“Stars.”

“Yes, stars. You can see them best from here.”

Alisa took the lantern out of Eden’s bag and lit it, then spread out the picnic mat and laid out the food. Eden looked over everything she had packed with clear intention and asked:

“Just to be sure — there’s no risk of wild animals coming, is there?”

“It’s fine. The most dangerous thing around here is a cat.”

“That’s a relief.”

The tension in Eden’s face, lit by the lantern, finally eased. Alisa watched him sitting there stiffly, then flopped down on the mat and lay on her back.

“You know. I had clothes I was keeping to wear when you came.”

“Is that so.”

“But they got completely soaked in the rain today. If you’d come just one day later they would have dried……”

Eden looked down at Alisa from where he sat on the mat with a suspicious expression.

“That rain wasn’t because of you, was it?”

“It was, but…… I didn’t know it would happen then. It just sort of turned out that way.”

“So something must have happened in the meantime that called for stopping time.”

“Hmm…… I’d rather not say.”

Alisa thought for a moment, then shook her head. But something about that answer seemed to catch Eden’s attention, and he pressed on with more persistence.

“Tell me. I might be able to help.”

“You? No. This is something even a prince can’t help with.”

“Saying it so flatly only makes me want to hear it more. If it’s a money problem, I can obviously help. If it’s a friend problem, that might be a bit harder. If you want a fake friend, come to my time. I’ll find you someone to talk to.”

“I have friends!”

“Is that so.”

“It’s true!”

“All right, I believe you.”

There was not a scrap of sincerity in Eden’s reply. Alisa fell silent with a sulky expression, and Eden asked with a resigned look:

“Fine, then. What’s your friend’s name.”

“……”

“You don’t know?”

Alisa, lips pressed firmly together, called out the first name that came to mind.

“Ro, Roben.”

“……You don’t actually believe that’s a real name, do you? Have you been getting swindled?”

“No, we even had dinner together today.”

“How old is he.”

Alisa pressed her lips shut again. Eden, who had been listening with mild interest, looked down at her with genuinely startled eyes this time.

“Don’t tell me you don’t know this either.”

“He’s, maybe, five years older than me?”

“You don’t know. And five years — unless he’s playing with an eight-year-old, that means eighteen or older, which means you don’t even know his identity properly. Dinner for two? At his home?”

“Well……”

Eden stared at Alisa with an expression of pure disbelief.

Of course, it wasn’t as though Alisa had nothing to say. The concerns Eden was raising were the same ones she had worried about herself. But that strange sensation she had felt just before crossing the footbridge — she couldn’t explain it.

Right at a moment like this, when the rain stopped and the sun came out, their eyes had met. It had been so brief she couldn’t even be sure she had seen it properly, but…… in that moment, she had needed to cross that bridge and face the man in the black top hat.

Alisa stayed quiet with an uncertain expression, and Eden, apparently having reached some kind of misunderstanding, sighed.

“Do you like him?”

“What?”

“I’m asking if you like that man.”

Alisa’s face went red in an instant.

Eden seemed to decide that simply throwing the question out wasn’t going to work, because he lay down flat beside Alisa on the mat. His hair, slightly damp from the rain, spread across the picnic mat.

He looked at Alisa’s face with a serious expression and said:

“Well, that can happen. They say people tend to be drawn to older people when they’re young.”

“You’re young too, you idiot!”

“No, I’m a prince, and you’re not, so it’s different.”

“How is that so different……”

“I already know roughly when and who I’ll marry. I haven’t been formally betrothed yet, but there aren’t many suitable matches of the right age for me. So I don’t need to think about that kind of…… thing.”

That kind of thing? What kind? Romantic advice?

While Alisa was still confused, Eden opened his mouth with the look of someone who had made up his mind.

“Right, tell me. I’ll listen. What’s it like when you see him? Does it, you know, feel like that?”

“Wh, what do you mean ‘like that.'”

“You’d know.”

Alisa swallowed. With Eden pressing her so seriously, she found herself looking back on the past without meaning to.

“……No. It’s really not like that. He’s just a good person. I’ve known him since I was even younger……”

“Don’t brush it off because you don’t want to say it.”

“It really isn’t! The person I like is someone more like you……”

Alisa froze. Eden’s mouth snapped shut along with her.

“……”

“……”

“Alisa…… you mean me……”

“Th, that’s……”

Alisa tried to recover, but it was too late. Eden was already nodding. It would have been easier to deal with if he had laughed it off or teased her, but his face was entirely serious.

Eden turned to face her completely. He propped one arm under his head and spoke in a low voice.

“I’m sorry, but I already have a betrothed. It was arranged before I was even born.”

“……”

“Even apart from that — we can’t meet whenever we want, can we. You know that too, don’t you?”

Alisa felt a surge of emotion rise in her chest. She had known there would be someone more fitting for this distinguished prince. But hearing it from Eden’s own lips made it hurt in a way she couldn’t help.

And the part about not being able to meet whenever they wanted.

That was entirely true as well.

It had only been luck that they could meet again this time — their very first meeting could have been the last. She knew. She knew it well enough.

‘Then why does my chest feel so tight and why am I so upset?’

Like someone caught wanting something beyond their reach, startled and flustered……

“Alisa.”

“……”

“Are you angry?”

Eden suddenly shoved his face in front of hers while she was still breathing in short, sharp bursts. Alisa startled and swung her hand forward. Eden’s eyes went wide as he took a smack right on the forehead.

“You!”

“S, s, sorry!”

Alisa bolted upright and grabbed the lantern. She peered at Eden’s forehead with it, fussing anxiously, then blew a soft breath — hoo — on the spot.

“It’s gone red…… what do I do. I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.”

“No……”

Alisa made a distressed face and rubbed his forehead with both hands. She kept blowing on it gently as she tried to soothe it.

Eden had been squirming and saying it was fine, but he soon went quiet. He had his eyes squeezed shut and his fists clenched. His chest wasn’t rising and falling — he seemed to be holding his breath.

“Eden…… are you all right?”

“……For now, it would be better if you…… stepped back a little.”

The subdued voice was unfamiliar. It was the voice of someone standing with one foot between boyhood and something older.

“It hurts, Alisa.”

“……What?”

Alisa realized she had been so focused on checking his forehead that she had her hand pressed against his chest. But she hadn’t been pressing hard enough to hurt……

She drew back slightly and found her palm wet. Her hand, lit by the lantern, was dark red.

“E, Eden, here…… you’re bleeding.”

“It’s fine. It’s nothing.”

“Nothing!”

Alisa drew a sharp breath and reached forward. She loosened his waist belt and lifted the doublet. Wrapped tightly around his right side was a bandage. Blood had soaked through it heavily. It looked like it needed to be changed.

“How did you get hurt. This badly, this……”

“……”

“Why didn’t you say anything. If I’d known you were hurt this badly, I wouldn’t have brought you all the way out here……”

“Exactly.”

The mouth Eden had been keeping stubbornly shut fell open.

“That’s why I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to be stuck in bed being treated like an invalid here too.”

The voice that scraped out of his throat was pained. Each word was pressed down deliberately, and the effort to keep his feelings in check was unmistakable.

Eden had his head turned to the side, breathing hard. His lowered eyelids trembled faintly. His blue eyes, swallowed by the dark, looked more like the sea than the sky. They crumpled as though tears were about to fall, then dried again.

The emotion Alisa read in his profile, lit by the lantern, was something she knew well. It was also something she had never once imagined she would find in a noble prince.

Humiliation. Shame. A deep revulsion toward the helplessness rooted inside him — the kind that couldn’t be overcome by willpower alone.