Lena looked at Orzena who suddenly stopped speaking.

“Come to think of it…?”

“Ah, it’s nothing.”

Orzena waved her hand.

The two spent some time conversing about Delian.

Not long after, the Duke returned. Kicking the door open just as he had when he left.

“Sorry for leaving you alo— Mother?!”

Delian’s eyes widened. Orzena laughed softly, gently waving her hand.

Lena awkwardly rose from her seat and said.

“Welcome back.”

In that moment, Delian’s heart stirred. His mother smiling gently and Lena beside her, warmly greeting him. It was the ideal scene he had dreamed of.

Delian clenched his fist. He liked the current situation so much it made his throat dry.

So without even asking why Orzena was with Lena, he nodded deeply.

“Yes, I’m back.”

Seeing Delian’s reaction, Orzena’s smile deepened.

‘He must really like her.’

After suddenly returning from the academy, to think she would see her son, who had shown no trace of cuteness, acting this adorably again.

Orzena had Lena sit beside her again.

Lena wanted to ask where he had gone, but thinking it would be presumptuous, she simply looked at him quietly.

Orzena said.

“Dandel, I was just about to ask. To our Lena……”

“Our Lena?”

Delian hastily interrupted his mother’s words. Orzena answered casually.

“Yes, our Lena. Why?”

Red flowers bloomed on Lena’s cheeks. Finding it pretty, Orzena called her name once more.

“Is it strange to call our Lena our Lena?”

“Since when have you become so close?”

“Since just now. Right?”

Lena nodded hastily.

‘Our Lena……’

Even her birth mother had never called her so affectionately. The warm address warmed Lena’s heart.

“Anyway, I heard you made an interesting condition with our Lena?”

“Ah. Well, that’s how it turned out.”

Delian sat down with a thud, lacking dignity, and awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck.

“I heard you said entertaining you was the justification for staying at the ducal residence, right?”

Orzena kept feeling mischievous about her son’s romance. It was truly an adorable notion, considering how he acted as if just being together was so enjoyable he could die.

Orzena looked at Lena.

“What have you prepared, Lena?”

“Ah, actually……”

Encouraged by Orzena’s gentle gaze, Lena confessed honestly.

“I don’t really know. I… I was always alone at home…… So stories about what villagers supposedly did were the most entertaining stories I knew.”

At that moment, Delian realized that what Lena had said earlier was actually the result of tremendous effort.

He wanted to punch his past self in the face.

“And I’m not good at anything……”

As Lena fidgeted with her fingers, Orzena gave Delian a look. Urging him to say something.

Though interfering in her son’s romance wasn’t what a cool mother would do, she disliked seeing the little sparrow who might someday become her daughter-in-law get hurt more than she disliked not being a cool mother.

Delian cleared his throat at his mother’s gaze.

“You were good at storytelling.”

“…Pardon?”

“Storytelling, I mean storytelling.”

“Storytelling……?”

“Reading storybooks aloud… you did it entertainingly well.”

Lena blinked unconsciously.

She always used to read storybooks to Roberto. More than a hundred, even a thousand times.

Thanks to that, he had learned to read, so it could be called the only past memory that wasn’t sad even in retrospect.

When she was healthy, on sunny days, she would go outside and read books aloud.

But that was all in the distant past.

‘It’s been over 10 years, how does the Duke know about that?’

Just then, Orzena clapped her hands and said.

“Really? That’s fortunate. Actually, our Dandel has insomnia.”

“What?”

“What?”

Delian and Lena asked simultaneously.

Orzena glared at Delian as if asking why he was being so dense.

“Ah, yes. I have insomnia.”

Only then did Delian hastily agree.

“I’ve heard reading storybooks is so good for insomnia.”

Orzena drove the point home.

“If you read him stories every night, our Dandel would sleep so, so well. I’d be grateful if you could do that, what do you think?”

“Ah, but……”

When Lena hesitated, Orzena quickly stood up and massaged Dandel’s shoulders.

“Oh my, oh my, goodness. Look how tense these shoulders are. This is all because he can’t sleep, you know? Look at these shadows under his eyes too. He has so much work but can’t sleep…… I’m always worried about his health deteriorating. But I can’t stay up all night reading to him.”

“Ah, yes. That’s right, Mother. Actually, not being able to sleep well at night is really hard for me. I just haven’t shown it outwardly.”

They were quite the mother-son team.

Lena blinked and answered softly.

“If I… can be of help…… I mean, if I’m good enough… if that’s alright with you……”

At that moment, as if to prove they were mother and son, a gleam appeared in the eyes of the two who looked exactly alike.

With triumphant smiles, Orzena and Delian didn’t miss this opportunity.

