Chapter 56
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Odelia, hearing Ludville's words, tried her best to erase the bitter look on her face as she replied.
"It seems like the effect will be certain, though."
No one would dare to even think of touching him.
"But, are you sure you're alright with this?"
"With what?"
"With me being known as the Blue-Eyed Woman."
Odelia, pretending to be calm, gauged Ludville's reaction as she asked,
"You're not going to look for her anymore?"
"Ah."
Ludville answered indifferently.
For a fleeting moment, a look of exhaustion crossed his face.
"How should I put it?"
He rubbed his chin, lost in thought for a moment, before returning to his expressionless state and opening his mouth.
"From the start, both in terms of time and space, such a woman could not exist in this world."
"......"
"My retainers have always consistently told me that fact. That she is a woman who cannot exist in reality."
Well, whenever I heard such things, I think I drew my sword and went on a rampage.
Ludville added, as if recalling a distant memory, even though it had only been a short while ago.
"Perhaps I was truly mad and seeing hallucinations. I was completely addicted to drugs, and I was even driven to the brink of Demonization."
So, that's the conclusion he came to.
"I just, I only had the thought of wanting to fill something empty inside me. That could be someone, or it could just be a delusion."
Odelia, knowing all the truth, didn't know how to react.
She simply remained silent, judging that not correcting Ludville's delusion would be better for his mental health.
"Now that emptiness is a little less, so I think I'm alright."
"......Less?"
"Enough to be able to live."
Ludville said calmly.
He paused for a moment, then awkwardly changed the subject, as if he thought he had revealed too much.
"In the first place, who would believe it if a Grand Duke who was searching for a certain woman suddenly fell in love with another woman and got married?"
He once again stated it precisely.
As if there was no other choice from the beginning.
"You have no choice but to become that Blue-Eyed Woman."
'Wouldn't it be fine if we just didn't act like we were madly in love with each other...?'
Odelia thought inwardly, but Ludville continued speaking without giving her a chance to object.
"Let's say that your disappearance was because your family opposed you meeting me, so you ran away from home."
"Then, why was His Highness so insistent on finding Princess Cardel?"
"Because the Princess hid her identity and met me."
"What is this, some kind of fairy tale..."
"Not bad."
Just what wasn't bad about it?
But Ludville seemed to quite like this childish romance novel.
He raised the corners of his lips with a playful look.
"There was a masquerade ball at the Imperial Palace four months ago. At that time, the Princess escaped from her family and secretly attended. That day, I happened to run into you, and we recognized each other at once..."
The more she heard the story, the more her mind wandered.
None of it makes any sense.
A mysterious woman who drove the Iron-Blooded Grand Duke mad?
Wouldn't you have to be a 'Goddess of Love' descended from the heavens, or use forbidden drugs, to make that possible?
...But before she knew it, Odelia was engrossed in the third-rate romance novel.
"It doesn't seem very convincing. It still has to be somewhat plausible to be fooled. People aren't stupid..."
"It's not that... implausible."
Huh?
Before Odelia could ask back with a puzzled look, Ludville quickly continued.
"When the clock tower bell rang, you left because you were afraid of being discovered, and I couldn't catch you, who I didn't even know the name of. Only those blue eyes remained in my memory..."
"That's a story I've heard somewhere before."
"Stop nitpicking. The public goes crazy for such obvious stories."
It certainly seems like it will be memorable.
If this story spreads, it will be engraved in everyone's minds.
Ludville had already received a lot of attention for bringing the Blue-Eyed Women to the castle.
Everyone will be waiting for the sequel.
To think that the other party is the sickly Princess of the Cardel family, who hid her identity.
People will talk about their story for days and nights.
"Your Highness, even so, it's a bit..."
"Stop with that 'Your Highness' title too."
"......"
"A more intimate title than a name would be better, so calling me 'Lud'..."
"......I can't do that."
There was a brief, unnecessary conflict due to a detail correction, but in any case, their love story seemed to be coming to an end like that.
Odelia, with a face that had become very tired in that short time, carefully asked him.
"You haven't forgotten the clause that private feelings will be excluded, have you?"
Then a snort came back.
"When did we ever talk about that? We're doing this act for the Cardel family to see. The contractual relationship won't change."
"......"
But aren't you talking a bit too much?
You seem to be talking about five times more than usual today...
Odelia narrowed her eyes and examined Ludville.
"Princess also knows that it's the best, most efficient, and even the most effective, doesn't she?"
Ludville rather asked back like that.
And unfortunately, that was the right thing to say, so Odelia couldn't refute his claim.
"That's not it... I should call you 'Odelia' too. Or do you want a separate nickname?"
"Odelia is enough."
Odelia belatedly realized that she had been caught up in Ludville's scheme, but it was already too late.
Because the rumor spread like wildfire not long after.
* * *
After receiving Odelia's Purification, the number of nightmares Ludville had noticeably decreased.
The nightmares that had been repeated every night, no, the hell that even invaded his daily life, now came about two or three times a week.
He was able to get a decent night's sleep.
The amount of sleep he used to get for only about an hour a day had also increased to three hours a day.
Of course, it wasn't like that every day.
Nights when he still couldn't sleep periodically came to him, and he still had to endure the dawn by smoking Cigarettes like an addict.
But he was steadily reducing the amount he smoked.
There was a clear change.
Instead of being crushed by collapsing dreams every day like before, he was now starting to feel alive little by little.
But that didn't mean that the nightmares had completely disappeared.
'...Again.'
When he was completely trapped in 'that nightmare' that had been endlessly repeated after a long time.
When no matter how hard he struggled, there was no sign of waking up.
And when it seemed like he would spend an infinite amount of time in this darkness where he couldn't see an inch ahead...
He couldn't accept it as if he was used to it like before, as if he was sick of it.
For the first time in a while, he felt true despair.
He gasped for breath, feeling suffocated.
The pain that had become dull when he experienced it every day came more vividly because it had been less frequent.
Was he given a breather in the meantime to give him even greater pain?
It even felt like that.
It was as if the moment he felt like he had finally come up to land and could breathe, he was dragged back down to the deep sea without any warning.
Into a deep, suffocating, endless darkness.
Ludville was back in this Abyss.
This was clearly a punishment given to him for committing some great sin in his past life.
Otherwise.
While watching someone's death.
While rotting away.
Why would he have to keep having nightmares of falling endlessly, again and again...?
'Until when?'
Does it continue until I die?
But he wasn't even allowed to die.
Someone prevented him from dying.
Following him around annoyingly.
And prying and interfering.
He dragged him, who was on the verge of death, who was about to fall into hell, back to this world.
He gave meaning to a meaningless life.
If so, you have to take responsibility.
Yes, it's all your fault.
