Chapter 4

Because I had received Emile’s proposal not long ago, he was the one I worried about most.

If his wife were to leave this world so early after proposing, it would surely be a deep wound for him as well.

‘It really would be better to reject the proposal after all…’

Turning back toward Emile with those thoughts in mind, I froze solid like ice.

Standing in black mourning clothes, Emile wore a hideously blank expression.

Far from grief, neither regret nor lingering affection was visible. He was simply looking down at my corpse as if staring at a piece of scrap paper. My hands began to tremble violently from the sheer shock.

‘Who is that? I don’t know a man who wears an expression like that.’

Emile had always smiled gently. He had never made such a cold face before.

‘Is that really Emile?’

As I stared at him as if spellbound, my face pale as a corpse, Emile contorted his face and spoke toward my body: “Always clinging to that knitting basket… Now I won’t have to look at that dreadful sight anymore.”

It was a statement cold enough to freeze my very heart.

‘Is that… really Emile?’

I was skilled at needlework. While good at sewing and embroidery, what I did best was knitting. Every winter, I knitted every single sweater Emile wore.

〈My goodness, Yvonne! You’re going to make a wonderful wife.〉

Countess Cline had praised my skills at every opportunity. Whenever I handed over a completed scarf or sweater, Emile always wore a gentle smile.

〈Yvonne, thank you as always. I’m so happy.〉

‘Yet behind my back, he was thinking like this all along?’

That he was glad he wouldn’t have to look at that dreadful sight anymore?

My mind was scrambled, unable to distinguish reality from magic. A woman with hair as red as a burning flame brushed past me. Calling to Emile in a coquettish voice, she said: “Come here, Emile. You’ve seen off your wife plenty. Honestly, isn’t even a funeral like this a bit much for Yvonne?”

Stepping close to Emile, she intimately linked arms with him. Emile, who had been expressionless the whole time, also offered her a bright smile.

“Indeed.”

“Let’s hurry back and raise a toast. I’ve prepared everything.”

“Alright.”

Watching her suggest raising a toast when someone had died, I clenched my fists tightly.

‘Roseanne Bergamot!’

She was none other than my one and only friend.

***

Because I had seen such a shocking future, my hands trembled uncontrollably. Even after returning to the present, I sat blankly for a long while, unable to pull myself together.

‘Why was the future like that?’

I wrapped my trembling arms tightly around my body. Though the illusion shown by the magic had vanished, the image of myself lying in the coffin as a corpse, and Emile looking down at me like that, remained vividly etched in my mind.

‘There’s no way Emile would do that.’

I shook my head violently. Emile’s gentle smile and his icy face crossed paths in a chaotic blur.

“Th-This is all fake. It’s an illusion. I must have been too nervous because it was so sudden.”

To see such an ominous future—I wished I could pretend I hadn’t seen it and erase the memory altogether.

However, the round, jade-colored knitted doll staring at me blocked my attempt to escape reality.

「Are you alright, Yvonne? If you want to cry, you may hug me.」

“Pepe…”

Pepe comforted me clumsily. On his face, which looked blurry through my tears, a clear sign of regret for recklessly using magic was evident.

I squeezed Pepe tight, cherishing him. Though he was just a small knitted doll, the mere fact that I wasn’t alone at this moment warmed my heart.

I slowly opened my lips. My voice trembled as it spilled out, because the future I had glimpsed was far too shocking.

“W-What I saw was real, wasn’t it?”

「That is…」

“In the near future, I die.”

Saying it aloud made the future I had just seen feel all the more starkly real. I tightened my grip on Pepe.

“Emile, my fiancé, was linking arms intimately with Roseanne, mocking my dead self. What on earth is going on?”

「Calm down, Yvonne.」

Despite Pepe’s comfort, my trembling did not easily settle. I squeezed my eyes shut, doing all I could just to keep the tears from flowing.

“Those two are people I trust…”

〈So you’re Yvonne! Nice to meet you, I’m Roseanne.〉

Roseanne was the prettiest girl in Countship Cline. Her father was a Viscount working under Count Cline. Having many occasions to visit the Count’s estate alongside her father, Roseanne naturally became friends with Emile and I.

