Barmas, startled, quickly turned his head toward the source of Romei’s voice. His eyes fell upon Romei wearing a nightgown of familiar design.

“Romei…?”

Though he was seeing her clearly with his own eyes, Barmas couldn’t believe Romei was actually there. When he questioned this, Romei blinked slowly before gradually sitting up.

The blanket covering her slipped down as she leaned forward, bringing herself closer to him.

He wondered what she was about to do when her hand gently touched his cheek.

“How are you feeling? Physically?”

“…”

“Do you need more life energy? Or would you like some water?”

“…I’ll have water.”

Barmas, not understanding what was happening, mindlessly answered her question. Only after sitting up and taking the water glass she brought did he realize something strange about her question.

‘Did she just ask if I needed more life energy?’

When Barmas stared at his own face without drinking the water, Romei asked with curiosity:

“You said you wanted water, aren’t you going to drink it?”

“No. I think I heard something strange earlier…”

“What did you hear?”

“I thought you asked if I needed… life energy. My ears must be playing tricks on me.”

Barmas let out an awkward laugh, trying to brush it off while preparing to drink the water, when Romei spoke with a face so composed it was almost serene.

“You heard correctly. I asked earlier if you needed life energy.”

“…?!”

“Don’t tell me you still think this is a dream?”

At Romei’s words, Barmas forgot about drinking the water and stared at her in profound shock.

Romei seemed far too calm for someone who had just dropped such a bombshell question about whether he needed life energy.

Moreover, her question about whether he still thought this was a dream made no sense to him.

‘What exactly isn’t a dream?’

That’s when Barmas noticed the marks on her neck.

Despite Romei’s clean and neat attire, her neck was covered with reddish-purple bruises that looked like bite marks. And they matched exactly with what Barmas had left on Romei in what he thought was a dream, when he couldn’t contain his excitement.

“Ah…!”

In that moment, the reality and memories he had forgotten while sleeping came rushing back all at once, and Barmas belatedly realized that the lewd yet pleasurable “last supper” was not a dream after all.

‘…D*mn it.’

Barmas silently cursed to himself as his complexion turned uncontrollably pale. Cold sweat seeped down his back.

He couldn’t believe he had behaved so bestially with Romei, who was finally living something close to a normal life. Simultaneously, a deep sense of self-loathing washed over him.

Even if he had mistaken it for a dream, it was too grave a mistake to take back.

“Barmas…?”

Romei called out to him with concern at his suddenly deteriorated appearance. His unfocused red eyes that had been wandering aimlessly moved quietly toward her voice.

Barmas’s heart began to race with fear. He needed to somehow make amends and beg for forgiveness. Otherwise, Romei might become disappointed and leave his side.

Completely unaware of Barmas’s thoughts, Romei examined his condition and asked:

“Rajie said there’s nothing wrong with your body, and that you have sufficient life energy…”

“…”

“Are you lacking? If you need more life energy, please don’t hesitate to tell me.”

What Romei expected from Barmas at this point was an ordinary response: that something hurt, or something didn’t feel right, or that he was a bit short on life energy, or if none of those, that he was fine.

She thought that if he were being more playful, he might casually say something like, “I do seem to be lacking life energy, shall we kiss?”

However, Barmas’s response was completely different from what Romei expected.

Setting down the water glass on the bedside table, he grabbed Romei’s sleeve and said:

“I’ve done wrong.”

“…What wrong are you talking about, all of a sudden?”

Romei asked in confusion.

She wasn’t scolding Barmas, merely questioning out of bewilderment, but his hand gripping her sleeve began to tremble slightly.

“I mean… I thought it was a dream.”

“…?”

“I mistook it for a final dream before dying, something like that. I don’t expect this excuse to work, but had I known it was really you, I would never have taken you, even if it meant cutting off my own manhood.”

“Barmas…”

“I’m sorry. I was wrong. Please believe me. I’ll do anything, I won’t ever do it again, just don’t say you’ll leave my side. Please…”

Barmas, who had been barely holding onto Romei’s sleeve, was now gripping both her hands and pleading.

