The underground prison of the Magic Tower.
The place where Enoch led Rosenta was the Eastern Tower. Rosenta had expectations since it was a place where magicians gathered.
However, what he saw upon arrival was not a village, but a rotten prison full of stench.
"Ugh."
The disgusting smell made him cover his nose.
Naturally, he grimaced, but he never averted his eyes.
Rather, it made him feel angry.
“……Anna."
Anna was in front of him.
Anna kept muttering something while staring into space.
She seemed to have lost her mind. Her hair was matted because she hadn’t washed it.
"What's wrong with her?"
Naturally, Rosenta’s eyes turned to Enoch.
Enoch blinked slowly at his question.
He seemed to think hard about how to answer.
Then, as though he couldn’t come up with a plausible response, he quickly approached him.
Enoch bent down slightly, looked him in the eyes, and slowly opened his red lips.
"I know you cared about this woman, but it couldn’t be helped."
"You must have extracted the information you told me about from Anna."
"Yes."
Enoch's face grew closer and closer.
When it felt as though his and Enoch’s noses were going to touch, he suddenly turned his head away.
As he was looking at Anna, he heard a voice from behind him again.
" Even so, it’s not like she’s lost her mind. She’s just trying to organize the jumbled memories that were forcibly extracted. But…….”
"But?"
He turned around again, frustrated that Enoch kept dragging things out.
"Oh...….”
As if he had anticipated Rosenta’s actions, Enoch leaned his head closer.
The tips of their noses touched.
Now, every time Enoch spoke, Rosenta could feel his breath on his lips.
While he was surprised, Enoch began to slowly speak, his eyes curving as he did.
"It seems like five years of memories have disappeared."
“……I see. Five years of memory."
Rosenta’s voice trembled.
The pale green eyes watching him were burdensome, so he quietly averted his eyes.
He backed away.
"Well done...….”
Then he calmly turned around and tried to go to Anna.
Although her memories were gone, he still had a lot to ask her. Of course, They were personal questions.
For example...….
"Rosa."
Enoch suddenly called him.
He called him 'Rosa' and even looked at him fondly.
His body, which was about to turn away, froze where it was.
"Do you hate me?"
‘What did Enoch just say?’
He doubted his ears at first.
Then, gradually, his eyes grew wider.
"What do you mean, ‘do I hate you?’ What do you mean...….”
It was such a childlike, unnecessary question.
However, when he saw the seriousness in Enoch's eyes, that thought disappeared completely.
"Because I’ve made a mess of the mind of the maid you care about. But I don't regret it."
‘Did he use magic?’
Enoch, who had been some distance from him, was now in front of him before he knew it.
"My first priority is to make sure you don't get hurt, even if you hate me for it."
"Sigh."
As soon as he heard that, Rosenta was overwhelmed.
He wasn’t angry, it wasn't something that caused him any harm anyway. Enoch had done it for him.
However, there were two things that were upsetting in Enoch's words.
"I've wanted to say this since last time. I'm not weak enough that I need to be protected at your expense."
"I know that...….”
"No."
He cut off Enoch's words firmly and shook his head.
Without suppressing the anger in his voice, he asked Enoch without hesitation,
"Do you think I would just sit back and watch someone else hurt after doing something for my sake? Have you ever thought about how that would make me feel?"
Enoch kept his mouth shut.
Enoch's eyes, which had been looking at him with a straight gaze, began to waver.
"Rosa...….”
Soon, Enoch called him and laughed.
‘It’s both bright and bitter.’
It was a contrasting description.
But There was no better way to describe that smile.
His eyes were smiling weakly like a sad puppy, but the corners of his mouth were turned up high.
"I have inexplicably mixed feelings...…. I'm happy, but I'm sad."
Rosenta didn't say anything this time.
He quietly listened to Enoch.
"I'm so glad to hear that you're worried that I'm going to get hurt. But if I don't help you, doesn’t that mean I'm useless...….”
Enoch distorted his face.
Even as he said those words himself, it seemed as if his heart was in so much pain.
Then, he pressed down on his chest and laughed painfully. It was heartbreaking to see him do that.
"It's hard."
As he finally uttered those words, Enoch's black eyelashes seemed to droop helplessly.
It was Rosenta’s first time seeing him.
Rosenta was also embarrassed and wanted to clear up his misunderstanding.
He reached out reflexively.
As he could see the complex road ahead, he unwittingly pulled the cloth around Enoch's neck.
"I don't know why you would think like that, but if you were someone I would just throw away...….”
When Enoch suddenly approached him, he was embarrassed.
He blinked and bit the tender flesh inside his mouth before barely managing to speak again.
