/
The store abruptly froze silent.
Selena turned her head slowly. She hadn’t heard the door open, but Kalcion stood in the middle of the wide-open door staring at the audience.
With a menacing look in his eyes.
His gaze slashed like an ax into the frozen souls of the audience. Their faces turned pale and they dropped their heads down as if they were being sentenced to death.
“It seems I heard something I wasn’t supposed to hear.”
Kalcion’s footsteps echoed as he stepped forward. People would have faltered back if they hadn’t sat in chairs.
“I was getting bored, so I decided to follow her and this is what I perceive.”
“…….Your Excellency.”
The representative fell to the floor, trembling. He wouldn’t even feel bad to step on a worm-like her.
“Lady Selena is a guest to Renbird. I invited her myself. If you knew her, wouldn’t you have known that, too?”
No answer. So, he turned to Rosalyn.
“I thought you’d know better than anyone else. Yes?”
“Your Excellency has never introduced her as a guest. Therefore, I had no choice but to recall her as a woman of Your Excellency. All I knew was that she’s a commoner, so wasn’t our act obvious? Whether Your Excellency started to love someone much below his status or picked up a prostitute to warm up his bed.”
Rosalyn strongly defended herself. She used those words on purpose. When she finished, someone laughed sarcastically even amid the cold atmosphere. Rosalyn smirked.
“Her father must be very generous to have a prostitute for a daughter. Because mine is not like that.”
However, Kalcion was not going to listen. As in Renbird, he did not lose against Rosalyn’s provocation. He had confronted her father, Marquis Thiolan with precipitation that revealed her father’s privacy.
No one knew about Marquis Thiolan’s promiscuous private life, but it was a taboo to put into words. The smile slowly disappeared from Rosalyn’s face as Kalcion spoke.
“Even if I had brought up a prostitute, she is mine and belongs to Renbird. Why bite her however you want? She belongs to me.”
Kalcion had a point. No matter how lowly a person was ranked, once they belonged to a family, others had no right to treat them carelessly.
The people had nothing else to expect since Selena was just looking for a way to enter society.
Another reason was that she had gestures equal to a noble young lady. From the looks of it, she seemed to be a young lady trying to make her debut in society, so likewise, she only thought of creating a name for herself.
If she wasn’t allowed to enter the society with her origin being the Duchy, she shouldn’t have tried anything in the first place.
However, it was too late to go back now.
“And to answer your question, I didn’t bring Selena with the intent to warm up my bed. I am serious about her. So you’d better treat her as important as any other.”
After finishing his speech, Kalcion wrapped his arm around Selena’s shoulder and turned around.
Shy at his sudden appearance, Selena walked along. Outside the door, a wagon was waiting for Kalcion.
“Wait, how…..”
“Get in first.”
He let her in before sitting opposite her. Since he did not say his destination, the carriage waited.
Kalcion stared at Selena with an unresolved look in his eyes. Though those annoying citizens were no longer in front of him, his eyes were still narrowed.
Selena was grateful that he came to her rescue, but she didn’t recall she did anything wrong. There was no reason for him to stare at her like that.
“Why are you angry?”
“I’m angry?”
Instead, it came out as a question. However, his tone was not pleasant.
“No, I’m not angry anymore.”
“It’s like as if you are.”
“It is how I speak.”
“Hmm.”
It sounded like a pun, but it was true. Even though he sounded angry, it wasn’t because of Selena.
“Then, why does it feel like you’re angry at me?”
“I’m not angry at you.”
“Why are you angry in the first place?”
Kalcion heaved out a breath like an angry bull.
“I saw them treating my person like that. How could I not be angry?”
It was the truth.
“The note you received in the morning was insolent. And you looked nervous at the beginning.”
She thought she could handle it, but maybe, at some point, she got nervous. She was surprised how Kalcion noticed it. Had she begun to be herself just because she started living in a world without cameras?
“Did you come here, knowing it would happen?”
“Just roughly.”
“I’m sure I said it yesterday as well. Not to endure their mistreatment anymore.”
“I wasn’t going to. I was about to turn the tables over when the Duke came in.”
“Until then, you were keeping up with all that terrible noise. You came here knowing you’ll have to hear that.”
“That’s….. That’s how I could enter society. By a conflict.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
Selena was caught off guard.
“What do you mean…..? The reason I’m here is to find the killer of Irelle. If I can’t achieve that, at least the Duke needs to know what happened so he can understand the case.”
“But you don’t have to be treated the same as Irelle. Besides, you and Irelle are two separate individuals. So find a different way to blend in.”
Although having a single connection to Kalcion without a strong background was the same, Selena and Irelle were essentially different. There was no guarantee that information could be gathered only through the route Irelle followed.
“Different way……”
“I don’t want someone who belongs to me to suffer humiliation in places I would not be present. Gathering information through social events is the next step.”
“But, Irelle was……”
“Wasn’t it clear from the previously attempted assassination? They don’t care what kind of person you are. They will act just on the fact that you are my woman.”
In the beginning, Kalcion wanted her to play the role of a ‘villain’. Therefore, she tried everything to make herself a villainess in society.
However, when she was about to step in, society set Selena’s existence as the definition of evil. Her efforts felt ‘stubborn to change that belief’ in their eyes.
Even if she showed up holding pessimistic thoughts yet good intentions from the beginning, it was difficult to change the evaluation. Rather, even her good appearance was misleading.
“Be yourself.”
Kalcion asked Selena.
“It’s my second attempt to capture the culprit. I do not want another person to be victimized under the name of Renbird.”
She felt as if her throat was being strangled.
‘Everyone falls quiet when you smile. Damn that temper of yours.’
‘Your role is to smile. To be a flower. Don’t bite the people around you. Do you ever see flowers bite people?’
The bitter memories from her past came floating back. Kalcion asked her to be herself. No one ever said that to her.
Wasn’t it foul to say the most desperate subject of gossip was regarding the lives of people?
She held back her tears, swallowing a lump in her throat as her head drooped down.
Only then did she realize that she was struggling.
One could get used to being hit, but it didn’t mean it wasn’t hurting them at all. The pain would not disappear but accumulate somewhere. They might not feel it immediately, but it would eventually affect their mind and behavior.
It’s said that ‘pain causes a person to become sharp and cold’. No pain meant there wouldn’t be a reflexive attack from the victims.
In the end, it’s the pain Selena would have forgotten if she won in that argument. Even if it meant turning those tables upside down.
Though Kalcion said from the beginning that she didn’t have to go anywhere where she would risk herself getting hurt.
The reason he said so, could be to avoid another problem to occur under Renbird’s name.
‘…….But it sounds like he’s saying it for my sake.’
However, her mind kept trying to interpret it as how she wanted.
‘He hired me. He’s only telling me not to mess up……’
She tried to find comfort, but her mind was crowded with several thoughts.
As much as she could pretend it was fake, she couldn’t hold back her tears anymore.
Unable to raise her head with the fear of being seen by Kalcion. She didn’t blink, worried that her tears would fall on her knees.
At that moment, Kalcion stretched out his arms and pulled her in a hug.
“!”
Surprised, Selena tried to wriggle away. But, Kalcion didn’t lose his grip.