Even if it’s a dream…… because it’s a dream…… just a little longer……

Margie reached out a trembling hand and touched Frederic’s cheek.

Warm. Soft. Real enough to be no dream at all.

Her fingertips traced across his brow, down his nose, across his lips.

“Ah, Margie.”

Sobbing like a child, he laid his hand over hers. Then he pressed kiss after kiss to her palm. The wetness of his tears and the warmth of his lips were vivid and immediate.

“I was wrong. So please, huk……

This much is fine. This is just my imagination……

“Margie!”

That was the last thing Margie remembered from that day.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Royal General Hospital, VIP ward.

Margie slept for a full two days before opening her eyes.

“Ahh, that was a good sleep.”

She hadn’t been struck directly by the car, so nothing hurt, and the deep rest had left her feeling clearer-headed than she had in a long time.

“I’m hungry.”

Eyes still heavy with sleep, Margie looked slowly around the room and pressed the nurse call button. Her vision swam from a sudden fierce hunger, and she was about to ask someone to bring her a snack.

Crash! Thud! Bang bang!

“Oh my! Your Grace! You can’t just barge in like that!”

The moment she pressed the call button, a commotion erupted outside the door……

“Margie!”

The door to the ward flew open without a knock.

It was Frederic.

“You can’t do this! The medical staff need to assess the patient’s condition first……!”

“Grab the duke! You, take his arms, you, take his legs! Don’t let him reach the patient! Hurry!”

“Oof!”

“Let go of me! Out of the way!”

In the open doorway, three or four men tangled together in a frantic scuffle.

Am I dead? Is that why I’m seeing and hearing things?

If so, is this heaven? Or h*ll?

Waking up to the face of a handsome husband seemed like heaven, but seeing him behave like a common street brawler without a shred of dignity seemed like something only h*ll could produce……

Blinking her pretty eyes, Margie stared fixedly at Frederic.

“Who do you think you are, stopping me from going to my wife! What right do you have!”

Having lost all composure, Frederic knocked three male doctors in white coats to the floor in one go.

Margie was startled. His physical force was overwhelming. And……

“I’m her guardian! Her husband! I want to see my own wife with my own eyes, so why are you—!”

Frederic had always called Margie ‘Miss Flynn,’ to her face and when speaking of her to others, without exception. As though she were a woman with no connection to him whatsoever.

“Let me through to my wife! Let go!”

And now Frederic Graham was calling her his wife.

Margie felt something tighten in her chest with emotion.

“Fred……”

Her lips parted.

“……!”

Frederic was the one who reacted first to the faint sound of her stirring. He shoved past the doctors and nurses and crossed to the head of Margie’s bed in a single motion.

“Margie!”

He took her hand without hesitation.

The piercing, commanding eyes that could make anyone feel small, the golden hair gleaming almost blindingly, the features arranged in perfect proportion and placement, all of it was still there, yet what struck her first was an impression of something worn thin.

The dull skin of someone who hadn’t been sleeping. A faint exhaustion lurking beneath those sharp eyes. A gaze so saturated with grief it looked ready to break open at any moment. Even this fragile, overwrought version of him, something she had never once seen before, only served to prove the flawlessness of his beauty.

Is it all right to look at a face this precious while lying down……

“Are you with me, Margie?”

“Of course……”

Still dazed and answering half in a trance at the sight of her husband, Margie abruptly pressed her lips shut.

‘I want nothing from you, Margie Flynn.’

Frederic’s cold voice surfaced in her mind, the one that had told her not to apologize, not to make any effort for his sake.

‘Yes. I’m certain of it. Out of everything in my entire life, that proposal was the worst of it.’

The look in his eyes, the tone of his voice, humiliating her in front of his closest friends.

‘If I could, I would undo that day.’

His cold profile as he murmured that he regretted their marriage. Even in that cruel, heartless moment, he had been so beautiful I couldn’t look away for a single second.

“Margie. Do you know who I am?”

Without ever realizing how much that beauty was breaking me……

‘I want to go back to when she and I were strangers.’

Strangers.

The word drove itself into some part of Margie’s heart, sharp and precise.

Frederic. If you and I went back to being strangers, could we start over from the very beginning? Could I feel less sad and less hurt by your indifference, and could you hate me a little less than you do now? Oh, Frederic. I won’t beg you to love me. So please…… just hate me a little less……

“Who are you?”

It was an impulsive answer, chosen in the hope that even a little of his contempt might be lifted.

The bickering medical staff went quiet all at once. They all seemed shaken by this unexpected symptom.

Oh. Maybe I went too far. I should say it was a joke, even now……

Margie swallowed against a dry throat.

“……Margie?”

The one hit hardest was Frederic.

“Surely you don’t mean…… that wasn’t directed at me, was it……”

He finally managed to speak, and his eyes wavered with visible anxiety. Pitifulness that tugged at something maternal, a fragile unsteadiness that looked ready to collapse, both of them crashed over Margie at once, and she lost all capacity for rational judgment.

A handsome man looking anxious because of me. I love it, it’s wonderful, it’s everything……!

“Hmm…… I really can’t recall anything. Forgive me, but would you tell me your name?”

Rather than laughing it off with a gotcha!, Margie leaned further into her performance.

“……Oh no.”

The end of Frederic’s words trembled.

“How…… could this happen……”

The shock he was experiencing seemed to far exceed anything Margie had anticipated.

“Margie. I am your……”

Frederic paused mid-murmur and ran the tip of his tongue over his dry lips.

“I am your husband, Frederic Graham.”

“My husband? Good heavens, I was married? When?”

The moment he finished speaking, Margie let out a shriek. Her performance was thoroughly shameless and impish, yet it never once crossed Frederic’s mind that it might be a lie.

“About a month ago, in a temple within the Graham duchy, with the Pope’s sacred wedding vows……”

Margie shook her head at Frederic’s hurried explanation. Still wearing the face of someone who remembered nothing.

“You gave thanks to God. You kept murmuring to yourself throughout the entire wedding ceremony about how your husband, Frederic Graham, had hair and eyes of such beautiful colors, and a physique that suited a uniform so well, and veins across his hands, and firm arms and legs, all of it so beautiful it moved you to tears, until the priest had to warn you……”

“Pardon me for interrupting.”

Margie cut cleanly across Frederic’s passionate speech, which had been tumbling out like testimony offered to prove they were truly husband and wife.

“You are…… not my type.”

She followed it with a careful whisper.

“Not your type……”

Frederic had never heard those words from anyone attracted to him, and occasionally from those of the same s*x with particular tastes. His perfect looks operated at a level that transcended the realm of preference altogether.

“……”

He turned over several objections inside his mouth and found, in the end, he had no adequate reply. He fell silent, wearing the bleak expression of a soldier stripped of the will to fight.