“Found Jade!”

Ray, having discovered Jade, beamed proudly with his pearly white teeth on full display.

“How did you know?”

“Ray knows everything!”

Ray shouted confidently and ran over to Jade’s side.

“Jade likes the maze. If you’re not anywhere else, you’re in the maze! I’m a little scared of the maze.”

Ray plopped down next to Jade, then seemed to remember something and stood up, hopping in place.

“Look! You can’t see Ray.”

No matter how many times he jumped, Ray’s head couldn’t clear the hedge walls.

“If you’re scared, why did you come in?”

Jade retorted curtly.

Last time, Ray must have been the one who told Arinne about the maze. He was too scared to come himself, so he definitely sent her in his place.

“Hmph! I came looking for you because Jade was in the maze!”

Ray puffed out his cheeks with his hands on his hips.

“I was brave today, you know? Even though I was scared, I came alone! I came to see Jade!”

His little brother’s adorable appearance, pouting like a duck with his lips stuck out and grumbling away, melted Jade’s inexplicably sulky mood that had been weighing on him all day.

“Okay. Thanks for coming to find me.”

“Of course!”

When Jade smiled and nodded, Ray sat down right next to him again, looking pleased with himself.

There was a time when Jade was scared of the maze too.

‘Jade. This is a gift.’

‘This, for Jade?’

Before Ray was born. When Mom was still around. Back then, Jade was much younger and smaller than Ray was now.

‘With, with Dada. Together!’

‘Yes. Let’s go in together.’

Even though it was a big, wide maze he couldn’t enter alone, Jade loved the maze.

The maze was Jade’s first memory and the first gift he remembered, making it all the more precious and special.

The reason he received the maze as a gift was hazy. Was it a belated birthday present? Was it to commemorate having a younger sibling? He couldn’t quite remember the reason.

What remained with Jade was the moment he encountered the maze and the image of his father appearing from somewhere to comfort him whenever he got lost and cried.

‘Can you see the path now?’

‘I can see it!’

When his father gave him a piggyback ride, the maze became completely visible.

The maze seen from his father’s height was so small and pretty that he wanted to grow up quickly to be like his father.

‘I, I messed up again. I got angry at Ray and then… sniff… I’m, I’m a bad kid…’

From then until now, Jade always came to the maze.

When his mind was complicated and his head hurt, when he wanted to cry, when he was upset…

Sometimes when he missed something desperately. And sometimes when he hated everything and wanted to hide somewhere no one knew.

The maze always comforted Jade.

“Jade.”

“Yeah.”

“I made you angry last time. That, um, you know. I’m really sorry about that.”

“……”

Receiving Ray’s apology, Jade felt pathetic about himself.

Even though Ray was only five years old, he knew how to enter the maze alone and had the courage to apologize first and seek reconciliation.

Meanwhile, he was a pitiful kid who couldn’t say a single “I’m sorry” and made his brother, four years younger, speak up first.

Because it was hard to admit his mistakes and apologize, he counted it as an apology by giving Ray better things and being kinder than usual.

“I’m sorry too.”

He finally apologized, but having lost the initiative, his apology carried less weight than Ray’s.

Jade envied Ray’s courage. He envied how he could always be honest and confident.

That’s probably why everyone loved Ray.

Father, Calon, the butler and the servants. Everyone loved Ray. He loved Ray too.

Even that scary Lady found Ray adorable. Those sharp eyes like a bird of prey softened into crescents when looking at Ray. That blunt mouth pressed in a straight line would always curl up and make sweet sounds for Ray.

Unlike himself, made up only of an ugly heart, Ray was filled only with a pretty heart and was a child who deserved to be loved.

‘I wish Sis could be our mom!’

That’s why Ray could say it so easily.

‘You’d be happy if we got a new mom. But I wouldn’t like it.’

Because he would believe that whatever mother came, she would love him. And he would actually be loved.

‘Mom will come back. So that woman can’t become our mom!!’

‘How can she come when she’s not here? Ray has never seen Mom. I don’t have a mom. I only have Dad!!’

‘Tsk… You don’t know anything!!’

He got angry at Ray out of anxiety. Ray was just curious about the ‘mother’ he’d never had.

