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Chapter Sixty-Five –
During a meeting with Hans, Theodor suddenly asked.
“How is the garden?”
“I have
Tell me
That Her Highness the Grand Duchess had had a long discussion with the Gardener, and that the Gardener was
Happy
Very
With budget
Which
I allocated it
“The Duchess is for the garden.”
Was the gardener very happy?
Theodore was paying this gardener without even doing any work, but he had never heard that he was “happy” before?
Of course, Theodore did not feel the need for a gardener in the palace, so he did not care whether he was there or not.
But he did not know that there was a “man” gardener in this house.
Theodor did not know what kind of man this gardener was, but Hans said that he was a man who had become very happy after a long conversation with Annette.
Suddenly, Theodore thought of a social scandal.
In aristocratic palaces, dirty love and infidelity between the gardener and the lady of the palace were very common.
“This-this gardener is a young man, isn’t he?”
Theodore would never have doubted Annette's sincerity, but the gardener's malicious intentions were unknown.
Gardeners who love flowers naturally fell in love with Annette, who looked like a flower.
And also….
Is it possible that the reason Annette asked Theodore to take care of the garden and the sudden change in her recent unreasonable behavior - becoming more kind and tolerant - was because she had innocently fallen in love with the malicious gardener?
“Where's Annette?”
Theodore stopped thinking and went to look for Annette.
But he did not know that he would hear terrible verbal insults from Annette, whom he would meet in the park.
* * *
Annette was walking around the garden alone.
She had finished her conversation with the gardener, so she didn't need to spend any more time in the garden, but she continued walking without any destination.
The garden was ruined because no one had taken care of it for a long time, and the place where flowers should bloom was empty.
But her mind was much more complex than the pile of branches tangled everywhere.
“I must have been mistaken.”
This was the first time she had felt so strange since she started living as Annette.
When Annette heard the names of the familiar flowers a while ago, she discovered this world's true identity.
“This is impossible...
This is not my world’s past.”
When Annette put these words into her mouth and murmured slowly, it felt more real.
Yes, of course.
She didn't go back in time, she came to a place beyond the past of her world.
While she was living here, involuntarily, Annette found herself believing that this world was in the past somewhere in the Europe that was in her home world...
But now she discovered that it was just an imaginary world that had no connection to her world at all.
“It is the present of an unknown world, not the past of my original world.”
Why had Annette not realized earlier this fact that was already obvious?
Unbeknownst to her, Annette was connecting the Odentia Empire to her homeworld in order to find some familiarity and not feel out of place here.
But you shouldn't have done that...
“I...I'm a complete stranger to this place.”
Annette was a being who defied the laws of the world she was now living in and should not exist there.
Unless this was just a fantasy world, it would be impossible for tulips to bloom in the middle of winter, and so Annette's strange presence would become awkward among all the natural things surrounding her.
A place where their presence would be more unnatural than chrysanthemums blooming out of season.
The names of the flowers Annette heard were very confusing.
She would have been less puzzled if the gardener had mentioned flowers whose names she did not know, but the flowers she encountered every day in her home world caused a storm in her head.
Annette looked at the clothes she was wearing.
An elegant Victorian dress fit the look of a gentlewoman.
This dress would have been popular in the Rococo era, and the shoes would have been worn in the Baroque era.
The dress was a confusing outfit that did not represent any era in Annette's home world, but no one thought it was a strange outfit.
It was only Annette who found it so strange.
Even if the zoo contains mammoths instead of elephants, it is not worth being surprised.
Because she is the foreign and strange person here.
No matter what was here, Annette shouldn't feel weird.
“Because there is no stranger than me.”
One day last fall when Annette had an argument with Theodore and went out onto the main street to vent, Theodore bought her a rose from a street florist.
Annette thought at the time that the flower was out of season, but she thought it might be a flower grown in a greenhouse that suited her climate.
