The letter, written in full but never sent, had disappeared. And it was the letter addressed to Lieutenant Colonel Ryan Wilgrave!

Eloise turned pale and frantically overturned everything on her desk.

But the letter was nowhere to be found. Still, she refused to give up. She pulled out every drawer and even moved the desk to check underneath.

Though it seemed absurd, she searched every crevice in the wooden floor. Of course, the letter was not there.

‘What? Where did it go? I was sure I placed it right here.’

After confirming that the letter was nowhere in the room, Eloise ran a hand down her face.

“I wrote so much since it had been a while…”

The truth was, Eloise had started writing letters to Lieutenant Colonel Wilgrave a long time ago.

When war broke out with foreign nations, many young men enlisted and marched to the front lines.

Those who had gone far away always longed for their hometowns, families, and friends. Because of this, letters delivered to the military units became one of the soldiers’ few joys.

One day, a small story appeared in the newspaper.

A young child from a family in the capital had sent a letter, painstakingly written, along with a charming drawing, to a well-respected colonel.

Since letters addressed simply to the military unit and recipient’s name would still be delivered, the letter had reached the colonel’s office.

Normally, his adjutant would have filtered through such letters before they reached him. However, due to the unit’s sudden deployment, there had been no time for sorting, and all the letters were taken along.

When the colonel finally had a moment to read them, he came across the child’s letter.

A man of his rank might have simply dismissed it, yet the colonel was deeply moved by the drawing—though clumsy, it depicted soldiers with admirable detail.

So, when he later returned to the capital, he visited the child’s home to personally express his gratitude and gave the boy a small toy soldier as a gift.

When the story was published in the newspaper, it sparked a trend not only in the capital but across all of Albion. People began writing letters to soldiers.

Not only children but also dignified ladies sent letters filled with encouragement and comfort to every soldier they knew.

The volume of mail grew so immense that the postal service had to request that people refrain from sending letters unless it was urgent.

But telling people not to do something only made them more eager. Since the soldiers who received the letters were overjoyed and their morale improved, the military could not outright forbid the practice.

Upon hearing of this growing trend, Eloise had immediately rushed to her room, pulled out her stationery, and sat down to write.

Naturally, her letter was intended for Second Lieutenant Ryan of the 57th Infantry Battalion.

At that time, Ryan was still only a second lieutenant, not yet a lieutenant colonel. But Eloise knew his name.

He had participated in a military operation she was interested in, and his name had appeared multiple times in the decorated soldiers’ list tucked away in the corners of military newspapers.

Having never written to a stranger before, it took her an entire week to compose her first letter.

How her heart had raced after sending it!

The newspapers were filled with stories of people forging deep friendships through the letters they exchanged with soldiers.

‘Then… wouldn’t Second Lieutenant Ryan Wilgrave also respond kindly to a letter from a stranger like me?’

“Eloise, what kind of trouble have you caused this time?”

Mrs. Surberton couldn’t hide her unease at seeing her daughter giddily pacing about all day.

Whenever Eloise was like this, something always happened.

From that day on, Eloise eagerly awaited the postman every day. A newly hatched gosling followed her around, circling as if guarding her.

But even after a month, there was no reply from Second Lieutenant Wilgrave.

Maybe it just takes a long time for letters to reach the military?

Eloise sought out townspeople who had family or relatives in the army. They told her that letters to military bases often took months to arrive.

That should have been reason enough to give up, but Eloise continued waiting for the postman every day.

In the meantime, the gosling grew into an impressive goose with an aggressive temperament toward everyone except the Surberton family. It was given the name Lancelot.

In the end, more than six months passed without a reply. By then, Ryan Wilgrave had been promoted from second lieutenant to first lieutenant.

Eloise wrote to him again, congratulating him on his promotion and mentioning that she had sent a letter before. She also expressed admiration for the new achievements he had made.

She included a few comments about the military operations he had participated in.

That letter was sent during the Winter Festival. Naturally, by the time spring arrived, there was still no reply. Meanwhile, Ryan Wilgrave had earned a major commendation and was promoted to captain.

Under normal circumstances, such a rapid promotion would have been unthinkable, but war made many things possible.

With so many officers perishing, their vacant positions needed to be filled.

