IDHGA 06

Chapter 06

Ars often used to look at me and smile a happy smile, as if he had the whole world.

And then he would mutter like a habit.

‘You are truly my everything.’

I had sent away that man.

Because I couldn’t distinguish between dream and reality.

I recalled once again the things I had racked my brains over for days while locked in my room.

The days I had thought were dreams felt more and more real as time passed, and I began to think that I was alive.

How vivid Jena was, knocking on my door every morning and asking when I would get up…

I was even tired of asking Jena what day it was every single day.

The date still pointed to that day in the past, which should never have been, and I increasingly felt that I had to adapt to this.

And just when I started to think that this time I could change things, I began to regret the tea time with Ars.

Because I couldn’t distinguish between dream and reality, I had done something stupid.

Because I didn’t want to repeat the same mistake even in a dream.

I had pushed away with my own hands the person who loved me with all his heart, who cherished me so abundantly.

Now that I realized it was entirely reality, I regretted that choice over and over.

That must be why I had no motivation for anything.

I considered myself lucky that I wasn’t just sitting down and bawling my eyes out, anyway.

Laying my limp body back on the bed, I let out a deep sigh.

“Tell Aunt I’m sorry, Jena. Tell her I’m not feeling well and can’t make it today.”

“No, you look perfectly fine, so why are you asking me to tell such a lie?”

*I’m* the one who’ll get in trouble if I’m caught!

Jena exclaimed rather boldly.

Well, she wasn’t wrong. But right now, I just had no energy.

Sighing repeatedly, I waved my hand.

“Then just say I won’t get up. I’ll take the blame…”

“No, what on earth is the matter, Miss! Is it because things didn’t work out with that handsome man? Should I send word to him right away? What could he possibly not like about our lovely Miss?”

My friend Jena, who was more like a sister than my own sibling, huffed and puffed as if she would run to Ars at any moment.

She seemed to think my lack of energy was Ars’s fault, and her voice was quite displeased.

But Jena didn’t know.

That the reason things didn’t work out wasn’t his fault, but mine.

I shook my head while still lying down.

“No, it’s not because of him. I’m just really tired…”

“Or is it because of the Count? Because he keeps bringing invitations from all over?”

“Huh…? Yeah, well…”

Father was bringing invitations?

For a moment, I wondered if there was anything like that in my memory, but I also didn’t miss the good opportunity to escape Jena’s questioning.

When I gave a vague answer, Jena started huffing and puffing again, this time for a different reason.

“Anyway, our Count doesn’t know the first thing about you, Miss! I mean, how can he keep bringing up His Highness the Crown Prince when his daughter just got her heart broken?”

“Hmm, I know.”

“Ugh, honestly! Did he think I wouldn’t know he was bringing invitations from other families? Miss, don’t go to any of them! Alright? I’ll refuse most of them, so don’t worry too much!”

Jena was so angry that she even stomped her feet.

From what I heard, while I had been lying in my room for days without moving, Father had apparently been bringing invitations from some families, and it seemed all of them were occasions to urge me to meet the Crown Prince.

Considering the father I remembered, it was entirely plausible, but…

…Had Father brought invitations like this even before the regression?

“He brought something to your room this morning too, I bet it’s another one. Ugh, honestly. Don’t worry about it and just rest! The best cure for a broken heart is eating good food and getting plenty of sleep!”

“Mmhm, thanks.”

As expected, brave Jena, amazing Jena.

Jena, who had mistaken me for being depressed, bravely rolled up her sleeves again today.

After returning the blanket she had taken from me, Jena passed the bed and headed to the table where the invitations were piled up.

Then she began to sort through the invitations on the table, one by one, with vigor.

“This one! Obviously a no!”

“This too! A ridiculous place!”

“This one…!”

While huffing and puffing and pushing invitations around, Jena suddenly stopped talking.

Lying on the bed, wrapped up in my blanket, I had been watching Jena, and I blinked while still lying down.

“What is it, Jena?”

She didn’t just stop talking.

Her movements had stopped too.

Holding one invitation in her hand, Jena stood frozen, and when I spoke, she slowly turned her head.

She looked just like someone who had seen something truly terrifying, and I flinched for a moment.

Having thrown away her usual spirited demeanor, she slowly, very slowly, opened her mouth.

“Miss… this is…”

“Hm?”

“…It’s an invitation from Her Highness the Princess.”

And a moment later, I too, still wrapped in my blanket.

Froze.

Before, I mean, in the previous life, this had happened once too.

Was it right before I got married?

