A small restaurant sits quietly in a corner of the city. Above the door hangs a rusted iron sign shaped like ivy leaves, and the warm smell of baking bread drifts out through the windows.
At the best table in the house — a table for two with a beautiful view from the window — they sit facing each other. One is Chloe’s fiancé, Leonardo. Across from him is the girl from the report: Sherry.
He’s smiling at her with an open, unguarded warmth he has never once shown Chloe. A small pain goes through Chloe’s chest at the sight of it.
The air between them is far too natural, far too intimate. One look is all it takes to know their relationship is something special, and what little hope Chloe had left shatters without a trace.
The dress Sherry is wearing is simple but delicately made, and the quality of the fabric makes it obvious it was a gift from him. Pale blue cloth with a soft sheen, careful lace at the cuffs and collar. It’s a gentle colour, and it suits her sweet face beautifully.
Her clothes alone say what she is to Leonardo. It isn’t a gown, but it’s still far beyond anything a bakery shop girl could ever afford. He bought it for her without a second thought — that’s how much she’s worth to him.
Another stab of pain. Come to think of it, Chloe has never received so much as a single garment from him. The scene in front of her forces one fact on her whether she likes it or not: his heart faces Sherry, not her.
Oblivious to the woman they’re wounding, the two of them go on enjoying their meal. They’re only a few steps from Chloe’s table, and somehow, through all the laughter and the clatter of plates, it’s Leonardo’s voice that carries.
[Sherry, it may take some time…… but the moment everything’s ready, I’ll come for you. I swear it. Until then, will you wait for me?] (L)
Sherry lowers her eyes for a moment and sets her wine glass down on the table with trembling fingers.
[……Really? You’ll really come for me? You have a young lady you’re promised to, don’t you?] (Sherry)
Her voice is hoarse, but there’s expectation woven through it. And, faintly, something like triumph.
[I do, but…… honestly, that engagement is agony for me. I’m only fulfilling my “duty” as a noble, that’s all. It’s been that way from the very beginning. My heart was never hers.] (L)
Chloe’s mind goes blank.
Then something cold runs down her spine, and the warmth drains out of her. A small tremor starts in her fingertips and spreads through her whole body. Before the memories of her previous life came back, she never once doubted that their hearts were joined. Finding out this is what he actually thought — the shock leaves her unable to form a thought.
[Chloe isn’t someone I can open up to, not the way I can with you. She’s…… well, she’s too perfect. Not a flaw anywhere, and nothing you could call endearing. She’s like a polished jewel…… I hesitate even to touch her.] (L)
Something inside Chloe quietly gives way.
‘Too perfect? No flaws? That’s the reason?’
What he’s describing is the image of a lady befitting the heiress of House Calendula — the thing she spent more than a decade building. It’s her pride itself. And he insults it without a flicker of hesitation, and her heart goes cold with a stillness that frightens her.
[When I’m with you, Sherry, I can be myself. I can laugh, make jokes, stop watching every word…… I want to stay like this with you forever.] (L)
[Leo……!] (S)
Tears welling in her eyes, Sherry reaches across and gently touches his fingers. Chloe’s chest doesn’t ache at the sight anymore. Something closer to contempt spreads there instead.
[You’re the only one I truly love. With you…… I can just be a man. Rank doesn’t matter, bloodline doesn’t matter. ……How happy that makes me, I doubt my fiancée could ever understand.] (L)
Leonardo takes Sherry’s hand and presses his lips to her fingertips. It looks almost like an oath.
[Then…… I’ll wait. However long it takes. If the day comes when I can stand at your side, I can wait forever……] (S)
Chloe watches the two of them wrapped in all that sweetness with utterly cold eyes. And deep behind them, a resolve she hasn’t put into words yet begins, quietly, to catch light.
—
The two of them finish their meal and leave, and still Chloe sits sunken in her chair, her face emptied of feeling.
[Um…… Owner, are you all right? If you’d like, I could bring you something to drink……] (Wife)
It’s the wife of the restaurant’s proprietor, speaking hesitantly. Chloe offers her a dry little smile and finally opens her mouth.
[……Yes, let’s do that. Wine, please. If you have a chilled white, that would be lovely.] (C)
[We have one cooling right now, as it happens. I’ll bring it straight over — one moment, please.] (Wife)
She hurries off to the kitchen and returns before long with a bottle and a glass on a trolley. With practised hands she pours and sets the glass down in front of Chloe.
