“I’m glad you didn’t die, Shailyn. I thought of your mother for a moment…… My heart sank thinking I was going to lose my family again.”

Ah, so that’s why he showed tears.

Shailyn, who finally understood Benjamin’s uncharacteristic behavior, suddenly felt her heart flutter.

Because of the word ‘family’ they had uttered.

She felt strange. It seemed like she now had real family who worried about her too.

Feeling unfamiliar emotions, Shailyn cleared her throat and changed the subject.

“I was able to be safe thanks to Carl and the tower master.”

“Ah, the tower master…… No, Tower Master! Why are you here?!”

Dain, who finally noticed Chester, opened his eyes wide.

And rightly so, hadn’t the entire capital been in an uproar because the tower master had gone missing? The Magic Tower was on emergency alert, so Deborah had to pull all-nighters.

But that tower master was suddenly discovered with Shailyn in the collapsed auction house!

Benjamin also had a surprised face.

However, Chester only gave a light bow, and Shailyn let out an awkward laugh.

‘I can’t say that Goldie transformed into the tower master and saved us……’

At that moment of desperation when she thought they would die, light suddenly burst from within Shailyn’s embrace, and a transparent barrier formed to surround them.

What was even more surprising was……

The baby cat she had been holding in her arms had disappeared at some point, and some man was standing tall using magic.

And it was the missing tower master, Chester, whom Shailyn had been so desperately searching for!

While her mind, which had turned white, couldn’t accept reality, Chester, who had finally returned to his original body, protected the three people with a barrier and broke through the debris with magic.

Thanks to that, they could come up to the surface without a single scratch.

Though for a moment, Carl, Raviel, and Shailyn all ended up in the ridiculous situation of being embraced by Chester.

‘But who would have thought Goldie’s identity was the tower master……’

Once the relief of surviving the brink of death faded, a wave of deep confusion and self-loathing surged in.

Because all her actions toward Goldie so far flashed through her mind.

While Shailyn was alone holding her head.

Dain discovered another surprising face and was shocked.

“No, isn’t the person Carl is carrying on his back head priest Raviel?”

“……Ah, right.”

“Why is he here too?!”

“……It just happened that way?”

She instinctively kept the story about Theo secret.

For some reason, she had a strong feeling that she should do so.

Then Dain, who misunderstood strangely, asked with a serious face.

“Were the tower master and head priest also kidnapped by slave traders?”

“……Something like that.”

Chester, who had been kidnapped by Shailyn though not by slave traders, roughly agreed.

The Diart family had ended up catching a slave trader gang that had kidnapped a noble young lady, the tower master, and the head priest all at once.

Benjamin realized the seriousness of the situation and left first to handle the aftermath.

Dain approached Carl and patted his shoulder.

“Anyway, you worked hard, Carl. Thank you for rescuing Shailyn.”

“No. I only did what I had to do.”

Dain was moved by the blunt but sincere answer.

“You’re like a true knight. Do you have any thoughts of joining our knight order?”

“I can’t because I’m a bondservant.”

“Tsk, that’s a shame. You seem like an excellent talent……”

Dain, who clicked his tongue while examining Carl’s muscles visible through his clothes, soon turned his head toward Chester.

“Thank you too, Tower Master. Thanks to you, Shailyn was safe.”

“It’s fine. I was just repaying a debt.”

Saying so, Chester glanced sideways at Shailyn.

Shailyn, who had much to say to him anyway, pulled Chester aside and stood far away for a moment.

“You were injured in the square, right? But you lied to me because you were in cat form, right?”

She pieced together the puzzle while retracing her memories asked with conviction.

Chester, who had nothing to deny at this point, nodded his head.

After finally finding the subject of the second hint, Shailyn completely got the hang of it and threw another question.

“Do you like grape juice?”

“……I hate it.”

“How much?”

“I hate it enough that I wouldn’t drink even a single drop.”

Chester was also the subject of the fourth hint. Now undeniably, he was a male lead.

“Hah…… Tower Master.”

Shailyn, who let out a long sigh mixed with various emotions, grabbed Chester’s sleeve.

“Miss, are you alright?”

“I’m sorry, but could you please call Carl for me.”

Because she felt like she might faint right now.

She couldn’t utter the rest of her words as she collapsed, unable to overcome the fatigue and burden accumulated in her body.

 The Secret Is Too Much

The ducal family’s physician examined my body and made the following diagnosis.

