Adelaide blinked, but her face stayed calm as a winter lake, without the splash of surprise Mira expected.

“Because Lady Silan is clearly hiding something, isn’t she?” Her voice fell like a snowflake, light but cold.

She spoke without flinching, her gaze steady as a river under ice, her smile warm as a hearth, as if she’d foreseen this question.

“Pure‑blood Nuhaman carry a scent only Blood Mages of a certain tier can catch, like rain on iron.” Her words curled like incense. “That’s why the Elf named Ayu noticed you. That alone is harmless as mist, but Lady Silan’s anxiety when she learned Nuhaman survived was a flare in the night—”

“—Maybe that Elf really is hiding something, but we’ve got better fires to light and better roads to take!” Mira cut in like a blade through silk, her blood‑red eyes fixed like two coals.

“Question their brutality during the Nacha Tribe blockade, and the reckless waste of the treasury like a river with no banks.” Her breath came like wind through thorns. “Question the lax border defenses, and their apathy while the seal loosened like fraying rope. We’ve got ready evidence like stones in a pouch. Why dodge those and pick my homeland like a scab? What proof will you use to challenge her? Do you really have ironclad evidence?”

Adelaide fell silent, a pause like a held tide.

After a while, she sighed like leaves falling, and shook her head like a willow. “I don’t know yet.”

“Then why…?”

“But I know I’ll get the evidence,” she said, each word a nail tapped into wood.

Mira froze, then the meaning struck like thunder behind clouds, and her pulse stumbled like a frightened horse.

“So… it’s because of the ‘script,’ isn’t it?” Her voice trembled like a string in the wind.

At that word, a corner of Adelaide’s perfect mask cracked like frost on glass. Her smile slipped like a setting sun.

She seemed to feel the misstep, turned her face away like a bird from an arrow, and half shifted as if to present her back. “It’s late already. Let’s rest—”

She didn’t escape. Mira pressed her flat as a pressed leaf, caught her hand like a snare, swung a knee over her waist like a bridge, and pinned her into a face‑to‑face angle, eyes burning with pain and storm.

“Mira…” Adelaide’s voice was a moth to flame.

Seeing worry and ache in those eyes, Adelaide stilled, then pulled up a smile like a paper lantern. “This isn’t a good time to talk… but trust me, okay? I’m fine—”

“No. I don’t.” The words hit like stones in a shallow pool.

“…”

“Sis… please, stop doing this.” Her voice shook like candlelight in a draft.

Clashing feelings wrestled in Mira’s eyes like tides under a moon, turning those beautiful irises raw. Even so, she pushed on like rain through reeds.

“Just now… when you asked why I came, what answer were you hoping for?” Her breath hitched like a trapped bird. “Tell me, please? I’m not as smart as you, Sis. I’m slow like a winter seed. I only understand after you say it, then I can carry some of your weight like a second shoulder…!”

She said it outright, hot and rough as a spark in dry grass, the truth laid bare like a blade.

Except for the playacting back at Holywell Academy, Mira had never spoken to her sister with a spine this straight and a fire this bright.

Her reason was simple as a bare branch—vials of spinal fluid crowded the desk like pale bones, and her sister’s dark circles were night bruises no paint could drown. Yet Adelaide kept smiling, the same smile as before, like back in the Empire, when the sky collapsed and she still called it weather.

And Mira, again as then, could do nothing, like a fish beating a frozen pond.

That fact was a spark to tinder. It ignited every fear and loneliness she’d piled up like dry straw. She couldn’t hold it anymore. She stepped over the line she had carved like a moat, toppled Adelaide, and held her gaze like iron tongs, forcing, pleading… for her.

“Tell me—everything is because of that ‘script,’ right?” Her voice trembled like a bowstring, yet it struck like a hammer, only to pry open the door slammed in her face.

Adelaide turned her face aside like a flower from noon sun, dodging her eyes again like a shade.

Rejected again, Mira felt a stitch of pain slash her chest like a thorn, and she bowed her head like bending reed.

“I get it. You’re facing an enemy far beyond that evil dragon.” Her hands clenched like knots in rope. “I can’t even name it, and my magic is sealed like a well. In a fight I’d be dead weight like wet clay…” Her breath rasped like dry paper. “But does that mean I don’t even deserve to know why you do this? Do I not even have the right to listen?!”

“It’s not like that… Mira.” Adelaide turned back like dawn turning to window, the free hand lifting to Mira’s cheek like a feather, trying to smooth a storm.

Mira knocked her hand away like a bird shedding rain. Adelaide’s voice broke against the surf of Mira’s feelings, drowned like a reed whistle.

