103.
For a while, I remained still in the silence of the room.
Then I got up and crouched down in front of the luggage I had placed by the bed.
When I reached inside and rummaged through it, my hand soon closed around a heavy glass bottle.
It was the whiskey I had quietly slipped in when Julie was packing.
It couldn’t be that he had found this. He must have only been guessing.
Yet his remark had pierced through my state of mind with almost frightening accuracy.
Was it because, all this time, whenever the sun went down and darkness settled in, I had spent my nights as if it were only natural that I had to be drunk to fall asleep?
I hated the dark.
More than that, I hated the long, endless nights spent sober.
‘You don’t need alcohol to endure the night anymore, do you?’
“……”
But nothing had been resolved yet.
I had thought that as soon as I found out who the pervert was, I would be able to prove my innocence at once.
But somehow, with his identity alone, bringing him down felt like a far-off prospect.
Besides, the relationships built while under the influence of the love potion were like sandcastles.
Once the potion’s effects disappeared, they would vanish without a trace, swept away by the waves.
Then only I, who had built those sandcastles with them, would remain there.
The unease scattered throughout my heart still made its presence known as vividly as ever.
I leaned back onto the bed as if sinking into it.
Then I placed a hand on my chest.
My heart was beating irregularly.
And yet…….
Soon, voices surfaced in my mind, disjointed and without order.
‘Lady Asha! Lady Asha!’
‘You must have suffered.’
‘You saved us.’
‘Even if there had been no potion, I would have liked you.’
‘Because we’ll come to save you.’
‘Then what’s the problem? Why bother worrying about something like that?’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Anyway, Baron, you should cut back on the alcohol a little now.’
‘You need to live a long, long life.’
I let out a faint laugh and tossed the bottle back into the bag.
“I really hope so.”
Rubbing my tired eyes, I closed them just like that.
* * *
Again.
My sense of smell reacted sharply.
The stench of blood.
But this time, it was not an unbelievable sight like a heap of corpses.
Nor was it Prien who appeared.
I saw the back of a woman holding something in her arms.
‘I’m sorry…… I’m sorry I had to be your mother, of all people.’
The woman gently shifted what she held in her arms, then hesitated before lowering her head.
It was an unbearably awkward kiss.
After that, the woman held out what was in her arms to the man standing before her.
‘Take the child now.’
‘…….’
‘You’re the father.’
‘Have you decided?’
‘Even if I die, I must die on this land.’
‘…….’
‘I’m begging you.’
Only after handing the child over to the man as if burdening him with it, with hands that showed no lingering attachment, did the woman silently gaze for a long time at the child who had moved away from her.
Her gaze was cautious, like that of someone encountering something unfamiliar and unknown.
‘The child still hasn’t opened their eyes. So I don’t know what color they are.’
‘…….’
The woman whispered.
‘When the child grows up later, it’s nothing much……. Just, could you tell them to live happily for a long, long time?’
‘……I’ll try.’
The woman tilted her head one last time toward the being held in the man’s arms.
‘I’m sorry, baby whose name I don’t even know. For choosing to give you not death, but a life that may be painful enough to make you wish for it.’
‘…….’
‘Ah. The eyes opened.’
As I heard the woman’s soft exclamation, I opened my eyes.
Faint dawn light was seeping in through the curtains.
The now-familiar pain in my left eye was throbbing as if rummaging through the inside of my head, but I could not react to it.
Something hot and heavy filled my chest to the brim, as though it were surging up beyond my throat.
It was a scene that certainly could not have been my memory.
‘Who?’
It was a memory that could never have remained inside my head.
Yes, just like when I dreamed of Prien, it was only a meaningless scene, nothing more…….
But for some reason, tears welled up.
After rubbing at my eyes again and again until the backs of my hands were damp, I stared into the dim room, feeling utterly exhausted.
Now my left eye was only throbbing dully from time to time.
With my hand pressed over that eye, I let out a long breath.
‘If what I saw then was the future……. Is this time the past?’
That vague impression did linger, but by the time I turned over and closed my eyes, it had vanished without a trace.
* * *
Had the duke’s suggestion truly worked that well?
