The air around Cardien settled heavily.

His eyes, staring at me, were cold as ice.

His firmly closed lips slowly parted.

“Sometimes I wonder. How do I appear in your eyes?”

It was a strange question.

How does he appear in my eyes?

That’s already established, isn’t it?

“Well… Your Grace is Your Grace.”

“What am I?”

No, why are you asking me that?

Is it like, ‘What do you know about me?’

I looked at him with a bewildered face, but Cardien’s expression as he questioned me was serious without a trace of humor.

Cardien seems a bit strange today.

‘Like that question earlier.’

Asking if I would run away if he liked me, asking what he is to me.

Unlike the Cardien I knew, he felt somewhat unfamiliar.

Hesitating because I didn’t know how to answer, I finally responded honestly.

“To me, Your Grace is…”

“….”

Cardien quietly stared at me.

I swallowed and said.

“My employer, a parent, my superior…”

“Enough, stop.”

As I listed them one by one, Cardien waved his hand, dismissing the need to hear more.

But I continued regardless.

“My savior.”

At that, he paused while turning his gaze to his documents and looked at me.

I smiled at him and said.

“The only person who can save my life. Therefore, my savior.”

“…It’s useless without the family heirloom anyway.”

“You said you would find it for me. Then you’ll find it and cure me.”

“…I can’t tell if you’re optimistic or just empty-headed.”

“I’m neither optimistic nor empty-headed. I just…”

“….”

“Simply believe in the person named Cardien.”

At that, Cardien looked at me with wide eyes.

I deliberately smiled more playfully and said.

“You told me to call you by your name.”

“…I didn’t really mean for you to actually call me that.”

“Words once spoken cannot be taken back. I just did as I was told.”

So I’m not at fault.

“Huh…”

Cardien laughed in disbelief.

Seeing this, I was secretly relieved.

‘He seems to be feeling a bit better.’

I don’t know why, but he seemed to be in a bad mood, so I provoked him lightly, and it seems to have worked.

I looked at him with a smiling face and then spoke with a serious expression.

“And about what Your Grace said.”

“…?”

“About whether I would run away if Your Grace liked me.”

“That’s enough now…”

“I’ll think about it.”

At my continued words, he slowly closed his lips and stared at me.

‘Honestly, I still don’t understand why he asked such a question.’

If it really wasn’t a joke.

“It’s difficult to answer right now. I’ve never imagined it, and it’s hard to imagine.”

Above all, I don’t know with what intention Cardien threw such a question.

“…”

“But if it wasn’t just a casual remark from Your Grace, I’ll think about it seriously. So, may I give you my answer later?”

Surely he wouldn’t say no?

He wouldn’t demand an answer right now, would he?

Instead of an immediate answer, Cardien stared at me with purple eyes that made it impossible to know what he was thinking.

Eventually, his lips parted.

“…As you wish.”

His voice was particularly low and rough.

Having gained a reprieve, I smiled brightly and said.

“Thank you.”

For a moment, I wondered if this was something to be thankful for.

Whatever the reason, the great Duke Mercedes, His Grace, is waiting for me, so it is indeed something to be grateful for.

“…You’re thankful for the strangest things.”

He muttered, regarding me with puzzlement, shifting his gaze to his documents.

But is it just my imagination?

‘He seems to be in a good mood.’

Cardien seemed to be in a good mood.

He wasn’t smiling or humming, but I could just feel it.

The heavy air around him seemed to have softened.

Why is that?

‘I really can’t understand. The psychology of the villain.’

Well, let’s just take it as a good thing.

I looked at Cardien, brushing it off lightly.

And I knew it was time to get to the main point.

I carefully spoke to him.

“Your Grace, do you remember the dream you had last time?”

At my question, Cardien replied indifferently.

“You mean that dream that consumed ten days of my time?”

“Yes, that’s right, that dream. Do you remember the content of that dream?”

If that dream really was Cardien’s erased past, maybe he remembered something after seeing it.

“I remember. I repeated a month in that dream.”

That’s right.

The time in reality was ten days, but Cardien said that a month had passed in the dream.

“It was a miserable nightmare.”

As if recalling that dream, wrinkles formed between Cardien’s straight brows.

I was nodding, but then stopped.

“A nightmare?”

My questioning voice was filled with puzzlement.

Of course, it could be called a nightmare.

After all, the young Cardien in the dream was shunned and isolated until the last moment.

But…

‘Wasn’t it also the first time Cardien received help?’

Of course, I don’t know all of Cardien’s past, so there might have been someone else who helped him before that girl.

But even so, the young Cardien in the dream received help from the girl just before dying.

Could it be…

‘Did he think he was betrayed at the end?’

Is that why Cardien determined that dream to be a nightmare?

Somehow, I felt a surge of emotion.

Cardien saw it too. That she had no choice.

Feeling unjustly upset, I defended her.

“As Your Grace knows, that girl had no choice. She never betrayed Your Grace…”

But I couldn’t continue.

“What girl?”

Something seems off.

“What girl are you talking about?”

“What? The one who helped Your Grace when you collapsed…”

Then Cardien sneered, clearly finding it ridiculous.

“Helped? Who?”

“….”

Cardien’s expression was so cold as he spoke that I couldn’t bring myself to talk about the girl.

Looking at me intently, he picked up his documents.

As if this conversation was uncomfortable.

“It seems you and I had different dreams.”

“That’s…”

I was about to say that couldn’t be possible, but I froze at Cardien’s next words.

“In that dream, I kept dying.”

“…What did you say?”

My heart sank at Cardien’s shocking words.

When I asked again with an incredulous face, he spoke again in a voice as dry as a desert.

“I died. In the alley. Buried in the snow without moving.”

“…That can’t be.”

“I don’t know what you saw to be so certain, but I watched that death more than thirty times. I died all night, and when the sun rose, time went back, and I died again.”

Until you appeared.

Cardien quietly added.

I couldn’t believe his words at all.

But there’s also no reason for Cardien to lie to me.

‘Then what did I see?’

The owner of that dream is clearly Cardien.

I entered the dream that Cardien was having, so why is the content of the dream different?

But what’s clear is that Cardien was trapped there, forced to watch himself die repeatedly.

‘…That’s terrible.’

While I’m shuddering, Cardien continued speaking as if he were used to it.

“It seems your theory that dreams reflect the past is wrong. If I had died there then, I couldn’t exist now.”

Died, dying.

The word “death” kept coming from Cardien’s mouth, and it bothered me.

‘It keeps reminding me of the original story.’

The image of Cardien dying miserably in the original story kept coming to mind.

As if someone were making a prediction.

That no matter how much you struggle, you cannot prevent the villain’s death.

It’s disturbing.

Yes, it’s disturbing.

“Even the clever tutor can be wrong sometimes-“

Just as Cardien was speaking playfully with a hint of humor.

“I wasn’t wrong.”

I stared at Cardien with intensity in my eyes.

Cardien looked at me with a slightly surprised expression.

I don’t know why the dream Cardien saw and the dream I saw have different content.

But at least, I couldn’t bear to see Cardien speaking self-deprecatingly about his own death anymore.

So I…

“In the dream I saw, Your Grace did not die.”

“….”

“In the dream I saw, Your Grace was saved.”

I decided to tell him what I had seen instead.

The story of the moment he was saved, which might have been the first time.