“In other words, it might be denial. ……Acting as if the bad thing never happened.”

“As if the bad thing never happened……”

“Yes. I don’t know how he felt inside, but I heard that Mr. Prieto endured it quite well in his own way. Since he couldn’t forget, he avoided it. Though I can’t say that method was good.”

‘……Avoidance in a not-good way?’

A puzzled look appeared on May’s face as she heard Dominic’s words. Reading the meaning in her expression, the man added in a calm tone,

“For instance, he turned away from Emily.”

“……Grandfather turned away from my mother?”

“Yes. I suppose Chloe must have come to mind.”

That means he turned away from his own daughter because she reminded him of his dead wife. It was certainly avoidance in a not-good way. But could one say he endured it well? The story seemed to lack causality.

May unconsciously sighed. The reason for the discord between her grandfather and mother was also something she had been curious about since the day she received the will….

But the root she discovered was worse than expected. In such a situation, it made sense that the two would have a bad relationship.

“Then my mother…… before living with grandfather, was she with grandmother? I mean, before grandmother passed away……”

After a moment of silence at May’s question, Dominic answered,

“……Under Imperial law, custody of illegitimate children born to unmarried parents goes to the father.”

“Ah……”

That meant her mother had lived with her grandfather all along. Suddenly, the phrase ‘unqualified to be a parent’ from Herman’s letter came to mind.

According to Dominic’s story, her grandfather certainly wasn’t a good parent. It was no different than starting another regrettable action out of regret for what he had already done.

May’s eye twitched briefly. Despite everything, she couldn’t shake off her compassion for the visible ghost, leaving her heart unsettled.

“……I see.”

Hearing her weak voice, Dominic glanced at her trembling eyes, then followed her gaze to look out the window.

The man’s vision doesn’t catch the lingering soul. So to him, he only saw the clear sky after rain.

Sunlight poured brightly onto the garden covered with green grass. It was peaceful, and therefore a perfect scene. It was similar to the scenery he had seen when he thought of May while climbing the hill.

A moment so picturesque that the square window felt like a picture frame. That peace, which suited the innocent and fragile-looking woman well, ……was something that didn’t need to be broken.

Dominic turned his gaze back to the woman who seemed lost in thought. His eyes had already sunk a little.

‘……It’s better for her to believe that.’

That her grandfather had adequately overcome his parting with Chloe.

In other words, everything he had told May earlier was a lie that cleverly twisted the truth. Chloe’s escape was the only truth Dominic had spoken.

He had never intended to tell May the truth from the beginning. This meant he had planned to fabricate a bearable, appropriate level of tragedy from the start.

In Dominic’s opinion, the story of May’s grandparents was a puddle she didn’t need to step in.

As a third party, he had no right to decide that… But Dominic had nonetheless overstepped his bounds.

That was his way of diluting the shallow guilt he felt. Even if she couldn’t see the puddle at her feet, he would reach out first to prevent her from falling into it.

But it seemed his sense of moderation was worse than he thought.

‘……I thought this much would be fine….’

May’s expression was worse than expected. Even though he had satisfied her curiosity and provided adequate plausibility.

“Viscount Vicenti had good reason to curse my grandfather……”

May belatedly opened her mouth, sensing the heavy atmosphere. She seemed to be trying to lighten the mood that had become somber because of her, but her awkward smile had the opposite effect.

Dominic swallowed a sigh and added,

“……The letters are so scathing because my father was quite fond of Emily. They had frequent contact.”

“Ah….”

“So you shouldn’t be too upset about the strained relationship between Emily and Mr. Prieto.”

“……”

“Because she wasn’t without people who cared for her. ……Sometimes relationships with people who aren’t blood-related can be better than those with actual family.”

As he awkwardly comforted the woman, Dominic naturally recalled his adoptive father’s voice, sobbing while drunk. It was a truth he couldn’t tell May.

“……Chloe died giving birth to Emily alone. Walter was the one who found her shortly after she died…. It ended without him ever getting to properly apologize.”

“And…… it’s all just past history anyway.”

‘So there’s no reason for this woman to bear the burden of their unhappy ending.’

* * *

Chloe died while giving birth. Walter was the one who found her not long after her death, and that was also when he learned she had been carrying his child.

It was like an artificial tragedy, as if someone had written it as a script. To find the woman he had been searching for so long right after her death.

Moreover, it was a place the man had frantically searched before. The village by the sea where the orphanage they grew up in was located….

‘This very place.’

