Chapter091. By any chance, have you ever liked someone?
“Is something worrying you?”
At the softly resonating voice, the thoughts that had been drifting through her mind scattered in an instant.
Helena slightly furrowed her brows at the blankly staring gaze directed toward her.
“What’s wrong? Is something really going on?”
At the warmth of the two hands quietly placed on the desk being gently held together, Deborah soon shook her head.
“No… What reason would I have for that?”
“But why are you so lost in thought?”
“……”
Because she was someone who had watched her for such a long time, clumsy lies would never work in front of her.
After opening and closing her mouth several times, Deborah finally spoke cautiously.
“…Teacher.”
“Yes.”
“By any chance… have you ever liked someone…?”
Perhaps it was an unexpected question, for Helena’s eyes widened slightly.
Yet it didn’t take long for her drifting gaze, as if searching through memories, to return to the present.
“Of course. Though it was a very long time ago.”
Watching Helena answer with a soft smile, Deborah seemed lost in thought.
Helena did not press her and simply waited.
Until she spoke of her own accord.
“When you like someone… I was wondering if there are this many things that don’t go the way you want them to.”
“What exactly isn’t going the way you want?”
After thinking for a moment, Deborah soon let out something akin to a sigh.
“Hmm, just… everything.”
In the words quietly exhaled, the heartache she had endured until now was plainly revealed.
Helena couldn’t help but feel sorry and heartbroken for her.
It was certainly surprising that she had developed feelings for someone while Helena wasn’t looking, but more than that—she was wondering just how much this child, who rarely ever revealed her inner feelings, must have suffered to act like this.
Helena gently patted the back of Deborah’s hand that she was still holding.
“Relationships between people are originally that difficult. Nothing about them is easy.”
“……”
“And among them, relationships between men and women are especially harder. Because you like the other person so much, you easily get hurt by even a single casual word or a small action. That’s how misunderstandings arise too.”
It sounded exactly as though she knew everything Deborah was currently going through.
“But when you think about it, isn’t that perfectly natural? A man and a woman raised in completely different environments and different ways can’t possibly understand each other perfectly from the very beginning. You just slowly come to understand and get to know each other little by little through patience and friction.”
“…But what if that very process is too painful?”
“Hmm… Of course there are times when the process of adjusting is hard, but wouldn’t it also become an opportunity to get to know each other even more deeply?”
“……”
“What’s important, in the end, is how much I love that person. Enough to endure trials of that degree.”
Having heard all of Helena’s words, Deborah fell into thought again.
Different environments, different ways.
Measured against that standard, he and she were people standing at the utmost opposite ends.
From the very beginning, the fact that they had even become this kind of relationship was absurd to that extent.
– If it’s all right with you, I’d like to show you around the area.
“……”
Because she had deliberately avoided looking in that direction, she had no idea what kind of expression the man had worn when he said those words.
She only knew that the sound of it had continued to linger in her ears even afterward.
Yesterday—
While she had been working for some time, she received a sudden call from Lady Cheister and headed to the small parlor on the first floor.
Since there was only one possible reason Lady Cheister would summon her, she had assumed it would be the same this time as well.
The moment she absentmindedly stepped inside, however, she froze solid.
– Ah, come on in.
– …
– Today, instead of mine, I’d like you to do the hair of the person here.
At the gesture of extending a hand and pointing to the opposite side, her gaze involuntarily followed.
Seeing Lady Constant smiling brightly and innocently, the heart that had been sinking plummeted even further toward the bottom while she styled her beautiful platinum-blond hair.
The stories of her engagement, her marriage, and her becoming the duke’s wife.
Even though she didn’t want to hear them, the endless stream of words made it impossible to control her expression to the point where she began worrying about what kind of face she was making.
Thinking that the only way to shake off this awful feeling was to leave this place right now, the hands arranging the hair began to move faster and faster.
Only after a long while was the hair finally completed.
Just as she was waiting for the inevitable order to leave, of all times, someone entered the parlor.
