“You don’t believe me even when I tell you.”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just…”

Mail felt her face flush. Why ‘him’? Of all people, why did it have to be him? The comment about her being heavy had been half a joke, but now she felt overly self-conscious. She waved her hands in front of her face to cool down the heat.

“It’s just embarrassing.”

“All I did was carry you. Nothing else…”

“Gasp! Who said anything! That’s not what I meant! I just… um… But I heard I was carried by a crowd of people?”

Suddenly, Mail remembered what Riela had told her. The princess had said she was carried by a group of people.

“I was told a whole bunch of people carried me. Were you one of them by any chance…?”

“No. I moved you somewhere else first, and then they took you to your quarters later.”

“I see.”

So, her master had carried her alone after all. She realized the truth: being carried likely meant he had cradled her. The typical way to carry a fallen woman. Mail flapped her hands again in a flustered attempt to calm down.

“You must have gone through a lot.”

“Didn’t expect to be thanked for it.”

“What else should I say? Should I ask if your arms are alright?”

“Still insisting you must have been heavy?”

“Well…”

“If you’d like, I’ll indulge you. To be honest, I still can’t feel my arms. Do you usually eat lead for meals?”

“…Yes, sure. If I had to recommend, try lead cake, lead pudding, and lead tart. They’re delicious, trust me.”

“And if you had to pick just one?”

“For you, I’d recommend lead punch.”

At Mail’s quick retort, Rohayden chuckled. After his laughter subsided, he shifted the conversation back to its original topic.

“So, are you truly feeling better?”

“I am. Honestly. I think I’m in better shape than I thought.”

Mail had always been confident in her physical stamina. After all, tending to a garden required a fair amount of strength. Among her acquaintances, Riela likely had the weakest constitution, and Mail often thought she could win a relay race even against five of her.

“I’m glad to hear that.”

Rohayden’s expression softened as his eyes darkened slightly. He was genuinely relieved, not just because Mail showed no visible injuries.

He had worried that she might suffer from aftereffects. Enduring the violence of a much stronger, larger opponent as a woman must have been a harrowing experience. Rohayden clenched his fists unconsciously at the memory.

Where could they have struck her?

Every time Mail shook or tilted her small head, her lush brown hair swayed gently. She was tall, yes, but her exposed wrists and neck were undeniably delicate. When he had lifted her, she had truly been light—it wasn’t just an exaggeration.

Though Mail was resilient compared to the frail noblewomen he knew, that didn’t mean she looked tough as nails on the outside.

To have handled this fragile body with such carelessness, how dare they?

‘I should have cut off every single one of his fingers,’ Rohayden thought bitterly. He regretted not being harsher. Simply severing the ankle and ruining the knee wasn’t enough. What was he thinking when he showed mercy? He should have gouged out the eyes that didn’t deserve to see anything and cut out the tongue that would no longer be of use.

Despite his cruel thoughts, Rohayden’s voice was gentle when he spoke to Mail again.

“There aren’t any scars left, are there?”

“None at all.”

Mail nodded. She assumed there might still be some bruises on her elbows or shoulders, even though the more visible areas like her face and neck had been treated. However, after changing clothes, she realized that everything had been taken care of, and there wasn’t even a trace of injury left. Although it was Rose’s doing, Mail wasn’t aware of that.

As she nodded, Mail suddenly snapped her fingers as if she had just remembered something.

“But I do have a scar of honor that I got while climbing a mountain as a child.”

“A scar?”

“Yes. It’s a small one, around here…”

Without thinking, Mail raised her hand to show it but then awkwardly smiled. The scar was on her shoulder, so she only pointed to its general location through her clothes.

“How did you get that scar? Did you fall down a mountain?”

“Correct! I was chasing a small animal—was it a squirrel or a bird? Anyway, I lost my footing on a steep slope while running all over the place trying to catch it. A little kid losing balance means rolling and tumbling all the way down…”

Mail dramatically gestured to illustrate her story. When she was six, she had rolled mercilessly down the slope, and by some stroke of luck, her clothes got caught on a tree branch, saving her life. Now that she thought about it, perhaps that’s when her fateful connection with trees began.

She told her story so casually that Rohayden almost wondered if he’d heard her wrong.

“That sounds like quite the intense way to get a scar.”

“That’s why it’s my scar of honor. There was even a knight guarding me at the time, but by sheer coincidence, he was picking something up off the ground when I fell. It turned out that what he picked up was mine, and he felt so guilty about it that he cried whenever he saw me for a while. I still feel bad for him.”

That knight had been nicknamed “Crybaby” for quite some time afterward. His real name was Urbo, so the nickname wasn’t too far off anyway. Looking back, it had all become a fond memory.

