A Friend from My Previous Life Lives in the Neighboring County

When the maid poured the tea and stepped down, the two women began to chat.

“I’m so sorry, Lia. Neither you nor Ellen knew that Royle had Rolanda’s disease. I should’ve told you not to let Ellen play with Royle.”

As she beckoned Gloria to touch the tea, she made an apology without even tasting her own.

“What are you sorry for? Anyone who sees Royle that day won’t think that he’s a patient but a healthy child. Who would have known?”

Gloria put down her teacup and spoke firmly.

“After all, it is a disease that every child gets once in a while. Fortunately, Ellen is doing well, and you have nothing to apologize for.”

“Still…it’s a disease with a high probability of going wrong.”

“If there had been any sign of something wrong, I would have told His Majesty to look for a dragon, or find artifacts in the magic tower. Nothing could go wrong, Diana. It will be okay.”

After Gloria deliberately reassert her words that it was okay, Diana relaxed her shoulders, smiled, and finally picked up her teacup.

“By the way, Ellen got better, but she got a little weird.”

“Cough! Cough!”

Diana, who was in the middle of drinking her tea, coughed violently at Gloria’s words.

“Huh…?”

Diana looked at her to tease her out of it, but Gloria’s face was full of more serious light than ever.

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“How did it get weird?”

In response to Diana’s question, Gloria carefully selected her words and pulled them out.

“Became gentle.”

“What?”

“She softened.”

The expression on Diana’s face became strange.

Gloria continued, as if she knew it from Diana’s strange expression.

“At first, I thought it was just because she’s ill. Not long after, I thought it was because she had no strength, so I asked the doctor to concoct medicine for her body. But after she completely recovered and regained her energy, she remained calm.”

“What do you mean gentle Ellen? Ellen was originally a pony… no, she was like a puppy, right? She’s very active, and she’s can’t stay still.”

Gloria, who pretending not to hear the word ‘pony’, nodded her head.

“I’m telling you! She’s still active, but… she seems to have run out of steam. She used to have an infinite supply of energy, but now it seems to be depleting. And she’s very energetic when she’s with me and Gerald, but when she’s by herself, it’s as if her spirit has left her body. I brought her here because I thought she would be okay if she went out and met her friend.”

After hearing Gloria’s words, Diana gave a quick glance around and lowered her voice.

“Actually, after Royle got better, he changed too.”

“Royle too?”

Gloria raised her brows.

“Isn’t my Royle a little too quiet?”

“He is. That’s why we say once in a while that we would mix Royle with Ellen so their personalities would be combined as well.”

“Right, it was like that. But these days, Royle is running around in the mansion.”

“What?”

In response to Gloria’s seeming disbelief, Diana spoke more seriously.

“Royle was running around in the house. It’s natural for children to run around since they’re still young, but my Royle was never like that. That’s why when I first saw him with the nanny, I was dumbfounded.”

“…Is Rolanda a disease with aftereffects?”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing…because the death rate is high, isn’t it a disease that can be cured completely once you overcome it?”

Gloria and Diana looked at each other with worried eyes.

***

The two of them went into Roylette’s playroom and started painting while they waited for the maid to bring the chocolate cake. Sitting on the floor carelessly, they immediately focused on painting. 

When the sketch was finished, the maid knocked on the door.

“Come on in.”

Roylette answered without looking up. The maid came in with a chocolate cake and tea and put it on the table. Roylette, who was concentrating on the painting until the maid left, raised his head only when he heard the door shut.

From the time the chocolate cake came in, Eleanor was already distracted by the cake. She couldn’t get up because the owner of the room, Roylette, was still painting on the floor.

“Eleanor, let’s eat the cake.”

Eleanor got up at his words and she sat down at the table. She really wants to eat right now. When she sees Roylette sitting opposite her, she motions for him to eat as well.

Eleanor picked up a fork and poked a large piece of cake. She even like the way the fork goes into the cake! Seeing her start eating cake, Roylette started eating cake too.

The decadent chocolate put Eleanor in a good mood. The chocolate cake was the best she ever had even when she’s still on Earth.

“It’s really good. I hope my cook can make this, too.”

She said, munching on the cake.

“Is it that good?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll tell the chef to make a new one now. Take it with you when you go home.”

Eleanor’s face glowed.

