Chapter 15.2

However, the statement that followed immediately after was harder to understand.

“This pit of a village, who would take responsibility for it if not me? Haah.”

“Do you dislike your hometown?”

“What? Oh, no. If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t take responsibility for it.”

“But you sighed.”

“Ahaha, that’s nothing. It’s like, you know, when long-time friends or married couples look at each other and joke around, saying they’re fed up with each other. But you’ve built up affection for them already. Think of it as something like that.”

“Married couples can become fed up with each other?”

Bertram’s innocent eyes were directed at Anna.

Usually, their huge height difference would render his expression hard to see, but it just so happened that he was seated on the bed, and so they could see each other’s faces clearly.

Anna felt like she was being attacked with questions by a five-year-old.

“I have not married before, but I do know that at marriages, the happy couple vow to love each other forever. Can that eternal vow wear out over time?”

“That, that’s right. It’s human emotion, after all. My parents, too, before my father passed away, used to say things like I’m so tired of that man to each other often. Though when he passed away, Mom regretted it later…..”

“My parents, though they have both passed away now, woke up every morning in the same bed and greeted each other asking if ‘your journey into dreamland without me was any good’.”

Anna’s jaw dropped.

This bear dude had grown up between such goosebump-inducing, cringeworthy people? And the fact that the child knew of the conversation between a couple meant that their family relations had been intimately good.

Where had such memorials worthy of the national treasury come from?

At that moment, Bertram spoke up again with something ridiculous.

“Of course, Miss Anna, if this is a realization that you had through your own marriage life, then I will not have any right to say that you are wrong.”

“I’ve never married before, excuse me! In! My life! Not even once! I’ve never even had a lover!”

“……”

“….Yes. Sorry about that. I have never married myself, but the couples around me all act like ‘love is a joke,’ so I spoke thinking that was true for everyone.”

To be honest, she still thought so.

But in front of someone who said they believed in eternal love, there was probably no need to argue that ‘couples inevitably tire of each other, after that they just live together out of shared memories.’

Bertram accepted the apology.

“Thank you for speaking honestly. I will wish for someone who you can love eternally will find you one day.”

“Yes, I wish the same for you, Mr. Bertram.”

Anna replied half-heartedly.

But Bertram’s response to her half-hearted voice was unexpectedly heavy.

“I understand. Once I have regained my emotions. In front of a lifelong partner that I will have happened to meet, I will offer them my eternal love. This, I vow with all my future footsteps and the rest of my life.”

Even when she knew he wasn’t saying this to her, Anna’s face turned bright red.

Saying that in a deep but graceful voice was cheating. In a single strike, it throbbed all the way into the heart.

If she heard her groom say something like that in her wedding, that would be something she’d never forget, even until the day she entered the coffin.

‘B-but he’s not saying that to me! Stop beating so much, my heart. Please? Calm down!’

“…Miss Anna. Your cheeks are red. Are you intoxicated?”

“Um—”

She was not. All she’d had was a few glasses of beer.

However, she didn’t want to say that she had reddened from hearing an imagined proposal, so Anna glossed over it vaguely.

“I guess the alcohol is getting to me now.”

“Then I will escort you to the women’s room.”

“Huh? ….Aack!”

Bertram lifted Anna up directly.

Even the village chief was the size of a young child when compared to Bertram, but Anna hung from him loosely, like some kind of cat.

Not even the slightest hint of romance could be found in the way Anna was being held by Bertram’s arm. That was something Anna, too, could feel deep in her bones as she was being transferred on top of his solid arm.

“Please let me down. I can walk there!”

“No. The village chief has told me to take care of everyone to the very end, so I am only completing my task.”

“All we’re doing is crossing a hallway, what could even happen!”

Bertram did not heed Anna’s opinion.

He strides into the women’s room and lays Anna down carefully, then pours a glass of water to drink during the night at the bedside. Taking her shoes off for her is an extra.

Thinking that was too excessive, Anna yelled.

“I will, I will do it on my own!”

“But….”

“This is a little too much, don’t you think! …..Oh, Lara. Good thing you’re here now. Why are you just standing in the hallway? Come help me!”

Anna desperately searched for an ally.

However, Lara not only failed to agree with Anna, but she only looked into the room from the hallway, her face flushed.

“…… Lara. Why aren’t you coming in?”

“….I’ll stay outside.”

“Huh?”

“I, I didn’t know you two had vowed love to each other! But to think that today’s your last day, that’s just way too sad! I, I will, I’ll just give you two some space for a while. Thirty minutes is enough, right? I can’t give you more!”

“Wait, hey! Where in the world did you hear that kind of nonsense!”

“Have a good time!”

Before she could say you have completely misunderstood, come into this room, close the door and spit out what kind of heated romantic misunderstanding is roaming in your head this instant—

The door closed.

And Lara scampered down the hallway.

Shoe in one hand, Bertram spoke to the frozen figure of Anna.

“….Should I put this back on for you, or carry you on my back? If you will chase after Miss Lara, I daresay the latter will be faster.”