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Chapter 9
Along with a low voice, soft lips touched her forehead.
Very lingeringly. The lips that had pressed against her forehead for a long while fell away with a heavy sigh.
Pandora stood blankly, her dry lips parting slightly.
[If a day ever comes when we share a goodnight kiss… Would I be able to answer with a genuine ‘good morning’ then, too?]
The words she had spoken to him in the morning. A muttered grumble, like talking to herself.
She had pinned no expectations or hopes on them whatsoever.
And yet, solely because of those words, Erp had stayed behind to guard the mansion instead of vanishing.
“Were you waiting for me?”
Pandora’s voice trembled slightly.
I do not love this man. What I chased was merely the small pleasure brought by actions like brushing lips or playing at being lovers, not truly sharing our hearts.
The dogma she had repeated so firmly seemed to be fluttering like a candle meeting the wind.
Erp did not answer Pandora’s question.
“…Sleep well.”
He simply offered a low night greeting, bypassed her, and headed toward the front door.
The broad back of the man striding away with his long legs felt resentful.
“This is the kind of thing you do to kids!”
Pandora spoke in a somewhat dissatisfied and slightly choked-up voice.
Erp, who had been about to step out the door, came to an abrupt halt.
Pandora spun around toward Erp and reached out the hand not holding her cane. Her fingertips were within a hair’s breadth of brushing the hem of his shirt.
It was an ambiguous distance—too far to consider close, yet close enough that she could catch him if she just stretched her hand out a little further.
Pandora hated that ambiguity.
To think of herself standing and lingering with just the tips of her toes touching, unable to cross the pitch-black drawn line nor step back from it.
Pandora took a bold step forward. The hand that had been wandering in empty air made contact with the man’s arm.
“A goodnight kiss between adults should be done like this.”
Griping his solid arm in her palm, she yanked hard. The ambiguous distance closed in an instant.
Pandora closed both eyes and tipped her chin up. Then, she stuck her lips out forward.
“…” “…”
All he had to do was pick up the spoon and eat the meal that was already set out for him, but no matter how long she waited, Erp gave no reaction.
Embarrassed, Pandora tried to pull back the lips she had poked out.
At that moment, large hands cupped both her cheeks and pulled her straight in, fusing their lips together.
It completely overshadowed her initial intent to leave after just a brief forehead kiss; Erp eagerly devoured Pandora’s breath.
Like someone unleashing and exploding suppressed emotions, hot lips pressed forward fiercely. A dizzying sensation, as if her entire body was melting away, scrambled her brains.
When Pandora was pushed back a step, Erp’s legs immediately strode forward to follow her even closer. As if refusing to tolerate even the slightest gap.
In the breathtaking, perilously close kiss, Pandora tightly grabbed the collar of Erp’s shirt. Her chest rose and fell continuously due to her suddenly shortened breath. Their overlapping hearts thudded heavily, racing noisily right at her ears, at the tips of her toes, and across their entangled lips.
It was the hottest and most concentrated goodnight kiss in the world.
When their lips slowly parted, Pandora was being carried in Erp’s arms, heading up the stairs.
He’s taking me to my room.
Opening her darkened eyes, Pandora looked down at Erp’s face.
Amidst everything being pitch-black and blurry, only the violet eyes meeting Pandora’s gaze were sharp and clear.
Pandora caressed his face with her fingertips.
“Doctor.”
“…Yes.”
Pandora had never once asked him.
Who he was. Where he came from. Why he so casually caused variables and stayed quietly silent, pretending not to know anything.
[Anna. Do you know what the doctor’s name is?] [The doctor’s name? It’s Dr. John Rail, of course.]
Even how that unfamiliar name, Erp Darling, had come to be.
She had been too scared to ask.
She feared that if she threw out questions, he would vanish like a ghost, just as he had first appeared out of nowhere like a ghost.
Yet now, she wanted the answers.
A strange man who had entered her endlessly repeating life.
The identity of this sole “bug.”
“I heard a creepy story outside today.”
“Yes.”
“They say a bad ghost wanders around during loading times, entering the rooms of women who are alone and committing bad deeds before disappearing.”
“Yes.”
“I’m scared to be alone, so couldn’t you stay by my side until I fall asleep?”
The master of excuses, Pandora.
Though she was a coward who couldn’t directly ask what she was curious about, nor boldly throw out a straight-shooting request that she just wanted to be with him longer, she always beat around the bush, making all sorts of excuses to hold onto Erp.
However, Pandora becoming such a habitual liar was partly Erp’s fault, too.
If you listened closely, Erp was the one who had willingly listened to and accepted those utterly nonsensical excuses every single time.
Stopping right in front of the bedroom door, Erp asked,
“Are ghosts scary, but I’m not?”
“Pardon?”
“What will you do if I commit a bad deed against you?”
His low, subdued voice tickled her ears.
Pandora tilted her head, looked around with unseeing eyes, and let out a stifled, muffled giggle like a child preparing a mischievous prank.
