The female protagonist forgets the male protagonist?
It didn’t seem possible, but it was true.
The Marquess of Seville, who had never liked Abel because he was close to Isis, seemed to see this as an opportunity and ordered Abel to leave the mansion with me.
But Abel refused his command.
It was only natural for the male protagonist, Abel, to refuse, but that was when another problem arose.
Viscount Owen, a vassal of the Seville Marquess family who had a preference for men, began approaching me.
I desperately held back the urge to punch him and tried to reject him as politely as possible, but perhaps he had gained so much weight that his ears were blocked. He simply refused to understand what I was saying.
There were more than a few occasions when he forcibly grabbed my wrist and tried to drag me somewhere.
Every time, Abel stood in his way, but because Abel ranked lower than him, he ended up being beaten badly by Viscount Owen instead.
When the Marquess of Seville learned about this, he offered to protect me from the Viscount on one condition.
In the end, Abel had no choice but to leave the mansion, if only for my sake.
And that was what finally triggered my memory of the general plot of this novel.
Only then did I realize,
‘Ah, this is where the entire story of the novel began.’
If I had remembered earlier, could I have prevented Isis’s accident?
But regretting it after the fact wouldn’t change anything.
Abel carefully tucked the letter of recommendation given to him by the Marquess of Seville into his clothes and began packing his belongings.
“You’re really going to the Duke’s household?”
I asked him again as I watched him, but Abel remained silent, as though he couldn’t even bring himself to answer.
The dark circles around his eyes, caused by all the emotional suffering he had endured because of Isis, made me feel sorry for him, but Abel absolutely could not go to the Duke’s household simply because they offered good money.
Abel would die if he went there.
But I couldn’t tell him the truth, and that was incredibly frustrating.
There was a reason I was trying so hard to stop him.
In the novel, Abel began working as a servant in the Duke’s household and started supporting me, who dreamed of becoming a teacher.
But while working there, Abel eventually lost his life in an accident at the Akarut ducal household.
Only after Abel died did Isis regain her memories.
Isis visited the ducal household in search of Abel, but the Duke seemed to know nothing about his death.
Eventually, Isis stayed at the ducal household and began investigating Abel’s death.
And the Duke, who had become captivated by a woman who had devoted her heart to nothing more than a servant, eventually fell for her.
The magic to bring the dead back to life belonged to the realm of the gods.
Because of this, people in ancient times praised magic, but that power had long since disappeared.
Of course, later on, the heroine Isis awakened as a great magician, one whose existence had long since vanished from the world, and brought Abel back to life.
After that, thanks to her, the world eventually became one where science and magic could coexist perfectly.
That was the ending of the novel, but……
“Let’s just go somewhere else. The Duke’s household is dangerous.”
“Cherish, you go straight to the address I gave you.”
As though he couldn’t hear a word I was saying, Abel placed an envelope filled with money into my hand.
“I’ll send you money every month, so just study as much as you want. Understand?”
The only reason I had said I wanted to become a teacher was because the original Cherish’s dream was to become one.
I had simply repeated that dream.
Seeing Abel, who was always willing to sacrifice himself for me, made me want to cry just a little.
But I swallowed my tears and carefully opened my mouth.
“……Haven’t you heard the rumors about the Duke’s household?”
“I have.”
“And you’re still going? You really must be crazy……”
At my vehement reaction, Abel spoke with a serious expression.
“The Marquess recommended this place. It’s only a servant position, but it should be easier to apply for a better position later.”
“……Then let’s do this. My smart older brother can study, and I’ll go work at the Duke’s household.”
Abel’s face filled with shock at my words.
“What?”
Of course, I knew perfectly well that my suggestion would never work on Abel.
In the end, the best way to stop Abel from going to the Duke’s household would have been to tear up his letter of recommendation.
But I kept it hidden so carefully that it was as though Abel could already see right through my plan.
I searched for days, but I couldn’t find even a glimpse of Abel’s letter of recommendation.
And when he caught me searching for it, I got thoroughly scolded.
He even told me that I was throwing away a great opportunity and that my head was full of flowers.
It was the first time Abel had ever spoken to me that harshly, so honestly, I was hurt.
But since my head was already apparently full of flowers, I decided to be a little more honest.
“If you go to the Duke’s household, you’ll die.”
At that, Abel’s expression became unusually serious.
For a moment, I had a tiny bit of hope that he had finally understood how I felt.
But Abel merely stroked my head.
“You’ve been under a lot of stress lately. Let’s go to the hospital and get you some medicine.”
Terrified that Abel might actually drag me to a hospital, I hurriedly added,
“I saw it in a dream. It’s just that it was so vivid.”
“……”
In the end, Abel and I reached an agreement to go to the Duke’s household together.
Honestly, I wanted to keep insisting until the very end, but there was simply no way I could win against Abel’s stubbornness.
