“Friends…?”

“The bad man said so! He said you’d been friends since a long time ago.”

‘Friend.’

It was a word she had never once attached to her relationship with him.

“And that’s why he saved me.”

Eve chattered on, recounting what had happened the day before. The scary man had struck her, and Shed had rescued her. And because Mommy had been in danger, he had stayed with Eve in a safe place until she came back.

Eve believed with all her heart that Shed had not abducted her, but protected her.

“But Eve, you cried yesterday because you were scared.”

“He said Mommy was dead…”

Eve pressed close to her side again, the sad thought returning.

“Why would Mommy be dead, Eve?”

“But the man said so. He said Daddy said Mommy was dead.”

“What are you talking about? Mommy’s not dead.”

Luise squeezed her daughter’s hand tight.

“I know. The man said Mommy would come, and you really did!”

For this reason, Eve had come to trust Shed completely.

This was how child abductions happened. Luise shuddered at the thought of her daughter’s innocence being threatened.

“Eve, what would you have done if Mommy hadn’t come back?”

At the question, her daughter’s face clouded.

“Mommy… you wouldn’t come to see me?”

“No—what if the man lied? What if he wasn’t Mommy’s friend at all?”

“No way. He knows Mommy really well!”

Eve’s little brows furrowed sharply in defiance. Even in her bewilderment, Luise found them so adorable that she couldn’t look away.

Planting her tiny hand on her hip, Eve rattled off the reasons she trusted the bad man.

“He knows Mommy likes lemons. He knows you like reading books too!”

At the child’s words—Shed’s words—something welled in Luise’s chest.

How strange. In the years of raising Eve, she had almost forgotten. That she had once loved the lemons that filled Ideana, and that she had loved reading.

The fact that he, of all people, remembered a part of her that even she had nearly forgotten felt unsettling.

“Mommy, did you really eat lots of cauliflower soup? Eve eats it all the time, right?”

“…Yes. That’s right.”

Luise smiled faintly, swallowing a bitter sigh.

Eve swung her feet with excitement, saying she had talked a lot with Shed about Mommy. Luise quietly watched her daughter, brimming with energy from the early morning.

Behind Eve’s cheerful chatter, the ship creaked and tilted with the sway of the waves.

“Still, Eve, it’s dangerous to trust strangers too easily. You mustn’t follow them either.”

Luise smoothed her daughter’s tousled hair, mussed from sleep. At that, Eve fell silent for a moment in thought, then nodded.

“Hey, Mommy… is the bad man a bad person?”

“I wouldn’t say he’s bad, exactly…”

“Then is he a good person?”

Round, green eyes—so much like her own—blinked up at her.

The answer did not come quickly. Everything about him was uncertain.

Was he good, or was he bad?

Victim, or perpetrator?

Virtue, or sin?

Happiness, or misfortune?

Love, or hatred?

He stood on a line that could never be defined by a single word.

Perhaps, if not for Louise Ideana, he might have remained nothing more than a kind man. The only truth that could not be altered was this: he was Eve’s father.

“Mommy doesn’t know either, Eve.”

So Luise could give her no clear answer. She could not decide whether it was better to paint him as evil, or as good, in her daughter’s eyes.

Eve’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Mommy doesn’t know something?”

To her, Mommy seemed to know everything. The idea that there was something she didn’t know was astonishing.

Luise gave a small laugh.

“Of course. Mommy doesn’t know a lot of things.”

That was why she wandered so helplessly.

Why the path ahead seemed so uncertain.

“Then I’ll go find out, Mommy!”

“What?”

Before Luise could blink, Eve jumped to her feet and dashed out of the cabin.

“Eve!”

She was gone in a flash—so quick it was hard to believe she was only a child.

As soon as she burst onto the deck, the crisp, salty sea breeze kissed her soft little cheeks.

Eve had meant to look for the bad man, but the vast, endless sea distracted her instead. The deep blue waters stretched out beneath the blue of the sky, until even her eyes felt cooled.

On the sparkling surface, sunlight shattered like jewels, and silver dolphins leapt in arcs like rainbows before disappearing again.

“Dolphins! Dolphins!”

In wonder, Eve ran toward the railing, only to trip on a thick coil of rope lying across the deck.

