'Oh my gosh.'

Annabelle opened her mouth wide and looked at Ian.

'...Annabelle Nadit? Perhaps...'

Under various circumstances, he must have been drunk now.

'I should have known from the moment Leslie said that the Duke would drink alcohol today...'

Just by looking at it, it seems that he and Braden drank strong alcohol and this shape came to be.

"...Ghost? Me?"

Annabelle, sullen, walked over to him with a sigh of relief.

"Ian, I..."

"Also."

Ian, utterly intoxicated, was scrutinizing her with his sharp eyes, reinforcing her own reasoning.

"Your movements are so agile compared to when you were alive."

"..."

Ian must have known very well about Annabelle for a long time to be able to grasp at once that she was different from before with just one step.

Annabelle was so stunned that there was no time for her to say anything, and Ian looked at her boldly and said:

"Hit me."

"...What?"

It was a spectacle to see him sitting upright on the bed with his chest open even while drunk. Ian continued speaking more seriously.

"If that's the only way you can go to the underworld comfortably, you can hit me without worries."

"Really?"

"Yes. After all, in this lifetime, even if we fight for a hundred days, you will not be able to defeat me."

"..."

After losing the friendly match, he was so proud to say such a thing that it almost made her laugh.

"How many times did I advise you to give up, but why didn't you listen? After all, the only thing left in your short life is your obsession with me."

Of course, it was only the first part that made her laugh.

Annabelle's eyes narrowed as the constant pouring of words, like listening to a moral book, he continued after that.

"But if you have the tenacity to come here even after you die, I'd rather welcome you, so beat me up and live happily in the next life."

Indeed, it was too common sense to say that in front of the ghost, and that was why it was so unfortunate.

Annabelle decided that she would enjoy it rather than avoid this outrageous situation.

Because she came up with a way to make this situation interesting.

"Well... Actually, I think you need to do something else so I can leave comfortably."

She smiled and walked over to Ian and sat down next to him.

Ian flinched and tried to avoid her, but she took his hand gently.

"Actually, Ian... I liked you..."

"...What?"

Ian's red eyes flashed with surprise. At the same time, his ears were red in an instant.

'Look at this, this, you don't even take your hand away...'

It was clear that he had gone back to the old days, seeing that he clearly ignored her skills by calling her 'Annabelle Nadit'.

'His breath is trembling...'

Ian, whose whole body stiffened after holding her hand once, spoke stiffly like a kokeshi doll.

"You, me, why, so, when, how..."

"When I was fourteen."

Annabelle laughed playfully and began to prank him seriously.

"The first time I saw you in the final... Because of your serious expression with your fluttering blonde hair holding a sword was so beautiful..."

It was a slightly modified version of Ian's answer to Nick's question on Caronda. Annabelle's natural words continued.

"But you... If not obsessed, you didn't care about me at all..."

"That, that, that..."

Ian was visibly embarrassed and flustered, but could not shake off her hand.

"No, with common sense, how can you treat someone you like like that? So ignorant and mean..."

"So that's it, Ian."

Annabelle approached Ian seriously and said.

"I didn't come to hit you. Before I go to the underworld, there is something I want to do more than defeat you."

As Annabelle narrowed the distance, Ian caught his breath.

Originally, they were fighting each other, so this distance was nothing.

Annabelle stopped just a few feet away from him, and she looked at his bare face and she asked in a whisper.

"Before that, can I ask you one thing?"

"...What?"

"You..."

The sound of rain pouring down from the window was heard, and the moonlight poking in through the clouds softly illuminated them.

"...Can you kiss me?"

At Annabelle's words, Ian immediately shook his head.

"Why should we kiss when we're not even dating?"

'Look at this.'

Annabelle thought with a sad smile.

'Are you saying that I can't be with you at all?'

She was initially joking when she started saying those remarks, but at some point, Annabelle's heart began to tickle as well.

She felt strange that she thought maybe her and Ian could have a different history very early.

