ITMFYWCLBU 0

Betrayal is unforgivable.

All the more so when it comes from someone you trusted—someone you loved.

That was why—

“Alexis Luvelier, in the future you will cheat on me with another woman and abandon me. So please, let us part ways now.”

Clarisse Brantome summoned her fiancé under the pretense of an important discussion and declared this to his face.

Later, once she had regained her composure, she would realize there were far better ways to phrase a breakup. But at that moment, Clarisse was anything but calm.

She was confused—no, perhaps enraged.

One could call it despair, or numb shock.

In truth, countless negative emotions were swirling violently in her chest, and the concept of composure had been left far behind.

But that was only natural.

After all, just one day earlier, Clarisse had lost her life at the hands of an assassin sent by the woman Alexis had an affair with.

No—perhaps that was not quite accurate.

What truly happened was this: Clarisse had been killed two years in the future by an assassin sent by Alexis’s lover, and then had been hurled back to the present.

It was something no one would ever believe, no matter how she explained it. Yet it was undeniably real.

At the very moment her life flickered out, she found herself transported two years into the past—back to when she was seventeen, before her marriage to Alexis.

To be frank, even after a full day had passed, she still did not understand what had happened to her.

All she knew was that she had been betrayed, murdered, and left drowning in a storm of rage and despair she could not escape.

After spending an entire day wrestling with those emotions and her disordered thoughts, Clarisse reached one conclusion: she had to sever her ties with the root cause of it all—Alexis—before it was too late.

I loved you so much…

The Alexis standing before her now was not the twenty-one-year-old man who would betray her two years from now, but a nineteen-year-old youth.

Golden hair, blue eyes. Tall and slender, with features so well-formed they looked as if they’d been painted. The fifth son of the Marquess Luvelier family, he currently served in the knight order and was destined to marry Clarisse, the only daughter of the Count Brantome household, and inherit her family name.

Their engagement had been arranged when Clarisse was ten and Alexis twelve.

Gentle, pleasant, earnest, and sincere—Clarisse had fallen in love with Alexis almost instantly.

She truly believed that by marrying him, she would build a happy family.

And yet—

I can’t forgive you. I’ll never forgive you. You swore eternal love to me on our wedding day…

The man who had sworn eternal love was not the Alexis standing before her now, but the future Alexis who would betray her. But such distinctions no longer mattered.

This man would betray her in the future. That fact alone was enough.

As Clarisse delivered her words with deadly seriousness, Alexis froze in stunned silence.

He did not move an inch. On closer inspection, he wasn’t even blinking.

For a moment, Clarisse wondered if he had stopped breathing altogether. When she cautiously asked, “Are you listening?” Alexis suddenly burst into laughter.

“Ah—hahahahaha…”

It was a hollow, lifeless laugh.

“H-ha… haha… Clarisse, th-that joke just now was, uh… really something… haha… hahahaha…”

He tried desperately to laugh, but his face told a different story. It had gone pale, and with trembling hands, Alexis grasped the teacup in front of him.

The cup rattled violently against its saucer—clatter, clatter—the sound growing louder and louder. Clarisse briefly worried it might shatter.

But there were more important things than a teacup.

She would not let this be dismissed as a joke.

“This is not a joke. Please dissolve our engagement.”

“……”

Alexis’s forced laughter stopped.

What little color remained drained from his face, his eyes turning dull and lifeless, like those of a dead fish.

“W-what are you saying…?”

“I’m saying we should part—”

“I said wait!”

Cutting her off, Alexis raked his fingers violently through his hair.

“Hold on. I don’t understand. Cheating in the future? What are you talking about? Don’t tell me you fell for some shady fortune-teller’s lies… Clarisse, just calm down!”

“I am calm.”

“You are absolutely not calm!”

The one who wasn’t calm was Alexis.

He shouted, then covered his face.

A few minutes after his outburst, there was a cautious knock at the door.

Someone—likely a maid or the butler—had grown worried after hearing his raised voice. Clarisse had summoned Alexis to the Brantome family’s townhouse in the royal capital and insisted on being alone with him, so the servants were surely listening anxiously. More than that, they must have noticed Clarisse’s strange behavior since yesterday and were on high alert.

“My lady…”

A probing voice came from beyond the closed door. It was Ellen, the maid.

Neither Clarisse nor Alexis gave permission to enter, so Ellen could only call out from outside.

“It’s nothing, Ellen.”

If the servants barged in now, the conversation would be derailed. Clarisse replied in a deliberately gentle voice.

“If anything happens, I’ll ring the bell. You may stand down.”

“Understood…”

Ellen answered, her voice laced with concern. Faint footsteps followed, retreating from the room.

The interruption seemed to help Alexis regain a measure of composure, though his expression remained tense and his complexion poor.

“Clarisse. Explain.”

His voice was strained, as though he were forcibly suppressing his emotions.

Explain… but there’s nothing more to explain.

She couldn’t very well say she had returned from the future. He would never believe her. Worse, he’d think she’d hit her head and dismiss the breakup entirely.

“Why would you think I’d cheat in the future? You should know—I’ve never cheated, nor have I ever even held hands with another woman besides you.”

…Oh.

Hearing that he had never even held another woman’s hand sent a faint, traitorous flutter through Clarisse’s heart—remnants of feelings she thought she had already buried.

She knew she had to discard those feelings, yet they clung stubbornly to her. That was how deeply she had loved him.

“That may be—”

“If I’d ever been unfaithful to you, I’d understand you saying this. But I’ve always been sincere. How could you possibly know I’d grow unfaithful in the future?”

Only now did Clarisse regret not choosing her words more carefully before broaching this topic. But it was far too late.

I can’t back down now.

Being betrayed once was more than enough. Being killed once was more than enough. She refused to walk toward the same ending again.

“Just break up with me already!”

Cornered by her own rashness, Clarisse could only push forward by force.

Naturally, Alexis did not agree.

“Don’t tell me—you’ve fallen in love with another man?”

“What? What are you talking about? That’s impossible!”

She could say this without hesitation. In the past and in the future alike, Alexis was the only man Clarisse had ever loved.

That was why the betrayal had hurt her so deeply.

“Then why would you suddenly ask to break up? It makes no sense!”

“It makes perfect sense! I know that you’ll cheat on me in the future!”

“This is absurd!”

Bang!

Alexis slammed his fist down on the low table in front of the sofa.

Clarisse flinched at the sound—but she refused to shrink back. Glaring at him with fierce blue eyes, she met his gaze.

Alexis glared back, his own blue-green eyes blazing.

Blue and aquamarine clashed, neither of them yielding as several seconds passed.

The sound of his fist striking the table must have reached the servants, because footsteps gathered once more outside the door—more than before.

If this continued, they might force their way in.

As panic gnawed at her, Alexis declared in a voice thick with fury:

“Enough. Listen carefully. I will never break up with you. I will never let you go. If you try to escape from me, I will chase you to the very ends of hell!”

Clarisse gasped, her breath catching as she lost the power of speech.

Had Alexis ever shown such intense obsession—either in the past or in the future?

At that moment, Clarisse had awakened something within him that should never have been stirred.

But she would not realize that until much, much later.