WRDP 10

Chapter 10

No matter how many times she experienced it, the passage of endurance still felt impossible to adapt to.

The man in front of her likely felt the same—yet unlike her, his relaxed demeanor pressed somewhere inside her mind in an unsightly, suffocating way. It felt as though she was being dragged into his pace, or perhaps losing.

Lyrette forced her expression into calmness, pretending she was unaffected. It was not an easy task.

“Why are you so tense, even though this happens every day or two?”

“Who’s tense—”

“You’re sweating.”

“……”

“It’s unpleasant. Slippery.”

The grown man complained as if he were a five-year-old child. Lyrette noticed the dampness forming each time they pressed against each other but chose to pretend otherwise.

“I’m not tense.”

“Then how do you explain this sweat?”

“Why do you assume I’m the cause?”

“So it’s my fault?”

“Maybe your hands are just too hot, Your Grace.”

Valderion laughed as if it were absurd, then shook his head.

“I’ll take that as you calling me passionate.”

“You’re excessively optimistic.”

“If you know I’m going to this much effort, at least show the decency to keep up.”

How much more was she supposed to “keep up”?

Lyrette swallowed a habitual sigh. There were still far more than thirty minutes left, and she had no need to further irritate his mood.

Especially today, when she had to hope for his leniency—as she once did the night she begged him to release her restraints.

The act of holding hands.

It seemed trivial when considered abstractly, but reality was different.

There were far more sensations tied to it.

The size difference that constantly reminded her of his masculine hands; the shifting temperature that sometimes felt cool, sometimes warm; the undeniable sense that two people were physically connected through a single point. Each detail accumulated into something far heavier than it appeared.

“After holding like this, does it last for about a day?”

Valderion spoke, observing the small, fragile hand that trembled slightly each time he applied pressure.

Lyrette nodded.

As he had guessed, enduring these thirty minutes of strain allowed her to move her fingers freely for about a day without the stiff, clogged sensation.

After obtaining the “Name,” Lyrette had learned that a day was shorter than she had expected.

When her joints began to stiffen as if her nerves were knotting together, it meant the Duke would visit her room again—and another day had already passed.

“Last time, when I touched your back, how long did it last?”

He said “back,” but it was not difficult to understand what he truly meant.

The neatly inscribed Name on his body.

“About a week…”

The difference was almost tragic.

It wasn’t only Lyrette who thought so. Valderion fell into thought, then suddenly bent his fingers.

At the scraping sensation across her palm, Lyrette flinched violently and pulled her hand away before she realized it.

When she looked up, he wore an expression that suggested she was overreacting to something trivial.

By then, the lower half of the hourglass had already filled.

Just as the thirty minutes ended, he sometimes played these unpleasant little tricks.

“Seems like you’ll never even dream of touching the Name.”

Today, it seemed less like teasing and more like testing her reaction. Either way, it was unpleasant.

Lyrette clenched her returning fingers repeatedly, then shifted a little farther away.

“I have a question.”

“What is it?”

“Is there a study in this building?”

After finishing their obligatory routine and drinking a glass of water, Valderion turned to her with a look that asked why she was bringing it up.

“I want to read books.”

“……”

“There’s nothing to do in here.”

From what she had observed so far, the main building where the head of the house stayed was elsewhere.

Since her range of movement had expanded after the restraints were lifted, she had often stood by the door, listening to the outside.

This place was nearly deserted. Given the scale of the Duke’s household, there should have been many servants.

Yet aside from the butler, none were visible. Combined with the fact that Valderion himself only appeared here after showing up in the garden earlier, it was clear.

This was not his primary residence.

In other words, this place existed solely to confine and monitor her.

A carefully furnished prison.

Even if it was intended for that purpose, it was still a prison. Decorating iron bars with ribbons did not change their nature.

Lyrette felt something inside her slowly wearing thin and brittle each passing day.

If the imperial palace with Dailen had been suffocating and unbearable, this place felt empty and hollow in comparison.

“If you’re still worried I might run away, you can assign guards.”

“……”

“I’ve said this many times. I understand now that running away won’t solve anything.”

Valderion seemed to hesitate, weighing the risks.

Lyrette only hoped he would acknowledge that she had behaved—and caused no trouble—since the restraints had been lifted.

“Fine.”

“……”

“But you’ll be accompanied by the butler.”

It wasn’t complete freedom, but it was enough.

“The study is at the end of the second-floor corridor.”

“……”

“Though I doubt you’ll find anything useful even if you tear it apart.”

Despite his pessimism, Lyrette allowed herself a sliver of hope. What he had told her was only fragments, and more importantly, it was centered on Valderion as a noble heir rather than on her situation.

There was still much to learn about the Name.

The next day.

Lyrette went to the study with the butler.

“This annex is rarely used, so it is somewhat unkempt,” he said.

As he had said, the interior showed clear neglect. Dust floated visibly through the air above the desks and bookshelves.

Lyrette coughed lightly and waved the air aside.

“Are you looking for something in particular?”

“I’ll look around myself.”

Leaving the butler behind, she walked between the shelves.

Unlike her hands, her legs had not received treatment, and she limped as if her ankle were twisted. Swallowing the familiar pain, she focused on selecting books.

She returned to her room carrying as many as she could.

She piled them on the table and read until her eyes ached—but as Valderion had said, there was nothing useful.

She even began reading medical texts. The Name was so rare that even when it appeared in books, it rarely exceeded a single page.

“There really isn’t anything new…”

She slumped onto the table, exhausted.

Rarity always came with a lack of information. The fewer the cases, the harder it was to gather data, and thus research inevitably progressed slowly.

The Name was no exception.

It was often called a “curse-like prank of the gods,” blurring the boundary between reality and unreality.

After all, it was difficult to accept as real.

That two strangers, who had known nothing of each other until yesterday, could become bound by something as simple as a name—tied together by invisible threads of fate to the point they could not survive without each other.

“It really is like a curse…”

She stared at her half-turned view, her head still resting sideways.

But she could not give up yet.

The study in the annex was dusty and neglected, but it contained a wide range of books.

She visited it twice a day.

Her efforts would surely reach Valderion through the butler, but she did not care.

That day as well, she placed another stack of books on the table and massaged her aching calves.

Her attempts to find even a single clue about the Name while suffering from its symptoms felt, in a way, pathetic.

Still, today she had found something useful.

It was a book by the foreign scholar Farve, who had personally experienced the Name.

Unlike the other texts that offered only a single page, this one contained three or four.

Her eyes moved quickly across the page.

She skimmed what she already knew, then what was new but unsurprising—until her pupils suddenly stiffened on the next page.

[Those who manifest a unilateral Name without a connected counterpart rarely survive more than five years after its manifestation.]