“……Lu. It’s fine if you go mad.”

He was sincere.

Lu not being in his right mind wasn’t a matter of just a day or two.

But one thing.

“Give up your attachment to the Andis people. You know, don’t you? That they won’t come even if you wait.”

Silence built up solidly.

“You need to find another human. For your sake……”

Ratol couldn’t continue his words for a moment, then parted his heavy lips again.

“……you need someone who will die for you.”

It was a very small voice.

But it was also words that pierced his heart like thorns, impossible not to hear.

“……Then rest.”

When Ratol left the bathroom, the silence became even more distinct.

Lu opened his closed eyes.

He knew it too.

Even though only a hundred years had passed, there wasn’t a single face he knew in Andis.

Kudkan wasn’t a figure from that era either.

Kudkan Mahof Dnu.

He was an Andis person who faintly possessed his lineage, and a descendant of Riman Lefson Dnu who looked exactly like him.

But whether it was Kudkan or Riman, nothing mattered.

He hadn’t gone to Andis to kill someone with the lineage in the first place.

It was an excuse.

A small excuse to stop by there.

Yet the moment he saw Kudkan, the urge to kill arose because of his face that looked exactly like Riman’s as he slept peacefully.

I’m still trapped in emptiness like punishment, while he sleeps peacefully.

—You need to find another human.

Suddenly, Ratol’s voice left in his ears shattered the silence.

—Just one person who will die for you.

Lu smiled loosely.

A beautiful smile was falling over the cheap fake that shone clumsily.

***

After the plague passed through the land of Andis, when Jane returned to Febrya after treating the remaining patients, about four months had passed.

Upon her return, she immediately received a position higher than the court’s first pharmacist.

The title was Honorary Researcher.

In the process, the damn emperor had a face that said ‘If it weren’t for the secretary, I would have ignored the medicine preparation!’ even while bestowing the position.

It didn’t matter at all.

The faces Jane wanted to see were already scattered everywhere.

This can’t be happening.

This is impossible.

Jane, who glanced over her pale-faced fellow pharmacists, felt thrilled enough to make her hair stand on end.

Ah.

I became the head pharmacist desperately to see those faces.

But only today…… I get to see them?

Jane wanted to call the court painter to carefully draw each of her dumbfounded colleagues one by one. It was such a delightful picture to imagine that she had to suppress the giggles that kept escaping.

Everything was satisfactory except for one thing.

Haim’s absence.

Haim, who was supposed to have returned before Jane came back to Febrya, had gone on an assignment to another battlefield right after returning.

If Haim had been here……

Jane’s thoughts were sinking low when,

“……This concludes the conferment ceremony.”

With the emperor’s final words, the Honorary Researcher conferment ceremony ended. It was a ceremony that ended quietly without a single clap.

When she came outside, a cool autumn breeze blew.

Jane entered her assigned private research room and organized the plaque she had received.

When she opened both windows, the autumn scent rushed in. She leaned against the white wall. The clean research room was so spacious that it couldn’t all be seen at a glance.

Jane muttered softly.

“It seems a bit too spacious.”

But she immediately shook her head.

I should work, she thought as she headed toward the court forest.

Not knowing that something that would completely change her future was there.

***

While the red sunset was busily coloring the court forest, Jane was crouched under a tree, gathering medicinal herbs.

When her basket was somewhat full, she stretched her neck back as if it were stiff. Clusters of figs caught her eye.

They were Jane’s favorite fruit.

She slyly looked around and picked up an appropriately sized stone and threw it with all her might. The stone neatly missed.

Jane threw stones several more times.

While stumbling, a fig rolled down from the stone she threw. She was about to wipe the fig on her sleeve and take a bite when….

She instinctively turned her body at a gaze she felt from somewhere.

A bird……?

Where her gaze reached, there was a black bird caught in a trap lying in the bushes.

For a moment, Jane’s brow furrowed strangely.

She glanced at the herb basket beside her, then lifted her feet that had been staying on the ground and approached the black bird.

Step by step.

Jane sat next to the black bird.

