‘No time for wild guesses.’

She shook her head, smoothed her hair, and hurried out of the shop with her boxes.

*

Rowella’s house was far grander than Shiloh had imagined. The white, ornate stone manor resembling a small castle and its immaculately kept gardens reeked of money.

Rowella’s family had originally been minor nobility in the moneylending business. They had little standing in aristocratic society, but a wildly successful trade investment had sent them soaring. Her father, Count Erald, was even on close terms with the principal of the National Magic Academy, which was reason enough for their peers to treat Rowella with care.

When Shiloh arrived, Rowella was nowhere to be seen. The butler and several maids who greeted her remarked that it had been a long time and bowed to her politely.

“It’s been a while, Miss.”

“Hello.”

“This way, please.”

After exchanging stiff pleasantries, Shiloh looked up and flinched. On the wall hung a painting of a bird struck by an arrow, flesh torn and bleeding.

She quickly looked away and followed the butler.

The maids plated the cookies and bread Shiloh had brought onto the parlor table according to her instructions. The sweet, nutty scent of freshly baked goods drifted beneath the ornate chandelier hanging from the high ceiling.

“Please make yourself comfortable.”

“Thank you.”

Shiloh sat carefully in a parlor chair, her face tense. There were still about two hours before the formal tea party was to begin. Even so, she thought it was too much of Rowella to invite her and then not show her face, and she sat with her eyes downcast, lost in thought.

Time passed.

Guests in fine dress began arriving one by one through the entrance. Among them, Shiloh’s eyes met those of a blonde young man. He looked away immediately, without a word of greeting. She found it odd, but before she could dwell on it, others came over and spoke to her warmly.

“Oh my, isn’t that Shiloh?!”

“Is it true you opened a bakery? What about the Academy?”

The people who gathered around her were unfamiliar faces, but she gathered from context that they were academy classmates.

“Yes. I opened a confectionery. All the bread here is made by me.”

“You made it yourself?”

“Yes.”

Her classmates fell silent and exchanged stunned glances with one another.

Shiloh’s eyes met the blonde young man’s again. His hair was neatly combed back, and he carried himself with a calm air, but in that brief moment their eyes met, something unreadable flickered in his amber gaze.

‘Did something happen between us? Why does he keep looking without saying anything?’

She pushed the thought aside. Shiloh picked up a lemon cupcake from the table and looked around at her friends.

“Want to try a lemon cupcake?”

“……”

Her friends glanced at her uncertainly and put the bread in their mouths.

Slowly, as they chewed their pieces of cupcake with rolling eyes, surprise spread across their faces like a wave.

“It’s bright and light and……”

“It’s so soft!”

“Can I have another one?”

Their enthusiastic reactions made Shiloh’s eyes curve into crescents.

“Anytime. If you like it, spread the word.”

She said it with a bright expression.

“I’d love to serve this to guests at our next tea party!”

Exclamations were coming from all directions when an odd sensation made Shiloh look up. From the entrance to the parlor, she locked eyes with Rowella.

She had half expected it, but there was a man beside her who appeared to be Peter.

The two of them seemed to be dressed in matching outfits in green. Rowella, in a green silk dress studded with jewels across the chest, took Peter’s arm, his green jacket paired with a black cravat, straightened her back, and walked toward her with measured steps.

Shiloh gave Peter a quick look. Pale skin beneath amber hair, round blue eyes…… he had the fragile look of a nervous herbivore, his features slightly crowded together, though not unhandsome.

‘Not my type.’

Peter had never been her real ex-boyfriend, so seeing him brought no racing heart, no weakness in the knees, no emotional disturbance of any kind. He did, however, remind her of the cheating ex from her previous life, and her expression soured involuntarily. Rowella had the same effect on her.

Shiloh drew her shoulders in and glanced down, needlessly smoothing the front of her plain beige dress.

‘So she invited me to stage this little scene.’

Her expression was hardening as she bit her lip, but she made a conscious effort to straighten her back. Just then, Rowella caught her eye and her clear, ringing voice cut through the awkward air of the parlor.

