Originally, he was someone who overwhelmed the person standing before him with his considerable height and solidly built, muscular body.
But the current him didn’t look threatening at all.
‘Rather than scary, he looks like he’s about to cry.’
The Duke gazed at me with an aching look and then opened his mouth.
“Evelyn, how could you… you left, and I, I was so…”
Speaking in a trembling voice as if his throat were choked up, he gently held my face with his large hands. I wanted to ask why, upon meeting me, a former friend, he looked sad rather than happy.
But I couldn’t ask.
The next moment, the Duke overlapped his lips with mine without hesitation.
Before I could properly grasp what was happening, the kiss between us had already deepened.
“Mmm….”
The thought that came to me as I pleasantly drifted into a daze was—
‘But this is strange. I wasn’t in this kind of relationship with the Duke.’
The instant I had that thought, the scene suddenly changed. It was the beautiful garden of the Blake estate.
And then I realized.
‘Ah, this is a dream. Earlier, and now as well.’
Because I had often experienced lucid dreams since childhood, I could recognize it right away.
In the world of lucid dreams, I could act as I wished and change situations as I pleased.
For someone like me, who had suffered for a long time due to abuse from my family, the world inside dreams was the only place where I was free and comfortable.
A place where I could do anything I wanted.
But then… doing something like that with the Duke wasn’t something I wanted, was it? Or was it?
Did I unconsciously actually want something like that?
‘My goodness. Of all people, having a dream like that about a friend. It’s not like I’m going through puberty!’
As I was reproaching myself over the indecent dream from just before, Duke Blake appeared once again.
But this time, he wasn’t alone.
‘Rosie?!’
He was walking through the garden with Rosie, carrying her on his shoulders.
Seeing the bright smiles on their faces, it felt like I was looking at a happy moment between a father and daughter.
‘Father and daughter… right. This is the world inside that novel. It must be a scene from [Even If You’re a Villain, Please Become My Family].’
A living, moving Rosie.
I felt so happy to see her that I thought I might cry.
But the moment I took a step forward to approach the child, I opened my eyes while lying in bed.
Seeing that it was still dark, it seemed to be before dawn.
‘Huh? I woke up? I didn’t even get to greet Rosie yet! It was a lucid dream, so what is with this timing…?’
A sigh escaped me out of regret.
I wanted to see Rosie’s happy face just one more time.
‘Maybe if I fall asleep again right away, the dream will continue…’
With my eyes closed, trying to fall asleep again, I recalled the dreams from just before.
Then, at the part where I kissed Duke Blake, my eyes flew open on their own.
‘I must be crazy! Evelyn Krone, what kind of dream are you having about a friend?!’
My face flared up in embarrassment. Cupping my burning cheeks with both hands, I apologized to him at least in my heart.
‘Your Grace, I am sorry! Even if it was just a dream, for kissing you, no, for having a dream where I was kissed so carelessly…?’
Duke Blake was a man who was upright and refined, the very embodiment of nobility.
If he ever found out I had a dream like that, how much of a beast would he think I was? Thankfully, it was something that happened only in my dream.
‘Haa… right. In any case, it’s not like he knows.’
Letting out a sigh of relief, I tried to fall asleep again, unaware at the time.
Unaware of why I had such a dream, and what would happen to me because of it.
***
“Hngh.”
Rastan gasped for breath as he snapped his eyes open.
The red light lingering in his pupils vanished swiftly like a rushing current, and before one could ask when it had happened, his eyes had returned to their usual blue.
As his mind cleared, the room he was lying in came into view.
At a glance it looked simple, but it was a place furnished only with the finest things. It was the bedroom of the Head of House Blake.
Rastan propped his upper body up from the bed and frowned, reaching around his heart area with his right hand.
Lowering his gaze to his muscular upper body, bare of any clothing, he saw large, reddish marks on his left chest. They looked like wounds from being struck hard by something, or as if he had been pierced countless times by something like very thick thorns.