Abel couldn’t bear the thought of letting me work alone, and I felt exactly the same about him.
Since the alias and gender I was supposed to use had already been written on the letter of recommendation prepared by the Marquess of Seville, I had to continue disguising myself as a boy.
No.
More importantly, I had to stay close to Abel.
Although I remembered the general progression of the story, I couldn’t remember exactly why Abel had died.
Abel was the first family I had ever gained.
Even though I hadn’t been able to protect our mother and father, I would protect Abel no matter what.
If Abel died as he did in the original story, Isis would eventually save him, but I simply couldn’t bear to watch him die with my own eyes.
Seeing a family member die once was more than enough.
“You must have been quite shocked, weren’t you?”
Mr. Henry, the head butler, asked apologetically as he checked on us after we left the room.
Apparently, even from outside, the gunshots the Duke had fired so carelessly had been loud enough to hear clearly.
I had been pretty startled, but there was absolutely no reason for Mr. Henry to apologize.
Abel carefully asked,
“What kind of person is His Grace?”
At Abel’s question, Mr. Henry gave an awkward smile.
He hesitated for quite a while before answering.
“He’s actually a good person once you get to know him.”
“……”
“Of course, getting to know him is the difficult part.”
At Mr. Henry’s words, Abel forced a smile.
But his smile looked far from natural, and he seemed quite worried about what lay ahead.
Perhaps trying to lighten our tense mood, Mr. Henry spoke again.
“By the way, this is the first time I’ve seen brothers who are so close.”
It was a perfect opportunity to change the gloomy atmosphere, so I quickly answered.
“When we were young, my brother practically raised me on his back.”
“Ah, then it makes sense that you two are close. How many years apart are you?”
“Three years.”
Abel was twenty-three, and I was twenty.
Technically, there were only three years between us, but perhaps because we were different genders, there was quite a noticeable difference in our height and build.
Aside from our light brown hair and green eyes, we hardly looked alike at all, so people often said they wouldn’t have even realized we were brothers if not for those similarities.
More than anything, I looked much more harmless than Abel.
Honestly, I was sick of hearing people say I looked gentle and easygoing.
At least when I was with the large-framed Abel, no one dared to pick a fight with me.
But when I was alone, there was always more than one person who seemed determined to get on my nerves.
I really hoped no one at the Duke’s household would treat me carelessly.
“You can use this room. And your work starts at seven in the morning…… I’ll tell you what you need to do tomorrow, so come to the front of the annex after breakfast.”
Mr. Henry placed a key in Abel’s hand and then explained a few more rules we needed to follow.
He told us where meals were served, what time we should eat, and things like that.
After that, Mr. Henry returned to his duties, and I immediately jumped onto the bed.
Abel looked as though he had a lot to say to me, but he didn’t open his mouth.
He was probably about to lecture me for lying down on the bed without even washing up.
Abel sighed repeatedly as he began tidying the room.
I wanted to help him, but my sluggish body refused to move.
Perhaps because the tension had finally disappeared, sleep gradually began to overcome me.
And so, I closed my eyes while listening to Abel bustling around the room as he cleaned.
The next day, all the servants I met at breakfast seemed perfectly normal.
‘I-I-I’m looking forward to working with you.’
‘You two are the new guys? Are you cousins?’
‘Oh, you’re brothers? You two really don’t look alike.’
The people working under the infamous Duke were far more ordinary than I had expected.
Honestly, I had imagined that everyone working under him would be worn down from constantly enduring his temper, leaving them all hardened and full of hostility.
But they were completely different from what I had imagined, and I was quite surprised.
In fact, the atmosphere here was much gentler than that of the Marquess’s household.
Thanks to that, I relaxed quite a bit.
No matter how the Duke behaved today, I felt like I would be able to handle it.
Actually, to be more precise, there was another reason.
The food at the Duke’s household was way more delicious than I had expected!
This was revolutionary.
I even found myself thinking that I had to somehow survive here just so I could keep eating this food for free.
Even Abel, who usually thought of food as nothing more than something to fill his stomach, seemed to be enjoying it quite a lot.
Good heavens, I was eating salmon steak for breakfast!
The food itself was wonderful, but the biggest advantage was that we could take as much of whatever we wanted to eat as we liked.
On top of that, they even prepared separate soups for those with sensitive stomachs, and if there was something we wanted to eat, we could request it at the end of the month.
Roel, who said he occupied the room across from ours, even brought me more food because he thought it was nice to see me eating so well.
“Tasty, right?”
Peter whispered into my ear.
Peter said that he shared a room with Roel as well.
I was too busy stuffing food into my mouth, but I answered Peter every time he spoke to me.
“Yes!”
Peter gave a knowing little chuckle at my answer, as if he had expected it.
I put some unfamiliar but luxurious-looking fruit into my mouth before cautiously asking Peter,
“But is the work really that difficult?”
