Is it that Nocton is not surprised because the subject of the situation is Sheryl Bornaine, or is it because the situation itself was created by him?

I watched, breathlessly, as he lowered himself to look at the fallen lady.

“Does the young lady usually have chronic diseases?”

“That, like that, she wouldn’t have anything like that! Why all of a sudden…!”

“Calm down, Lord Elford.”

He calmed the man with a voice that was clearly contrast with Elford, then Nocton reached out to Sheryl Bornaine.

Then he put his palm right in front of her eyes, as if to cover her blurry eyes.

Even so, the rough and tigh breath slowly calmed down, and after a while, the body of Sheryl Bornaine was dropped.

“Sheryl!”

“Don’t worry. I just put her to sleep with the magic items I had. You can bring her to the priest who lives in the castle.”

“Ah … thank you, thank you.”

Roziks Elford rose with Sheryl Bornaine in his arms.

He stumbled once because he’s not that strong enough, but he seemed to never let go of the hand that held the lady firmly.

Don’t tell me she has his heart.

Nocton, who was watching two people in silence, called Roziks Elford by name.

Young lord, Count Elford.

“I’m on the receiving end, so I believe I won’t touch it anymore.”

In words of unknown meaning, Elford nodded heavily.

Soon after, the Marquis Bornaine’s daughter disappeared, and the eyes of those who were watching spread toward the door of the ballroom.

I took advantage of the situation and crept my feet. It would be a good to run away at such a messy time.

But even before my steps had fallen, a shadow fell on me.

“Would you spare me a moment, Valrose?”

A face that doesn’t seem angry, but doesn’t even smile.

The expressionless him looked cold due to his white skin color comparable to snow, and his purple eyes was trapping me in.

In words, it was an invitation, but emotionally, it was a coercion. I couldn’t help but nod my head.

As I walked along Nocton, I saw Alice in the direction I was heading. Even at a glance, her face doesn’t look good. While observing the situation, she must have thought the same thing as me.

She hesitated and seemed to be approaching me, but I shook my head quietly.

No matter how powerful Nocton Edgar is, he won’t do anything at the Imperial Ball.

He need to hypnotize the guests one by one, and here to make it possible, he need to do that for hundreds of people.

If he had intended to hurt me, he would have chosen a quieter place and a more private time.

In fact, if that’s the intention, even if Alice comes, there will only be two victims, and nothing will change.

Alice mouthed something to me in silence, but there was only one word I could understand from this distance.

Be careful.

I feel like I’m performing a play by a secret order.

I swallowed my dry saliva and followed Nocton to the terrace.

Unfortunately, the terrace we headed for was where Nocton broke the railing last time. All other places were already curtained. It’s been only a month now, but the railing is already fixed. The Imperial birthday party was just around the corner, so it seemed to have been handled in a hurry.

Nocton Edgar really bothers many people. Don’t tell me it’s a bad construction.

“It’s been a while, Valrose.”

I tried to turn away from reality with different thoughts, but my thoughts collapsed at Nocton’s greeting.

Of all things, he looked more radiant with his backlit back against the moon.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I felt like a fool trying to greet him.

“Why did you ask to see me?”

“Yeah, I have something I must say now. Between you and me.”

What is between me and you?

Once again, my tongue flinched at the words that irritated me, but I managed to shut my mouth. For nearly a month, Alice was asking me not to irritate Nocton, which has given me a little patience.

I don’t even know what it’s like to provoke him in the first place.

I looked at Nocton without responding, as if urging him to continue.

I think I deserve to get used to it now, but my heart was running hard after a month of absence.

Nocton made eye contact with me, but he laid his eyes down as if avoiding my gaze. The drooping eyelashes looked beautiful in the middle of the whole thing.

“You’re not curious? Why did the young lady of Bornaine suddenly fall? Would Nocton Edgar have anything to do with it?”

Although the words from his mouth were not at all beautiful.

“I didn’t push, I reverted what I did.”

“You said you reverted it?”

“Because Sheryl Bornaine was brainwashed by me.”

He’s speaking very openly now.

It doesn’t seem like a good sign. I took a half step.

The only thing Nocton had behind the curtain was a railing, but I wanted to spread the distance.

“….the eyes were different.”

“I didn’t act so bad that her brain ruined. I only hypnotized her once, twice three times…? At the time of hypnosis, there must have been no big difference in eyes or anything, but over time, it seems to have weakened quite a bit.”

“Are you saying that the reason Lady Sheryl Bornaine is so hostile towards me is because of your brainwashing?”

