Odely answered Ludville while forcing herself to erase the bitter expression from her face.
“It does seem like it would be quite effective.”
No one would dare even think about touching her.
“But are you sure you’re okay with this?”
“With what?”
“Even if you announce that I am the blue-eyed woman.”
Odely asked casually, watching Ludville’s reaction.
“Do you have no intention of searching anymore?”
“Ah.”
Ludville answered indifferently.
For the briefest moment, a look of exhaustion passed across his face.
“How should I put it?”
He rubbed his chin and thought for a moment before his expression returned to blankness and he spoke.
“To begin with, that kind of woman could not have existed in this world, both in terms of time and space.”
“…….”
“My vassals always reminded me of that fact. That she was a woman who could not possibly exist.”
Well, whenever they said that, I think I would draw my sword and go berserk.
Ludville added, as though searching through a faint memory even though it had only happened a short while ago.
“Perhaps I really was insane and hallucinating. I was completely addicted to drugs, and I was even pushed to the verge of becoming a monster.”
So that was the conclusion he had reached.
“I simply wanted to fill something empty inside me. It could have been someone, or it could have just been a delusion.”
Odely, who knew the whole truth, did not know how she should respond.
She simply remained silent because she decided that not correcting Ludville’s misunderstanding would be better for his mental health.
“Now that emptiness feels a little smaller, so I think I’m all right.”
“……It feels smaller?”
“It’s enough for me to keep living.”
Ludville spoke calmly.
He hesitated for a moment, perhaps realizing that he had been unnecessarily honest, then awkwardly changed the subject.
“Besides, if a Grand Duke who had been searching everywhere for some woman suddenly fell in love with another woman and married her, would anyone believe it?”
He firmly drove the point home once again.
As though there had never been another choice.
“You have no choice but to become that blue-eyed woman.”
‘Couldn’t we just not pretend that we’re so madly in love that we can’t live without each other……?’
Odely thought that to herself, but Ludville continued without giving her a chance to object.
“Let’s say your disappearance happened because your family opposed you meeting me, so you ran away from home.”
“Then why did Your Highness go around searching for the Lady of Cardel in the first place?”
“Because the Lady met me while hiding her identity.”
“This isn’t some fairy tale…….”
“Not bad.”
Exactly what part of this was not bad?
But Ludville seemed to quite like this unbearably childish romance novel.
He lifted the corners of his mouth with a playful expression.
“There was a masquerade ball at the Imperial Palace four months ago. You slipped away from your family and secretly attended it. You happened to meet me there, and we recognized each other at once……”
The more she listened to the story, the more her mind went blank.
None of it made any sense.
A mysterious woman who drove the iron-blooded Grand Duke mad?
Wouldn’t that require her to be some kind of ‘goddess of love’ descended from the heavens, or for him to have taken some forbidden drug?
……And yet, before she knew it, Odely was absorbed in that third-rate romance novel.
“It doesn’t sound very convincing. It still needs to be believable enough for people to fall for it. People aren’t stupid……”
“It isn’t…… completely unbelievable.”
“What?”
Before Odely could ask again with a puzzled expression, Ludville quickly continued.
“When the clock tower bells rang, you left because you were afraid your identity would be discovered, and I could not stop you because I did not even know your name. The only thing I remembered was those blue eyes……”
“This sounds like something I’ve heard somewhere before.”
“Stop nitpicking. The public goes crazy for these kinds of predictable stories.”
It certainly seemed like it would be memorable.
If this story spread, it would definitely be etched into everyone’s minds.
Ludville had already attracted enormous attention by summoning blue-eyed women to the castle.
Everyone would be waiting for the next chapter.
And who would have guessed that the woman in question was the sickly young Lady of the Cardel family, who had been hiding her identity?
People would talk about the two of them for days and days.
“Your Highness, even so, this is a little……”
“Stop calling me Your Highness, too.”
“…….”
“I think a more familiar title than my name would be better, so perhaps you could call me ‘Lu’……”
“……I can’t do that.”
There was a brief, pointless disagreement over the details, but in any case, it seemed that their love story had come to an end.
With a face that had become remarkably exhausted in that short time, Odely carefully asked him,
“You haven’t forgotten the clause about excluding personal feelings, have you?”
A scoff was the answer.
“When did we ever say otherwise? We’re only pretending for the Cardel family to see. Our contract relationship isn’t changing.”
“…….”
But aren’t you talking a little too much?
You seem to be talking about five times as much as usual today……
Odely narrowed her eyes and studied Ludville.
“You know that this is the best option, the most efficient one, and even the most effective, don’t you?”
Ludville asked her in return.
Unfortunately, what he said was true, so Odely could not argue against him.
“No, wait……. I should call you ‘Odely’ too. Or is there some other nickname you would prefer?”
“Odely is enough.”
Odely realized too late that she had been drawn into Ludville’s scheme, but by then, it was already too late.
It did not take long for the rumor to spread far and wide.
****
After receiving Odely’s purification, the frequency of Ludville’s nightmares noticeably decreased.
The nightmares that had repeated every night—the hell that had even invaded his daily life—now came only two or three times a week.
He was even able to get something resembling proper sleep.
The amount of sleep he got, which had barely been an hour a day, increased to as much as three hours.
Of course, it was not like that every day.
There were still nights when he could not sleep, and he still had to endure the early morning by constantly smoking cigarettes like an addict.
Still, he was steadily reducing the amount he smoked.
There was a clear change.
Instead of being crushed every day by dreams that made him fall apart like before, he was beginning to feel, little by little, what it was like to be alive.
But that did not mean the nightmares had disappeared completely.
‘……Again.’
When, after a long time, he became completely trapped inside ‘that nightmare,’ endlessly repeating itself.
When, no matter how desperately he struggled, there was no sign that he could wake up.
And when it felt as though he would spend an eternity in this darkness where he could not see even an inch ahead……
He could no longer accept it as calmly as before, as though it were familiar and tiresome.
For the first time in a long while, he felt true despair.
He gasped for breath, feeling as though he were suffocating.
The pain that he had grown numb to when he experienced it every day now felt even clearer simply because it had become less frequent.
Had it given him time to breathe all this time only so that it could inflict even greater pain on him?
He almost felt that way.
The moment he finally reached the surface and felt that he could breathe again, it was as though he had been dragged back down into the deep without any warning.
Into the deep, suffocating, endless darkness.
Ludville had returned to this abyss.
This was surely a punishment inflicted upon him for some great sin he had committed in his previous life.
Otherwise, how could this be?
Watching someone die.
Rotting away.
How could he have to keep having nightmares of falling endlessly, endlessly into the abyss……?
‘How much longer?’
Would it continue until he died?
But even death was not allowed to him.
Because someone had stopped him from dying.
Following him around annoyingly, step after step.
And constantly interfering, asking him question after question.
He had dragged Ludville, who was standing on the verge of death, who had been just about to fall into hell, back into the world of the living.
“I told you that you would need me.”
No, I did not need someone like you.
But you made me need you.
You had grabbed me by the collar and dragged me up from that pit, where I had been waiting for the gates of hell to open, and forced me to keep living.
You gave meaning to a meaningless life.
Then you have to take responsibility.
Yes, this is all your responsibility.
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