If You Wish to Have Me - Chapter 119

The man standing at the door bore a striking resemblance to the boy in her memories, but with facial features that had grown more mature and resolute.

The figure at the doorway was unmistakably Seyard Hillan, her lover and fiancé.

Was she dreaming right now?

Unable to believe the sight before her eyes, Kisa could only blink repeatedly before finally managing to move her lips.

“Wh-why are you h-here…?”

Then Seyard strode into the room and closed the door behind him.

He approached Kisa, and the sound of his shoes striking the floor told her this was definitely not a dream.

Her heart, which seemed to have stopped beating for a moment, began pounding fiercely.

Seyard’s calm face illuminated by the lamplight only heightened her tension further.

“…….”

Kisa unconsciously took a step or two backward and bumped into the table behind her.

As Seyard drew closer, just as Kisa swallowed nervously, he walked right past her.

“Let me turn on the light first. It’s too dark.”

His unexpectedly calm voice reached her ears almost simultaneously as the room brightened.

Seyard had lit the gas lamp hanging on the wall.

After turning around to face Kisa again, Seyard spoke with apparent satisfaction.

“Now I can see your face clearly.”

His gentle eyes were no different from usual.

What would normally have reassured Kisa now only confused her heart further.

Multiple questions stirred within her chest.

What was this about? Why was he here? When had he returned? Wasn’t he angry? How could he act so normally?

She had countless things she wanted to ask, but precisely because there were so many, Kisa had to keep her mouth shut.

As if reading his lover’s inner thoughts, Seyard gently said to Kisa, who had lowered her head:

“If you have anything you want to ask, please feel free to ask as much as you like. I welcome it.”

“…What?”

“Since you’ve seen this room, I assumed you must have many questions for me. Was I wrong?”

From the very beginning, he touched upon Kisa’s greatest weakness without any hesitation.

She had betrayed Seyard’s request and entered the secret room to examine its contents.

And she had done so using the brass key that Seyard had entrusted to her out of faith.

Yet despite this clear act of betrayal, Seyard’s reaction was completely unexpected.

The man before Kisa’s eyes didn’t seem particularly angry, nor did he appear disappointed in her.

There was no sign of him struggling to control rising emotions either.

Even though Kisa was holding the very evidence of her transgression—the scarf—in her hands right now.

‘Why?’

In the suffocating silence, Kisa’s mind raced.

She began to consider things she hadn’t thought of earlier due to her shock.

No matter how she looked at it, Seyard’s presence here was no coincidence.

The possibility that he had encountered a sudden problem while heading to the Hillan family estate and had to turn back?

‘Extremely unlikely.’

Kisa had already considered all reasonable variables before sneaking into the secret room.

The weather had been good for several days, there were no reports of bandits, and even the royal family, who had once summoned Seyard constantly out of spite, had been quiet recently.

Even if some unexpected problem had arisen that forced him to turn back, it would be normal to send someone ahead to the mansion to inform them of the situation.

That way, they could prepare for the Duke’s return.

Moreover, aside from everything else, there was one decisively strange point.

Why had Seyard come to this room first upon returning to the mansion?

Even if he had returned quietly late at night to avoid waking the servants, it would have been natural to go to his own bedroom to rest, or to meet his lover, Kisa.

‘If it had been the latter, he might have searched for me after finding my room empty, but coming directly to this room makes no sense.’

Most importantly, Seyard had shown no sign of surprise upon seeing Kisa in the secret room.

These clues led to only one conclusion.

“Seyard.”

Breaking the lengthy silence, Kisa raised her head and barely managed to meet his gaze.

“Were you testing me?”

If that was the case, all her questions would be answered.

If all of this had been a series of performances orchestrated by Seyard to observe Kisa’s behavior from the beginning…

“You never actually left the capital, did you? Right?”

Since he hadn’t gone far, returning quickly would have been easy.

“Was the business reason for going to the estate also a lie? Is there really a problem with the family business?”

At Kisa’s continued questions, the man’s expression changed slightly.