But it was not that the flowers had bloomed in a greenhouse out of season, but rather that Annette was living in a world that did not suit her concepts and the laws of her world.
It was all the things here that just didn't fit in her world.
This era, this world, the fantasy world, was a place that did not exist in the real world.
However, she was constantly living and breathing here.
What does this mean in the name of the Creator?
Annette stood on the ground, but she felt like she was falling into an abyss.
She was tired of looking at the ground, so she looked up at the sky.
“The sky is different too...”
She couldn't find any stars she knew.
The flowers that opened out of season and the stars that floated in the sky in a strange arrangement were completely unknown to her.
“Where am I?”
An unknown feeling of fear settled in Annette's heart.
She thought it was this world that invaded her peaceful life and turned it upside down, but it turned out that it was Annette who invaded this world and came to it from a very far away place.
Annette couldn't look at the ground or the sky, so instead she closed her eyes.
Annette suddenly felt very lonely.
The wind that had made her so cheerful a short while ago had become so cold that it sent shivers down her body.
She had no confidence in what she would encounter if she opened her tightly closed eyes, so she continued to stand there stiff like a statue, but then she heard someone's voice approaching her.
“
Annette
?
Theodore called her name.
But that wasn't her real name.
Who in the name of Hell is this “Annette”?
Annette hated herself for responding to a name that wasn't her own.
Theodore approached her with hasty steps.
Was the Annette that Theodore was searching for really the “present Annette” or was he searching for the “fake Annette” who was pretending to be inside a body that was not her own?
“What's going on?
What
What's wrong with you?
?
“You don’t look good.”
Theodore stood directly in front of her and looked at her anxiously.
No matter how Theodore looked at her, Annette did not look like her usual self.
“Why do you think there is
What's wrong?
What's wrong with me?
“What are you talking about?
Me.”
I ask you
Because you don't look well, and I'm worried about that.
Are you sick somewhere?”
Theodore angrily asked if Annette was sick again.
But he wasn't angry at her, he was just angry at the fact that he didn't know what was hurting her.
His expression narrowed, then he put his hand on her forehead to take her temperature.
His obvious anxiety was unbearable in these uncertain moments.
Annette knew she was the one acting weird right now, but she desperately needed someone to blame.
So she took out her resentment towards Theodore, who had just arrived, without any logical justification.
“Why...why
You brought me
To here?
What
I benefited from it
By bringing someone who was living a happy life into such hell?”
Annette hit Theodore's chest with the hardest force she had in her fist.
Blood flowed from her thin lip as she bit it while her eyes were unfocused, so she had no choice but to use her fists to express the feeling of fear that was engulfing her heart.
Theodore also noticed something unusual in her actions.
“Annette,
Calm down
.
You have to
You tell me
What happened first
And we will try
Together
Find a solution for it.”
“
I prefer
If only I
I stayed
Imprisoned in a hospital
For diseases
mentality rather than knowing anything about this strange world.”
“How are you going to imprison someone who is not...
Crazy
There?”
"Are you sure I'm not crazy?
No, I'm definitely very crazy.
How could I not?"
Go crazy
And I live inside an unknown vortex?
She is in an unknown place, a parasite in someone else's body.
She became a parasitic pest in an instant and began to become attached to an unknown world that had nothing to do with her original world, so it was impossible for her not to go crazy.
Why did she come here and why was she living a life other than her own, in a body other than her own, inside a world far removed from her.
Annette had become an unknown, non-existent person who could be quickly forgotten and replaced, so the painful anxiety of being in a place completely foreign to her began to stab her mind.
“Why do you keep going?
Destructive
Like this?
Why don't you leave me?
My business
Just?”
"What?"
The shock was evident on Theodore's face.
Annette ran away even though she knew she had hurt him with her words.
Her confusion was so great that she couldn't even think about what Theodore felt about what she said.
When Annette realized the huge gap between her and this world, she panicked and was no longer confident that she could continue living like Annette anymore.
