Her voice was strangely calm. Alkaid’s fingertips twitched.

It wasn’t that Spica’s thanks felt false. He just felt an inexplicable sense of crisis from her attitude.

Alkaid looked back at Spica urgently. He had been aware that her gaze had withdrawn from him, but when he actually took in that sight, his heart sank.

Spica looking somewhere over there, not at him.

He wanted to grab her chin and fix it on himself right away. So she couldn’t look anywhere else. However, Alkaid suppressed the impulse with familiarity.

“……Spica.”

“But Commander, was it also thanks to the mana you put in that you knew where I was? It was a time when the kidnapped child wouldn’t have even reached the knight order.”

“A maid from the Atrain viscountcy came to report. I handed command to Megrez and sent her, and while I was listening, I heard your voice……”

“My voice?”

Spica’s voice mixed with some bewilderment.

It was true that she had thought of Alkaid while wishing for good luck. But he heard that voice? They didn’t even have communication magic tools with each other.

Spica concentrated her mind as a test and muttered in her heart.

‘Alkaid. If you can hear my thoughts right now, draw a big heart above your head.’

She waited for a moment, but Alkaid didn’t draw a heart above his head, let alone with his fingers.

‘He can’t hear it at all. Then in the end, it can only mean he attached a tracking or eavesdropping magic tool to me.’

She could accept that he had planted his mana in her. Following his words, dangerous situations could arise. She had really received help too.

‘But attaching a tracking device means he suspects me.’

Spica had a very tolerant personality toward people she had given her heart to. Jealousy? Obsession? She could accept it all.

But suspicion was an unacceptable problem.

Lovers start with feelings of liking each other and continue with trust in each other. But if they start with suspicion from the beginning, how long could this relationship really last?

‘This time, I thought I had met someone decent.’

She should have noticed something was strange from the beginning. Alkaid said he wore a helmet because he was afraid Spica would also be scared of him like other people, but he had worn his helmet and greeted her from when Spica first entered the knight order.

What reason could there be to care so much about someone you met for the first time?

‘I shouldn’t accept that person any more.’

Like something had been peeled away, someone seemed to be warning her from one corner of her heart. It was a sense of crisis as a human being that had manifested belatedly.

“Spica. The important thing is that your condition was very dangerous.”

“I know. I really thought I was going to die then.”

Her complexion naturally turned pale when she recalled the experience of being strangled while bleeding heavily.

Spica rose from her seat smoothly like a ghost.

“Come to think of it, I haven’t even thanked you yet. Thank you so much for saving me.”

“I didn’t do it to receive thanks. Naturally……”

“Naturally, I will repay this debt. I mean it.”

She wasn’t so lacking in conscience as to pretend not to know when he had saved her life and even mobilized the Crown Prince’s power to treat her.

‘Still…… I should quit the knight order.’

It was fine. Since her arm had healed, it wouldn’t be difficult to enter a noble territory’s knight order either.

‘She’ll repay the debt?’

Spica’s words flowed down Alkaid’s spine like ice. This was the first time she had drawn such a line with him. Something was going terribly wrong.

“I’ll go see my younger brother.”

Spica tried to leave naturally. But the moment she took one step toward the door, Alkaid’s massive body blocked the way like a wall.

“Please don’t go.”

“I can’t let my younger brother miss his exams because of me. I need to send him back quickly.”

“That’s an excuse.”

“What…… did you say?”

How did he know? When she looked up at Alkaid’s face with furrowed brows, she met desperate eyes.

“If I let you out now, you’ll never come back to me again.”

How did he know this too? Could he really read minds?

She tried muttering ‘heart, heart’ in her mind again just in case, but there was still no reaction.

The change was rather in Spica herself. While making eye contact, bound by Alkaid’s red eyes, the warning voice that had been cooling her head gradually grew faint.

‘Why are you looking at me like that…… Anyone would think you staked your life on me. Heart heart.’

Alkaid let out a hollow laugh. Spica didn’t deny his words.

