Chapter 302: Forgotten Interval
“What’s wrong, Mr. Armand?”
Seeing the surprised look on Armand’s face, Evelia felt a little confused. She even went over what she had just said in her mind, wondering if she had said something wrong.
“......”
Armand's eyes widened, and he opened his mouth, but in the end, he couldn’t get any words out.
“—No, it’s nothing.”
He tried hard to calm himself down, pretending like nothing had happened at all.
To be more accurate, he didn’t even know what had happened.
According to his memory, they should still be at the early stage of preparing for the engagement party. The venue should have only just started being set up, and everything was supposed to be progressing step by step according to the plan.
But now Evelia was telling him... the engagement party is next week?
Where did the time in between go?
Did he forget?
“Mr. Armand, are you okay?”
Evelia held his hand with concern. His hand was cold, which made her heart ache a little. She pressed both of her warm palms against his hand, trying to warm it up.
“Hmm? No, I’m fine. I just got a little nervous thinking about the engagement party coming up.”
He was still lying, pretending that nothing was wrong.
But if what Evelia said was true and the engagement party is next week, that meant he had lost at least one or two weeks of memories.
But everything was perfectly normal this morning?
He didn’t feel anything strange. He woke up as usual, skipped his duties at the knight order because he was busy with engagement preparations, and instead relaxed in the garden, enjoying the sun—
Thinking about it now, his life had been almost too routine.
So routine that even if something strange happened, he might not have noticed it.
Was there something important in the part of his memory that’s missing? If it was just regular daily stuff, that would be fine. But what if he made some kind of decision during those missing days? When the time came, he might be completely unprepared.
Thinking about that, Armand couldn’t help but feel annoyed at himself for always keeping things to himself. Now that something like this had happened, he had no way to ask anyone what he’d been doing for the past week.
Even though he knew how serious this was, Armand still had no plans to tell Evelia the truth. He cleared his dry throat and gave her his usual gentle smile.
“Aren’t you nervous, Eve? You’re the bride, but you seem so calm.”
To avoid being questioned further, he changed the topic.
Of course, Evelia still cared about the engagement party and the wedding afterward, so when Armand mentioned it, her attention was immediately drawn to the topic. His gentle smile made her feel like his strange reaction earlier was just a small and unimportant moment.
“Hmm… I am a little nervous,” Evelia said, already sounding tense as she raised her hand and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “After all, I’ve never been married before… I’m still new to all this…”
“If you did have experience with this, that would be kind of strange,” Armand replied with a smile. “I mean, I don’t even have any experience with love, let alone marriage. But I’m really happy… because you’re my first love.”
Even though Armand had changed the topic to avoid further questions, everything he said was true. They were honest words straight from his heart. He had just chosen this moment to say them.
"Really...? Then... I’m also very happy, or rather, very honored, Mr. Armand."
Maybe because Armand's sudden honesty caught her off guard, Evelia wasn’t quite ready for it. She replied a bit shyly, her expression showing a rare bashfulness that only a young girl would show.
Though it wasn’t that obvious, her slightly flushed cheeks made it hard to tell if she was blushing from embarrassment or simply cold from the breeze.
Evelia really was Armand’s first love. Before her, he had never even gotten close to having a deep friendship with any woman.
Sure, Armand could be friendly with anyone, but not everyone could become his close friend. Besides Carle, he barely had any real friends, let alone female ones.
Thanks to Carle, Armand got along decently with Melian, Carle’s wife. But because Carle always stayed out of other people’s personal lives, Armand also didn’t get involved in his. So even though he knew Melian fairly well, their relationship was never deep, just “my best friend’s wife,” nothing more.
But Evelia wasn’t just a friend now. She was his girlfriend, too.
By right, Armand should be learning to rely on her.
He was dealing with symptoms that no one knew how to ease, a harsh winter that might be hard to get through, and a memory that was growing more and more confused because of the effects of his poisoning. These weren’t problems he could handle alone.
Maybe if these things came at him one by one, he could still pretend everything was fine with some clever lies. But they were all coming at him at once now.
He had to tell someone what was going on. He needed someone to catch him if he fell.
He could feel it, his mind was about to become like the doctor described, “a clogged toilet.” He’d already forgotten a lot recently, and he couldn’t be sure how much more he’d forget.
He didn’t even know when the memory loss had started.
At first, he thought it was just forgetting small things from the same day. Then he realized he might wake up and forget everything from the day before. But now… his "forgotten time" had stretched to one or two weeks.
His illness was getting worse. In simple terms, it was like he was developing early-onset dementia.
And Armand didn’t think the two weeks of memory disappeared all at once. He suspected they were fading bit by bit, day by day, layering over like paint. He might have even forgotten that he forgot, just walking through those days like nothing had happened. That’s probably why he didn’t notice anything was wrong until the calendar made it clear.
The doctor had warned him before that the poison could one day affect his brain and lead to memory problems, or even dementia. But this… this felt way too early.
Was it his fault? Was his body just giving out because he was getting older? Or was it because of that recent flare-up from the poison? Maybe it pushed the symptoms to come sooner than expected?
Or... was there something else?
And if so, what?
Was there still a way to fix it?
Right now, Armand wasn’t so focused on what happened. He just wanted to know, what should he do now?
He wasn’t even asking whether the illness could be cured anymore. What he really wanted to know was, how can he still look like a normal person?
Because Evelia was still here, by his side.
Just like he used to worry about before, this was the reason he didn’t want to get married in the first place. He didn’t want to ruin a woman’s life because of his own issues.
But maybe he’d been blinded by love. In the end, he got together with Evelia and made her his fiancée.
He should be enjoying a happy life with the woman he loved. But instead, he now had to face the one fear that had always held him back—
—If I die young… what will happen to my wife?