As they neared the castle's back gate, Aaron dismounted first and carefully lifted Megrie down.
"Thank you for seeing me home. Good night," Megrie said softly, her steps light as she headed toward the door.
Aaron remained beneath the moonlight, watching until her slender figure disappeared beyond the gate. Only then did he mount his horse and ride away.
He did not know that, within the shadows of the corridor, a pair of eyes burned with a dark, smoldering fire.
"…That guard again," Loya muttered, leaning against the wall, his fingers digging hard into the stone.
Megrie, meanwhile, was preoccupied with plans for using the "modern kitchen" to develop chocolate. Her steps were buoyant, completely unaware that someone was closing in behind her.
Loya carried a flask, drinking as he walked. The alcohol twisted his jealousy and rage into something feverish and unstable. Seeing the smile she couldn't quite hide only made it worse—he was certain that happiness was because of the guard.
"Bang!"
The moment Megrie pushed her door open, a brutal force slammed into her back, shoving her inside. She stumbled forward, nearly falling, and spun around in shock to see Loya stagger in after her, locking the door with a sharp click.
The heavy stench of alcohol filled the narrow room.
"Good heavens—how much have you had to drink?" Megrie stepped back, brow tightly furrowed.
"Megrie… I'm in so much pain. My heart feels like it's tearing apart. Please help me…" Loya tossed the flask aside and clutched his chest, his voice pitiful, almost childlike.
"If your heart hurts, call a doctor. I'm not trained in medicine—how am I supposed to help?" Megrie snapped, though her body tensed with caution.
Loya advanced step by step, his eyes bloodshot. "Gray warned me… told me I couldn't care about you, absolutely couldn't fall in love with you…" He howled, his voice breaking into sobs. "But I can't control it! You're all I think about—it's driving me insane!"
Listening to this confession stirred no warmth in Megrie—only alarm. While he wasn't looking, she grabbed a pillow from the bed and held it against her chest, trying to create distance.
"Gray is right. Even if we aren't blood-related, in name we're still siblings!"
"No! That's not why I can't love you!" Loya suddenly seized her shoulders, his grip terrifyingly strong. "It's because Gray said… the city lord was the one who drove our real father to his death! And you—you're the enemy's daughter!"
Megrie's eyes flew wide open, her head buzzing. "What are you talking about? Explain yourself!"
Loya clutched his head, teetering between clarity and chaos. "I don't know… Gray said it. He said Mother marrying the city lord was part of her plan… and that you were part of it too…"
"A plan? What plan? What else do you know?" Megrie pressed urgently, one hand instinctively gripping his arm while the other still hugged the "defensive pillow."
Mistaking her proximity for a response, Loya suddenly wrapped his arms around her waist.
Megrie reacted instantly, wedging the pillow between them. The charged embrace turned absurd—into a boy clinging tightly to a pillow, with a thoroughly exasperated woman on the other side.
"You can't fall in love with that guard… you can't…" Loya held on fiercely, his voice muffled against his own chest.
Megrie could barely breathe under the pressure. Looking at the mess of hair buried in the pillow, her emotions tangled into something complicated.
How did this poor child end up falling for me?
She sighed inwardly.
Though this body was only eighteen, the thirty-eight-year-old soul inside her saw Loya not as a man, but as a sulking, oversized adolescent—incapable of stirring any romantic feeling, only a deep sense of absurdity and weight.
"Loya, let go. I can't breathe," Megrie said gently—no anger, just a calm reminder.
The words "can't breathe" snapped him back to himself. Loya released her at once, panic flashing across his face as he saw her cheeks tinged red from lack of air.
"I'm sorry… I didn't mean to," he said, stumbling backward before collapsing onto the cold floor, clutching his head. "I just don't know what to do… it hurts so much in here, I'm going mad."
Megrie looked at the boy on the floor. His usually proud, meticulously kept hair was a mess; his shoulders trembled with restrained sobs.
Something soft stirred in her—an instinct born of maturity. She sighed quietly, set the pillow aside, and stepped forward, lowering herself beside him. Without avoiding him, she patted his back gently, steadily, like soothing a lost child.
"Silly child," she murmured, her voice carrying a tenderness even she hadn't noticed. "The grudges of adults shouldn't trap you. You're still so young. The road ahead is long—you have many better choices."
Loya stiffened, feeling the warmth of her hand. It wasn't the passionate response he'd craved, but a deeply unfamiliar comfort—one that felt like reassurance from someone older.
Megrie looked at his profile, understanding all too clearly: Nata's schemes, Gray's vengeance—Loya was little more than a pawn pushed to the front lines of a cruel game. His fixation on "Megrie," through the lens of her thirty-eight-year-old soul, was nothing more than adolescent infatuation, born of rebellion and loneliness.
He didn't truly love her.
He was simply clinging to the first trace of real vitality he'd ever found in this rotting castle.
"I can't… what choices do I even have?" Loya's voice rasped as he gave a bitter laugh.
"You can choose to be yourself," Megrie said, withdrawing her hand, her gaze steady as she looked toward the night sky beyond the window. "If you don't know where to go yet, then watch me. Watch how I climb out of this mire."
The words made Loya jerk his head up.
He stared at Megrie. In that moment, she felt terrifyingly mysterious—yet irresistibly compelling. Her circumstances were harsher than his, yet her eyes were firmer than anyone's.
He didn't know that this resolve came from decades of experience in another world. He only knew that from this moment on, he could no longer look at her with the same possessive gaze as before.