Dietrich, breathing heavily, had an extremely pale face.
"..."
Dietrich sat on the bed, stared blankly into the air, and then wiped his face, which was covered in cold sweat.
Dietrich isn't feeling well. Ella's statement that he took medicine and fell asleep wasn't a lie.
[I went to the flower garden for a moment to get some fresh air, but Lord Noah stopped me. So we exchanged greetings, but... Prince Attar appeared and chased Lord Noah away.]
That very day.
Ever since Presepe chose the bug option, Dietrich had been tormented by events he had no memory of.
Would Dietrich also regain all the memories from the previous episode? Presepe's prediction turned out to be spot on.
"Ha..."
With a face that had grown noticeably paler in the past few days, Dietrich let out a heavy sigh.
At first, he just thought it was because fatigue had piled up over time. He assumed it was simply because je wasn't feeling well.
However, the memories of the previous episode did not leave Dietrich alone.
It was not limited solely to the ending of Presepe and Dietrich.
The drunken deaths and abuses Presepe suffered while attacking Dietrich—all those moments unfolded in Dietrich's mind as if planted therein.
Even when he fell asleep after taking strong medicine, memories appeared as dreams. It was the same when he woke up from the dream.
The Presepe in his memory was constantly hurt and constantly died because of him.
He even killed Presepe with my own hands.
"I didn't do that..."
Dietrich muttered in a weak voice that sounded as if it would fade away at any moment.
"I... I am Presepe..."
But whenever he tried to hold onto his sanity with such thoughts, the pitch-black inner self, coiled like a snake deep within his heart, rears its head and asks him.
Do you really think so?
The truth is, you've been struggling to hold back the urge to do that.
That was your true intention!
“No, no..."
Deep sorrow hung over Dietrich's pale face, bathed in the bright moonlight.
"Presepe..."
Dietrich very cautiously called out Presepe's name. Then, he slowly ruminated on his memories of her.
However, that did not last very long. Once again, new and unfamiliar memories of things he had never actually committed began to fill his mind.
However, even within that memory, there was a moment that Dietrich kept ruminating on.
[I have never abandoned Your Majesty... Not when I was young, not now, and not in the future...]
It was the very scene where Presepe whispered her true feelings while sobbing.
It was too painful to accept that the new memories were real.
Even so, he couldn't bring himself to think that all of it was a lie or that he had merely seen a hallucination; that moment kept lingering in his mind.
In the end, Dietrich was eating away at himself, unable to do anything.
Have I really gone crazy?
No way.
It was a moment when the dazed Dietrich asked himself.
"Your Majesty..."
At the low voice of the escort knight, Dietrich squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them again.
He was tormented all night by inexplicable memories, and barely managed to fall asleep early in the morning, high on medication. Now that it was night again, he had effectively wasted nearly an entire day. So, he supposed the work to be done must be piled up like a mountain.
Now was the time to pull himself together, no matter what. Dietrich wiped his face once again and briefly told him to come in.
"Your Majesty, are you feeling well?"
The guard knight who appeared as soon as permission to enter was given clearly showed signs of worry on his face.
Dietrich merely nodded vaguely instead of answering. Then, with a hoarse voice, he rubbed his dry lips.
“What’s going on?”
"..."
"Say it."
"There was a disturbance at the church in the afternoon."
"Church?"
At the completely unexpected word, Dietrich's brow furrowed slightly.
"It is said that someone broke the sacred stone statue."
However, the words the escort knight spoke next were something Dietrich could not have predicted.
"However, the first witness was Lady Presepe."
In that moment, Dietrich's face turned cold.
"What on earth are you talking about? To think Presepe was at the church?"
"They say she went to pray for Your Majesty's health. But as soon as she arrived at the church, something like that happened."
"..."
"She says she witnessed a suspicious person along with her lady-in-waiting, Ella. Just so, Grand Duke Fenrir came to see me, saying he had something to tell me regarding her. However, since His Majesty has fallen asleep, he said he would come back later."
Suspicious person?
Within the imperial palace?
"Presepe..."
The first thing Dietrich asked about was not Presepe's safety.
"Are you saying it is related to that suspicious person?"
"Ah, no. I haven't heard anything like that."
Dietrich bit his lip hard.
Could it be that, just like before, she was preparing to abandon me like a worn-out shoe and leave? Smashing the church statue was nothing more than a deception, and failing to escape amidst the commotion was...
[I have never abandoned Your Majesty... Not when I was young, not now, and not in the future...]
...Dietrich could not understand why the scene he had seen in his dream suddenly came to mind.
"And also, a letter like this arrived..."
The escort knight held a neatly folded letter in his hand.
However, it was very different from the ordinary letters Dietrich usually received. There was no seal revealing status or family, and the sender's name was not even written.
"I had Archmage Ivan check it first, and he says there is no magic cast on it."
It was a sort of procedure for Ivan to inspect all letters and items sent to the Emperor. Of course, even Ivan could not read the contents of the letters beforehand, but he had to check to see if any black magic or curses were cast on them, just in case.
Of course, well, Ivan wasn't exactly thrilled about this, though.
“Give it here.”
Dietrich, having received the letter, pressed his temples to soothe his throbbing headache.
Then, he unfolded the neatly folded letter and slowly began to read its contents.
"..."
And as Dietrich checked the contents of the letter, his face began to grow cold like midwinter frost.
"Your Majesty...? Why is your complexion so pale..."
The guard was speaking to Dietrich in a worried voice, but not a word of it reached his ears.
Instead, only the printed words mocking him caught his eye.
The content of the letter was brief.
The former Empress who died a long time ago.
So, all it contained was a passage mocking Dietrich's mother and Dietrich's secret known only to Presepe.
However, that brief content was more than enough to make Dietrich suspect Presepe.
Just as it has always been until now.
"..."
The sound of teeth grinding was heard from between Dietrich's tightly closed lips.
The second regular event of <Presepe in the Cage>.
It was the very moment when the event of Presepe being unjustly imprisoned in an ice prison began.
***
Lady Presepe.
"..."
"Lady Presepe. You must get up. Hurry."
Her heavy eyelids finally opened slowly.
"His Majesty is calling for you. You must go immediately."
Ah. So that damn event has started.
She'll probably be summoned by Dietrich again, rant and rave about how she's being treated unfairly, and then end up locked in an ice prison.
She couldn't even remember how many times this event had been repeated already. She was truly sick and tired of it.
She chose the bug option, so she thought there was a chance, but she guessed the fixed event was unavoidable after all.
Presepe sighed and stood up from her seat.
Thens he made a puzzled expression.
It was because it was another maid, not Ella, who woke her up.
It's never been like this before.
“Ella?”
"I haven't seen her since yesterday afternoon. I have no idea where on earth they went..."
[That is true, but I still have business at the Imperial Palace.]
What suddenly crossed her mind was what Fenrir had said before they parted ways.
[I mean that handmaiden named Ella.]
"Anyway, hurry up and get ready. I'll help you."
Regardless of what Presepe was thinking, the maid was frantically busy preparing him to meet Dietrich.
...Could it be that the incident at the church has compounded things, leading to an even worse fate? But is there anything worse than being imprisoned in an ice prison?
With a troubled heart, Presepe let out another sigh as she finished getting ready, and unable to resist the maid's urging, she immediately left the tower.
Without ever imagining what was about to happen.
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