“Why did you hide the fact that you were engaged?”

“I wasn’t trying to hide it. I just…”

“Just what? You could have told me before you proposed! Or at least when you proposed! Or afterwards! But you didn’t say anything until we got to your house. How is that any different from hiding it?”

Her voice rang sharp and unyielding as they walked towards the drawing room. Visibly flustered, Calix tried to soothe her. The firm authority he had displayed earlier had completely disappeared, yet this did nothing to quell Aillen’s anger.

“It wasn’t an engagement I chose. It was merely an arrangement between our families. I was afraid that if you knew, you wouldn’t accept my proposal. I was foolish. I promise I’ll end the engagement before the ceremony.”

“You were right about one thing. I’m already regretting accepting your proposal.”

“Aillen, please… I swear I’ll break it off within this week—no, within two days.”

When the chill in her eyes did not soften, Calix hurriedly added.

“I forgot to tell you about the engagement, but I promise I haven’t done anything to embarrass you. I’ve known her since childhood – we’re practically siblings. She doesn’t want this marriage either.”

However, by not telling Aillen, Calix had effectively made her out to be a woman who stole a man who was already engaged to someone else.

Saying she hadn’t known no longer sounded like an excuse. Whatever the truth, it was clear that his mother believed her.

“Don’t speak so selfishly. If you truly cared about me, you would have told me.”

“Aillen…”

Harsher words rose to her lips, but she swallowed them. He and his mother had already had a bitter argument by the time they reached the drawing room.

Calix slipped an arm around her shoulders. She was still breathing heavily with anger, yet she did not immediately push him away. It wasn’t because he was looking at her with a pitiful expression. Nor was it because the room prepared for her — her room — was lavish and breathtakingly beautiful.

It was simply that she was too foolish to understand her own heart.

She convinced herself that she still loved him.

And so Aillen endured the days when Calix left her in that grand room alone, claiming he was busy, as though she were something to be stored away. He did not return.

His engagement to the woman he described as ‘like a sister’ did not last more than two days. It was broken off the very day Aillen arrived.

Yet the news brought her far less satisfaction than she had imagined.

Time drifted by in a haze of confusion.

Calix treated her no differently to the potted plants lined up neatly in his room.

He left her alone during the day, only appearing at night. The only time they spent together was during thirty minutes of courteous, measured conversation.

Aillen knew she was not an object. There was no reason for her to be treated this way, or to be confined and hidden away as though she needed to be kept out of sight.

Whenever she told Calix that she wanted to go out, he seemed to assume that she wanted to go with him. He would say that he was too busy and that they would go another time. Yet he never allowed her to go alone.

‘Why should I feel ashamed for not even being able to step outside by myself?’

Although she told herself that she could leave, she found that she could not. The memory of nearly being hit by a car on her first day was still too vivid and overwhelming.

Looking out of the enormous glass windows of the mansion, the road beyond seemed impossibly complex to someone new to the city. Cars and carriages moved in restless streams — there were too many things moving too fast and feeling too unfamiliar.

Her once boundless spirit of adventure began to flicker like a fragile candle flame. Under the watchful eyes of the estate’s staff, who regarded her as strange, and in a place where even stepping outside seemed an act of defiance, that flame slowly weakened.

Since arriving in Rinamoth, she had not written a single letter home. The oppressive atmosphere did not allow for such simple comforts.

Why had Calix proposed to her?

By the time she finally asked herself that question, the distance between them had already grown too great to bridge.

He was so consumed by work that catching even a glimpse of him had become rare. When he realized how unfamiliar she was with trivial things like the feel of imported rugs or the names of different glass chandeliers, he would look at her with faint displeasure. Sometimes, there was even something in his eyes that resembled regret.

She was not entirely blameless, either.

The same applied to his mother. Their relationship had never shown much promise, and the tension between them only grew as the days passed.

When it came to choosing tea sets, Aillen could not tell the difference between designs from Salem and Tanix. She had never lived a life that demanded such careful discernment. Yet his mother would deliberately ask for her opinion, and when she hesitated or faltered, she made no effort to hide her contempt.

“I see. I suppose I expected too much from a woman of the South.”

Aillen withered day by day.

It was several months after arriving in the North when she happened to overhear Calix arguing with his mother.

“Do you have any idea how much damage breaking off the engagement with the Inax family has caused us?”

“Please stop bringing up the past, Mother.”

“The past? It can still be put right. Be honest, son — you regret it too, don’t you? Just imagine holding an engagement ceremony with that Southern girl. Can you picture the kind of dress she’d choose? How would you face your sister and brother?”

“…I don’t regret it.”

“You’re too old to cling to childish stubbornness. Even adults make mistakes. Admit your mistake and correct it. Can’t you see the difference between you and that woman?”

Calix said nothing more.

But his silence spoke volumes.

Without bothering to soften her footsteps, Aillen turned and walked back to her room.