“I didn’t mean to brainwash her into being hostile to you. Yeah, I told her to love me, to be exact.”

“Crazy….”

The mad conversation made me swear. Thinking of Alice, I managed to suppress it, and I exhaled thinly.

He brainwashed her to love him, since when?

For Nocton Edgar, a person’s heart is that light?

I stopped making a sharp sound, but I couldn’t stand it.

“Is a person’s heart that simple for you?”

“In my defense, it was her who made fun of me first. When I was young. They liked my appearance, but since my family didn’t treat me well, there were many children who tried to win over me and enjoy their superiority. Some of them went further to make a mockery of it.”

“What….?”

“The hypnosis was then too. She came to mock me, so I thought it was self-defense to take her mind. There was something I wanted to check.”

The calm voice contains a wretched story.

The moment I heard that, I realized I had forgotten what had passed.

I knew that Sheryl Bornaine tried to mock Nocton. It was a story I overheard not long after I got close to him, the conversation that made me hate her on my childhood.

The words that aroused my guilt, the words that I swallowed up in the past because I told myself it would hurt him, came out of his mouth today.

He knew that.

After the succession process stabilized, he gained strength and was quick-witted, so I thought he would find out later.

Nevertheless, my heart agitated whether I was hoping he didn’t know.

So did he, too, notice that I was approached him for another purpose?

Maybe I’m the only one who knows….

I had a complicated mind. When I heard that he hypnotized Sheryl Bornaine, I became more and less suspicious that Nocton might have hypnotized me.

I didn’t think I’d be safe because I was someone very close to him, on the other hand, I was skeptical because he didn’t even need to hypnotize me if he had noticed my intentions,

But what makes me even more troubled than such doubts was that Nocton knew the truth.

I felt so vague that I couldn’t define what I was feeling.

It was neither sad nor cool.

Perhaps Nocton’s voice is overly calm that it’s confusing me.

I couldn’t say anything.

Just for no apparent reason, my heart was in anguish.

Even though the person concerned said calmly, I felt as if I had found a wound in the words.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been silent at that time …. or maybe I shouldn’t have thought like that from the beginning.

The fear in my heart has been crushed under other emotions.

However, I wasn’t happy that the fear had died down.

“….Why are you telling me that.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about it since we talked in the Marquis’ drawing room before.”

Nocton Edgar came a step closer to me.

Reflexively, I also took a step back, but he didn’t take another step after me.

I don’t know what he’s thinking, he was looking at me with eyes as vague as my own.

“You told me that. I don’t care about you specially. I think of you as a toy. So you’re going to distance yourself from me. Honestly, it was shocking, Valrose. I really … that’s not true.”

“What … I’m special to you, are you trying to say that now?”

“That’s right, so I want to apologize to you.”

For a moment, I was speechless at the unexpected words.

That I’m special and he wants to apologize.

The words that I wished for in my childhood flow so lightly.

Perhaps, Nocton Edgar had been struggling in his own pains and finally came up with the words.

Just like I found a subtle wound in Nocton’s words a while ago, this time, too, it’s a little more complicated, and there may be some emotions behind it.

But I didn’t know how to think so deeply about the matter that touched my feelings.

I couldn’t make any reasonable and rational assumptions unless I heard directly about his deed.

In fact, it may be because I have already heard an apology from Nocton. On the day he apologized for his careless talk about Aaron, he extended me an invitation to the tea party.

An invitation to the tea party that, if it wasn’t cancelled, would have killed Aaron and Alice.

My heart is twisted.

His apology cannot be trusted.

“Are you going to invite me, Alice, and Aaron to the tea party again?”

“I’ve stopped doing that. I’ll apologize properly, Valrose. Not in my way, but in your way. Not what I want to do, but what you want. Yeah….”

Nocton took a breath and spoke in a stronger tone.

“I will do whatever you want.”

As if waiting for an answer, or as if waiting for a disposition, he paused.

I also didn’t open my mouth immediately, so only the sound of the cold breeze between us filled the silence.

A winter night with the crescent moon, a cool breeze, and Nocton Edgar standing before my eyes.

Everything makes my heart cold.

I started to have a headache. As if I was hitting a hammer on the inside of the left eyebrow bone, I felt a throbbing ringing.

“What are you apologizing for? For testing me? For never came to Valrose’s mansion even when you asked me to visit Edgar every day? For never came to my birthday party?”

No, it’s not that big of a deal, actually.

I took a breath for a while, I wanted to get rid of my headache.