Echoes of an Eerie Charade

It began at his family's suffocating engagement gala. To stop his overbearing relatives from forcing him into an arranged marriage, Fennic Vallow - the mist-shrouded city’s most scandalous playboy - dragged me into the spotlight and declared me his lover. I am Virelay Hesk, a cold and calculating relic-keeper who prefers dusty crypts to high society, but I agreed to the charade to access his family's restricted archives. It was meant to be a temporary, emotionless arrangement. But Fennic’s careless facade keeps slipping. For the society photographers, he whispers outrageously dirty jokes in my ear just to break my icy exterior into a genuine laugh. When I fall ill with the mist-fever, he abruptly cancels a lavish getaway with elite models just to sit in my drafty room and spoon-feed me a rare herbal soup. He remembers every tiny, insignificant detail I mention in passing. Worse, when a rival scholar shows interest in me, Fennic's eyes go dead with a terrifying, genuine possessiveness. We are drowning in a bittersweet, unspoken love. But as I finally decode the archives, a chilling truth emerges: the mastermind who meticulously orchestrated this fake romance was my own erased, past self. What horrific future was I trying to prevent?