In the end, Lena agreed to read storybooks to Delian every night.

❀❀❀

It had already been a week since she started reading storybooks to Delian. Come to think of it, it was already her tenth day at the House of Northdelion.

Every day at 10 PM, Delian would come to her room.

Since the purpose was to put him to sleep, it would make more sense for her to go to his room, but Delian insisted on coming to hers. Saying he couldn’t let her return to her room alone at night.

And after the storytelling was over, he would turn off the lights, wishing her good night.

But that was so scary that on the first night, she had to tell him the truth about why she had been outside her room.

Delian reassured her that even if she turned on a hundred lights in this room, it wouldn’t make the slightest difference, so she should feel free to keep as many lights on as she wanted.

And the next day, Lena had to work up a sweat stopping him from bringing in dozens more lamps.

And later she learned that this room had been completed a very long time ago, but no one had used it until now.

Joshua, the butler, told Lena that he had been curious about who would eventually use the room.

‘Is it alright for me to use a room that has an owner?’

After hearing those words, Lena became even more cautious in her daily life.

Today too, at exactly 10 PM, Delian knocked on the door.

“I’m coming in.”

“Yes, yes.”

Lena, who had been sitting in a daze, hurriedly stood up.

The book for Lena to read was always brought by Delian himself.

On the first day, it was “The Three Little Pigs,” on the second day, “The Little Mermaid,” on the third day, “Snow White,” and so on—different every day.

They were all incomparably prettier than the storybooks she used to read.

First of all, they were colored, and paper figures popped up with each turn of the page. So at twenty-three years old, she found joy in reading storybooks.

“What book is it today?”

“Hansel and Gretel.”

Delian’s hair was always wet, having just bathed in his room.

Delian naturally sat in front of her dressing table, and Lena stood behind him with a towel.

Delian entrusted his wet hair to her touch and rummaged through the dressing table.

“I told you to buy whatever you want.”

“I don’t want anything.”

Delian pouted.

On the first day of their storybook arrangement, despite the bitterly cold weather, Delian had appeared with wet hair.

Surprised by this, she had brought a towel to dry his hair, and since then, Delian always came to her with wet hair.

Lena worried that Delian seemed too busy to even dry his hair, but Delian was completely preoccupied with the fact that he could legally feel Lena’s touch.

Strangely, when Lena gently touched his hair, drowsiness would come over him.

Not only that, lying next to Lena and listening to the fairy tales read in her gentle voice made him not just drowsy but on the verge of collapsing with sleep.

Thanks to this, his non-existent insomnia completely disappeared, at least in her room.

‘But I wake up completely on my way back to my room.’

The problem came afterward. When he returned to his room, he felt so empty that he couldn’t fall asleep.

But sleeping together with Lena was still a bit difficult. For lower body reasons, among others.

And while coming and going from her room, Delian developed another concern.

He didn’t know what other ladies’ dressing tables looked like, but they couldn’t be as empty as hers.

“Still, why not fill it with something?”

“How could I do that, it’s someone else’s room.”

“…What?”

Their eyes met through the mirror.

“Who said that?”

“Butler Joshua.”

“That old man……”

Delian groaned inwardly.

As Lena said, this room did have an owner. And now that owner was living in it.

In other words, it had been Lena’s room from the beginning.

‘It’s your room, your room. If it weren’t your room, there’s no way the wallpaper and carpet would have been touched by my hand.’

Those words rose to the tip of his tongue, but Delian barely held back. He needed to reveal things slowly. He didn’t want to startle her and create distance.

Delian said.

“There’s no owner.”

“But Butler Joshua……”

“You misunderstood something. Or he confused it with another room. At least this room has no owner. So use it as you please.”

“Ah……”

“You have nowhere else to go anyway. Why not just live here for the rest of your life?”

He slipped in his true feelings at the end, but Lena shuddered and moved away.

“H-how could I dare……”

Lena was always like this. Just when she seemed to be getting comfortable, she would immediately draw a line for herself.

Delian hid his bitterness and waved his hand, saying it was a joke.

‘Was it wrong to say it was work and promise her a salary?’

Delian closed his eyes as he quietly received Lena’s touch.

He had promised Lena a maid’s salary. He had no choice when she told Penna she needed money and asked about job opportunities.

Keeping her with just a justification was insufficient.

So he gave her a little money through the storytelling arrangement, but she was planning her retirement with that paltry sum.

She said she would work hard and open a small shop in the village.

When he asked what kind of shop, she just said a shop. A shop that does anything, everything, because she didn’t know how to do anything specific.

It was absurd.

But seeing her reading books to him diligently to achieve that dream, he had nothing to say.