“Just having you home is more than enough to be grateful for, Milady!”
Hannah’s tear-stained face blurred into the butler’s gentle, weary smile. Down on the desk lay the matchbox Leonhart had left with her.
‘Lilietta’s disappearance… It shattered them even more than I realized.’
Rita bit her lip, an uncomfortable knot tightening in her chest.
‘If only I truly were Lilietta….’
If she were truly the girl they longed for—the child whose mere presence brought such solace—she would not feel so torn. She could have simply accepted the warmth and allowed herself some peace.
‘Yet I have no memory of any of it. If I let myself believe their words, what happens when the real Lilietta returns? What then…?’
She thought back to swearing an oath under Lilietta’s name, and the memory left a foul taste in her mouth. Nothing around her felt familiar. Not a single spark of recognition had flared. The limbo was suffocating; all she wanted was certainty.
Seeing her chew nervously on her lip, Alfred gently broke the silence.
“A few servants on the grounds still recall you as a child, Milady. Shall I summon them?”
“…Yes. Please do.”
Rita wiped a hand over her tired face, murmuring,
“And… would they be able to walk the grounds with me? Just around the places Lil—places I might have visited back then.”
“Of course, Milady.”
A spark of hope lit Alfred’s eyes, as though he clung to the belief that the sights might jar her memory.
That evening, accompanied by an elderly gardener and a maid who had served the estate since Lilietta was small, Rita began exploring the halls and grounds of House Laskail.
Unable to stomach the lingering patchouli scent on Lilietta’s gowns, she had changed into a modest dress Alfred hastily fetched for her.
Nestled beside a vast birch forest, the estate proved far grander than she had imagined. Now she understood why it was known as Birch Castle.
Though they visited only the spots Lilietta was said to have loved, the hours slipped away. At each place, Rita lingered far longer than necessary, waiting for some flicker of memory to surface.
Leonhart had finished his duties for the day, and though he knew she was walking the estate, he did not interrupt. He, too, was quietly praying that something would return to her.
One afternoon was not nearly enough. Rita repeated the walk the following day, and the day after that.
She spent half a day just lingering near Lilietta’s old bedchamber. Left untouched since the night of the child’s disappearance ten years ago, everything inside remained perfectly preserved. Yet Rita could not bring herself to cross the threshold, remaining outside the door, staring at the frozen room.
Hannah, assigned as her maid, had not appeared once since their first encounter. Rita did not blame her. After the shock she had endured, acting as though nothing had happened would have been far stranger.
‘She will probably go out of her way to avoid me now….’
Rather than cornering the girl, Rita had Leonhart pass along her apologies. Nor had she seen Richard again; Alfred mentioned the second son had likely slipped away from the castle to drink.
By the third night, Rita dragged herself back to the guest room, utterly depleted.
‘This body has no endurance at all.’
She felt exhausted enough to collapse on the spot, but her thoughts refused to quiet. Crossing the room with weary steps, she rested her forehead against the cool windowpane. Outside, the night sky was scattered with brilliant, piercing stars—a sight impossible to see back where she came from.
Staring up at the sky in a daze, she let the stories she had gathered over the past three days drift through her mind.
“Lady Lilietta was such a bright, sweet child, even with her frail health. She always spoke so kindly, even to an old hand like me.”
“She took my muddy, calloused hands once and called the scars my medals of honor. She even dubbed me the ‘Knight of Blossoms.’”
“Whenever the young masters quarreled and one stomped off to hide in the garden, Lady Lilietta could always find him. And as soon as she coaxed him, all his temper melted away.”
“It was true. She was like a little sun, warm and radiant. Her presence alone warmed the entire castle.”
“Before she came along, Birch Castle was a grim, austere place. Even Master Richard used to complain about how suffocating it felt.”
“The moment she was born, the smiles returned. Most of all to His Grace.”
“Her Grace used to tease him, saying he had abandoned all his pride and turned into a fool over ‘Lili.’ But she would say it with the widest smile, watching her little girl toddle across the room…”
The tales were not just of Lilietta; the servants had spoken freely about the rest of the family as well.
“His Grace is away from the estate. He left for the capital at dawn. Oh, he is not trying to avoid you, Milady—it was a pressing matter.”
“Truth be told, His Grace rarely resides here these days. He stays mostly at the townhouse in Cream Dome, much like how Her Grace keeps to the annex.”
