And then, slowly, slowly.

She stroked his hair. Just like petting a dog’s head.

“……?”

“…Oh.”

The Duke’s face, as he slowly turned his head, filled with shock. Lena’s face was also full of surprise.

“…What are you doing?”

“Ah, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to……”

“Ha… what?”

Lena hurriedly withdrew her hand.

The Duke stared at her blankly as if dumbfounded.

Lena bowed her head deeply in fear. Just then, she heard a “huh” sound of hollow laughter from above her head.

Lena’s heart pounded.

‘This time I might really die.’

She couldn’t understand why she had done that.

‘But somehow… he really seemed like a dog……’

Though the nuance was a bit strange, it was truly like that.

Lena tightly gripped her wrist that had stroked the Duke’s hair.

The Duke calmly gazed at her. Her shoulders trembled intermittently, perhaps from fear, making him feel sorry for her.

The Duke ruffled his hair where Lena had stroked it.

‘I didn’t mean to frighten her……’

Perhaps because it had been a while since they met, he kept scaring her. Delian disliked himself for this and unconsciously clicked his tongue.

Seeing Lena flinch at that sound, Delian resolved not to click his tongue anymore.

“I don’t know why you did it but… do it again.”

“…Pardon?”

“I said do it again.”

Not ‘do it one more time and you die’?

He dutifully lowered his head toward Lena.

What was she possessed by? Lena placed her hand again on the black hair that looked so fluffy and soft. It was brief but extremely soft.

When the Duke showed no reaction, Lena gently stroked his hair.

‘He really… is like a dog.’

As her hand relaxed from its tension, Lena began to stroke the Duke’s hair in earnest.

Delian felt strange.

It somehow made him feel stable, relaxed, calm…… In short, it felt good.

So much so that he unconsciously thought, ‘Hmm, I should have her do this occasionally.’

After stroking for some time, Lena called to him.

“Umm……”

Lena’s arm was starting to ache.

The Duke, coming to his senses, pulled his head away from under her hand.

“Do you have a place to go?”

“…Pardon?”

“I’m asking if you have somewhere to go.”

“…Ah.”

She was a being offered as a sacrifice.

‘A place to go……’

Though she hadn’t told the Duke, she was a terminally ill person abandoned even by her family.

Lena slowly shook her head.

“I don’t… have one. A place to go……”

The Duke stared at her blankly.

The Duke didn’t ask about her family. Lena found this both very grateful and puzzling.

‘I don’t even want to think about it.’

The Duke said.

“Then live here.”

“…Pardon?”

“You really seem to only know how to say ‘Pardon?’ Live here, I said.”

“…Pardon?”

“What are you thinking so much with that small head? It all seems like useless thoughts.”

The Duke grumbled that he would develop a neurosis from all the “Pardon?”s.

“Live here. There are plenty of rooms.”

“B-but I……”

She was terminally ill. Because of her fatal disease, she couldn’t provide labor. If she couldn’t work, she couldn’t stay anywhere. That was common sense.

The only reason they hadn’t abandoned her despite her fatal disease was because they were family.

‘No, did they abandon me……’

Lena frowned slightly, feeling bitter.

“What’s the problem?”

“I… have circumstances that prevent me from working……”

“Who asked you to work?”

“But if I don’t work, I can’t live anywhere……”

“Why can’t you?”

“……”

“When I, a Duke, tell you to live in the ducal residence. Why.”

Why can’t you live here, he asked.

But Lena couldn’t take his words at face value. It wasn’t acceptable by her common sense.

Yet the Duke was completely overturning Lena’s common sense.

To her hesitation, Delian said.

“If it bothers you that much, then work.”

“But as I said, I cannot work……”

“You can at least talk, can’t you? You seemed good at it earlier.”

“That’s……”

Lena stared blankly at the Duke who dismissed her rudeness as “being good at talking.”

“You can tell me interesting stories. Be my conversation partner.”

“…Pardon?”

“Stop with that ‘Pardon?’ and say something to entertain me. Yes, let’s make that your justification.”

“That’s absurd……”

When Lena muttered quietly, the Duke raised his hand, telling her to listen.

“Entertaining me will be quite difficult. It might be more arduous than anything you’ve done in your life. I provide you a place to live, and you do the ‘job’ of entertaining me. How about it.”

His words were full of holes, but there was no reason to refuse. She didn’t have a choice to begin with.

The Duke, secretly admiring his own brilliant wit, urged her to answer.

“Answer.”

“Yeees……”

“Then I look forward to working with you.”

“Ah, um… I’m the one who should be grateful……”

“No need for thanks. Entertaining me will be very difficult, after all.”

The Duke grinned. His mouth corners lifted enough to show his sharp canines, but somehow he gave off more of a boyish impression than the fierce feeling she had first perceived.

