Chapter 5
When the maid poured the tea and withdrew, the two ladies began their conversation.
“I’m truly sorry, Lia. To both you and your husband, and to Ellen as well. No one knew Royl had caught Rollanda disease. I should have told him back then not to play with Ellen.”
Diana gestured for Gloria to have some tea, but before even taking a sip herself, she offered an apology.
“What’s there to be sorry about? Rollanda has a long incubation period, doesn’t it? That day Royl looked perfectly healthy—anyone could see he wasn’t sick. Who could have known?”
Gloria set her teacup down with a firm tone.
“All children catch it at least once. Fortunately Ellen recovered well. You have nothing to apologize for.”
“Even so… it’s such a dangerous illness.”
“If there had been any sign things were turning bad, I would have told His Majesty and gone to find a dragon, or sought an artifact from the Tower. There was no way anything bad would have happened, Diana. It’s fine.”
Hearing the deliberate reassurance in Gloria’s voice, Diana relaxed her shoulders, smiled, and finally lifted her cup.
“By the way, she did recover… but Ellen’s been a bit strange since then.”
Cough, cough, cough!
Diana sputtered into a rough cough as she sipped her tea at Gloria’s words.
“Huh…?”
She wondered if Gloria was joking, but the other woman’s expression was more serious than ever.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“In what way is she strange?”
Gloria carefully chose her words before replying.
“She’s become… well-mannered.”
“What?”
“I said she’s become well-mannered.”
Diana’s expression turned peculiar. Seeing it, Gloria continued as if she had expected that reaction.
“At first I thought it was because she hadn’t been well for long and still didn’t have her strength back. I even asked the doctor to prepare some tonics for her. But even after the time when her energy should’ve returned, she kept behaving so… composed.”
“A well-mannered Ellen? Ellen was like a little foal—no, a puppy—wasn’t she? Always lively. Never sitting still.”
Gloria pretended not to hear the word foal and nodded.
“My point exactly! She’s still energetic now, but… it’s like her energy isn’t endless anymore. And she’s lively around Gerald and me, but when she’s alone, it’s like half her spirit’s gone. I think she tries not to show it in front of us… so I thought maybe meeting friends outside would help, and that’s why I brought her.”
At that, Diana glanced around and lowered her voice.
“Actually, Royl has been a little different since he recovered from Rollanda, too.”
“Royl as well?”
Gloria’s eyes widened.
“Our Royl was always too quiet, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, so much so that we used to joke about mixing him and Ellen and splitting them into two more balanced children.”
“That’s right. But these days Royl runs around the mansion.”
“What?”
At Gloria’s incredulous tone, Diana spoke even more seriously.
“Royl. Running around. Inside the house. I know it’s normal for children to run, but our Royl never did that. Neither I nor the nanny could believe our eyes the first time.”
“…Is Rollanda known to have aftereffects?”
“I’ve never heard that. The mortality rate is high, but once you survive it, isn’t it supposed to be a clean recovery?”
The two women exchanged concerned looks.
Roylette and Ellen went into his playroom and decided to draw while they waited for the maid to bring chocolate cake. They sat carelessly on the floor and soon became absorbed in their work.
Just as they finished their sketches, a knock came at the door.
“Come in,” Roylette said without looking up. The maid entered carrying chocolate cake and tea, placing them on the table.
Roylette stayed focused on his drawing until the maid left and the door closed. Then he looked up.
“Elenoa. Let’s have cake.”
Ellen had been staring at the cake ever since it came in. She hadn’t stood up because Roylette, as the room’s host, was still sitting and drawing.
At his words, she quickly got up and sat at the table. She glanced at him, wondering if she could start, and he gestured for her to go ahead.
She picked up her fork and plunged it into a big slice of cake, even enjoying the feel of the fork sinking in. When she began eating, Roylette followed suit.
The rich chocolate flavor instantly lifted Ellen’s mood. She hadn’t tasted chocolate cake this delicious even on Earth.
“This is so good. I wish our chef knew how to make it.”