“I’m sorry, Kisa. Your assumptions are largely correct.”

He apologized with a regretful face.

“I have told you several lies up until now. While it’s true that a business problem occurred, it wasn’t something that required my personal attention, and our party has been staying in the outskirts of the capital for the past few days.”

It was Kisa who found herself at a loss for words due to his all-too-quick and straightforward admission.

“I won’t make excuses for my lies. But please believe this one thing. I—”

“Wait, wait.”

She pressed her hand to her forehead and furrowed her brow.

“Please give me some time to process this.”

“Of course.”

Seyard’s attitude as he readily stepped back with that response was truly gentlemanly.

And the collision between this aspect of him and the truth she had just heard left her feeling increasingly lost in a maze.

“Why… why aren’t you angry?”

Kisa, her shoulders hunched from the chill that had settled in her heart, gnawed at her own lips.

“You were testing whether I was trustworthy or not. And as a result, I failed that test spectacularly.”

“Kisa.”

“Honestly, the fact that I was tested, that you didn’t trust me enough—it’s not exactly pleasant. But I have no right to blame you when I broke my promise and entered this room.”

Kisa muttered in a spirit of self-abandonment.

“So be angry with me. Scold me to your heart’s content.”

Though imagining her beloved reproaching her made her chest tighten, it seemed better than this current ambiguous state.

At least it would be clear and definite.

But Seyard slowly shook his head.

“That’s not right. I’m not angry with you at all. I have no reason to be angry.”

“Why not?”

“Because Kisa hasn’t done anything regrettable to me. And I didn’t orchestrate this because I didn’t trust you in the first place.”

“Then for what purpose…?”

At that moment, the corners of the man’s mouth curved upward in a gentle arc.

“I wanted Kisa to open that door. I hoped you would enter this room and examine it based on your own judgment.”

Though his words became more puzzling the more she heard them, Kisa asked as if entranced:

“Examine what?”

At her question, Seyard’s gaze turned downward.

He glanced at the scarf Kisa was holding, then lowered his voice to a whisper.

“I wanted you to recall that memory.”

Kisa immediately understood what memory he was referring to, and Seyard knew that she understood.

“S-surely not…”

As she held her breath, unable to continue speaking, he gently stroked her back.

“Come now, Kisa. You have more questions for me, don’t you? I’ll gladly answer them, so please ask.”

The face of the boy from her memories overlapped with her lover’s face before her.

The boy had definitely introduced himself as Vischer.

And just now, Seyard had spoken as if he knew all about that day.

‘Was that boy really Seyard after all?’

If so, the most plausible possibility would be that young Seyard had given his brother’s name instead of his own real name.

Come to think of it, it wasn’t such an absurd assumption.

At the time, the boy had indeed committed the transgression of running away from home, and he might have wanted to hide his identity because that fact weighed on his mind.

It wouldn’t be strange for an improvised alias in response to Kisa’s question to be the name of someone he was familiar with.

However, for some unknown reason, somewhere deep in Kisa’s heart, she rejected that assumption.

Though she couldn’t give a clear reason even to herself, she kept thinking that wasn’t it.

Instead, some utterly preposterous possibility began to emerge faintly.

That’s impossible. It can’t be. How could such a thing be conceivable?

It was such a fantastical notion that rational Kisa’s mind vehemently opposed it, but her heart would not bend.

After a brief but fierce internal battle, her heart finally won.

The primary contributor to this victory was a certain place that Kisa and Seyard had visited not long ago.

The girlish and pretty villa situated by the lakeside.

A villa that was long out of fashion, but seemed perfectly suited to Kisa’s tastes.

Though it might have been mere coincidence, that place bore considerable resemblance to the house of the family of three that had appeared in her old memories.

And the person who had built that villa was…

“S-surely you’re not…”

Kisa took a deep breath and looked at Seyard, moving her trembling lips.

Even as she cursed herself for asking what had to be the most foolish question in the world.

“Are you….Vischer Hillan?”

Then Seyard smiled.

It was the most innocent smile she had ever seen.