“There are fine cracks in your ribs, so you need rest for the time being. There’s no special treatment and we must rely on natural recovery, so absolutely don’t overexert yourself.”

Thus I received my second bed sentence following the one during Deborah’s entrance exam.

One that prevented me from taking even a single step outside the bed.

This time it wasn’t just Deborah and Dain making a fuss, but the entire ducal family, so I was practically confined to my room.

By the way, Deborah, who learned of my kidnapping belatedly, cried and made a scene.

‘How could you hide it so perfectly from just me?! You were ignoring me! You excluded me!’

The three men of the ducal family broke out in cold sweat and struggled against her fiery anger.

Fortunately, I was also a victim of the incident and was injured, so I could avoid Deborah’s wrath.

Phew, thank goodness.

The tower master’s disappearance was handled as being caught up in the slave trader incident somehow.

All sorts of rumors and speculation had run rampant about his disappearance, but they all died down when he appeared in perfect condition.

The ducal house of Diart had a more important task than that: finding out exactly who had commissioned the slave traders to kidnap me. The duke took charge of this.

“Shailyn, do you have a moment?”

I, who had been lying half-sprawled on the bed eating snacks, hurriedly straightened my body at the duke’s sudden visit.

I brushed off the cookie crumbs on my clothes and greeted him.

“What’s the matter?”

“I came to share the results of the slave trader investigation with you and also have something to say.”

The duke who entered the room stared intently at my face and took out a handkerchief from his chest.

I received it first and made a puzzled face, so he lightly tapped around his mouth.

“Ah.”

I quickly checked my face with the hand mirror placed on the bedside table. Cookie crumbs that I hadn’t managed to clean off were stuck around my mouth.

I wiped them off with the duke’s handkerchief and lowered my head in embarrassment.

“Thank you.”

“Not at all. If there’s anything you want to eat, tell the kitchen anytime.”

“Yes.”

He pulled a chair over beside the bed and sat down. It was when I was just fidgeting with my fingers in the awkward atmosphere.

“Shailyn, I want to apologize to you.”

“Yes? For what?”

“At first I thought you had come to find us with ulterior motives.”

The duke continued speaking in a low voice with downcast eyes.

“But watching you from close by…… I realized that I had misunderstood and greatly mistaken you all by myself.”

“……”

“But I was too late in accepting that realization, and only came to my senses when you were in danger. I almost became a pathetic uncle who lost his only niece.”

He let out a laugh like a sigh and brushed his lips.

Niece and uncle. Hearing those words again in a normal state, I felt strange as if the distance between the duke and me had suddenly narrowed.

“……I’m fine. It would be natural for Your Grace to think that way.”

After pondering what to say, I just smiled brightly.

Right, when a niece who hadn’t shown her face even once in nearly twenty years suddenly came asking to live in the house……

From the duke’s perspective, it could have been suspicious. Understanding that feeling, I hadn’t had any particular complaints until now either.

The duke who gazed at me steadily spoke with wistful eyes.

“Diane left us saying she wanted to build her own family. But you know, just because you have a new family doesn’t mean your original family disappears, right?”

“Well, that’s true……?”

“I wasn’t able to tell my sister that fact, so I want to properly let you, her daughter, know.”

He reached out his hand and carefully clasped mine.

It was a rough yet warm hand, different from both the wrinkled hand of Lord Diart and Dain’s hard hand.

“Whatever you do in the future, our ducal house of Diart will always remain your family.”

Family. When I came out alive from the collapsed building debris, they had called me family too.

My heart fluttered even more than then, and something welled up inside me.

Strange. Why did the duke’s words sound like he would remain family even after I leave and disappear from them? That is, even after I left for the original world.

That couldn’t be at all.

When I bit my lips tightly and said nothing, the duke patted my shoulder as if he understood my feelings.

“The reason I brought this up to you is…… because what I’m about to say might be quite shocking.”

“What do you mean?”

The duke took a small breath and carefully opened his mouth.

“Shailyn, the person who commissioned the slave traders to kidnap you…… was your younger sister.”

“Ah, I see.”

I nodded without being particularly surprised.

Honestly, since there weren’t many people who held such grudges against me, I had somewhat expected the mother and daughter.

“……Are you alright?”

The duke looked at me with worried eyes. He seemed to think I would be quite shocked when it was revealed that the count’s family had committed this act.

But I already had no trace of affection or expectation for the mother and daughter.

“Yes, I’m fine. So what happens now?”