“How long has it been?”

Rowella sat down close beside Shiloh and pulled one of her hands into both of hers.

“Rowella, do you want to try Shiloh’s lemon cupcake? Her skill is remarkable.”

“Hmm?”

Yielding to the insistence of the other classmates, Rowella accepted the lemon cupcake someone handed her. She put a piece on a fork, placed it in her mouth, and tasted it with an unimpressed expression. A brief flicker of surprise crossed her blue eyes, but she quickly composed herself, squeezed Shiloh’s hand tighter, and made a pitying face.

“You’ve had such a hard time!”

“……”

“I can only imagine how desperate you must have been to work this hard at learning to bake, something the maids do, just to dream of making money from it.”

“I’m simply doing what I enjoy.”

Shiloh replied with a flat expression.

“You don’t have to put on a brave face in front of me.”

Shiloh’s brow furrowed faintly at the feel of Rowella’s hand stroking her back.

“……”

A subtle tension had been building between Shiloh and Rowella when Rowella suddenly slapped her knee as if remembering something.

“Oh, right! We’re going on a trip to the seaside to celebrate graduating from the Academy. Want to come? Everyone here said yes except you.”

The classmates’ mouths fell open at Rowella’s breezy suggestion. Inviting her to a gathering that included the man who had broken off their engagement was nothing short of an act of cruelty.

“No. I’m not interested.”

Shiloh refused without hesitation, and an uncomfortable silence settled over the room.

“How embarrassing for me.”

Rowella twisted her lips in an awkward smile, but Shiloh ignored her and changed the subject.

“Where’s the bathroom?”

Rowella responded with an imperious tilt of her chin toward one of the maids.

“Show her!”

Shiloh stood up abruptly, eager to escape the suffocating room. She turned and was about to leave the parlor when voices murmured behind her.

“Rowella, you and Peter aren’t really like the rumors say, are you?”

“Honestly. I was shocked she invited Shiloh.”

The classmates had only known that Shiloh and Peter’s engagement had ended, so his appearance beside Rowella was bound to raise eyebrows.

“Well…… you never know how things will go between a man and a woman.”

At Rowella’s words, Shiloh stopped mid-step.

Her hand tightened around the fabric of her skirt.

She gave the maid a quick look that said wait a moment.

Then a sorrowful voice drifted from the parlor.

“The truth is, after Shiloh disappeared without a word when things got hard, Peter suffered terribly. I did my best to listen and comfort him. Then one day he confessed that he had feelings for me. He said I had healed him and his heart had grown. But he held back because of Shiloh…… he couldn’t give me an answer. Because she was my closest friend……”

Rowella sent Peter a look, and Peter nodded vigorously.

“Y, yes…… Rowella’s right.”

Shiloh was speechless at Rowella’s artful framing. She was distorting the truth to make it sound as though Shiloh had abandoned him when things were at their worst.

Having read the novel, she saw straight through Rowella better than anyone. She knew that festering jealousy toward her friend had driven Rowella to take her friend’s man as well. And Peter was going along with the lie.

“I’m worried about Shiloh, but I…… I believe she’ll understand us. She’s always been so understanding and big-hearted, hasn’t she?”

Rowella’s clever manipulation of the narrative pushed Shiloh past the last of her patience. The rage she had never properly expressed toward the cheating ex and the friend who had betrayed her in her previous life felt ready to erupt right here.

‘I can’t take any more of this.’

Shiloh walked back into the parlor with steady, deliberate steps toward the classmates seated around the room.

The original Shiloh had endured in silence, like a fool, the wounds inflicted by people who barely deserved to be called human. Perhaps the real Shiloh would have overlooked even this moment, for Peter’s sake.

But she had no desire to do that.

‘Disgusting people.’

Shiloh appeared at Rowella’s side before she knew it, looking down at her with cool eyes and a startled expression on Rowella’s face.

“I think I need to set the facts straight.”

“Set the facts straight? Is there anything that needs straightening?”

Rowella blinked with shameless composure.

Shiloh stared deliberately at that infuriating face she wanted to slap.