“I apologize for being late, Your Grace!”
Hugo threw open the study door. It was empty, as expected.
He crossed the room with anxious steps, and the faint scent of strawberries still drifting through the air made him exhale in defeat. Ivelina’s scent.
“Damn. Too late.”
In his hand was a small violet vial.
It was a suppressant — prescribed in secret by the Duke’s personal physician after Kael had seen Ivelina leaving the estate, her face drained of all color. But with Ivelina’s slightly earlier-than-expected arrival today, the vial’s intended recipient had already left the study with her.
* * *
They arrived at the dining room. Ivelina slid a sidelong glance at Kael as they walked in.
‘…How did he know to have a meal prepared?’
This wasn’t how things were supposed to go.
Her carefully planned scenario had looked something like this:
1. Burst through the study door without knocking, shamelessly and rudely.
2. Immediately demand food the moment she sees his face. Like a child.
3. Kael, flustered, explains that no meal has been prepared yet.
4. She pesters and whines at him relentlessly anyway.
5. Kael scowls and exhales a visibly irritated sigh.
6. She gets thrown out with a ‘get out of my sight’.
7. The contract termination notice arrives shortly after.
‘That’ was what she’d been expecting.
She had even practiced whining at a busy man over food, specifically.
But it was fine. She still had plenty of cards left to play.
‘If I was going to give up this easily, I wouldn’t have started at all.’
The Hardeion dining room was her first time in it.
Like something from a fantasy film she’d seen in her past life — one of those grand, mysterious manor houses — it was genuinely impossible to look away from. The interior was staggeringly ornate and magnificent.
She found herself stealing glances around the room, half-enchanted.
No. ‘No.’ This was not the time.
‘Focus, Ivelina!’
“You can sit here.”
He pulled out her chair himself.
‘Damn. She’d been planning to whine about the chair too. Another one gone.’
“Fine, then!”
She tossed her head with the petulance of a sulky child and dropped into the seat.
She snuck a glance at Kael. One corner of his mouth was curved slightly upward.
He let out a small, quiet laugh and took the seat across from her.
‘Ha. Let’s see how long you keep smiling.’
Soon enough he’d be furious enough to scream at her to get out.
She rapidly ran through likely scenarios and the responses she’d prepared for each.
‘If he ordered steak, I was going to demand something grilled instead.’
Good. The scenarios and their corresponding lines were still crisp and ready — the reward of spending all night rehearsing with Emily.
The servants arrived with the food shortly after.
‘From looking at Kael’s meal logs, I figured his menus were pretty simple and straightforward. Surely there’d be something missing.’
But.
“I wasn’t sure what you preferred.”
“…”
“So I had every dish prepared.”
“I see… How very… thorough…”
Unless she was mistaken, every variety of food the Empire had to offer was arranged on the table in front of her. Finding an empty patch of surface was nearly impossible. Seaweed dishes, an array of meats, several kinds of salads arranged by type, and a full selection of soups.
She stared at the laden table and tried desperately to think of something that could possibly be missing. Eventually she gave up.
Without so much as a polite greeting before the meal, she picked up her fork. Then said, with great primness:
“Hmph! I’m hungry, so I’ll start without you.”
“Of course.”
He received her rudeness with complete ease.
‘I am going to see that composed face crumple. I swear it.’
She began eating, and a moment later he picked up his own fork and knife.
‘Honestly, how is he so handsome.’
Kael cut his steak with impeccable, upright posture.
‘Oh — his hands.’
She had never paid close attention to his hands before, but the tendons across the back of them were pronounced and prominent, standing out with a kind of coiled tension.
‘And his hands are enormous. About the size of my whole face.’
She stared for a moment longer than she meant to.
‘He’s literally just cutting a steak, and I want to ask permission to photograph it and keep it forever. Even the way he uses a knife is elegant. The whole thing looks like a film scene.’
“…Oh.”
“What?”
Kael tilted his head slightly and met her eyes.
‘Oh no. She’d been staring openly and gotten caught.’
“Hmph! It’s nothing!”
She answered him with the irritable snap of a sulking child.
Her technique must have been a little lacking — he simply returned to his meal, unbothered.
‘All right. I’m going to have to play the aegyo card after all.’
The aegyo card she’d drilled with Emily.
So far she’d only been whining, but looking at his utterly unmoved expression, she was going to need to mix it in.
‘A bit more of the babyish speech. Time to bring it out.’
“Kael!”
“Yes.”
He answered smoothly without pausing his steak-cutting.
“I wanna sit next to Kael~!”
His eyes went momentarily wide. He started to say something and swallowed it.
It was definitely a curse.
There was not a single person in either this life or her previous one who could maintain composure in the face of that.
‘Now. This is the moment.’
Without waiting for his reaction, she scooted her chair back and scurried around to the seat beside him — with the total, blameless thoughtlessness of a child who has never considered anyone else’s feelings.
She turned her head sharply to the right.
“I wanna eat here! I like being next to Kael~”
“…All right.”
His mouth twitched — the reluctant beginning of a smile.
‘Good. Right on track.’
She quickly speared a piece of steak and held it out toward his face.
“Kael, open wide~!”
The smooth line of Kael’s brow developed a faint crack.
‘Oh, he really doesn’t like it. What do I do.’
She was cheering on the inside.
The man who maintained a flawless expression at all times — cracking even that much?
‘He’s starting to reach his limit.’
“…Fine.”
He accepted the bite with visible reluctance, then turned back to cutting his own steak as though nothing had happened.
He was pretending to be unaffected, but she had caught the sharp flash in his eyes just a moment ago.
‘Push harder.’
She grabbed his arm and shook it.
“Now you feed me~”
‘Oh — she hadn’t meant to use that word.’ The casual term of endearment had slipped out from rehearsing with Emily. She covered the slip quickly with volume.
“Eenh. I fed you, didn’t I~! Feed me back, Kael!”
She pulled her lower lip into an exaggerated pout and whined at him in her most childish voice.
For a moment, the knife stilled.
Kael set both hands down on the table, slowly, as though the effort required some concentration.
‘Oh — he looks a little exasperated.’
She fought to keep the corners of her mouth from curling up. She pushed her cheekbones down, again and again.
He rose from his chair. Reached out and pulled her chair toward him. Then braced both hands on its armrests, trapping her between them.
“Feed you, you said?”
‘Wait. His eyes look a bit—’
‘Is he actually angry?’
She summoned her courage. She needed to drive the nail in further to truly repel him. She had come this far. There was no retreating now.
“Yes!”
He let out a small laugh and leaned closer.
Against every resolution she’d just made, she instinctively pressed herself backward, shrinking into her seat.
“Oh — b-but this is, this is too close—”
Kael was advancing, and she squeezed her eyes shut and turned her face away.
‘The chair back. I can’t go any further back!’
Then his fingers closed gently around her chin and tilted it up.
He ran his thumb — broad-knuckled, unhurried — across her lips, pressing lightly.
Her lips parted slightly under the pressure.
‘What — what is this. What is he doing?’
She couldn’t work out what was happening. She held her breath.
His eyes had gone to that unfocused, half-drowned quality — the kind that made everything in her vision go soft and uncertain just from looking into them.
Their gazes met, and he asked:
“What should I feed you, Ivelina.”
“…”
“Hmm? What do you want?”
* * *