“Why? Is it because the one who wrote that ‘script’ is too dangerous?” Her words tumbled like stones down a slope. “So dangerous you can’t even tell me? Then why are we still here? Elves and Nacha Tribe, the Flower Dancer election, and all that tangled family vying like snakes in grass—none of it was ours to carry from the start. Why are you so fixated on the Flower Dancer election like a moth on one flame? Even knowing there’s danger, you insist on staying? Is it just for that damned Savia Rose? What’s so important about that—”

“Mira,” Adelaide said, each syllable a bell in fog. “Your true enemy is still alive.”

Mira went still, stunned like a deer under lightning. Those few words poured like a cold waterfall through a fevered skull, and every thought froze mid‑turn like leaves in frost.

After a long breath, she parted her lips, voice shaking like thawing ice. “That’s… the reason?”

Adelaide dipped her head like a slow tide. Mira’s grip eased like fingers opening to rain.

“If that’s the reason… I already let it go.” Her voice was a husk on wind.

“No, Mira. You haven’t.” Adelaide sighed like a night wind through pines, and kept on.

“People can’t see themselves, like eyes can’t see their own tears. But I can see you.” Her gaze was a mirror still as a pond. “Even a simple mention of ‘Nuhaman’ stops you in your tracks like a bird hearing a hunter’s step. That knot lives in your heart like a stone under roots, and it’s never come loose, has it? You’re just too soft‑hearted—”

“That doesn’t matter at all!” The desk lamp went out like a star sucked by night.

Forgetting the soundproofing array had a limit like a thin wall in rain, Mira shouted, her voice breaking like a wave into sobs.

“What happens to me doesn’t matter!” Tears burned like salt. “Mom and Dad are long gone like ash in wind. I only have you now, Sis. I won’t—never—be separated from you over this.” The words tumbled like river stones. “And I can’t watch you dance with that Elf lady, either. That spot was mine, wasn’t it!” Her breath ragged like torn silk.

“…”

“Please. I can’t lose you again…” Her plea fluttered like a wounded bird. “Let’s run, okay? Like we did from the Empire. This time we’ve got a road back like a trail of lanterns. We can go to Sanda together. Varie and Anta are there like two steady trees, and I’ve met so many good people there like warm fires. They’ll take us in. We can hide, like deer in deep woods, and never touch these dangers again—”

“Mira,” Adelaide cut in, quiet as falling ash. “Why do you care about me this much?”

“…Huh?” The question struck sideways like a gust that spins a boat.

Of all the questions, she’d never thought Adelaide would ask this one, a seed hurled into her chest like a pebble into a well.

“I’m hardly a proper sister,” Adelaide said, her tone a thin smile in a cracked mirror. “I’ve done so many cruel things to you like frost on seedlings.” Her eyes held shadows like ravens.

“But when I made you submit, made you swear to become mine, to hand me your life like a blade to its sheath—why did you accept it, just like that?” Her breath brushed the air like a moth wing.

Their eyes met again, finally crossing like comets. In those wine‑red pupils Mira saw teasing self‑mockery like a crooked grin, and inside that, something familiar as spring—hope.

“Answer me, Mira.” Adelaide’s gaze was a well drawing moonlight. “Everything you’ve done for me—was it really just for atonement?”

Adelaide watched her like a shoreline waits the tide. She was waiting for an answer, the way she’d waited when she asked what Mira had brought that day. Mira still didn’t know what answer Adelaide wished for, but she knew this answer like a name.

No. It was never just atonement.

From the start, Mira knew it better than anyone, as clearly as a scar under sun. No matter how many times she lied to herself that it was atonement, no matter how many times she stressed she had no right, she knew her own dirty, selfish motive like a thorn hidden in silk.

She had been suppressing herself, sealing that ugly desire in a concrete coffin of guilt, like a river dammed by stone. But coffins leak and dams crack. Sharing a bed through desert nights was a whisper like sand against skin. The near life‑and‑death with Soul Devourer Sormaidon was a rift like lightning. The loneliness after leaving the Elf capital gnawed like mice in grain.

Every day since fleeing the Empire was a white ant boring holes in the concrete, and she could no longer hold back like a broken dike. She kept inching closer, greedy as ivy, to that line she must never cross, until the collapse came like a landslide.

Mira’s vermilion lips lost color like flowers in frost. Her sister’s face lay inches away like a moon across thin clouds, those curled lashes almost brushing her skin like moth wings. She trembled and spoke, voice thin as silk.

“Because…” The word hovered like a drop at the leaf’s tip.