She had decided to leave the estate the very next day.

Lost in thought, she carelessly cut her finger on a butter knife. A sharp pain followed, and a thin line of blood appeared on her skin.

Pressing her bleeding finger to her palm, she wandered around the room in search of bandages. No matter how many times she circled the space, however, she could not remember where they were kept. Stepping cautiously into the hallway, she hoped for clarity, but her confusion only deepened.

A hollow laugh slipped from her lips.

She had been confined to this house for months, rarely venturing beyond its walls, yet she could not remember where to find even a single bandage.

Staring at the blood that had already dried and stiffened on her skin, Aillen thought…

‘I truly don’t belong here.’

She lay awake all night. Only then did she finally admit that ending the engagement was the only answer left.

It was foolish of her to examine her own heart only now.

She had never truly fallen for Calix.

She had just wanted to believe that she had.

The moment she acknowledged this, a strange sense of relief washed over her. There was no reason left to cling to him — or to the grand mansion that had begun to feel like a cage.

Nevertheless, when she reflected on her choices, a bitter aftertaste lingered. She needed fresh air and a change of scene.

She would return to the south and work at the inn for a while. Then she would save money and become independent.

Once she had made the decision, carrying it out felt simple.

Just before dawn, craving air that hadn’t been touched by the estate’s suffocating stillness, Aillen slipped outside unnoticed. She only meant to gather her thoughts beneath the open sky and find her resolve in the quiet.

What she did not know was that a car would come hurtling around the corner moments later.

It was as though it had been foretold from the day she first arrived in the north.

That her life would end like this.

They say that just before they die, a person sees their past.

‘Ah… my life was this foolish.’

‘And I won’t even be given the chance to undo it…’

Her green eyes disappeared beneath her closed eyelids.

Yes, she had definitely died.

Afternoon sunlight pressed warmly against her eyelids. Nevertheless, Aillen stubbornly refused to open them, as though keeping them shut might delay what came next.

But the sunlight would not relent. The chirping of sparrows beyond the window and the distant murmur of human voices drifted towards her, impossible to ignore. The last shred of her sanity tempted her to open her eyes and look beyond, to see what the afterlife truly looked like.

With quiet resignation, Aillen slowly opened her eyes.

Her green irises, brighter than the vines casting shifting shadows against the window, caught the light. The haze clouding her vision gradually lifted. She blinked once. Then again.

The scenery before her looked startlingly familiar.

It resembled the view she used to see from the small cabin behind the inn.

‘I must have come to heaven.’

If this was what awaited her after death, perhaps her life had not been so bad after all.

However, she soon realized that something was wrong.

***

Still unable to comprehend what was happening, Aillen blinked repeatedly.

Although she had never been particularly religious, she had always imagined that heaven or h*ll would await her after death.

However, she had never imagined heaven resembling the place where she had grown up so much.

She instinctively sensed that this was a moment that demanded composure — one of the rare moments in her life when she needed to stay calm.

Slowly, she pushed herself upright.

And then she froze.

Scratched across the wall were rough, uneven lines, like careless graffiti. They were height marks, recorded every six months. Her own mark, which had stopped at some point, was the lowest. Above that was Haila’s, and about a palm’s length higher still was Riman’s. The two of them were still growing.

Even if this were heaven, there would be no reason to recreate something so trivial. It was so painfully ordinary.

Aillen felt a chilling certainty settle into her bones.

Something was wrong.

The murmur of voices outside grew louder.

Then the cabin door swung open.

Familiar voices.

“Hey, let’s just not tell her.”

“No, Haila, even so… not telling her at all is a bit…”

“A bit what? Would you like it if she just left like that?”

“I don’t like it either… I really don’t… but she’ll find out anyway…”

“If she’s going to find out anyway, better that she finds out as late as possible. And leaves as late as possible.”

“Find out what?”

When Aillen suddenly spoke up, Haila and Riman finally seemed to notice that she was awake. They shrieked and took a step back, pretending to be shocked.

Their lack of effort to lower their voices, coupled with their exaggerated surprise at her waking up, was so absurd that laughter slipped from her without her realizing it.

Regardless of what had happened, she was simply glad to see them again.

“S-sister, you’re awake?”

“Sister… you could’ve slept more. It’s still morning.”

Riman glanced nervously at the window, through which sunlight streamed onto the floor as though ten baskets of it had been overturned all at once. Aillen pushed herself fully upright and smiled faintly.

“But what are you talking about? Where is this?”

She heard the faint rustle of fabric and instinctively lowered her gaze.

The plain, beige, chemise-style dress — washed pale by the light and simple and unadorned — was the same one she had worn the day she accepted the proposal.

Aillen’s face went rigid.

Across from her, the twins’ faces flickered with confusion.

A strange, almost absurd premonition brushed against her thoughts.

Perhaps she had been asking the wrong question.

Instead of asking where she was, perhaps she should have asked—

When she was.