[Here you are.] (Wife)
[Thank you…… I’ll enjoy it.] (C)
[Of course. Please take all the time you need.] (Wife)
After an awkward little bow, she withdraws.
Alone again, Chloe lifts the wine to her lips with elegant grace. The cool liquid slides down a throat gone bone-dry, and her mind begins working again, as if she’s stepping out of a fog.
‘My engagement is agony for him. Hah. And here I’ve been minding his feelings all this time. What an idiot I’ve been.’
Ever since the engagement, Chloe has done nothing but consider him. She had his favourite blend of tea brought in for their tea parties, and since he dislikes sweet things, she arranged for savoury refreshments instead. She tried to take an interest in his hobbies, held her own feelings in check and put him first. In public she was always careful, so that he’d never be embarrassed by his fiancée. She was attentive to his family too, and at gatherings she quietly made sure he looked good.
All of that consideration was wasted. Whatever Chloe did, the engagement itself was agony for him.
‘Fine, then. Enough. I won’t spend another thought on his feelings.’
Her mind made up, she drains what’s left in the glass.
[I’m glad I came today. Now I know what he really is……] (C)
She murmurs it too softly for anyone to hear and sets the glass on the table.
His words cut a deep wound in her. But thanks to them, she knows he’s the sort of coward who sneaks off to badmouth his fiancée to the woman he’s cheating with. He seems to fancy himself the tragic hero, dragged unwillingly into an engagement, and it’s genuinely laughable. As if there were any reason on her side that it had to be him.
Whatever corner of her heart still insisted he wasn’t the same scum of a father from the otome game is gone now. The future where he murders his wife and abuses his own daughter, exactly as the game laid it out, has started to feel entirely plausible.
‘He really has made a fool of me. Me — the next head of House Calendula — and by the second son of a duke who’s fallen out of favour with the sun of the coming age, no less……’
What angers Chloe most isn’t that her fiancé betrayed her. It’s that he looked down on her.
House Calendula sits above Leonardo’s family in every respect. Lineage, standing, blood, wealth — take any of them and House Linden isn’t fit to stand at Calendula’s feet. Both dukedoms, and yet worlds apart.
Above all, House Linden is out of favour with the sun of the coming age: the current crown prince. The reason is the last succession dispute, in which they backed the second prince rather than the first prince, who became crown prince.
Having lost that fight, the family naturally found society a colder place, and so they set about marrying into a house in the crown prince’s faction in order to come under his wing. The house they settled on was Calendula.
Losing and then surrendering to the enemy is ordinary enough in politics, and Chloe has no particular objection to House Linden trying to restore its honour that way. Other second-prince families have married into the old first-prince camp as well. Bringing former rivals into the fold, swelling the crown prince’s support and hardening his base — that’s the thinking among her father and the rest of the old first-prince faction. Common practice; nothing worth a second thought.
What is worth a thought is that Leonardo knows all of this, and mocks her behind her back anyway.
An engagement to someone who owed her family a debt would mean a man who treasured the daughter and the house he married into. That calculation may well have been at the bottom of her father’s decision. It would never have crossed his mind that the man would sneer at his daughter in private and one day scheme to seize the house and end its bloodline.
And Chloe would never have known her fiancé was plotting something so monstrous, so far outside the bounds of decency, if the memories of her previous life hadn’t come back.
Recovering them at this particular moment is a stroke of fortune. Before the engagement was signed would have been better, but she’s in no position to be greedy about it.
‘There is not one single reason I deserve to be looked down on like this. I’ll just have to make sure he receives a proper “thank you” for the insult……’
House Linden kept its footing in noble society only because of this engagement, and to have that debt repaid with treachery is not something she’ll take lying down. Avoiding the poisoning is a given. Beyond that, she won’t be satisfied until Leonardo has tasted, in full, the consequences of his own stupidity.
Every trace of hesitation gone from her face, Chloe rises from her chair. She calls the proprietor’s wife over and hands her a gold coin for the wine.
[Owner, there’s no charge! And I couldn’t possibly accept this much——] (Wife)
[It’s fine, do take it. More importantly, I have a favour to ask……] (C)
[A favour? Yes, anything at all, please just say the word. For the Owner we’re so indebted to, I’d do absolutely anything!] (Wife)
[Fufu. Thank you. Then lend me your ear a moment……] (C)
And Chloe leans in and whispers.
Simplyrical 
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