She spoke through a mouthful of cake.
“Is it that good?”
“Yeah.”
“Then I’ll have them make another one right now. You can take a whole cake home.”
Ellen’s face lit up. What a sweet kid!
She decided to abandon her earlier thought that “playing with a seven-year-old is tiring” and treat Roylette kindly. In truth, he wasn’t even that troublesome.
“Roylette. You can call me Ellen.”
Roylette chuckled at her resolute tone.
“Then you can call me Roy.”
“Alright.”
As she nodded, he studied her for a moment before speaking again.
“Ellen? I think ‘Ellie’ suits you better. I’ll call you Ellie.”
“Suit yourself.”
She thought, Do kids just decide nicknames for others on their own? but figured maybe it was just a child’s sense of aesthetics and let him.
Then she wondered—maybe it was normal for children to give each other nicknames—and added,
“Then I’ll call you Roi. It suits you better.”
“Okay.”
He agreed with a smile. Something about that smile felt like he was humoring her, and she thought, Oh really?
This little guy’s kind of cute.
The way he, a much younger child, tried to act like an older brother was both funny and endearing. It even made her think of Eunho and feel a pang of longing.
Even though they had agreed on nicknames, nothing changed much for Ellen—whether Roylette, Roy, or Roi, she still had to call him oppa. But she did like that “Ellie” sounded a bit cuter than “Ellen.”
After finishing her cake, she finally noticed their scattered drawings on the floor.
She had drawn the yellow mutt she’d owned as Hye-seo, the one with the black crescent mark on its rear.
After her grandfather passed away, she’d taken in the dog he’d been raising. But a few months later, it had run away.
Her whole family had searched the neighborhood for it, but they never found it. She’d waited, but it never returned.
Originally, she’d wanted to draw her mom, dad, and Hye-rim, but she couldn’t—she would have ended up crying. And if anyone asked who they were, she wouldn’t have had an answer.
So she drew the dog instead.
After gazing wistfully at her drawing, Ellen looked over at Roy’s—and froze.
On his paper floated numerous hot air balloons, big and small.
“What’s that, Roi? The one you drew.”
“It’s something that flies in the sky.”
Hot air balloons exist here?
Suppressing the strange feeling that rose in her, she kept her tone casual.
“Do those exist?”
“No. I just thought it’d be nice if they did. I imagined it.”
Ah… imagination.
She wondered how he could imagine something in exactly the same shape as she remembered from Earth, but decided it wasn’t impossible—after all, everything came from someone’s mind.
Looking between Roy and his balloons, she thought, If Roi ever says he wants to actually make something like a hot air balloon, I should give him a few hints.
They went back to the floor to finish their drawings.
Her less-developed child’s hands made the paint clumsy, but at least she didn’t have to pretend to be bad at it—that was a relief.
Once she’d finished painting the dog yellow, she added the black crescent mark on its rear, completing the picture.
When she set down her brush and looked at Roy’s work, his painting was also nearly done. Soon he too set down his brush.
He gazed at his drawing in satisfaction, then glanced at hers. Suddenly, he snatched up her paper.
Startled, Ellen looked at him—he was staring at the picture like he might burn a hole through it.
His eyes were fixed on the black crescent mark on the dog’s rear.
“Why… does it have a moon on its butt?”
Even his voice had gone a pitch higher.
“Because I wanted to see a dog with a black crescent moon on its rear.”
“Why a black crescent?”
Ellen gave him a strange look before answering.
“Because I feel like it.”
It was the most natural answer.
“Right. It’s how you feel.”
Roy muttered with a smile, but the smile seemed so bitter that Ellen almost reached out to pat his head without thinking.
Their drawing session ended on an oddly gloomy note.
Seeing both her dog and his hot air balloon made Ellen’s emotions stir, and she fell silent. For some reason, Roy also looked at the two drawings with sad eyes.
The air was heavy, but Ellen was too lost in memories of her past life to notice. Roy too sat quietly, staring into space.
When she left for home that day, Roy handed her a whole chocolate cake.
