Seeing the dolls only intensified his interest in Angela.If the dolls she kept in her own home were completed to this degree, how exceptional must the ones made on commission be?“This looks like the kitchen….”Following the wall where fabric was displayed, he noticed a half-drawn curtain. Judging from the fire grate and piled fruit, it seemed to be the kitchen.At some point, Edgar forgot entirely that he had entered without the homeowner’s permission and was absorbed in touring the house.Even the tailoring workshops he visited while running his boutique business hadn’t looked as though someone had poured their entire life into them like this. He found himself wondering just how deeply a Baronet could be consumed by dollmaking to arrange every inch of her living space like this.“Is this where she mainly works.”Aside from the kitchen and the staircase beside it, every other space was filled with worktables for dollmaking and storage racks for materials. The worktables were crowded with strange items whose purpose he could not begin to guess, scraps of cut fabric, pastels, and brushes of varying thickness.“What is this…?”Edgar was admiring the endlessly fascinating dollmaking materials when he froze in place. Something that made him doubt his own eyes pulled sharply at his attention.creeak—Just as he was about to take a proper look at it, a door opened upstairs. Startled, Edgar looked around quickly and ducked into the nook between the window shelf and the sofa.“Why am I hiding…?”He muttered in bewilderment, unable to understand his own behavior. Then he saw Angela coming down the stairs, step by step, having removed the black cloak she always wore like a second skin.“Eddy.”At the sound of her voice, Edgar had to clamp a hand over his mouth to keep from making a noise of surprise.“Eddy” was his nickname. One that no one called him anymore.“Look at this. I stayed up all night making it since yesterday.”Completely unaware that a stranger had invaded her space, Angela spoke to someone in a slightly excited voice.“Of all the outfits I have on hand, I had the most reference for this one, so I started with it first. How does it look? Bianca got me the same fabric as the suit Edgar wore. I wanted to make it as identical as possible, but maybe because it’s a fabric I’ve never handled before, the quality feels like it dropped a lot.”Edgar blinked, unable to make sense of the situation.His photographs plastered across the workshop wall, a doll in her hands that looked exactly like him, and his nickname—never permitted—spoken with such gentle familiarity.“If I make a few more adjustments, I should be able to finish you. Once I complete you, I won’t harbor that ridiculous desire to see Edgar up close anymore, will I?”Angela apparently had the peculiar habit of conversing with her dolls. Thanks to that, without making any effort of his own, all kinds of information flowed smoothly into Edgar’s ears.“Edgar’s secretary came again yesterday. I don’t know why he’s trying to meet me. He didn’t find out I’m making you, did he?”Among baby dolls, some were made so the eyelids blinked. Those dolls often had long eyelashes attached so the blinking would show clearly.Without her cloak to cover them, Angela’s eyes were as large and distinct as those dolls, with thick, long black lashes that made her blinks visible even from afar.“Don’t worry, I won’t let anyone take you away. Protecting you is far more important to me than any chance of seeing the real Edgar up close.”Those long eyelashes trembled as though in fear.Hoo…Edgar couldn’t stop the corners of his mouth from rising over the back of the hand he held against it.A few days ago, he had tasted no small degree of defeat when his initial certainty veered wildly off course.But he had been wrong. He wasn’t mistaken at all.Angela Faber likes me.Today, Edgar de Grace had two objectives to accomplish.Meet Angela Faber and make her fall for him.Secure a doll-making commission so exceptional that Baron Pierre would have no choice but to hand over exclusive rights to the Oricto Mine.Yet before he’d even attempted anything, those two objectives had become all but accomplished. Because he had now discovered Angela Faber, who had longed for him so deeply she ended up creating his double.“I wasn’t born from a wooden puppet, and I’m not a witch… but when I look at you, I sometimes end up thinking terrible things.”Now then, what should he do about that gemstone mine?“It would be wonderful if you really became him, wouldn’t it?”Her voice, drifting down in the midst of his plotting, pulled sharply at his interest.“In the story of Pinocchio, you know. The puppet moves and talks like a real person. So I imagined it—what if you moved and talked, and shared every part of daily life with me.”A wicked witch, they said. From a woman who entertained such pure, girlish thoughts as these. He couldn’t help but laugh in disbelief.“There’s a tale passed down among dollmakers—like a legend—that if someone pours their whole heart into crafting a doll, a fairy may breathe life into it.”Angela continued whispering to “Eddy” as if sharing a tremendous secret.“I really wish you could come alive like in the story. And if you loved me… I could be the happiest person in the world.”If that is your wish, he could grant it as many times as she wanted.Hearing her dreamy whisper, Edgar smiled a triumphant smile.***“Why isn’t he coming back….”Despite Edgar telling him to return in an hour, Timothy, unable to shake his worry, came back to the area near Angela’s house in barely thirty minutes.Yet no matter how long he waited, there was no sign of Edgar. Even when the agreed time approached.Growing weary of waiting, Timothy began to seriously wonder whether he needed to storm the witch’s house to rescue Edgar.But what was this—just as Timothy was about to jump out of the carriage, Edgar appeared, rapping on the door with his characteristic arrogant, well-fed smile.“Director!”“Shh. What if the Baronet hears you.”“You met the Baronet?”“Will you open the door first?”“Ah, yes. One moment.”Realizing his mistake too late, Timothy hurried to open the door and held it so Edgar could climb inside. Edgar stepped up into the high carriage with an easy air and tapped his neck and shoulders as if fatigued.“Now tell me. What happened?”“Let’s depart first. My body aches from crouching in that corner too long.”“Crouching in a corner?”“There was such a thing.”Ignoring Timothy’s baffled expression, Edgar let out a pleased laugh.Angela had spoken a little more to the doll called Eddy—made in his own likeness—then said she would return to finish her work and went back upstairs.In that gap, Edgar slipped swiftly out of the house. Now that he ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) had unexpectedly discovered her feelings for him, the question was how best to make use of them.“This is turning out to be far more entertaining than I thought.”It had been a drunken bet, and the approach had originally been a means to an end, but if things continued like this, he might gain at least a scrap of amusement in his otherwise dull life.Lately, Edgar had felt his daily routine was monotonous, boring. Perhaps it was the ennui born of having so much in his hands and succeeding in business again and again. Maybe that was why he kept pursuing new ventures.Succeeding at the things everyone insisted were impossible—That was the catalyst that gave the strongest jolt to his tedious life.And the glimpse he’d just seen into Angela’s hidden side was more than enough to spark the interest that had begun to dull everything else.

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