In the first place, it was his fault that Ray grew up not knowing their mother. Because of him, Ray lost his mother, and his father lost his wife.

This was all because he was lacking.

Because he threw tantrums often and didn’t listen. Because he didn’t meet her expectations. Because he wasn’t honest and wasn’t brave. Because he was timid and cried a lot. And so… because he wasn’t a child worth loving.

‘Goodbye. My baby.’

‘M-Mom…!’

That’s why she left.

Jade sometimes dreamed of his mother returning. Dreams where she came back, praised him, and hugged him…

Unlike his dreams, she probably wouldn’t return. Even while sensing this fact, Jade couldn’t let go of his attachment.

If he didn’t cry at every little thing, didn’t throw tantrums. If he became a proud child who could do everything well. If he could meet her expectations.

And so if he became a child worth loving, maybe mom would come back. He grew up holding onto that hope in one corner of his heart.

“Ray, you’re right. I don’t have a mom. Mom won’t come back.”

“Brother?”

My mom, scattered like a mirage…

Jade no longer knew.

Whether his mother would return. No, whether he even had a mother at all.

“Is Jade feeling bad? Did Ray do something wrong?”

“No. Ray didn’t do anything wrong.”

Even at nine years old, he was still a pathetic, pitiful child.

“Why are you feeling bad? If Jade cries, Ray will cry too.”

“I miss Mom.”

“Hic! Mom talk is secret! This is secret too, right?! Ray will keep Jade’s secret.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

If that woman called the Lady became family, at least Dad and Ray would be happy.

Maybe even himself.

Jade hated himself so much for thinking that way.

He shouldn’t wish for the ‘mom’ that Ray wanted, and even if he saw changes in his father, he couldn’t acknowledge them.

Sometimes even his own heart rippled like water struck by a thrown stone, but he alone had to preserve his mother’s place.

‘I can’t. I shouldn’t…’

Really.

* * *

“The children have all left.”

The Marquis spoke awkwardly while looking in the direction the children had disappeared.

“Let’s go inside.”

Arinne stood up and lightly patted the wrinkles from her dress.

“Won’t the Lady wait for me?”

He stood up after her and stopped Arinne.

“Why should I?”

“Huh, what’s wrong with going together?”

“……”

Arinne felt slightly wronged. She genuinely didn’t know why she should wait for him and asked for the reason, but he let out an incredulous laugh.

“Let’s take a walk together.”

“Fine.”

With the feeling of appeasing a sulking child, Arinne permitted the walk.

They walked past the garden with clear traces of where the children had played, all the way to the front of the mansion.

“The weather is nice.”

At Arinne’s indifferent observation, his expression became subtly displeased.

“Don’t just look straight ahead. Isn’t it pretty?”

“Who? You, Marquis?”

Arinne paused and looked at the Marquis’s face. He stared back at Arinne with sour eyes, looking even more dumbfounded himself.

“……I mean the flower garden, not me.”

“Ah.”

Only then did the surroundings enter Arinne’s view. Beside them, the remaining summer flowers and early-blooming autumn flowers were mixed together in diverse colors.

“The flowers are pretty.”

Arinne lightly tapped a purple lisianthus with the tip of her index finger.

“So this is where Ray picked flowers.”

At the sparse spot with only short stems left without flowers, she could sense Ray’s touch, and Arinne smiled unconsciously.

The Marquis fidgeted beside her like a puppy that needed to go.

Opening his mouth then closing it. Clenching his hands then unclenching them. Rolling his eyes this way and that way.

Arinne, her appreciation interrupted, let out a short sigh.

“Do you have something to say?”

“Um, well.”

“Speak comfortably.”

Even though he was looking down from a much taller height, the Marquis’s gaze sometimes seemed like it was looking up from below.

“Well, I attended the Academy with the Lady’s brother. We weren’t close, but we ran into each other often,”

“And?”

As soon as Luke’s story came up, her expression hardened.

She wondered what he was trying to say with all that hesitation and reading the room, and suddenly Luke popped up.

Arinne didn’t hide her irritation and cut off his words.

“So, um, well, what I’m trying to say is……”

When her reaction wasn’t favorable, the Marquis became noticeably flustered.