Chapter 29
Guilt
“Who’s there…?!”
The moment she slipped into the room, a sharp, demanding voice shot toward her.
Sena had assumed Mia was still half-asleep, so she was caught off guard and couldn’t immediately respond.
However, Mia showed no intention of coming closer. That alone told Sena her friend was still not feeling well.
Sena quietly opened the door leading into the bedroom and called out.
“It’s me. Sorry for coming so early.”
“…Sena? Why are you here at this hour?”
Mia looked at her from the bed with the wary eyes of someone seeing a suspicious intruder. Sena shrank back behind the door, hiding her body.
She couldn’t bear to show her closest friend the state she was currently in. Sena’s entire being violently rejected the idea.
In her mind, she was scolding herself harshly for letting things reach such a humiliating point. Mia’s puzzled, “What is going on?” only made her shrink further.
Please don’t look at me. Please don’t come over here. Sena’s racing heart pounded painfully.
To Mia, however, someone behaving like that at the door made one thing immediately clear—after years of friendship, she could tell something had definitely happened.
“Making a morning return? Quite the noble lady. Don’t tell me you used my name to fool around?”
“…I told someone my real name.”
“Huh? What were you thinking?”
Mia threw one of the cushions from her bedside toward the door in exasperation. Sena ducked her head like a turtle, avoiding the flying cushion, then picked it up and tossed it back into the room.
“I had pleasant conversations with handsome noblemen in your place.”
There was no way she could say, I spent the night with His Highness.
“Hmmm?” Mia’s suspicious voice rose as she pointed toward the closet. “Get changed first.”
That closet also served as a dressing room, just like the prince’s suite, and could be accessed from the living room.
Thinking she would need it later, Mia added a warning: “Don’t dirty anything.”
Sena silently closed the door in response.
It was time to part with the borrowed dress, the jewelry, and the beautiful high heels Mia had lent her.
A hollow feeling washed over her, like someone mourning the death of a long-time partner. In her heart, she expressed deep gratitude to them.
Without these items—without borrowing their masked elegance to draw out a side of herself she normally couldn’t show—she would never have had such an extraordinary experience.
The thrill of that rare, dazzling night still lingered, but Mia had already sensed, with sharp insight, that Sena had run into trouble within mere minutes of stepping into reality again. The thought exhausted her.
“Ugh… how did it come to this?”
Muttering regretfully, Sena chose a simple black skirt and a pastel-pink blouse from Mia’s many workplace-appropriate clothes.
When she picked up the small white underwear she had worn under the dress so it wouldn’t show through, she noticed faint traces of blood.
She checked herself, worried she was injured. But then she remembered—the holy magic she’d used to clear her drunkenness would have healed any small wound.
Once she thought about the true cause—a reason only women would understand—Sena pressed a hand to her racing chest and took a deep breath.
That dreamlike miracle had to be removed from her heart now.
Reality was calling her back.
She told herself she needed to forget him entirely, even while guilt squeezed painfully at her heart. She put on Mia’s clean clothes and stepped into the bedroom.
Predictably, questions came at her immediately.
“What happened?”
“…Nothing. It was just a dream. That’s all.”
“Sena.”
“I’m sorry. I have to get back to work… I returned the dress to where it was. Really, thank you for such a wonderful night.”
“Wait! …What do you mean?”
As Sena suddenly apologized and tried to leave with tears in her eyes, Mia quickly stood from the bed and approached her gently when she collapsed, crying.
“You’re planning to go to work looking like that? With your hair like that?”
“…Huh? Oh. Well…”
Sena tried to excuse herself, saying she planned to use a cleansing spell somewhere in the staff corridors and then fix her hair.
Mia laughed dryly and dismissed that idea.
Sena hadn’t noticed, but her face was a mess from crying—her makeup smudged, and marks left by “those noblemen” were visible on her neck. She looked quite terrible.
“What time do you start work?”
“Five… but…”
“Then can you tell me what happened? If you do, I can at least fix your makeup and brush your hair.”
Mia pointed at the vanity.
Seeing the reflection of her devastated face, Sena realized she couldn’t go anywhere looking like this. She slumped her shoulders and nodded.
The small clock between the bed and vanity showed it had just passed five.
If they hurried, she could fix everything and still make it on time.
But the ticket to the dream world that Mia had handed her was turning into a source of cracks between them—for many reasons neither of them dared to say out loud.
“I… I…”
“Mm-hmm. What happened? Did you meet someone nice?”
Sena nodded firmly.
She confessed that, with the help of champagne and the excitement of dancing at the ball she’d always dreamed of, she had lost herself in the moment… and ended up spending the night with a man.
Mia agreed gently that it must’ve been a lovely experience.
But for Sena, a heavy weight remained—she had run away from him.
And that guilt wouldn’t leave her side for a long, long time.