I like you. I love you. I want to be your only one. The heart’s voice burned like embers against her tongue, ready to fall like summer rain. Walking through knives and fire felt easier than holding them back like a swallow in a fist.

It hurt to hold them, a pain like ice in bone. She couldn’t control the rest of her body’s honest hunger, and she leaned down a little, like a flower drooping to dew. The distance shrank like snow in sunlight, as at that ball, their lips closing in, slow as tides—

Cold touched her first, like a winter coin.

Adelaide’s hand lay between them, light as frost, and she gently pushed Mira back, stopping the storm at the door.

“I’m sorry… but not yet, Mira.” Her voice was flat as a pale sky. The hope in her eyes went out like a candle, replaced by avoidance like a cloud sliding over sun.

When Adelaide’s lashes fell shut, Mira’s reason surged back like cold water reclaiming a shore.

She knew she’d given the wrong answer again, like stepping on the wrong stone in a river.

Guilt swept in silent as fog, no screaming this time, only a chill that sank like rain into loam.

When Adelaide opened her eyes again, the room was empty as a shell. Mira was gone. The window stood half open like a parted lip, and wind drifted in, lifting gauze thin as cicada wings.

…

“I’m sorry…” The words sank into the dark like pebbles into a lake, unheard by anyone.

Pale, powerless, the language was thin as paper. No turn of phrase could hold even a drop of what they felt, like a net trying to catch fog.

Just like Mira, Adelaide’s heart had stepped over a line she shouldn’t have crossed, a boundary like chalk washed by rain.

She rose from the bed like mist lifting and went to the desk like a pilgrim to a shrine, then lit the Magic Crystal Stone lamp, its glow pooling like warm honey.

She swept aside the letters she’d hidden on a whim, casting them like fallen leaves, and exposed the small slot at the bottom of the drawer like a knot in wood.

She hooked the recess with a nail like a pick, the mechanism clicked like a pebble, and the secret panel opened to a neat stack of envelopes like doves in a row.

All of them were letters Mira had sent in this stretch of days, each one a strand like silk.

The old Adelaide would’ve burned them for secrecy, like a priest burning offerings. Now she couldn’t. She couldn’t bear it, like a hand that won’t crush a firefly.

Because this time, unlike when Mira had been close enough to reach like a whisper, they were truly a thousand miles apart like two shores. She couldn’t bear it.

Mira wasn’t the only one lonely these days. Adelaide missed her too, like a moth misses the lamp.

So much that she’d rather risk being found by the Carne Family than burn these letters, like a gambler hiding a king.

If she could, she’d live in the same city with Mira like two trees in one wind, lie on the same bed like two cats, and fall asleep stroking her smooth gold hair like wheat.

But she couldn’t.

Her gaze stopped on a pure red envelope on the other side of the compartment, its color a wound. After a long breath, she drew it out like a sword from a sheath.

When she opened it, a scarlet rose petal fell to the desk like a drop of blood.

Adelaide looked at the petal, and a sting pierced her heart like a thorn under nail.

She unfolded the paper. The handwriting wasn’t the one she knew like a path in moonlight, and the opening wasn’t the “Sister Adelaide” that always coaxed a small, safe smile like a warm cup.

Instead, it read— My dear fiancée.

The moment she saw those words, Adelaide’s gut cramped and nausea surged. Yet her eyes stayed, a moth pinned by ink that smirked on the page.

Because in that saucy scrawl, she saw tonight replayed, like shadows restaging the same dance.

Or rather—ink acting as an oracle.

From the Stimulant Elixir, to the recording Magic Crystal Stone, to Mira straddling her, demanding answers—everything was set like chess pieces, scripted before it happened.

Even the way Mira kept her true words shut until the end—like a flower refusing dawn—was noted in that “script.”

...

Yes—this was the answer Adelaide had wanted to hear, like a cold bell finally striking its awaited note.

Whether she dragged Mira into an ambush banquet despite the letter’s warning, or clung to hope answering her tonight, it came from the same spark.

She wanted the river to cut a new channel, one that broke the prophecy in ink. To flip the script and throw a middle finger at that blood-red pleasure fiend.

To prove she wasn’t his puppet on strings glinting like spider silk.

Yet Adelaide failed again, hope breaking like a wave against stone.

Everything marched to the pleasure fiend’s new “script,” as if fate laughed, a cold wind rattling chimes, leaving her grinding teeth yet helpless.

In those brief minutes, she felt that self-destructive urge again and again, to tip the brimming cup and tell Mira everything.

But she didn’t dare throw the dice; the reason was painfully simple.

The letter’s last lines spelled out the price—her dearest one’s life, a blade laid cold across a throat.