As striking as her pretty face was, Roseanne possessed a refreshingly confident personality.

〈Yvonne, sit up straight.〉

〈Don’t pay attention to people who mock you.〉

〈You have us.〉

A precious friend who always loudly cheered for me when I involuntarily shrank back whenever the three of us hung out.

‘For such a Roseanne to rejoice over my death…’

Furthermore, the sight of her intimately linking arms with Emile was no ordinary matter. They looked as though they had been lovers for a very long time.

‘Could it be that they were in love all along?’

I tilted my head.

‘Then why did Emile propose to me? He could have just proposed directly to Roseanne, not me.’

The person who came to mind right then was none other than Emile’s mother, the Countess.

〈I’m so happy you two are getting married!〉

At Emile’s sudden proposal, the Countess had burst out as if she had been waiting for it. And Emile hadn’t seemed particularly surprised, either.

That strange proposal situation pointed to only one thing:

‘Emile already knew. That the Countess wanted to take me as her daughter-in-law.’

Then the situation fit together. He might have proposed to me simply because he didn’t want to disappoint his mother.

The problem was: how long did they intend to keep up that ridiculous charade?

‘Don’t tell me… until I died?’

Did they plan to deceive me while sharing their love between the two of them?

Recalling the two laughing in front of my corpse chilled my blood once more. As I bit my lower lip, Pepe patted the back of my hand and said: 「Looking at your face, you seem to be harboring exceedingly negative thoughts. Stop it. What we saw was merely a tiny fragment of the future—nothing is certain.」

And the words that followed sank clearly into my ears: 「The future can be changed.」

“What?”

The future can be changed?

As I faced Pepe with a blank expression, the maid called out to me from outside.

“Lady Yvonne, you must come downstairs.”

“Wh-What?”

Rising abruptly like someone with a secret that mustn’t be caught, I looked around frantically. Fortunately, the maid hadn’t entered the room yet.

Flustered, I looked at Pepe. Pepe shook his head.

「I-I shall pretend to be a doll!」

Right! A talking doll would look suspicious to anyone!

Pepe went limp, shedding all tension from his body like an ordinary doll. Anyone looking would see nothing more than a normal plushie. I pressed my palm firmly against my thumping chest.

‘Acting so restless like this will only raise more suspicion. There’s nothing to get caught for. Other people don’t know what Pepe really is.’

To be honest, until this very morning, Pepe had been just a doll to me, too. In the end, I was the only one who knew he was a magic-using dragon.

‘Right, there’s nothing to worry about. Just act naturally. Naturally.’

I walked toward the doorway. As I walked, I couldn’t tell if my mind was settling down or freezing over even further.

“Whew.”

Approaching the door so awkwardly my joints practically creaked, I took a deep breath and opened it. The maid I saw every day blinked and asked:

“My Lady, are you alright? Sweat is dripping from your forehead.”

“Ah, I was… exercising.”

“In your room?”

“Y-Yes.”

Even to my own ears, my voice sounded terribly strange. I offered an awkward smile.

“Y-You know… I thought I should lose a bit of weight before the engagement ceremony.”

The maid tilted her head, but managed to nod at my words.

“I understand being nervous about announcing the marriage publicly. Still, My Lady, you are just fine right now. The important thing is to maintain your current figure without gaining or losing weight—there’s no need to exercise differently than usual.”

“I-Is that so?”

The maid’s words weren’t wrong. Thanks to the hurried Countess, the dress to wear at the wedding had already been ordered. In fact, altering her body shape now and ruining the fit of the dress would be a bigger issue.

The maid muttered in a small voice, “And here you always said you detested exercise…” She then pulled and smoothed out the hem of my skirt, saying: “A guest has arrived at the mansion right now. You must hurry to the reception room.”

“A guest?”

Was there a guest I was supposed to meet today? Puzzled, I tilted my head, only to freeze rigid like stone at the maid’s following words: “It’s Lady Roseanne.”

“…”

Roseanne had come to visit.