After they altered their appearances slightly and went around claiming that strange relationship,
although we did sometimes receive odd looks, nothing happened like a lord who had heard the news rushing out barefoot to greet us, or a group of rigid priests storming in together to stage a protest.
Unfortunately, over the course of those few days, I had become completely accustomed to playing the role of their husband.
‘They say if you can’t avoid it, enjoy it.’
To the point that, since we were stuck together all day long, it would have been stranger not to get used to it.
Resting my chin on my hand, I stared intently at Prien, who was sitting across from me in ordinary clothes and pouring water.
“What is it?”
As he was the first to push a glass of water in front of me, I opened my mouth.
“It’s just, now that you’re out of your priestly robes……. You seem surprisingly ordinary, I guess.”
Prien’s movement did pause for a moment at being called “ordinary” by me despite his insane beauty.
“Mm, in what way did you feel that?”
But it seemed his faith in his own beauty was not something that could be shattered with a single word.
“Before, you had this strong, untouchably holy feeling, but now you just seem like someone indescribably handsome.”
And that was, to some extent, true.
He smiled softly at my words.
“I am an ordinary person too, after all.”
“I didn’t know that.”
I gave a faint laugh and lifted the glass of water, but then the tip of my nose began to tickle, so I quickly turned my head.
“Achoo.”
“Your cold really isn’t going away.”
Prien reached out to me, looking worried.
He gently turned his hand palm up and stared straight at me.
“What will you do if you’re caught using divine power?”
“Then… should I secretly hold your hand under the table?”
Prien tilted his head slightly, and his hair slipped softly down.
I had only ever seen him with silver hair, but this time it had changed to gold.
It seemed he was destined to shine brilliantly no matter what he changed or how.
“You couldn’t even wait while I brought the food and started fooling around?”
Jaka set the steaming dishes on the table and sat down across from me.
With his hair changed to navy blue, Jaka looked much calmer than before.
Perhaps because his features stood out more clearly, he gave off a colder, sharper impression.
Jaka looked at me and grinned.
“You seem to like my hair color even more than I expected.”
“I just looked a few times because it was unusual, that’s all.”
As he set utensils in front of me, Jaka tipped his head.
“My dear really is so dishonest….”
“Pfft! Cough….”
I tried to drink some water and ended up spraying it out.
‘Maybe I should take back what I said about getting used to it….’
My mouth and chest were soaked with water. I took out a handkerchief and wiped myself off, glaring silently at Jaka.
He was definitely enjoying the way he sometimes said things like that and made me startle all by myself.
But what I had to be careful of at times like this was not to get needlessly competitive and talk back to him.
‘Dear, what on earth do you do at night? You can never manage to wake up in the morning.’
‘I-Isn’t that all because of y-you, dear? Hm?’
‘…….’
It had only been a single retort I barely managed to make, but Jaka suddenly laced his fingers with mine and pulled me into his arms.
It was already unbearably hot these days as soon as the sun rose, and with him pressed so close, Jaka’s whisper was far too suggestive.
‘Is that true, dear?’
‘…….’
I could feel it on my skin that he wasn’t joking.
In the end, I spent the entire day struggling to ignore Jaka as he stared fixedly at me with a gaze full of heat….
Worse still, since I had brought it on myself, I had no excuse.
“I think it would be best not to startle your wife while she’s eating. What would you do if she choked?”
Prien exchanged my water-soaked utensils for his own and shot Jaka a reproachful look.
At any rate, by now I had developed the knack of eating perfectly well no matter what the two of them said while they bickered.
I continued my meal, half letting their voices pass me by, when something appeared on my plate.
Following the neatly cut piece of steak with my eyes, I saw the duke’s expressionless profile.
Perhaps the shock of having the seat beside me taken at the first restaurant we visited had been greater than he let on, because now the duke occupied the seat next to me with very high probability.
And….
Without fail, he would often serve me steak or salad like this.
“Asha. Is there something on my face?”
“…No, I was just looking.”
“Eat quickly before it gets cold.”
More than anything, the hardest thing to get used to was Isitan Gladineer’s “polite speech.”
The first time I heard it, a chill ran down my spine and my hair stood on end.
‘I suppose humans really are creatures of adaptation….’
In any case, before I knew it, our destination was close at hand.