, who had been standing guard outside his door.

“Your Excellency, might it not be better to go tomorrow? It’s already late.”

Calverst hurried after him, trying to persuade him, but there was no hesitation in Leandro’s stride.

“…Rene doesn’t have time.”

Without giving anyone the chance to stop him, Leandro flung open the estate doors and strode out.