Delian extended his hand. When Lena remained dazed, the Duke pulled her hand and held it.

“Don’t you know a handshake?”

“Ah, a handshake?”

She didn’t know.

The Duke held Lena’s seemingly dubious hand and shook it.

And so Lena came to live in the ducal household on the condition that she would entertain the Duke.

❀❀❀

That evening. Perhaps because she had slept too long, Lena couldn’t fall asleep easily.

‘I can’t sleep……’

Far from being drowsy, Lena stared at the ceiling with a mind that grew clearer as time passed.

‘Too many things happened all at once.’

The family she believed loved her had sold her, and she had left the small room she had never escaped from to live in a ducal household.

She experienced the events of a lifetime in just one day.

To push away her thoughts to a corner, Lena tossed and turned, lying on her side.

‘But the Duke… doesn’t seem like a bad person at all.’

She had thought this consistently since meeting the Duke.

Although his overall fierce appearance resembled a beast, and his behavior was so rough that not a trace of nobility could be found, he didn’t seem like a bad person.

For starters, the way he spoke casually with Penna, the lady’s maid.

‘Plus he saved me… let me live here…… Doesn’t ask questions…… Maybe he really, really is a good person.’

Thinking this way made her feel a little relieved. Indeed, what lord would directly intervene in a bullying incident within a village?

‘Though asking me to entertain him is a bit strange……’

She had been caught up in it unexpectedly, but the result was very good for her.

She didn’t have to return to her family who had betrayed and sold her.

‘Yes, that’s something.’

Just for that alone, the Duke was already a good enough person to her.

Lena closed her eyes.

A sharp face wearing an eyepatch rose hazily before her, staring directly at Lena. Golden eyes exactly like the wolf’s eyes she had once read about in a fairy tale.

‘I wonder how tall he is.’

He was extremely tall. It wasn’t just because Lena’s seated perspective was low.

‘Delian… what does it mean?’

Lena didn’t realize it, but she kept thinking about the Duke.

They say the more you think, the further sleep drifts away.

That was exactly her situation. Sleep, which didn’t come easily to begin with, had now completely fled.

Lena finally sat up in bed. Not feeling sleepy at all, sitting alone in the dark place made her automatically think of the shabby house where she lived with her family.

‘Of course, this room is incomparably more luxurious than back then.’

The blanket with a nice smell was fluffy, and the bed was so soft that no matter how much she tossed and turned, the cotton didn’t clump.

All these things told her that she was in a ducal household, not a shabby house.

Then suddenly, a vague fear came over her.

‘Especially this pitch darkness……’

The room where she had been virtually imprisoned for 10 years after receiving her terminal diagnosis, that space that was always dark, remained a trauma for her.

The light leaking through the door crack felt like the warm cheerfulness of her family that she would sit alone in the room envying. It was one of the moments she suffered the most.

Once recognized, the fear swelled and brought anxiety with it.

Her fingers trembled.

Though it was impossible, it felt as if her family might open that door at any moment.

And then they would say such luxurious extravagance didn’t suit her, and throw her back into that dark and lonely room.

Lena hurriedly got up and turned on the lamp. The lamp brightened with a single gesture. It was a magical tool unimaginable to ordinary farmers.

Lena clutched the bluish-glowing lamp as if it were a lifeline.

That alone was reassuring, and she found herself breathing heavily.

‘What should I do.’

Dark places were poison to her. The comfort of darkness, the peace of night no longer remained in her life.

Lena instinctively felt this and fell into brief despair.

She had heard that magical tools cost enormous amounts the longer they were activated.

So her holding the lamp like this would be equivalent to pouring tremendous amounts of money by the second.

‘But I hate the darkness so much.’

Lena fiddled with the lamp switch looking for candles to light, but there were none to be found.

The light leaking through the door crack that frightened her was also from a magical lamp.

The cost of the lamp wouldn’t make even a speck of impact on the ducal household’s finances, but she didn’t know this fact.

Lena fiddled with the lamp for a long time. Her shoulders would tremble whenever the lamp’s light dimmed even slightly, so she couldn’t muster the courage to turn it off.

After pondering, she decided to take drastic measures.

“Let’s go outside.”

Lena turned off the lamp and hurriedly went out to the corridor before darkness could be felt. Though the marble corridor had not a bit of warm coziness, her mind was at ease.

‘Cold is better than dark.’

A moment later, Lena regretted not bringing a robe. But she didn’t have the courage to return to the room with no light.

With no other choice, Lena leaned against the door and slid down to sit.

The cold chill of the marble passed through her thin clothes without difficulty. Her bottom was cold, but it wasn’t unbearable.

Lena hugged her skinny shoulders and buried her face between her arms.