Chapter 43

“Jack Hatzfeld. You know him, don’t you? It seems he’s head over heels for Adeline. Well, the fact that he came to me for help should tell you enough.”

Sophia lifted her shoulders in a smug little shrug.

He even offered to trade the jewels her family needs. Imagine how devoted he must be.

Then, wiping the laughter from her face, she struck with cold finality.

“Now it’s your turn to taste it as well, the pain you inflicted on Mireille.”

With that scornful parting shot, she took her leave. And as if to prove Sophia’s words, Adeline soon asked Millein.

“Why did you propose to me, Millein?”

Recalling that moment, Millein let out a short, derisive laugh and swept a hand through his hair. The blue eyes that so often held a gentle smile were now fixed coldly on the window beyond.

“You ask why I proposed to you, Renée…”

Had she already forgotten?

“You were the one who first said we should become family.”

His thoughts slipped back to the moment in the past when he had resolved to finally make his proposal. Around the time his graduation from the academy drew near, Adeline had once said.

—I wish I could have been real family with you, Millein. Don’t you think so too?

At the time, he had been seated across from her, working on an assignment. As Adeline rested her chin in her hand and murmured, Millein’s steadily moving fountain pen abruptly stopped.

—…Is that so?

His voice, touched with a gentle smile, flowed softly toward her.

—Adeline, do you truly wish to become family with me?
—Hm? Of course. The Belov family has always been so close. I’ve always envied that.

As she spoke, still resting her chin in her hand, Adeline’s face seemed caught somewhere between a girl and a grown woman.

—If I became family with you, Millein, maybe I could live that kind of life too.

They say children grow in leaps whenever one looks away, but that was the first moment he felt the truth of that saying so vividly. And in Adeline’s eyes, fixed upon him, there was an affection unlike anything she had ever shown him before.

Even though she herself seemed unaware, Millein had long known the feelings she harbored for him.

‘I only wondered when she might realize it herself, that was why I never spoke of it.’

And this was the truth.

That it was Adeline who wanted him first.

And so he had always waited for the day she would be the first to say she wanted him.

‘I would do anything for you if you just said the word, Renée.’

If he had waited over ten years, what was one more month? Had he not witnessed Adeline kissing Jack, Millein truly would have waited until the day she came to him of her own accord.

‘After all, Adeline would eventually come back to me.’

But after tasting her lips once, he found his tongue turning dry.

Never before had he felt weary of waiting.

But the moment he heard Adeline’s question, it was as though mocking that thought, he realized just how thin his patience really was.

‘I thought I didn’t mind waiting.’

But that wasn’t true.

He had grown skilled at waiting for the Adeline who loved him.

He had never learned how to wait for the Adeline whose heart had turned away. And so he felt a thirst. After tasting her lips once, the urge for more swelled into something close to greed. He wanted to seize Adeline as she turned away and ask her—

‘…Renée.’

Don’t you want me anymore?
I have waited only for you, all this time. You were the one who wanted me first, so how can you turn away now as if that had all been a lie?

‘I can’t wait any longer.’

So… 

Millein lifted his hand before his eyes, as though to shield them from the sun. It was a hand unusually long and straight, the knuckles distinct yet not overly pronounced.

As his gaze lingered on the bare ring finger of his left hand, a faint murmur escaped him.

“…I wish she would notice now.”