"I wouldn’t have placed you by my side to begin with."
He saw Enoch's pupils gradually tremble.
Enoch pondered something for a long time, as if he had heard something difficult to understand.
Soon, his tense mouth gradually relaxed.
Soon Enoch began to open his mouth as though to speak.
"That means you will never abandon me in the future...….”
"Huh? Young Master?"
Enoch's words were cut off.
A puzzled woman's voice came from behind Rosenta.
‘Did she come to her senses?’
"Hey, what's this? What's wrong with my body? Ugh...….”
Rosenta immediately looked back and saw Anna, who was confused.
Anna was shaking as if she didn't understand the current situation, pulling at the chains that bound her body.
***
Anna really didn't remember.
At first, he tried to soothe Anna, who was frightened, but he quickly gave up on that idea.
It would be easier to figure out what was true or false when she was too scared to properly hide things.
So, he pressured Anna.
"Anna, be honest. A lot has happened in the time you don't remember, and I know why you really stayed by my side."
“……What?"
Rosenta squatted down.
Then, with a smile-less face, he looked Anna in the eye.
Anna's brown eyes, constantly fluctuating, were visible. Soon she tried to keep her head down, avoiding his gaze.
He reached out quickly and clasped Anna's chin.
"I don't know."
He held her chin in place so she couldn’t look down and forced her to look straight at him.
"You don’t remember, but I told you. I’m also...….”
He deliberately sneered.
"A member of the Estella family."
[t/n: Rosenta previously said something along these lines to imply he can be just as cruel as his father.]
Anna seemed to understand what that meant.
Her face was pale.
Anna shuddered harder than before.
"Now that you don't have my father and your grandmother to protect you...…. What should I do with you?"
"M-my Lord! Please spare me! I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I will!"
"Tell me, Anna."
He didn’t care to hear information about his father.
Since Enoch had already found everything out, there was no more information to extract from Anna by doing all this.
He had just one question.
"What were your real reasons for staying with me? From the beginning, you...….”
Although Emma had been his father's eyes, he’d thought Anna was on his side.
Since he was young, Anna had been with him like a younger sister, like an older sister, and like a friend.
So, regardless of whose granddaughter she was, he’d thought their relationship was their own....….
‘But…….’
"Have you ever been sincere by my side?"
His trust was betrayed.
It felt like everything in his memories, Anna's smile, warm words, and worries were all being denied.
***
Yura didn't leave the cellar.
Even though she’d packed the book away, she lingered in the basement for a while.
Once she’d found the book, she finally took note of the cellar.
in particular, there were a lot of strange things.
"What is this? Is it an experimental tool?"
Not only skulls but also things like this.
Yura looked around with her eyes full of wariness.
She needed to leave right away now that she was done with her work, but it was such a strange place.
She had all kinds of imagined thoughts running through her head.
"Don't tell me, Your Majesty...….”
‘Maybe he's controlling him.’
That's why my blessing no longer works on His Majesty, and every time he sees the Duke, his eyes...….
[t/n: I normally don’t leave these sorts of comments, but this was so ridiculous I had to say something. She just admitted she knows she’s affecting some sort of force on Theodore but is saying Rosenta must be controlling him. The audacity; the delusion.]
"That's right. In this world, wizards exist. And they say the power of the duke is to curse!"
Yura was almost certain.
In fact, she knew it was ridiculous to use this as evidence, but she thought it made sense.
‘As expected, the priests were right when they said that the Dukes of Estella have had dirty abilities for generations!’
For a moment, disgust arose in Yura's eyes.
Then, Yura scoured the cellar as though she were looking to secure more damning evidence.
Not only the bookshelves, but all the tables began to become a mess.
"Oh!"
Then, she bumped into a big box near a drawer.
"Ugh, what is this?"
Naturally, Yura's eyes turned to the box.
It was the box full of gifts from Vivian, that were left in the cellar because Rosenta was too tired and busy to deal with them.
But, of all things, Yura's leg hit that box.
"Why is this here?"
Yura took out a piece of cloth among the many cluttered things in the box.
No matter how she looked at it, it had a shape similar to that of menstrual panties.
No, that was definitely what it was.
"What?"
She threw it back into the box as if she had seen something she shouldn’t have seen.
"Why would a man have that?"
Even if he enjoyed dressing up as a woman, there was no reason to have that...….
"Oh."
A single hypothesis came to mind.
However, Yura shook her head hard, saying that it couldn't be the case.
"Oh, no way."
It was nonsense.
No matter how beautiful Duke Estella was, didn’t his firm chest and Adam’s apple confirm he was a man?