“…”
He squeezed his eyes shut as if enduring the pain, then soon let out a long sigh.
“Hoo….”
Opening his eyes, Rastan stared intently at the glass bottle placed beside the bed. Inside it was filled with a narcotic painkiller infused with mana.
After agonizing over it fiercely for a moment, he finally withdrew his gaze. It hurt, but at this level, it was something he could endure without medication.
‘Just how in the world…?’
Among the many familiar nightmares he had throughout the night, there was exactly one thing mixed in that wasn’t a nightmare.
A dream so happy that calling it merely ‘not a nightmare’ felt like an understatement.
As Rastan recalled that dream, the tips of his ears turned slightly red.
For a moment, he savored what he himself had done within that dream.
Then he realized it. Thanks to that unfamiliar dream slipping in, the time he spent having nightmares had clearly been reduced.
‘Because of that, it seems that damned thorny vine didn’t have enough time to attack me today.’
As he thought that, his gaze drifted unconsciously toward the window. Pale sunlight was seeping in through the thick curtains.
Rastan sat there for a moment, watching the thin rays of sunlight, then stood up and went to stand in front of the mirror.
Intense yet cool eyes, cleanly shaped eyebrows, and a straight, prominent nose. A man with perfect features and a cold impression was meeting his own gaze with a dissatisfied expression.
‘As expected, I look a little better.’
Because he suffered from horrific nightmares that repeated every night, his face had always been cast in shadow.
Rastan stared once more at the bottle of painkillers and the bottle of sleeping pills placed beside it, then turned away.
His eyes were still slightly furrowed as if he was in some pain, but a subtle thrill was floating in his gaze.
***
“Your Grace. You look well this morning. Could it be that you slept peacefully…?”
Raven, his aide, said that the moment he came to work and saw Rastan’s face.
And indeed, anyone who attended Rastan daily could tell at a glance that there was a clear difference.
Normally, if Raven spoke in such a high tone from early morning, Rastan would shoot him a piercing glare with eyes darkened by fatigue, as if to bore straight through him.
But today, his reaction was a little different.
“…Does it look that way?”
“Yes, for the first time in a long while, your complexion looks almost human—ah, I apologize.”
Babbling on like this and then belatedly clamping his mouth shut was part of Raven’s daily routine.
But today, Rastan felt strangely as if a screw had come slightly loose.
As if unconcerned with Raven’s words, he opened his mouth while wearing a gaze that seemed to be looking somewhere far away.
“I met someone I had missed in a dream.”
“What? Your Grace, did you even have friends?”
“…”
Thinking he seemed to be in a good mood, Raven had tried a bit of playful teasing, but as expected, it ended the same way.
Faced with a terrifying gaze sharp enough to feel like being stabbed with an ice pick, Raven awkwardly changed the subject.
“Haha, w-well, if Your Grace says you do, then you must. It must have been a good dream, if you slept soundly for once.”
“…Yes.”
“How did it happen? It is almost unheard of.”
In truth, even what counted as a sound sleep for Rastan was less than half of what ordinary people slept, but compared to usual, he had slept very well.
“Who knows.”
Rastan slowly brushed his thumb across his own lips.
The sensation of what had touched his soft lips still felt vivid, as if it lingered. As he thought for a moment, one corner of his mouth lifted slightly.
“…I think I may have found a clue to resolving the curse. I still need to confirm it further, though.”
At the words muttered softly, as if to himself, Raven’s face lit up.
“Really? What is it?”
At that overly excited question, Rastan recalled ‘that’ dream.
Even with his immense power, he couldn’t freely control his own dreams.
It was a powerful curse he had been burdened with as the price for ‘purging’ beings of his own kind.
However, last night’s nightmare was a little different. When ‘she’ called out to him, the thick thorny vines that pierced and tore through his heart vanished without a trace.
And he was able to kiss her of his own will. Just as he had desperately wanted to, ‘for a long time.’
If that was the case, then why had such a salvation-like dream suddenly intruded?
