"Are you... Mr. Lawrence?"
Fujimaru Ritsuka and the others had already returned to the Ovis family villa.
The villa had never been particularly large to begin with, and now it was even more crowded.
After tossing the three senior brothers haphazardly onto the beds, Lawrence first reported their physical conditions to Fujimaru Ritsuka and Verrocchio. He had Mash use Sheba to conduct further examinations, then came up to the villa's rooftop alone.
He had barely slept these past two days. Whenever he had time, he would come sit on the villa's rooftop. Sometimes Fujimaru Ritsuka would keep him company, but most of the time, he was alone.
Oh, Leonardo da Vinci in the communicator probably counted as one too. That made two, occasionally three.
But now, another uninvited guest had arrived. Probably an uninvited guest?
"Miss Vespucci." Lawrence rose to his feet and gave Simonetta a slight, courteous bow.
Simonetta's full name was Simonetta Cattaneo Vespucci. Even setting aside her status as Giuliano's wife, she herself was descended from nobility—though only from a knightly family ranked below even barons. Otherwise, she would not have fled from Genoa to Florence later on.
Simonetta nodded in return, her eyes still fixed on Lawrence, holding both confusion and cautious probing.
"Looks like you heard everything at the square during the day." Lawrence admitted it openly, smiling as he nodded.
"So it really was you." Simonetta was slightly surprised. "Then this...?"
She had died young, and Lawrence had been young too—well, Lawrence was no longer young, but he was still a man who cared about appearances.
This somewhat scruffy old man.
"This is what I looked like in my old age. Because of certain events, I stopped creating art after I grew older and instead began researching... other things."
"Things related to the human