She’d created trouble with careless words. She looked at Calon for help, but he didn’t seem inclined to intervene.

“If it’s a bad ghost, I’ll protect you both from it.”

“…”

Far from stopping this, Calon actually encouraged the situation.

Arinne couldn’t bring herself to blame the child, so instead she glared resentfully at Calon’s smooth face.

The third floor was forbidden territory by Arinne’s own decree. She’d believed she would never voluntarily climb to the third floor again.

And yet, ridiculously, she couldn’t refuse a single child and ended up going up to the third floor.

Who could have known that words meant to tease Jo a little would lead to this situation?

Jo, who’d run off early, was nowhere to be seen, and Arinne, caught in her own trap, had to let Jade lead her by the hand all around the third floor.

“In the end, there was no ghost.”

Calon carefully laid Jade, who’d tired himself out wandering the estate all morning and fallen asleep, onto the lavender bed.

“It’s still daytime.”

“I wonder if one will appear at night.”

“You’re curious about that?”

“I thought it would be nice if I could meet Young Master Jade’s expectations.”

Calon smiled as he adjusted Jade’s blanket.

“That’s fierce loyalty.”

Arinne took in the sight of Calon and Jade with her arms crossed.

Watching Jade’s innocent face, gentle only when sleeping, Arinne covered her mouth and yawned quietly.

She’d used up her energy for the day too.

‘My lady? Aren’t you coming?’

‘…I’m coming.’

This exhaustion was definitely mental. Though she’d walked up the stairs with her own two feet, it hadn’t been by her own will.

Until she passed the last step and set foot on the floor, she’d broken out in cold sweat and felt so nauseous she wanted to just pass out.

‘It’s nothing…’

Once she actually stepped on it, things went surprisingly smoothly. Her next foot moved forward easily. Then the next, and the next, and the next.

It was disappointingly uneventful. Breathing, walking, talking, eating, sleeping.

Everything happened without much emotion, like the countless acts of daily life.

“May I ask why you rejected the third floor—no, this room?”

“You’re perceptive?”

Arinne raised her voice softly at the end. In other words, an affirmation.

“Let’s say it’s because I don’t like ghosts.”

“Is that so?”

Calon smiled at her with eyes similar to those he used when looking at Jade.

His flexible, contemplative attitude of not asking unnecessarily and only observing what she showed him put her avoidant nature at ease.

“It’s quite a lovely room.”

“You think so? It just looks childish to me.”

Arinne quietly followed Calon’s gaze.

Crude drawings of indistinct forms filled one wall, decorated in frames. Those must be the abstract paintings Jo mentioned.

“Why would they even frame things like that…”

Arinne muttered as she looked at the wall full of pictures.

“You had exceptional aesthetic sense from a young age. The eagle head on the door was particularly impressive.”

“You’re kind of annoying, aren’t you?”

Arinne shot a look at him as he spoke while holding back laughter, then got up and approached the pictures.

“Family… I drew my family. That purple one is the Duke. The green one next to him seems to be Mother. That’s probably the Young Duke?”

It was a picture with four ugly circles with stick-like limbs.

Maybe because she’d drawn it herself, stories about the picture flowed from Arinne’s mouth like she’d prepared them in advance.

“In other words, it’s a picture denouncing how the Young Duke bullied me in front of the Duke and his wife. The Young Duke had a terrible personality even as a child.”

Even looking at the circles lined up harmoniously in a row, she added an emotional interpretation.

“What? How can you tell…”

“If I say so, then that’s what it is.”

Anyway, she was the artist of those shabby, crude pictures, so her interpretation was the answer.

Sitting back on the sofa, Arinne looked with a sour face at a pink rabbit doll placed on one side of the sofa.

“What’s this now?”

The soft fur covering the rabbit doll tickled her fingertips.

The room was definitely her taste. More precisely, her childhood taste. The toys filling the room were also things she would have liked back then.

“Who would use these things? What, do they have some hidden late-born child or something?”

“As someone who would—”

“Don’t respond to my muttering.”

“…Yes.”

Even if she conceded a hundred times that the room was kept for memories or whatever, what about the mountain of new toys? There couldn’t be memories attached to new things.

‘Could it be…’

A creepy thought suddenly crossed her mind.

“I figured it out.”

