Perhaps he didn’t really want an answer, he shrugged his shoulders and muttered playfully.

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what everyone else says as long as you say you like my eyes.”

“Where are your father and stepmother now?”

“Nowhere.”

“Don’t you know?”

“Not in that way.”

Having said this, Reynard stopped for a moment and added:

“Both are dead.”

“…”

Yurina turned around and was dumbfounded. Not wanting to show his face, Raynard buried his face into her neck as soon as their eyes met. Yurina patted his back and then finally opened her lips.

“What’s happened?”

“It was a carriage accident. They were hit by the carriage of some nobleman.”

“Carriage accident?”

“Yeah. Father pushed me before I was hit, so I was fine with only a small scratch on my arm. But my father and stepmother…”

Yurina felt strangely dizzy listening to his words. Of course, she had already seen a similar story somewhere.

‘So, when I was younger than when I met you, maybe when I was 10 years old. In fact, I’ve seen carriage accidents myself. So I understand why you were so scared that day.’

Could it be that the carriage accident she was talking about back then was the same as the one he was talking about now? But Yurina couldn’t bear to ask if it was his parents who died in that carriage accident.

Yurina asked as she turned her face as hard as she could without realizing it.

 “How old were you then?”

“Ten.”

Reynard smiled and gently rubbed Yurina’s cheek with his hand, perhaps realizing that Yurina had noticed even though he said he wasn’t showing off.

“You don’t have to do that face. It was a long time ago, so I don’t even remember.”

Lie. The words stuck in her throat like a stone. That day, lying on Yurina’s leg and confessing his past as if confessing, he told a completely different story.

“I still sometimes think about the past. Yurina, if I had learned magic back then, would I have been able to save these people? Sometimes I really regret it.”

He suffered so much from the death of his family that he blamed himself for not saving them.

Raynard, who was studying Yurina’s distorted face, spoke in a nonchalant tone to soften the atmosphere a bit.

“After that, I lived in a shelter…”

But Yurina couldn’t listen to him anymore. She gently put her arms around his head and wept.

“I’m sorry.”

She didn’t even know what those apologies were for. She was just sorry.

“I’m sorry, Ray.”

“What are you sorry for?”

Reynard only wiped Yurina’s tear-stained cheeks with her reddened eyes.

“I’m just sorry about everything.”

Yurina thought she healed the wounds of his youth to some extent.

Because of his red eyes, he was pointed at with a finger. Yurina stayed by his side and was a friend.

Unlike everyone else, she thought she sympathized with his pain and shared her warmth.

But that was conceit.

All she did was those things. What the hell was she like, did she think she was a great person? Even she started it all with selfishness.

In fact, she did absolutely nothing. It is absurd to say that she will heal his wounds, because she didn’t even look at them properly.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“What didn’t you do?”

Raynard hugged Yurina and lay down on the bed.

“The day I told you the story about the carriage, you convinced me that I wasn’t to blame. That my father would be grateful just for the fact that I was there while he was dying. To be honest, sometimes I was tormented by the memories of my father’s last moments. But after hearing you, it was fine. Really.”

However, Yurina couldn’t stop crying so he kept telling her that everything was okay until she calmed down.

“Do you have a headache? My head hurts when I cry a lot.”

Raynard stroked Yurina’s back and tried to change the subject by looking into her reddened eyes. When he gently rubbed the area around her eyes with his thumb, the burning pain subsided.

“Now it’s your turn.”

He whispered softly, wiping tears from her cheeks.

“I told you my story, now tell me yours.”

He looked at Yurina’s expression and paused for a while before asking quietly. 

“There’s something you haven’t told me either. Yes?”