“What kind of bad deed do you want to commit?”
Pandora’s lips landed lightly upon the top of Erp’s head.
“Like this kind?”
His black hair suddenly fluffed up and gleamed a soft white, but Pandora pretended not to see it and kept up her teasing mischief.
Quickly pressing her lips to his right cheek, then his left cheek, she tapped them on and off.
“Or maybe this kind?”
His tickling breath could be felt right up close.
Click. Holding Pandora effortlessly in one arm, Erp opened the bedroom door with his other hand and stepped inside. Then, he pushed the door shut with his back.
“Pandora. You are overly innocent.”
The body of Pandora, who had been clinging to Erp like a cicada, tilted backward. A soft blanket enveloped her back.
“You need to have a bit more sense of danger.”
Laying Pandora down on the bed, Erp took her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm.
Mwah. Unlike the cute sound, the kiss that lingered long before parting was steeped in heavy desire.
Wiggling her fingers at the tickling sensation, Pandora smiled softly and said,
“Should I feel a sense of danger toward a man who is always, every day, and without fail, flustered and worried that I might get hurt?”
To him, who couldn’t remember, today might be the very first, but Pandora remembered Erp’s cautious and affectionate kisses across numerous “todays.”
The tender care with which he treasured her, as though handling a fragile, precious jewel.
Look at this. Even now, while threatening her verbally that he could commit a bad deed, isn’t he actually unable to do anything, sitting at the edge of the bed and merely fiddling with her fingers?
When she pointed this out, Erp’s sigh tickled her fingers.
“Just how much I…”
Rrrrrrrumble—
At that moment, the untimely growling of Pandora’s belly clock cut off Erp’s words.
Pandora cursed her own stomach for raising a ruckus without reading the atmosphere.
“I’ll tell them to go downstairs and prepare dinner.”
“Eat together. Won’t you?”
Fearing that Erp would go downstairs, order dinner prepared, and bolt away immediately, Pandora grabbed onto him urgently.
“If you hold on to me like that…”
“?”
“Never mind. Don’t worry. I’ll stay right by your side until you go to sleep.”
Erp brushed aside the hair tangled across Pandora’s forehead and stood up.
“Oh my, Doctor. You still haven’t left?”
Carrying up the prepared meal, Anna asked with a puzzled look.
“Our young lady needs to eat, wash up, and go to sleep, you know.”
“I told you to bring two portions, Anna. The doctor will be eating with me, too.”
“Aigoo~ I thought you meant you wanted to eat with me.”
“Hmph. What’s so pretty about you that I’d eat with you.”
You were already out the running ever since the 40th June 9th, when you forcibly loaded me onto a carriage and sent me off to the exhibition even though I fell from the window and hurt my leg!
Our quack doctor gets worried and brews me lemon tea even if I just cough once!
Granted, he completely failed to fulfill his role as an actual doctor, but so what?
Either way, Pandora was trapped in a time loop, possessing a body that could neither get sicker, heal, nor for that matter, age.
Grumbling, Pandora tightly hugged Erp’s arm.
“Our young lady is just so— Even if you say that, you love me~ Really, you’re just so bad at being honest!”
Whether Pandora glared at her sharply or not, Anna beamed broadly, setting the table before suddenly pausing with a gasp.
“Oh dear, oh dear. Look at my head. We have guests in the studio.”
“Guests?”
“His Highness the Crown Prince, the Grand Duke, and Sir Eugene. Ah, Priest Noel came too.”
“Huh? Why are those people here?”
“Weren’t you supposed to have an appointment with them?”
“I don’t?”
Unthinkingly replying, Pandora recalled the exhibition hall from earlier in the day. The voices of the male leads who had been persistently searching for Pandora unusually hard today.
“Did they come to chew me out for holding such a pathetic exhibition!”
Thinking about how they might curse her out—saying that putting this kind of stuff on display was a national disgrace, and that she didn’t even deserve to be called a painter—made her heart flutter and pound with excitement.
Yet another thing had changed. Her day.
She had thought it might perhaps be a completely meaningless action.
Yet Pandora was steadily painting colorful pictures across the repeating Möbius strip of her life.
“Is that so? I didn’t know because I was taking a nap until the young lady came back, but the butler escorted them to the parlor and served them tea. They arrived one by one, and His Highness and the Grand Duke said they’d look around the studio until the young lady returned. Sir Eugene and Priest Noel arrived later and said it would be rude to enter an empty studio without the host, so they went to escort those two back to the parlor, but they haven’t come back yet.”
“Hmm. I see.”
“Right when I heard the carriage sound of the young lady returning earlier, I ran to the front door with the butler to notify you, but right then those two…”
Anna omitted the rest of her sentence and let out a sly hehehe chuckle.
Meaning she had witnessed Pandora kissing Erp and completely forgotten to announce the guests’ arrival.
Erp’s face flushed a deep red.