After forcibly sending the persistently gloomy May back to her room, Dominic leaned his upper body against the first-floor terrace with a view of the sea.

His eyes, following the dark blue waves, began to sink as they traced memories of the past.

* * *

Herman’s face was already red with intoxication despite it being early afternoon. Across from the heavily drunk man sat his adopted son in school uniform, looking disinterested.

“When I followed Walter belatedly, the baby hadn’t eaten anything for days and couldn’t even cry properly……”

‘This is tiresome….’

Dominic, who had been caught after coming to greet his adoptive father in his office, frowned at the whiskey bottle that was already more than half empty. His adoptive father usually lived by the saying that sorrow shouldn’t be shared, only joy….

‘But when alcohol enters his system, he’s desperate to share his sorrows.’

And he becomes talkative. He was already chatty, but with alcohol, he became twice as verbose.

Moreover, the topic was always the same. About Emily and his friend, whom he usually sang praises of.

“Back then, I was the first to hold baby Emily. She was so tiny… and pitiful.”

Like now, explaining why he had such unusual compassion for Emily.

Dominic couldn’t hide his bored expression, as if listening to an ancient oral legend. He knew their story well enough to not only ace a test but also create the questions himself. In other words, he was already overflowing with nutritionally void information.

But as always, Dominic silently listened to his adoptive father’s story. It was the duty of the recipient to humor the provider of such luxuries as status, comfort, and opportunities to choose one’s future.

‘I can only hope it ends as quickly as possible….’

Though judging by his adoptive father’s already wet eyes, that seemed unlikely.

“You would have liked having a sister too….”

The ‘sister’ he was talking about now wasn’t referring to that small child they had visited previously. He was talking about the small and pitiful ‘Emily’….

‘So there’s been no news since that day.’

As Dominic skillfully let his adoptive father’s words wash over him, he recalled the child with curly hair. At the same time, as he rested his chin on his hand and moved the whiskey bottle far away, Herman’s eyebrows drooped.

“Are you telling me to stop drinking? ……Then I should write a letter to Walter.”

Dominic sighed at the conclusion with incomprehensible causality.

“Letters that receive no reply, and you don’t even know if the recipient reads them.”

“Yes! But that’s the only way to know if that fellow is alive or dead….”

And sometimes he does read them…. He doesn’t read most of them, but at least he receives them. After saying that, Herman stood up unsteadily. Then the number of letters he wrote, splattering ink, rapidly increased.

What was a bit nauseating was that he continued chattering even while writing.

“That bastard is a man with many problems. He wasn’t normal since his cadet days. A straw dummy of a man…. Let me tell you what kind of man he is….”

Dominic clicked his tongue at the occasional sobbing mixed in and dropped his hand from his chin. The boy stood up and supported his adoptive father’s staggering body, helping him lie down on a long couch at one side of the office.

Leaving the mumbling voice behind, Dominic returned to the desk and began organizing the messily written letters. His hands were quite adept at this task.

‘……Walter Prieto, he certainly is a man with many problems.’

In fact, Dominic considered him a high-risk mental patient. It was a scathing assessment based on his adoptive father’s stories.

At that time, the woman’s corpse had already begun to decompose due to the hot weather. And when his adoptive father arrived there, that decaying empty body was deeply cradled in Walter’s arms. By then, the man’s mind was already unsound.

Herman said that the man’s crying sound he heard then sometimes haunted him like a nightmare. The sorrow that poured out from the man who normally expressed little emotion was unfathomably deep, and the sound of him crying with a hoarse voice was so heartrending that he couldn’t approach for a while despite witnessing that horrific scene, he would say with reddened eyes.

“He’s a son of a b*tch who deserves to be taken by a Kraken, but…… I didn’t wish for that to happen.”

Just like now.

“I thought it would be better if he just acted like a straw dummy…… That he should be a bad man who easily betrayed the woman he loved, and would quickly shake off her death as well…. Even though I was the one who criticized him the most.”

“……”

The body was difficult to recover because of the man who acted like a beast protecting its young. Though they held a belated funeral, Walter never accepted Chloe’s death. The man, whose mental illness worsened, endlessly waited for the already dead woman in the house he had built thinking of her.

‘Extreme avoidance.’

Waiting for the dead. Wasn’t that a serious symptom of mental delusion?

Clicking his tongue and shaking his head, Dominic left the somewhat organized desk and moved his feet. Just as the boy was about to open the door and leave, a melancholic voice stopped him.

“……Actually, a long time ago, Emily burned all the photos and letters of her dead mother.”