The sight of his parents that he had seen since childhood seemed to strangle his neck.

He had tried hard not to become like them, not wanting to make only Spica unhappy. Despite never learning what happiness was.

“It was all futile.”

It had been a mistake to try to obtain something invisible like the heart. He had dreamed a vain dream from the beginning.

He should have ignored fiancés and either scattered money or used family to force marriage first.

Alkaid chuckled. He finally somewhat understood why his mother had confined his father and continued to violate him. If she bore offspring, the other party would acknowledge her too — she had really thought like a beast. The result was that his father was completely broken.

What about Spica?

Given the precedent set by his parents, he already knew how it would end. But he wanted to hold onto even a speck of hope that it wouldn’t be exactly the same.

Alkaid’s expression sank ominously. It felt more dangerous than just before being consumed by heat that night. Spica almost stepped back but forced herself to stand straight and glare at him.

“What do you mean by futile?”

One corner of her heart still had a faint impulse that she should run away. At the same time, an instinct that she shouldn’t leave Alkaid like this tormented Spica.

She was someone who had never wavered between choices in her life.

Right arm injured? Use the left arm.

Like Lepus? Make advances.

Trusted but he cheated? Break the engagement.

Alkaid had complicated such a simple life.

She was curious about what he was hiding and even cared about the small laughter she heard from inside his helmet. In front of him, she couldn’t muster even half her usual courage. He made her constantly hesitate and falter.

‘Because of someone who doesn’t even trust me. Why should I change like this?’

It was unfair. So very unfair.

Everything she had suppressed until now surged up like a lump.

“Say something! What exactly are you hiding? You won’t say a single word about liking me, so what could you be hiding that’s more than that!”

“……Spica?”

Alkaid’s face was colored with confusion.

He had been endlessly sinking into misery like having rocks tied to his thoughts. But the moment he saw Spica’s tears, his mind snapped to attention.

He hurriedly took out a handkerchief and held it out, but Spica swatted it away like venting her anger.

“Futile? Are you saying you regret treating me? I said I’d repay you somehow!”

“That was never what I meant. Spica, please calm down.”

“Calm down? Calm down?!”

She couldn’t calm down. Spica was just frustrated. She hadn’t cried like this even when she thought her arm had been cut off, so what exactly was this man?

“Don’t cry, Spica. I was wrong. So……”

She didn’t even know why she was struggling this desperately. She no longer knew anything.

Her head felt like it would burst. Spica gave up on speaking indirectly and asked with the momentum to grab Alkaid’s collar.

“I don’t need to hear that you were wrong, so tell me what you’re hiding!”

“……”

“Did you make a deal with His Highness the Crown Prince to treat me? Or do you regret being good to me until now?”

“That can’t be.”

“Then what exactly is it?”

Alkaid shut his mouth tight.

Spica’s eyes, rippling with tears, were like blue burning flames. When his father’s contemptuous gaze overlapped on top of that, he absolutely couldn’t confess.

‘You’re going to stay silent again here?’

Spica now just wanted to kick Alkaid’s shins. She had tried to just leave. But why was he making her so pathetic?

“You can’t trust me that much?”

“Spica……”

“Well, that’s why you attached something like a magic tool to me.”

The moment he heard those words, it felt like an arrow had pierced his heart. Alkaid asked with a serious expression.

“What do you mean by that?”

“You attached something like an eavesdropping device.”

“I swear on you, I have never done such a thing.”

“Why are you swearing on me!”

Spica flared up, but Alkaid was innocent.

He thought every day about tying Spica up, confining her in a place only he knew, making sure she couldn’t meet anyone else for the rest of her life. But those remained only thoughts.

An eavesdropping device? Spica was someone who couldn’t lie in the first place, and if another male approached her, he could tell just by scent. There was no reason to attach such cumbersome magic tools.

Why would he attach such a thing?

Spica wiped away her tears roughly with her bare hands. She was utterly bewildered.