'Even though I wasn't conscious of it, I think he really liked me in the past...'

If she hadn't been so serious, she could have fallen for him easily.

As she thought about it like that, it seemed that at some point, her feelings from the old days disappeared and only her love for Ian remained.

Annabelle noticed the confused heat in Ian's eyes as she suddenly looked up, and she shrugged a bit.

"Well then..."

When Ian's old feelings were reconfirmed, she was so excited that she was embarrassed enough to even play more pranks.

Annabelle coughed and let go of his hand she was holding.

"I can't help it. Get some rest. I will go too."

The body that was close to him was also about to go back. Suddenly, he grabbed her hand again.

"...Wait a moment."

Ian opened his mouth in a low voice.

"Don't go."

"What?"

Then she leaned her body towards him, the sweet smell of strong alcohol, the smell of soap, and his refreshing body harmonized and it felt like an attack on Annabelle.

"If it's your last wish, I must grant it."

"Oh no, wait a minute."

Annabelle blinked her eyes as she looked at his most serious face, as if he had made the decision of the century.

"Ian, first think about if you really can..."

"I don't know how long you've been dreaming of kissing me."

At Ian's next words, Annabelle swallowed her thoughts, unable to get her thoughts out of her mouth.

'Well, I've never dreamed of it so much.'

"Of course, in your imagination I would have done pretty well, but I'm not really confident about it."

'I didn't imagine it. But you are really good...'

He slowly clasped her hands and grabbed them. Annabelle could feel Ian's breathing becoming rougher in the distance from her.

"Because it's my first time..."

It was no longer a joke and he couldn't stop here.

Because he was assimilated by Annabelle's fresh excitement.

The man who grabbed hold of her was Ian, saying that he would kiss even her ghost.

Her tension, her pounding heart, and the thrill of doing something forbidden, added to Annabelle's ability to be still at his slowly approaching breath.

'Ah...'

The body temperature mixed between the lips that met slowly.

Feeling a gentle winding touch around her waist, Annabelle had no choice but to think to herself.

'...Even if he claims it's his first time, he's good at it, just like back then.'

Letting out a small moan, Ian pulled his body back one more time.

Rain-soaked hair tangled between them.

As if giving him an impulsive first kiss, Annabelle, too, couldn't help her pounding heart, and she hugged him.

"Ha..."

Her breath was caught in his, and she barely lifted her lips from him, just as she was about to say, 'Actually, it's all a joke, and once you sleep, you'll know the whole story'.

"Ian?"

But Annabelle was astonished as if in a game.

Tears were clearly falling from Ian's red eyes.

"...How did you die?"

He asked in a hoarse voice.

"How the hell..."

Annabelle saw his face full of sadness and she panicked.

It was drunk Ian, who first assumed she was a ghost and responded calmly. Annabelle didn't take the fact that he thought 'she was dead' seriously.

Even if she refuted that fact, she had no excuses at any point in time in the past.

Because there was a time when he wouldn't believe anything she said.

Besides, she thought he wouldn't care if she was dead, and he was the human being who would calmly say, 'Take it easy and go to the underworld'...

'Is it possible to wake up like this with one kiss?'

Before Annabelle could say anything, he grabbed her by the back of her head once more and kissed her.

"I always thought I was sick of you..."

"Come on, wait... Ah!"

She couldn't tell him the truth that night after all.

This was because Ian fell asleep as if he had lost his mind after pushing her constantly to the point where she couldn't say anything.

Annabelle was watching Ian's tears rolling down in the meantime, with a face not knowing whether she should laugh or cry.

Of course, that night, Annabelle was not the only person in the duke's residence to be bewildered.

In Braden and Leslie's bedroom on the top floor, Leslie was looking at Braden with an expression similar to that of Annabelle

"Ah, not Leslie."

Braden looked at her with sullen eyes, clenched his chin and said sarcastically.

"You are finally here. You must have been greedy for a sword before the final duel."

It was the arrogant young nobleman that Leslie had hated before.