“So Leonhart manages the estate in all but name.”
“Leonhart has put off marriage for far too long. People have urged him to take a wife, but with Milady safely home, perhaps things will finally fall into place.”
“As for Master Richard… he was always so stern, so ascetic. Befitting a holy knight, I suppose. Even with his drinking, his holy powers never waned. His devotion runs deep at heart.”
“He used to be one of the most promising knights in the Order. It is a miracle he has not been cast out, though Leonhart must have shielded him from a great deal.”
“Her Grace rarely steps outside now. She is… deeply unwell. A new maid once caught sight of her and fainted, thinking she was a ghost. Yet she has always been gentle, which only makes it more heartbreaking. She never smiles anymore.”
House Laskail was more imposing and magnificent than Rita had pictured, but the family within it was far more wounded and fragile than she could have known.
‘At least Leonhart seems steady. Perhaps that is why he is the only one who keeps checking on me.’
Yet despite all the accounts, despite retracing every step of the castle over the last few days, Rita recalled nothing.
Today she had seen the last remaining place on the grounds. All that was left was the lakeshore in the birch forest, where she had first awakened in this world.
‘If this really were simple amnesia, shouldn’t something have sparked by now? The faintest hint of familiarity?’
Nothing had come. Every face, every room, every memory belonged to a stranger.
The child they described sounded like a figure from a fairy tale: radiant, sweet, and endlessly gentle. A little girl woven out of sunshine.
She was nothing like Rita.
‘Could I truly be… Lilietta?’
Perhaps Leonhart was mistaken. The oath had responded to Lilietta’s name, but what if the magic bound itself to the physical body rather than the soul?
If only Ollie were here; she would have known the precise mechanics of the spell. Rita knew only how to invoke an oath, not how to dissect its weave.
Rita looked down at the matchbox Leonhart had left behind, then ran a frustrated hand through her hair.
‘I’ve exhausted every lead. Considered every possibility. The answer is still no.’
Clinging to the thought that she might be Lilietta was pointless. Finding a way to return this vessel to its rightful owner and getting back to her own world made far more sense.
‘They miss Lilietta so desperately… If there is any chance of bringing her back, I want to take it.’
Rita had survived in a world where sentiment invited death, where hesitation proved fatal. Shedding futile regrets was second nature to her. She closed her eyes, setting her resolve.
‘Besides, I don’t belong in a place like this. A noble lady of Birch Castle? Me? The squad would have laughed until they choked.’
A bitter smirk curved her lips as her eyes drifted open.
‘Starting tomorrow, I need to look into dark magic. There must be records on possession somewhere. I can ask Leonhart for access.’
She turned away from the glass to prepare for bed when a flicker of movement down in the darkened garden caught her attention.
‘What is that?’
Rita narrowed her eyes, pressing closer to the glass.
A pale nightgown billowed softly in the night breeze. Beneath a cascade of wavy red hair, bare feet stepped across the dewy grass with an unsettling, gliding grace.
After studying so many portraits throughout the estate, Rita recognized her instantly.
The phantom drifting under the moonlight was Duchess Laskail.
‘Why is she out there at this hour, without even shoes…?’
Rita’s hand reached toward the latch, then froze.
“Father and Richard know you are ‘Rita Pascal.’ But we haven’t told Mother a thing. Do you understand what that means?”
“Once you can truly act the part of Lilietta, we will tell her that her daughter has returned. Until then, you must not let her see you.”
Her fingers hovered above the sill. Was it right to reveal herself to the Duchess now?
‘I should alert Leonhart. Or Alfred.’
She stepped back from the window, only to freeze again.
The Duchess was approaching the iron gate leading toward the birch woods. Reaching out with pale, trembling hands, she began rattling the bars.
The chains Duke Laskail had wrapped around the gate when Lilietta vanished had been removed the day Leonhart brought Rita back. No one had secured them properly since.
Only now did Rita realize why that gate had been locked so tightly in the first place.
With a sharp metallic clatter, the unfastened chain gave way and fell into the grass. The iron gate swung open with a faint groan, and the Duchess drifted past it into the darkness of the woods.
Down the very trail where little Lilietta had walked ten years ago, never to return.
“—!”
‘This is bad.’
Every instinct honed in battle screamed that disaster was imminent. If she wasted time running through the halls to wake someone, it would be far too late.
Without another thought, Rita flung the window wide.