Though Romei found his urgent and desperate pleas perplexing, she decided to calm him first. He seemed confused, likely because he had just woken up.

“Barmas, calm down.”

Romei moved closer, almost burrowing into Barmas’s embrace, and wrapped her arms around his torso, which was heaving with what might have been excitement or anxiety. Then she patted his back gently, like soothing a baby.

“I’m not disappointed in you at all. There’s nothing you need to apologize to me for.”

“…”

“So don’t be confused, and breathe calmly. I’ll explain everything step by step.”

Before long, his rough and irregular breathing gradually steadied, and the tension in his body noticeably eased.

Judging that he had reached a state where they could have a proper conversation, Romei slowly withdrew her arms from around him.

The embrace seemed quite effective; his previously pale complexion and his eyes that had been darting left and right had both stabilized.

Meeting Barmas’s gaze, Romei calmly explained what had happened the previous day.

“Barmas. You collapsed in your office around noon yesterday. The familiars and servants seemed to try everything to save you, but they ultimately failed, so Rajie asked me for help.”

“…Asked what?”

“I had to feed you sufficient life energy within fifteen minutes.”

“…”

Barmas tightly shut his eyes at Romei’s precise statement that hit him directly.

He had tried so hard to hide this fact no matter what, yet it was ridiculous how they had run straight to Romei the moment he collapsed.

But what was most terrible was Barmas himself.

It was unbearably painful to realize that after thinking he’d rather die than embrace Romei to replenish his life energy, he had failed to distinguish reality and embraced her so thoroughly.

However, Romei didn’t comfort or console Barmas who looked distressed. Instead, she decided to use a more effective method.

That was to tell him the truth, faster and more accurately than anyone else could.

“So to give you as much life energy as you needed, I took off my clothes, straddled your body, and…”

“…Wait. What did you say you did?”

Barmas, who had been in deep self-loathing, interrupted Romei and asked again.

He thought there was something strange in her sentence, and surely his ears must have been mistaken.

However, Romei answered again with a calm face, suggesting that he had not misheard:

“To save you, I took off my clothes and straddled your body.”

“…”

“I kissed you directly, and when that didn’t wake you up, I had no choice but to remove your pants to make you ej*culate using my mouth.”

“…Removed my pants…?”

Barmas frowned and muttered in surprise at the fact that such an absurd and unbelievable thing had happened while he was unconscious.

But Romei, not surprised in the least, continued her explanation with an air suggesting it was so obvious that it hardly needed explaining:

“I made you ej*culate once, but you still wouldn’t wake up. Your complexion improved but since you remained unconscious, I judged that you needed more life energy, so I inserted you directly.”

“…You inserted it??”

“While moving my hips on my own, I reached climax once before you could ej*culate, and just when I was about to make you ej*culate, you woke up. Everything after that is exactly as you remember.”

The more Barmas heard Romei’s explanation of what happened after he collapsed in his office—how he came back from the brink of death—the more dumbfounded he became.

The part about Romei, of all people, taking off her clothes to save him made no sense from the start.

Barmas knew better than anyone what he had done to Romei after bringing her here. He had acted like a complete b*stard, saying he would possess her, and he couldn’t believe that Romei had wanted to save someone like him.

Moreover, Romei had done more than just remove her clothes.

She had not only removed his pants and taken his manhood into her mouth but had also inserted him directly and moved her hips herself.

And that request which had strongly convinced him it was a dream—her asking him to take her roughly—was also something Romei had actually said to him. It was even more unbelievable.

Yet it was hard to believe that the Romei standing before him was making up such an outlandish story.

From the beginning, Romei wasn’t good at lying, and her emotions were plainly visible just by looking into her eyes.

Most decisively, Romei had no reason to tell such a lie. The woman who had frowned with shame at his lewd talk would never suddenly change and start talking about their intimate relations.

In the end, Barmas had no choice but to believe Romei’s explanation.

That’s not to say he had no questions at all.

Among the many questions welling up, Barmas asked Romei the most incomprehensible yet crucial one:

“May I ask you one thing?”

“Yes. Go ahead.”

“Why did you save me?”