“Ah!”

Just as she was about to topple forward, something caught her, leaving her dangling in midair.

Blinking around in confusion, Eve found herself suspended—and her violet eyes locked with his.

“Bad man!”

“It’s dangerous. Don’t go wandering around, brat.”

Shed’s brows knit tightly together.

It should have been enough to frighten her, that cold warning. Yet the bold little girl only widened her eyes and broke into a cheeky grin.

“…Why are you smiling like that?”

Watching the child—so much like Luise—smile at him left Shed oddly unsettled.

And then—

“Hehe, you’re nice~”

Eve, lifted high to his eye level, stretched out her stubby arms and patted his head.

Her tiny hand, small as a maple leaf, brushed through his black hair, and the Duke of Lester’s face froze stiff with shock.

No one had ever dared touch his head since he had entered the ducal house.

“What do you think you’re doing, brat?”

Shed quickly set her down on the deck as though she had crossed some forbidden line.

Eve only giggled, flashing her small white teeth.

The sea breeze had tinted her cheeks a rosy pink, and sunlight danced across her golden hair. And on that face… Luise’s image overlapped again and again.

“Takes after her mother…”

Shed deliberately turned his gaze out to the far horizon. But a determined little voice pierced through the roar of the waves.

“No, I look like Daddy!”

At her audacious reply, Shed’s eyes unwillingly returned to her.

Like her father?

Shed searched her face for traces of Eclace. Yet not a single feature resembled him.

A blessing, perhaps, hidden in misfortune.

If she had shown even the slightest hint of being like that cunning swindler, this child might already have lost her life. It was only because she closely resembled Luise that he showed her any mercy at all.

“Mommy said when I smile, I look just like Daddy.”

Eve beamed up at him, stretching her lips wide on purpose. But Shed couldn’t see it. Not at all.

He knew Eclace’s smile too well, the crescent curve of his eyes, the crimson irises gleaming with sharpness beneath a mask of kindness, the lips, charming yet insidious, curling into unreadable schemes.

But in Eve’s smile, there was none of that. Not even the faintest echo.

Her smile was the very opposite of Eclace’s, honest, guileless, clumsy, and for that reason, pure.

“Not a bit alike.”

Shed stared blankly at Eve’s smile before letting slip the truth without thinking.

At once, the little girl’s cheeks puffed up like a frog, swollen with indignation.

“No! Mommy said so! Eve and Daddy are the same!”

“Then you’ve been deceived. Your mother is very good at lying.”

Shed muttered coldly.

‘I once believed her too.’

That face, as still as a lake holding quiet tears. There was a time when he thought that by gazing into it, he could see all the way to its shallow depths.

When the water was stirred by ripples, he believed that she could be shaken, even changed. He used to think that if he dived deep enough, he would reach the lake’s bottom.

But not anymore. No matter how much he splashed and churned the waters, beneath the surface it remained still — deep and dark.

What was visible above was nothing more than a shallow reflection. Or perhaps it was merely a pathetic projection of himself.

The truth was that he had never truly known her.

“No! Mommy’s not a liar!”

A pair of tiny fists thumped against his shin.

A laughable kind of violence.

“She is a liar.”

The sight of the fearless little girl made Shed retort just to seize the last word.

“She’s not!”

Eve clung to his black leather boot, wrapping her small arms tight around his leg. Her little body weighed less than a sandbag.

Shed lifted the leg she clung to and swung it lazily.

Eve’s face lit up at once. To her, it must have felt just like a swing.

‘At this rate, she’ll ask me to keep going.’

Noticing the sparkle in her eyes, Shed gave a crooked smile. Just moments ago she had been furious, and now—so easily delighted.

What a simple child.

He pried her off his leg and swung her up into his arms.

Dangling from his large hands, Eve burst into bright laughter at the suddenly higher view.

Truly, she was such a foolish little thing.

Shed, who was watching, thought about the day when this pure white innocence would inevitably be stained.

That radiant smile—how pitiably naïve, how ignorant.

“Come back when you’ve grown a little, if you want to fight me.”

For someday, you’ll wish to raise a blade against me.

Someday, that white smile will twist black with hatred.

Shed whispered quietly to Luise’s child.