The Duke of Cheister.
The very man whose face she hadn’t seen for days—the moment she spotted him, Deborah quickly lowered her gaze.
She couldn’t see clearly because her head was bowed, but one thing was certain.
From the moment the man entered the parlor until the moment he turned and left again, he had shown not the slightest interest in her direction.
It felt ridiculously pathetic that she alone had been so nervously on edge.
Only then did the blurred vision gradually become clear.
It was the feeling of a reality she had been turning away from striking her skin with vivid clarity.
This was precisely the relationship between her and him.
Even if they had shared their bodies more intimately than anyone just the day before, the very next day they had to cleanly revert as though nothing had happened.
Then what exactly remained between the two of them?
Deborah tossed and turned all night, thinking and thinking again. Just a fleeting relationship to satisfy a night’s desire and nothing more?
Her thoughts eventually reached that horrifying conclusion.
Honestly, on this day off she had wanted to do nothing and simply sleep the whole day, but she felt that if she did, her heart would plummet irretrievably to the bottom.
“I wonder just who on earth our Deborah likes so much that she’s worrying this deeply.”
While she was lost in various thoughts, a voice tinged with laughter burrowed into her ears.
Deborah’s gaze slowly moved to the front, to Helena’s brightly smiling face.
“Is the identity of that person still a secret?”
“Ah, that… no, it’s not my story…”
Her face turning bright red, Deborah hurriedly shook her head.
At the sight, Helena’s smile deepened even further.
“All right. Until you tell me yourself, Teacher will keep pretending not to know.”
With a wide grin that seemed to say “That works, right?” Deborah was left speechless.
‘Teacher… I might never be able to tell you, even in the future…’
Muttering the words she could never voice aloud inside her heart.
* * *
“I really can go alone…”
“Well, I was getting bored anyway.”
“……”
At Jade’s bright smile insisting he was fine, Deborah ended up letting out a small laugh too.
About ten minutes ago, Helena had suddenly received an urgent call and left the bookstore much earlier than expected.
Left standing there blankly, Deborah pondered for a moment.
Spending the remaining time at the bookstore was out of the question—books simply weren’t registering in her eyes—and returning early to Elfengreen was the last thing she felt like doing.
After much deliberation, she asked Jade whether there was a decent walking path near Levenville Market, and he immediately offered to guide her.
She had firmly refused, feeling she was needlessly wasting the time of a busy person, but when he smiled and said he could use the chance to clear his own head as well, she could no longer object.
He entrusted the bookstore to one of the regulars inside and stepped outside without hesitation.
“But is it really okay to just leave it to a customer like that?”
After they had walked a few steps, Deborah cautiously asked.
Of course that customer did seem to be the enthusiastic regular she always saw whenever she visited, but still, handing the entire shop over to a customer and walking out like this felt incomprehensible.
Though unlikely, what if every single book inside got stolen?
As if guessing the intent behind the question, Jade burst out laughing.
“Ahh, no need to worry. As you’ve probably noticed, Deborah, our bookstore is the kind of place that only the people who are meant to come will come to.”
Wasn’t that a rather problematic thing to say? Deborah’s brow furrowed slightly.
Come to think of it, she actually knew very little about the person named Jade.
They had met by chance and become friends through Teacher Helena, but they had never really had any meaningful conversation about each other.
Which family he was from, what on earth he actually did for a living.
In truth, she probably could have found out if she wanted to, but the biggest reason was that she herself had never felt the desire to know anything about him.
“……”
Thinking about it that way somehow made her feel a little sorry.
“What exact time do you have to be back?”
“…Pardon?”
Lost in various thoughts, she hadn’t properly heard what he said.
“I was asking how much time we have until you need to return.”
“Ah, probably about one or two hours left, I think.”
Recalling the time when they had left, Deborah answered, and immediately a sun-bright smile bloomed across his face.
“Perfect.”
“……”
She truly had no idea what was supposedly perfect, but seeing that radiant smile made her think, well, whatever.
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