‘What a nice little boy!’

She finally gave up the thought of ‘I’m too lazy to play with a 7-year-old kid’ and decided to be nice to Roylette. In fact, he wasn’t even a bothersome kid at all.

“Roylette, you can call me Ellen.”

At Eleanor’s attitude as if she had made up her mind to something, Roylette smiled and said.

“Then call me Royle too.”

“All right.”

As she nodded her head, he looked at her quietly and spoke again.

“Ellen? Ellie sounds better than Ellen. I’ll call you Ellie.”

“Do as you please.”

‘Are you choosing someone else’s nickname?’

Then, she also thought of a nickname, wondering if children were supposed to choose each other’s nicknames at will.

“I’ll call you Roy instead. Roy suits you more.”

“Okay.”

He smiled and agreed.

At Roylette’s smile, which is somehow going easy on her, she thought,

‘He’s a little cute.’

It was both funny and cute for a young child to try to act as her older brother. On the other hand, she remembered Eunho and felt longing for him.

They started using pet names for one another, but Eleanor didn’t notice much of a difference. Whether it is Roylette or Royle, she will still call him ‘Roy’.

However, she liked the nickname ‘Ellie’ because it is a little cuter than ‘Ellen’.

After Eleanor finished eating the chocolate cake, she noticed their paintings scattered on the floor.

One painting is a yellowish dog with a black dot on its bottom. It was the dog she raised when she was still Hyeseo.

She took in her grandfather’s dog after he died when she was young and raised it, but it eventually ran away.

She and her family looked all over the neighborhood for the dog, but they couldn’t find it. After that, she still waited, but the dog never came back.

Originally, she wanted to draw her mom, dad and Hyerim, but she couldn’t. It was because she felt like she was about to cry while drawing. When someone looked at her painting and asked who she was painting, she won’t have any words to answer.

So she drew her dog instead of her family.

Eleanor gave her own drawing a brief glance before shifting her gaze to the one Roy had made. She then stiffened in her sitting position.

Several large and small hot-air balloons were floating on the paper Royle had drawn on.

She asked him as she looked at his paper.

“Roy, what is that? The one you drew.”

“It’s a flying balloon.”

Are there hot air balloons in this world?

She managed her expression as she asked again, trying to push aside her strange feelings.

“Is there anything like that?”

“No. I just wanted to… be there. I drew it after imagining it.”

Ah… Imagination.

Ellen was curious as to how he was able to visualize the same thing, but she reasoned that it wasn’t impossible given that the concept of a hot air balloon originated from the human mind.

She shifted her gaze back and forth between Roy and the painting of the hot air balloon.

‘If Roy wants to make something like a hot air balloon next time, I should give him a hint.’

Ellen and Royle went back down to the floor and started painting.

Because it was the hands of an underdeveloped child, she couldn’t paint the way she wanted, but it was convenient because she didn’t have to pretend to be inexperienced.

Ellen finished her painting of the dog by adding a black dot to its buttocks. Putting down her brush, Ellen looked at Roy’s painting.

He’s almost finished. Not long after, he also finished painting and put down his brush.

Satisfied, Roy looked at his painting before casting a glance at Ellen’s. While he’s studying Ellen’s painting, he took it from her hands abruptly.

She looked at Roy in shock.

He looked at the picture with his eyes as if he were tearing a piece of paper.

Roy pointed the black dot on the dog’s buttocks and asked her.

“This…why does it have a dot on the butt?”

Somehow, even the tone of his voice is slightly higher.

“I want a dog with a black dot on its bottom.”

“Why is it supposed to be a black dot?”

Ellen looked at Roy strangely before she replied.

“It’s up to me.”

She answered naturally.

“That’s right. It’s up to you.”

Roy murmured with a smile. The smile somehow seemed so bitter that Ellen almost patted his head.

The painting ended in a somewhat melancholy atmosphere.

Ellen became restless when she saw her dog painting and Roy’s hot air balloon together. And she doesn’t know why, but Roy was also looking down at the two paintings.

Ellen felt nothing because she was too busy recalling her past to notice the dreary atmosphere. Roy, on the other hand, was present but he sat quietly in the room, staring off into the distance.

Still, on the way home that day, Roy didn’t forgot to offer Ellen the cake she could take away.