“And that’s how a six-year-old learned the harsh realities of the world,” Mail concluded.

“Why didn’t you get rid of the scar?”

Rohayden asked this with genuine curiosity. It seemed natural for a serious injury to leave a scar, but in this world, even scars could be erased with enough money. Noblewomen rarely had visible scars on their bodies.

“My father didn’t let me.”

“Why not?”

“He said it was to help me reflect and learn from it. He wanted me to see the scar every time I washed or changed clothes and remember: life is precious, so be careful in the future.”

“Did it work?”

“For about a month?”

That short? Rohayden chuckled.

“Oh, and there’s another story my father told me about the scar. This was after I’d grown up a bit.”

“Did you get in trouble again?”

“No, it was about marriage. He said that if my future spouse ever comments on the scar on my shoulder and criticizes a lady’s body, I should kick him out right away. He said a man who treats a knight’s scars as badges of honor but calls a lady’s scar a flaw isn’t worthy to be my husband. And, if necessary, my father would take full responsibility for wherever I chose to kick him.”

“You have quite the father.”

Rohayden briefly gazed at Mail’s shoulder. If it were up to him, he wouldn’t view such a scar as a blemish. On the contrary, it might seem admirable or even endearing. After all, scars were signs that a wound had healed.

“Honestly, it’s such a small scar that you can barely notice it. Sometimes I forget it’s even there myself. Now that I think about it, I really must have a strong constitution!”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because after all that rolling as a kid, I was left with just one small scar. I must’ve been born tough.”

Mail added, half-jokingly, that sometimes she wondered if she had an iron constitution. That meant she had tested her body enough times to say so, and that her father’s grand lesson had worn off fairly quickly.

She laughed cheerfully, even after admitting something that would likely make her father faint if he knew.

Rohayden watched her silently. His gaze remained soft, though at times, there was a flicker of confusion or even quiet anguish.

His heart pounded joyfully, as though it had just begun to beat, yet at the same time, there was a heaviness weighing on him, making it hard to breathe.

Mail compared herself to having an iron constitution, laughing. But even if that were true, Rohayden would still worry about her. It had nothing to do with whether she was physically strong or weak.

Even if one day she became truly invincible, Rohayden would still care for her. No other reason—just because she was Mail.

“Master.”

“…What is it?”

“I just felt like calling you.”

What did it mean to smile brightly? Maybe it was a smile like this. Rohayden stared into Mail’s eyes for a moment before he squeezed his eyes shut, as if in brief pain.

He recalled a moment that could be called the beginning. In that memory, he was arrogantly smiling.

He had thought of her as a lighthearted amusement for a few days. He’d believed that once the set time passed, he could end things without a second thought, foolishly confident.

He had no idea it would come to this.

Rohayden raised his hand to touch the mask he wore. He knew what he wanted. He wanted to take off this mask. He wanted to face Mail not as someone hiding behind a facade, but as the emperor himself. He longed to receive her gaze, her words, and her expressions directed at him—not the mask.

But what he wanted and what he could do rarely aligned. Unfortunately.

“Mail.”

“…Yes?”

He called her name and then paused. The silence was brief, but in that time, countless thoughts and feelings swirled within him, intense and overwhelming. Overwhelming enough to hurt him.

“I…”

“…?”

“I… will be here… from now on…”

The face behind the mask twisted in anguish. The words he had organized and rehearsed countless times in his head refused to come out.

‘Why was it so hard to say? Why was this so difficult?’

His lips moved, more hesitantly than a sinner confessing their crimes, forcing out each word as if they weighed heavily on him.

“I will…”

Here.

“…come here.”

I will not come.

“I… will come.”

I will not come.

“…continuously.”

Continuously.

“…Huh? Why are you saying something so obvious with such weight? It’s not like you ever stopped coming. You’re like the garden’s resident spirit!”

Mail laughed, confused by his serious tone. She wondered what he was about to say so gravely. Laughing as if he’d just made a joke, she suddenly remembered.

Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen him for a few days. At first, she thought they’d just missed each other, but maybe he really hadn’t come to the garden during that time.

So this “garden spirit” had gone on strike for a bit? Mail jokingly added, pretending to be playful.

“Oh, wait! Are you making a big announcement that you’re really going to live here now? Is that why you were gone—to pack your things? What a bold decision!”

Her voice was light and teasing as she spoke. Mail’s eyes curved into crescent moons as she smiled. The moon was bright, the wind cold but refreshing, and Mail’s smile was lovely.

Rohayden had become a liar.

The wind blew again. The leaves of the violet tree didn’t stir. And no one congratulated the liar.