“Tree… garden?”
What came into his view was a tree with his older brother’s name on it.
Vientin grabbed the shoulder of the servant who’d been hastily watering the tree. “Servant.”
“Ah, yes! Greetings, Your Grace.”
Looking down at the bowed servant, Vientin pursed his lips. Still gripping the man’s shoulder hard, he gritted his teeth and muttered. “This is where my brother, the heir, used to have his office.”
“Ah, dear, yes. It was.”
“It was? What do you mean? Why is my brother’s office gone?”
“By the order of the previous Duchess Yuliana Kalinos, this garden has now been made into a place to preserve his remains.”
“His remains?”
“That…”
“What do you mean? Say it properly.”
Only then did the servant fidget and confess. “Because he… fell in that fierce battle defending the family.”
Riwes, the servant, everyone. They all said his older brother was dead. There was no proof anywhere that his older brother or his sister-in-law was alive. Then they really both…
Wanting to deny this entire reality, Vientin shook his head inwardly. Through countless battles, not once had he thought his older brother might die. But… Vientin slowly sank down onto the floor.
“Um, Your Grace.”
“Everyone get out. And don’t let anyone… enter this garden.”
“Ah, yes.”
He was, without a doubt, nothing more than a brash eighteen-year-old kid. Not Vientin Kalinos, the century’s hero who slaughtered every last monster.
Right then, a loud noise came from outside the window. It was the powerful shouts of countless guards. Both the servant and Vientin fixed their gazes on the ceremony outside the window. It was one of the many morning ceremonies performed by the guards. A line formation ceremony that had been practiced since his brother was alive, designed to further bolster loyalty toward the Kalinos family.
The guards bellowed in booming voices.
“For our great hero!”
“For the great Duke Vientin Kalinos, who ended the Monster War!”
“For Duchess Giselle Kalinos, who kept the empire from being overthrown by evil forces!”
Listening to the flood of praise, Vientin turned his eyes back toward the inside of the garden. More precisely, toward the base of a certain tree said to be preserving his older brother’s remains.
“Seriously… f*ck that.”
He couldn’t even protect his own brother, so what was the point of all this praise?
Unlike Duke Kalinos, the him of now had quite a foul mouth. So whether it was a servant in the corridor or a guard outside, there was hardly anyone who could stop the current him.
Just then, he heard the soft click of a door opening. Vientin roughly wiped at the reddened corners of his eyes and muttered, “I’m pretty sure I said not to let anyone in.”
“Oh dear.”
A familiar voice. It was familiar in a way that made his body react before his mind could.
Giselle came closer to him and held out her hand. “Let’s get you up first.”
“…”
“And don’t cry.”
He spoke dryly to the woman who’d come close to him, Giselle. “I wasn’t crying. The act of ‘crying’ is a physiological response in which the lacrimal glands around the eyes are stimulated and produce an excess of tears to help regulate emotion. I haven’t been subjected to any such stimulus.”
“You’re really staying in character, even now. Anyway, if you keep crouching like that, the venous blood in your lower body won’t return properly to your heart, and it can very likely lead to circulation problems.”
He listened to Giselle’s words in a daze. What she was saying definitely made sense. But the guilt of having failed to properly protect his older brother from death made him not want to do anything at all.
Then Giselle stepped closer and held her hand out to him. “If you can’t get up by yourself, take my hand.”
“…”
“If you don’t want to hold my hand, should I offer you my foot instead?”
“…It’s not that I don’t want to hold your hand.” Vientin hurriedly clamped down on Giselle’s hand.
What the? Why am I like this? His body moved on its own. As if it had to keep touching her.
“Even after losing your memories, some things never change, huh?” Giselle’s smile bloomed as she tightened her grip on his hand.
She’s like an angel. In that instant, the color drained from Vientin’s face. That wasn’t a thought that had come from him. Have I actually lost it? Was it the world that had gone mad, or him?
“Aren’t you getting up?”
That thought snapped him back to himself. Are you insane? You’ve lost your memories and your older brother. But in the middle of all of that, you look at that woman and think she’s an angel? It made no sense. And yet, things that made no sense kept happening.
* * *
“I mixed chamomile tea with orange. Supposedly it helps relax your nerves.”
“I’m fairly certain I ordered that no one was to come in. Why are you here, and what’s with this sudden tea time?”
A teapot and cups had appeared out of nowhere on the table in the tree garden. I poured the carefully steeped chamomile tea into his cup and said, “Go on, have a drink.”
“Are you deaf?”
“I hear you just fine.”
“Then why aren’t you answering? I asked what this sudden tea time is about.” His tone was so heavy it actually felt oppressive. But I just calmly sipped my tea.
I know there’s a total science nerd hiding inside that scary shell. Nothing to be scared of. Ah, well, not that I’d find anyone scary anyway…
Waving my hand lightly, I gave him a bright smile. “I’ll tell you after you take a sip.”
He glared at me, then grabbed the cup and downed it in one go.
Isn’t that hot? Judging by how his face flushed red, it definitely was. I clicked my tongue, and he hurried to defend himself.
“It’s not hot at all.”
“Ah, yes. Regardless, your face certainly looks a bit better now than earlier. Earlier, you looked completely plunged into despair, like you were about to burst into tears.”
“My feelings don’t show on my face.”
“They totally were, though.”
“…”
He still had a sulky expression right now. Anyway, after taking a sip of tea, I lightly shifted the subject. “More importantly, let me tell you why we’re having this tea time. I heard you were looking for your older brother.”
“…How on earth did you know that?”
“Because the servants told me everything.”
“So, you’re saying I’m the duke. And the duchess is monitoring the duke’s every move?” His expression turned bleak.
Oh wow, I guess he had no idea what his future would stoop to.
I grinned and pulled a contract out of my pocket. “Yup. All thanks to the threats from the past Vientin Kalinos.”
He snatched the contract in a rush, his face crumpling in despair. “Is this the contract where Mother made Father into her slave?”
Yep, that ‘slave contract.’ The very contract Duke Kalinos shoved into my hands when we had our ‘real’ wedding. The one that had all those bizarre clauses like, ‘Giselle may monitor Vientin’s every move and is allowed to put a tracking device on him.’ I told him I didn’t need anything like that, but he just had to force the contract on me. Even I had no idea it would come in handy at a time like this…
“So according to this, I’m currently monitoring Duke’s every move, and I can check where you are no matter where you go.”
Hearing that, Vientin wiped his dry face and let out a hollow laugh. “My future self was truly an idiot. Not only did he hand over his leash to an unknown woman, but he couldn’t even save his own brother…”
“He was being smart, actually.”
“And stop calling yourself my wife.”
“Why? I am your wife.”
“ To me, ‘wife’ only exists in the word ‘deny.’ [1] ”
“Ah.”
When I held the tea in my mouth without speaking for a moment, he avoided my gaze and murmured with a tiny hint of apology. “Even if you’re hurt by that… I still can’t accept you as my wife.”
It would be a lie to say that it didn’t hurt at all. Honestly, I’m not hurt. That’s right. What I said earlier was a lie.
- 1. In Korea, wife is (부인) and deny is (부인하다). So, as Vientin said, the only 부인 word he knew was 부인하다.
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