Don’t Concern Yourself With That Book

Relationships were like a scale so she must have had a reason for placing weights on the other side. Her feelings wouldn’t have arisen for no reason.

“Why do I hate the duke?”

“Pardon?”

She didn’t like Hernandez the same way she liked Dane, Fleon, Ray and Hannah. However, if she were to just consider how she would normally treat people she just met, or in other words, her basic standards… No, since he had saved her once before, she should be reacting a little more positively to him.

“I don’t hate the duke.”

Smiling gently before blowing the petals she was holding away, the girl looked up and stared into the trembling blue eyes.

“Hernan.”

With a lovely expression, she smiled widely and spoke cheerfully.

In his eyes that captured the dusk, the sun was setting.

“O-Once more.”

“Yes?”

“Could you call for me once more?”

As if he was running out of breath, he pleaded with her.

“Ah…”

The light trickling down like a piece of soft cloth landed on the young man’s hair.

“Let’s just go.”

With their surroundings looking like that of an oil painting, when their gazes met, a gust of spring breeze brushed against their hair. The girl then spun around.

“Hernan.”

Hernan believed that the girl’s face as she smiled amidst the spring breeze was something he would never have the chance to see again for the rest of his life.

***

The next day, because Castor was busy dealing with political matters, ther practice had been pushed back.

Since she had some free time. Ashley visited the 4th Prince’s Palace. Perhaps it was because it was spring, the palace looked spectacular as vines and plants alike took over the pure white exterior walls.

“There are flowers here too.”

There were numerous small cute yellow flowers blooming along the vines. By the time the heat arrives, those vines would be covered in lush leaves.

Ashley entered the room.

“…. Why are you coming in through the front door?”

Amor glanced at her with his pretty gray-green eyes before turning away.

At his words, Ashley unknowingly looked at the door.

“… You’re right, why did I?”

“That’s strange, you must have forgotten.”

“…..”

His face was as pale and white as ever. She wanted to stretch the wrinkles appearing on his delicate face one by one. She wondered if she looked like a fool from Amor’s point of view.

“I came because Rex, I mean, the Templars of Vucanus had something to give you.”

Her business here was to recruit a templar who could act as a power source. Since that was her reason for her visit, a formal visit like this wasn’t too bad of an idea.

“Bring it here.”

Usually, Amor would communicate with the Templars of Vulcanus using the communication beads.

“… You don’t need to explain why you’re here.”

Amor accepted the parchment she handed him before placing it down. Then, he spoke.

“Since when have you cared about this?” (1)

“It’s the least I can do to be polite. It’s manners.”

“… Manners?”

His refreshing voice retorted with a roughness much like the fur on a caterpillar.

“Of course.”

“Since when have we started being polite to each other?”

Ashley just gave an awkward smile calmly. This whole time she was thinking about how it was such a shame that a face as handsome as his kept frowning all the time.

“… These kinds of things. You don’t need to set it up.”

Ashley flinched at his cracked voice.

‘That face again.’

She didn’t know what she said that offended him but he didn’t seem to be in a good mood.

‘No, rather than saying he was in a bad mood…’

These days, his expressions towards her contained pity or some other emotion she couldn’t really pinpoint.

“You don’t look good… are you sick?”

Then, Amor lowered his head and smirked.

“When have I not been?”

Even his mumbles to himself did not sound any different from how they usually did. She wondered why. His smile suited the heat that his fever brought to his face.

Ashley had been looking around the room but she brought her attention back to him. Her eyebrows twitched delicately as her hair ruffled softly in the wind like fur.

What immediately came to her mind was an excerpt from the <Light of Rusbella> where his hair was described to be like a feather of a sky-coloured bird.

In the Empire, there existed silver birds that could only be found to its north. Their feathers were fine and their survival was constantly threatened but they would die with any slight change in their environment. It was a rare bird that was now almost extinct.

There was a scene where Rebecca came across this bird after barely surviving her trip to look for the medicine for her ill-stricken male lead and was consequently reminded of Amor.

Even after his death, his dedication and his unrequited love for her eventually managed to only occupy a moment in that woman’s life.

“Brother, have you ever fallen in love?”

She had asked impulsively. To be honest, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t been curious during the whole time she knew him but asking him felt a little strange.

There had always been a distance between the two and they had been busy with other things.

‘Huh, I’ve been busy? With what?’

Her vision dimmed again. Vague images seemed to sway in front of her but the cloud soon cleared up as if nothing had happened. Her eyes managed to clear up.

“… Why are you asking?”

“Ah… I’m thinking of making reference to it on stage.”

“The stage?”

“Everyone thinks that it was the relationship between the gods and the first Emperor.”

“Love.”

“Yes.”

Of course, Ashley had no intentions of igniting any sort of romance between herself and the tyrant.

But there was a law in the world that stated that things in the world would never go the way she wanted. Just like the diary in her hand. Misfortune did not enter her life because she wanted it to.

“Before I answer… come here. Why are you standing so far away?”

“Ah, well, it’s not so different from how we usually are, is it?”

But contrary to what she said, there was a strange distance between the two.