And she carefully examined the trap caught on the bird’s ankle. It was an old trap. Old enough that it would come loose with just a touch.

Jane’s gaze that had been on the trap reached the black bird’s blue eyes.

“……You weren’t dead after all?”

She had thought it might be dead because the bird wasn’t moving at all. But when she got close and looked, it was slowly blinking its eyelids.

Especially its eyes.

They sparkled too much to say it had reached death.

They were jewel-like eyes that seemed to contain the clear sky, the dazzling sunlight on a lake, all the blue in this world created by divine power.

She felt déjà vu.

As if she had seen them somewhere before.

But the bird lying under her gaze was definitely a type of bird she was seeing for the first time.

Jane ignored the unsettling déjà vu and took a bite of the fig she was holding. She tasted a subtle sweetness.

However, her mood didn’t improve.

Far from improving, it became unpleasantly bad beyond measure.

The source of the unpleasantness was the black bird.

Jane looked at the black bird and recalled the things she liked.

Shade.

A bug caught in a spider web.

A bare winter tree.

The things she liked had their own reasons for existing.

Where there was shade, there was light, and the bug caught in the spider web had the instinct to live, and the bare winter tree had the hope that spring buds would sprout.

But she couldn’t find such things in the black bird.

Despite being caught in a trap, the bird didn’t move an inch even when a human approached, showing no instinct to live, no struggle, no flailing.

Nothing at all.

And that behavior scratched at something inside Jane.

“……You know. If you stay still like you’re dead, no one will save you.”

Then she stared at the old trap.

“No one.”

Meanwhile, the red sunset crossing the mountain ridge was becoming as small as a fingernail.

“……So.”

Jane took another bite of the fig. The fig was sweet, but the unpleasantness remained.

“Struggle, so I’ll want to save you.”

A self-deprecating smile suddenly caught at the corner of her mouth.

Who was saying this to whom.

When nausea rose to her throat from the unpleasantness that filled her to the brim, the black bird spread its large wings and moved low and softly, as if it understood her words. Of course, it was wing-flapping that showed no trace of desperation to call it struggling.

Jane sighed as if laughing and released the worn-out trap.

Right then.

The red sunset completely disappeared between the mountain valleys. At the same time, a blue light emanated around the black bird and it instantly transformed into a beautiful man.

“!”

Jane froze like plaster.

She was so shocked that no voice came out.

Only the refreshing mint scent lingering at her nose tip chaotically stirred through her mind.

“Hello, Jane.”

“You……”

Surprisingly, that man was a face Jane knew.

The wickedly enchanting man she had met in Andis, Lu.

Jane’s mind couldn’t follow at all why that man was in Febrya’s court forest, in the form of a bird no less, and had even changed from a bird to human form.

Thump thump thump.

Jane pressed her lips together more tightly, feeling as if her heart would burst out.

He said.

“I should thank the desert mage who turned me into a black bird.”

Lu, who had been persistently staring at her gray eyes, grabbed Jane’s dry wrist and took a bite of the half-remaining fig as he pleased.

“For letting me meet you again.”

Jane still couldn’t say anything.

Is this a dream? If this is a dream……

A wind that had cooled due to sunset blew.

The man’s black hair, contrasting with his white skin, rippled like night waves.

Following the fluttering wind, the gap between his black robe soon opened. Past his smooth jawline and Adam’s apple, curved muscles stood out prominently.

Everything about him that her eyes touched was no different from a masterpiece painting.

“Jane, listen carefully.”

……Thump thump thump.

She couldn’t tell whose heart was beating so loudly. Only the sound of pounding echoed chaotically in each other’s ears.

“I’ll send the forest birds to you. Follow those birds and come to me. And……”

Lu added in a voice sweeter than the fig.

“Remember that this is my struggle.”

Jane continued her thoughts that seemed about to break.

If this was a dream, at least it wasn’t a nightmare, so that was fortunate.

But it wasn’t a dream.

It was reality.

At the same time, it was a fate stickier than a nightmare.

A damn fate that would slowly, completely turn her future upside down.