Or right after I announced to high society that I was dating Ars?

When I was declining all the invitations to parties where the Crown Prince was likely to attend, an invitation arrived in the name of Her Highness the Princess.

Even if I declined invitations from all other families, I couldn’t decline one that arrived in the name of the Imperial Family’s precious jewel, Delphina Hugh Livre.

And at that place I reluctantly attended, I met the Crown Prince.

It was perhaps only natural that I couldn’t tell Ars about the ridiculous nonsense he had spewed, things I couldn’t speak of anywhere else.

Perhaps that was the beginning.

The trigger that made Ars gradually start listening to the rumors circulating in high society.

When Ars, who later learned that I had met the Crown Prince there, subtly asked me what he had said, I never gave him an answer.

That’s how utterly despicable things he had said…

The problem started from there.

Delphina, who was 14 at the time, had fallen for my husband.

Delphina Hugh Livre was the empire’s precious jewel, much younger than her brother, the Crown Prince.

A naive child who knew nothing but being loved.

A child for whom being loved was natural, as natural as breathing.

She was a princess I had no particular reason to dislike or resent, but after she declared, as if warning me, that she had fallen for my husband, Delphina kept sending me invitations.

Unable to refuse the imperial princess’s invitations, I would reluctantly head to the palace, where the Crown Prince would always be there as if it were natural, and the Princess would then run off to meet my husband, who was working in the palace.

‘The Duke of Fontaine seems so perfect! Duchess, when I grow up, you’ll give me a place as your husband’s second wife, won’t you?’

She had said that a little over a year after we were married.

Whether she was clever or oblivious for a child.

The siblings, working as a pair, turned my stomach inside out and then would smile as if they knew nothing.

As if I was the strange one for having my expression harden at those childish words.

And not stopping there, she had apparently let slip to my husband that I had feelings for the Crown Prince.

Delphina, who thought everyone would naturally like her, experienced rejection for the first time in her life at the hands of my husband.

And as if trying to get compensation for it, she clung to my husband more persistently as she grew older.

It was good that he coldly refused the young princess, but my husband, who couldn’t very well tell her to stop wandering around his own home, the palace, was stressed every day, and I, in turn, resented the Crown Prince and Princess for constantly summoning me.

Yes. That was that invitation.

But clearly, that invitation should have only come after I had a publicly recognized relationship with Ars. Why had it already arrived?

I sighed and waved my hand at Jena.

“Tell them I’ll go. I can’t help that one.”

“Without even seeing what it says?”

“What difference would seeing it make? It’s a place I have to go anyway.”

“That’s true, but…”

“Just open it and tell me the date. And let Aunt know too.”

“Yes, Miss. Understood.”

Jena reluctantly nodded at my words and left the room quietly with the invitations.

Normally, I should have opened them and written the replies myself, but right now, I was just too lazy.

If you asked why I was so lazy, all I could say was that everything was, just everything.

I had resolved to separate myself, the biggest risk factor, from Ars so that he wouldn’t be harmed any further… but I hadn’t known the side effects would be this severe.

My mood was so sunken that it wouldn’t have been surprising if I burst into tears at any moment.

If just not being able to be by the side of the one I loved made daily life this impossible, how hard must Ars have been after I left?

As I thought of that, the image of Ars holding an unidentified medicine bottle in that dark, gloomy room came to mind again.

And the faint smile he had given as he called my name.

Ah, no. That was just my dream.

My mood darkening again, I shook my head to stop the thoughts and closed my eyes.

If I could force myself to sleep, maybe my thoughts would stop for a while.

I pulled the blanket back up over my head.

I truly wished the world would just end as it was.

“What on earth have you been doing locked in your room all this time?”

It had been nearly a month.

Those were my father’s first words upon seeing his daughter, who had barely come out of her room for almost a month.

My father, who hadn’t even sent a single greeting while I was in my room, said that as his first words.

All he had done for his reclusive daughter was hand her invitations to events where the Crown Prince might attend?

I didn’t even spare him a glance and let out a snort.

“So you *were* curious.”

“A grown daughter locking herself in her room like a child—of course I’m curious.”

“Since, as you said, I’m a grown daughter, you don’t need to worry about me. When have you ever acted like you cared?”

“I am your father, Eloise.”

That tiresome line, coming out whenever I was about to forget.

I let out a hollow laugh at his words.

Because he was my father, so what?

I looked at my father with an incredulous expression.

“Father, please stop pretending to be a parent when it doesn’t suit you.”

“How dare you speak to me with such impertinence!”