She would rather go crazy.
The treatment she received as a madwoman in the Elysia Asylum was the treatment she deserved.
When Annette turned and ran away, Theodore's outstretched hand fell helplessly towards her.
Now when Theodore was barely beginning to understand her, Annette asked him to distance himself from her.
* * *
Annette was busy walking around the Flores mansion.
After leaving the garden, Annette decided to walk around different parts of the palace.
Annette wandered around the palace looking for something to point to and grumble about, venting her discontent whenever she got the chance.
It was a kind of training.
Annette should have lived longer as Grand Duchess Annette, the novel's original villain, so she now takes care of palace affairs and tries to make the servants hate her so that she has nothing else to cling to in this world.
More than anything, Annette wanted to live a life where she would be so busy that she wouldn't have time to think any more scary thoughts.
After she finished searching the main building and failed to find anything to shout about, she trudged along, looking for something to complain about until she reached the outbuildings.
For a long time, Flores Palace had no use for outbuildings because the owner was only Theodore and he did not bring any guests to him.
For this reason, the outbuildings were left unmanaged.
Annette finally went to that outhouse and found a rotting wall there.
After shouting at the servants in a way that she thought resembled aristocratic arrogance, the servants bit their lips and ran away in fear, so Annette was left sighing alone in the place.
However, it was still difficult for her to judge whether her screaming fit the role of a villain or not.
“I didn't know it was so hard to play a bad guy.”
“Do you want to?”
Good night
Evil?”
“When
You came
To here?”
Theodore approached Annette, who was alone in the annex.
This was their first conversation since Annette's tantrum in the park.
“The butler has come
To meet me
He was panting from running
And inform me
“The lady had found a spot of mold in the abandoned building and had become very angry.”
“Ah… I was a little angry on purpose to intimidate the servants, but it seems I...
I exaggerated
“A little bit because of my personal feelings.”
“Is mold the cause?”
“It reminds me of the past.”
"the past?"
“When I was in a sanatorium
Elysia
There was a hole in the wall overlooking the next room, and there was mold growing
Next to him
“
At first, Annette was frightened by the appearance of mold on the wall.
The unknown winds blowing through the cracked walls and the mold clinging together were unfamiliar and frightening to her.
But after one day, two days, three days...
Annette was used to it.
This is because she realized that the only thing that came from those things was the wind coming from outside.
I also realized that the only living thing in that room was mold.
“Anyway, thanks
For you
On
My output
From there.
But to be honest, it would have been better
For you
That
You lock me up
In that sanatorium, she stays
By exploiting me
“As you wish.”
Annette was well aware of her situation.
Theodore looked at Annette with his head tilted as if he couldn't understand what she was saying.
“Thanks.”
For you
On
Make me
, I am the one
I used to
To be a friend
For mold
,
In person
"He can get angry at the sight of mold."
"girlfriend?"
“At noon, there was very little sunlight coming into my room, but there was mold next to where the light was leaking in.
I was looking for the shape of something in that mold.”
And I try
Imagine it
In the form of pictures.
It was like looking up at the night sky and trying to find a familiar shape among the scattered stars.
Then, when I saw the shape of someone
Constellations
The star is there, I felt
As if we were
We became close friends.”
“Will
You found it
Zodiac sign or what?
“Dog Tower?”
Annette tilted her head in confusion.
“I found it
In form
Similar
For Leo...
No, more than that, since when is the Dog considered a zodiac sign?
“The lion is the one who is not found in the zodiac calendar.”
The common sense of the two people who were from two different worlds collided.
The two scientists also differed in how they read the stars.
As the days passed, more differences appeared between the two than they had in common.
“
I prefer
That
We change
The topic is not to talk about these ridiculous zodiac signs.”
“Yes, I guess
That you are
“Right.”
“So can we talk about something else now?”
"What?"
“Why were you angry?”
At the direct question, Annette was silent for a moment.