Having found the answer, she nodded to herself.

“It wasn’t reminiscing, it was mourning.”

“Pardon?”

Calon looked at her incredulously.

“He thinks I’m dead and fills this room with toys like laying flowers on a grave. Crazy b*stard!”

Already convinced, she solemnly explained her theory to Calon.

“Haha!”

Calon laughed out loud.

The sight was so unfamiliar and curious that Arinne stared blankly at Calon’s laughter.

“Are you mocking me?”

“I’m just surprised by the unexpected idea. That’s probably not it.”

Calon quickly swallowed his laughter, covering his mouth with one hand spread wide.

“I can still see you laughing.”

Arinne narrowed her eyes and picked up the rabbit doll next to her, tossing it at Calon with a thud.

In the process, he caught what she’d thrown for him to get hit by and placed it gently beside him.

“There’s a room like this left behind in Carentium too.”

Still holding the next doll she was going to throw at Calon, she tilted her head. Calon carefully took the doll from her hand.

“If you’re curious, please visit the marquis’s estate again. He would be delighted.”

Arinne recalled the marchioness’s room she’d seen at the marquis’s estate. Was he talking about that creepy room? The abandoned room of the marquis’s estate, maintained without an owner.

She thought she understood, but she couldn’t pretend to know.

“Even if not for that, please visit again. Since you came, Lawrence and the children have brightened up considerably.”

Reading her reluctance, Calon quickly added more.

Arinne watched him quietly, wondering why he was saying this, then soon understood his meaning.

“Do you want me to meet with him?”

“I’m overstepping. Actually, it’s for my sake. Not for his or the children’s sake…”

After a moment’s hesitation, Calon began calmly.

From him, who’d finally opened his mouth, came a stream of words she couldn’t understand.

“Even without a family name, I’m not free. My life is bound to Carentium.”

“Did you sign a slave contract or something?”

“Perhaps.”

Calon affirmed helplessly.

‘I was joking… But with that face, it seems real.’

Arinne recalled when she first met Calon in the garden of the marquis’s estate.

‘Is Calon your name?’

‘Yes. I don’t have a separate surname.’

‘That must be liberating.’

Back then, she’d made assumptions carelessly. Without even knowing him well.

To her, the family name ‘Marcedea’ was tiresome and uncomfortable. She’d always wanted to remove that heavy name.

So she’d envied him for not having a surname. She’d judged on her own that someone with just a short name must be free. She’d decided and envied him all by herself.

Now he wore a pained expression that could never come from a free person.

“If you would stay by Lawrence and the children’s side, I think I could become free. Because they would be happier.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Yes. That’s why I said it nonsensically.”

In his eyes was carved some wound that Arinne couldn’t fathom.

“Unfortunately, I can’t fulfill your wish. I won’t meet with Lawrence. So I won’t have any reason to go to Carentium again.”

“It’s merely my wish.”

He spoke in a calm voice.

“…”

Arinne felt like she’d discovered that a well-crafted precious porcelain piece was actually a cracked defective product.

Noah, Lawrence, and now Calon before her eyes. How was it that exceptionally handsome men were all overflowing with stories and had completely broken hearts?

Was there some kind of law about it?

Arinne let out a deep breath like exhaling complicated thoughts, then picked up the doll she’d tried to throw at Calon earlier but had been taken from her.

“Are you going to throw it?”

Calon asked curiously.

“If I throw it, will you let it hit you?”

“If you wish me to be hit.”

“…You’re really no fun. That’s not it—this is a worry doll. It’ll ease your concerns. Give all your worries and stray thoughts to it.”

Arinne clicked her tongue and pressed the doll into Calon’s hand. The doll that had filled her hand looked absurdly small in his.

“This is the first time I’ve received a doll.”

Calon looked bewildered at the doll in his hand.

“Don’t feel burdened since I’m giving you something the Duke left here arbitrarily. Technically, it’s like the Duke is giving it to you.”

“What kind of logic is that?”

Calon, who let out a laugh like air escaping at her sophistry, carefully tucked the tiny doll into his jacket’s inner pocket.

“If you like it, take everything here. It should be worth some money.”

Arinne tore off toys and decorations within her arm’s reach and piled them in front of Calon. Of course, Calon didn’t even consider it and refused immediately.