And since Ryan Wilgrave continued to achieve notable successes, he was the ideal candidate to take those empty positions.

Eloise kept sending him letters, and his name began appearing in the newspapers more frequently.

Of course, she wasn’t the only one who took notice of him. Beyond military papers, mainstream newspapers also published numerous editorials on his rapid rise.

At the same time, his accomplishments were widely praised.

Eloise wrote even more diligently. By then, she had fallen ill for the first time in a long while, leaving her unable to step outside.

Having read every book at home multiple times—more than three times, in fact—Eloise had grown tired of reading.

So, she asked her father to buy her a large stack of stationery.

That year, from spring to summer, Eloise ended up using all the stationery, writing letters that could have lasted for years.

And despite sending so many letters, she never received a reply.

‘Well, it can’t be helped.’

As he became more famous, even more people were writing to him.

The newspaper Eloise read stated that he received over a hundred letters a day.

How could Ryan Wilgrave, who was out on the battlefield, possibly read them all and respond to everyone? Like other officers, he would probably leave them to his adjutant and only reply when he felt like it.

Or perhaps he didn’t read them at all and simply discarded them.

That thought should have left her feeling empty, but instead, Eloise felt relieved.

‘If he doesn’t check them anyway…’

…then wouldn’t it be fine to write whatever she wanted?

From then on, Eloise’s letters became even longer.

She wrote about her thoughts on the troop deployment in other battles, wondering if the strategies were truly sound. At times, she wrote about Julia, the girl next door, who was growing colder toward her for reasons she couldn’t understand.

She wrote about Lancelot, who had taken a liking to the neighbor’s female goose and kept jumping over the fence every day. She also noted how it seemed to rain more often in the summer.

Yet, not once did any of her letters return to her.

‘That means they’re at least arriving somewhere.’

At that point, whether Ryan Wilgrave received them or not no longer mattered.

Because he never wrote back, Eloise felt even more at ease writing to him. He was the perfect recipient—someone to whom she could say whatever she wanted without restraint.

Within her letters, Ryan Wilgrave became her friend, a soldier worthy of admiration, and at times, an adult from whom she sought advice.

And, inevitably, he also became the first subject of her budding affections.

At first, she found herself ridiculous. Developing feelings for someone she had never even seen?

But as she spent her days poring over battle reports from the capital, analyzing the tactics he led, she began to feel as if she could picture him.

Ryan Wilgrave’s face was not widely known at the time, so Eloise gathered every piece of information she could from the newspapers and imagined his appearance.

Tall, with a strong build, and sharp, piercing eyes…

The problem was his hair and eye color.

Many claimed to have met him, yet their descriptions varied.

Some said he had black hair, while others insisted it was a deep brown.

However, a retired soldier she had met by chance in Camborne mentioned that Ryan Wilgrave often changed his hair color for infiltration missions and that his true hair color was red.

The same issue applied to his eyes—some said they were black, others brown, while some swore they were blue or green…

How many Ryan Wilgraves were there, exactly?

So, in the end, Eloise decided to imagine him however she pleased.

In her mind, he was a tall man with black hair and blue eyes. As a soldier who fought on the front lines without regard for his own safety, he had a strong and formidable physique. His ever-watchful eyes, constantly scanning enemy lines, were sharp and keen…

At that thought, Eloise suddenly snapped out of her reverie and bolted upright.

Come to think of it, the Ryan Wilgrave she had once envisioned bore a striking resemblance to Sergeant Ryan Thornton.

“…I must have lost my mind.”

That vague image had completely faded from her memory when she had the luck to acquire his portrait.

Eloise turned to look at the portrait hanging on her wall.

A handsome man with blond hair and kind blue eyes smiled gently at her.

She stared at it for a moment before returning to her desk. Then, as she calmly recalled what she had been doing just moments ago—

“Oh!”

A gasp escaped her lips.

She had spent the entire day reviewing Blissbury’s documents here. And then she had hurriedly put them away.

“…Did my letter get mixed in with those papers?”

Realizing this, Eloise collapsed onto the sofa in despair.

Sergeant Thornton had even sent an errand boy to press for a reply when he had grown tired of waiting. So the moment he received the letter, he would undoubtedly read its contents immediately.

And then, he would see it.

The letter she had addressed—

“To my Ryan.”