For some reason, Ashley did not want to narrow the distance between them. Which was why she quickly started speaking kindly to him. However, she couldn’t win his persistent gaze and gave into him. She sat down.

“Don’t you feel bad for speaking like that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I feel a little distant from you, brother.”

“…..”

“No, I’m not sure why either… It just feels like I’m suddenly out of time. It’s like that awkward feeling of leaving your room to get some snacks only to realise that you aren’t hungry anymore.”

Perhaps what she was feeling was something like marriage blues, where the bride would get preoccupied with all sorts of pessimistic thoughts right before the wedding.

“Well, I might be getting sensitive because I’ve been preparing for the stage.”

She thought they were particularly close but when he was acting so distant and awkward, she felt heartbroken.

“Am I sick?”

“What?”

“N-N-Nothing?”

No, it must be because his friendly caresses felt awkward. She wondered why. From what she could remember, he had not been this friendly.

For Ashley who had lost her memories, Amor’s appearance was very unfamiliar to her.

‘It feels strange. Why?’

The gaps in her memories went back far before she died so she was not familiar with Amor’s occasional smiles and his natural skinship.

When the current Ashley tries to think of Amor, recalling her remaining memories of him was like seeing him through a screen.

After she saved Amor from his death, all her instincts and emotions that accumulated through her deaths had disappeared. Hence, after the motivation that was her deaths had disappeared, her memories no longer had any substance. It was because of that, even if she were to think about Amor, she could not recall the feelings she had for him as they had disappeared.

Because what bonded them together was ‘death’.

Their relationship had one-sidedly ended to become a sorrowful one in which only one party could remember.

“Are you saying that you feel awkward with me?”

“No, that’s not quite it… No, don’t make that expression.’

Amor smiled without a word and gestured at her to come closer.

“It’s fine if you feel awkward.”

Something softened the sensitivity and harshness that had always been in his gray-green eyes.

Was this what the girl was supposed to originally be like? Even thinking about it wouldn’t make it any easier to get used to this change. He blamed it all on his sensitivity. Amor could now easily sense it.

“Love… You’re asking about something there is no answer to.”

Amor held his chin and smiled. As his long sky-coloured hair fluttered in the wind, it covered and revealed his eyes again and again.

“It’s something I don’t want to experience again. Because it hurt and it pained me when it passed.”

Since the <Light of Rusbella> contained only Rusbella’s story, there was no way to know Amor’s when he was only a supporting character in the original novel but the expression she was seeing on him now did give Ashley some guesses.

Where and from what point did he start falling in love?

He removed his sensitivity as if it had been a thorn on his side for a while. In front of her eyes, his expression had surprisingly softened and his face was surprisingly clear and fresh.

Perhaps this was the expression Rusbella always sees on him.

“But. It was not something I chose to feel.”

As he spoke, he reached out to Ashley. Ashley stared at his hand before placing her curled hands on top.

“H-Hold on.”

Amor then pulled up with the strength no one would expect from such a weak man. When she came to, Ashley realised that she was sitting on the bed with her back well supported.

“It always comes looking for me. When I noticed it, it was already too late.”

Now that their hips were touching, she looked up at the man.

“I realised that it was love.”

His hair was flying, eyebrows fluttering and his gray-green eyes stood out against his pale white face.

Within his desperate gaze, Ashley felt like she got a peek at the answer.

“Ashley.”

HIs eyes folded. As his face gradually got closer, out of impulse, Ashley unknowingly held his face.

“This…”

At a distance so narrow that they could feel every wind generated by the blink of an eye, Amor slowly removed Ashley’s hand which was covering his mouth.

“Is this the bad hand that’s trying to block a blessing?”

“Y-Y-You can place the blessing someplace else, can’t you?

“Well, I don’t remember.”

Her slender hand slotted into the larger hand that held it.

“You asked me to tell you about love.”

Slowly, as their faces got closer, as their noses touched and as their breaths brushed against the other’s face, Ashley did the only thing she could do. She closed her eyes. His short breaths warmed her lips. She could tell even without looking. The breath she was not sure she should release was getting hotter and hotter, and she could feel his grip on her hand get tighter.

And as she waited for his warmth to touch, contrary to her expectations, the shadows disappeared from her face with an airy laugh.

“Is that enough of an answer?”

What he couldn’t say was that he could no longer see kissing her lips as merely a blessing.

Amor distanced himself.

‘Why?’

Like a hand full of sand, like ruins crumbling and becoming destroyed, like a castle on a cliff, his ephemeral smile looked sad.

“Brother, am I overthinking?”

As he continued to resist the questions haunting him, Ashley caught onto him. She thought that she should.

“… About what?”

She had come to him today for some advice but when she tried to bring it up, she couldn’t speak easily. She vaguely recalled consulting him for something before but the words did not fall off her tongue that easily, as if they had gone back to the beginning.

In the end, she decided to beat around the bush and bring it up vaguely.

“I feel like I’m forgetting something.”

“It’s just a feeling.”

He responded to Ashley before saying reassuringly.

“You’re overthinking.”

T/N;

(1): Amor here is referring to the fact that Ashley bothered to bring a parchment and everything like it was a formal request when she would usually just ask him for a favour outright.