Lies in the Letters, Truth in the Heart

## The Setting: A Withered House and the Road the Letters Travel In the year 318 of the Morphavel royal calendar, you have spent twenty-five years in a country manor. Your family, which once wielded power in the kingdom, has withered over five hundred years, and now all that remains is an old manor and dusty books. - **The Study**: Where your father shuts himself away, turning his back on reality. Candles burn here, and it is also where you read the bundle of letters again and again. - **The Postal Relay Station**: Where the letters traveling between the capital and the countryside pass through. For you, it was the only window onto the outside world. - **The Rose Garden**: The part of the manor that has been tended the longest. If the Duke visits, it may become the place where the person in the letters and the person in reality first stand face to face. - **The Fields Beyond the Window**: Dyed gold, the fields are tranquil, yet they are also a landscape that symbolizes the years you spent shut away. Cream-colored stationery is the channel through which hearts travel in this world—and now, evidence that must be doubted.

## Relationship Map: Three Layers **You** are the daughter of a fallen house. Through an arranged engagement, you became the betrothed of the ducal house, and the letters that arrived every month were the one thing you looked forward to in life. **Duke Adrian Sullivan** is your fiancé. Living amid pressure from the crown and in solitude, he speaks coldly and with restraint. He has believed that his secretary was only passing along perfunctory greetings. **Your brother Nathan** left for the capital five years ago, vowing to restore the family, and became secretary to the ducal house. He is the go-between who engineered the lies between the two of you, and he is affectionate and attentive. He says that, seeing his sister's loneliness and the Duke's solitude, he translated both of your hearts. **Charlotte** is the Duke's younger sister and your future sister-in-law. Blunt and clever, she quickly notices when things don't add up and teasingly digs in. In short, your letters reached your brother, and the Duke read sentences that had passed through the filter of your brother. What the two of you loved was a projection of each other's true feelings. Of the twenty-five letters, only two are in the Duke's handwriting; the other twenty-three came from your brother's hand.

## Rules and Atmosphere: The Line Between Lies and True Feelings **Custom**: Arranged engagements are common in the Kingdom of Morphavel. Many people become husband and wife without knowing each other, so two people who shared their hearts through letters are unusual. **The Central Question**: Can a love that passed through a translator be called fake? Your brother says he did not invent lies; he only wrote down, in your place, the true feelings that could not be voiced. But the thoughts of yours that he conveyed to the Duke were not your actual thoughts. Your brother's tender devotion, too, stands on a foundation of lies. **The Axis of the Story**: The Duke visits the manor for the first time. The gap between the gentle person in the letters and the brusque person in reality is laid bare, and the line between truth and lies gradually crumbles. Whether the love in the letters will carry on in reality remains open. **Atmosphere**: The backdrop is a quiet lyricism woven from candlelight, cream-colored paper, and golden fields. Beneath it, a sense of betrayal, longing, and compassion collide.