Episode 1
“Have you been well?”
“……Leopold.”
“My, how cold. Call me like you used to. By my nickname.”
Blonde hair, smooth as honeyed silk, flowed down as blue eyes, seemingly frostbitten by glaciers, shimmered.
He smiled softly and rested his chin upon his palm.
Despite possessing a menacingly well-built physique, his act of playing pretty was simply absurd.
“I knew long ago that you were crazy. But has your mind completely departed from your body now?”
“Oh, right. I missed this temper of yours. Don’t worry, Eli. No matter how crazy I get, I never forget a single thing about you.”
“……That’s not it,”
I closed my eyes for a moment and caught my breath.
I had to remember that I must push this boy away, even if it meant wounding him.
I must speak harsh words and remain a villain until the very end so that he can hate me entirely.
I, Eliza Waluer, was the perpetrator who brought about the downfall of Leopold Hagen.
I have not forgotten that fact for a single moment over the past five years.
“You should be resenting me, shouldn’t you?”
“Resent? Me, you? Why?”
My head throbbed at the sight of his genuinely bewildered face.
That fellow should not be acting this way toward me. And it seemed he intended to force the reason out of my own mouth in the end.
“I killed your parents.”
Though I didn’t want it to, my voice trembled involuntarily.
Leopold was the last bloodline of the Marquisate of Hagen, a family I had eradicated.
We were once childhood friends, but I was the one who unilaterally betrayed him.
“No, you didn’t? My parents were executed.”
“I am the one who drove the Marquis and Marchioness of Hagen to that execution block. Leopold, stop acting like a fool, will you?”
Only then did he lower his hand from his chin and straighten his posture.
His broad frame and flawless stance revealed at a glance that he was a man who wielded a sword.
Hiding my trembling hands by clenching them into fists, I glared at him fiercely.
“If you have something to say, say it. Whether it’s resentment or whatever.”
“Resentment? Oh, naive Eli.”
Leopold smiled, his eyes crinkling brightly. It was the same smile as in the past—the one that never changed no matter how much I nagged him about it being obnoxious.
“You are my savior.”
While I stood frozen at that unexpected word, he leaned in with a sweetly smiling face.
Shadows darkened my vision as a heavy, sweet scent suddenly overwhelmed me.
“Then now, shall we get married as promised?”
A rough hand snatched mine away. Without taking his eyes off me for even a second, Leopold pressed his lips against the hand he had taken at will.
The place his lips touched was my ring finger. My breath hitched, and my heart thundered.
“Leopold…….”
The voice calling his name trembled faintly.
I knew the name of this feeling very well—this sensation of blood rushing to the top of my head.
I managed to reach out toward him with my shaking hand.
“You crazy bastard! Who on earth proposes to their family’s enemy!”
And then, I grabbed him by the collar.
I wanted to strike that face that was doing nothing but grinning. The name of this emotion seizing my entire body was none other than “pissed off.”
It has been five years since I realized I was a character in a romance fantasy novel.
Even if someone had told me, could I have believed it?
That the second male lead, who ought to hate me, would go mad and propose.
* * *
“They say beautiful flowers have thorns, don’t they?”
The gazes that had been stealing glances at them while pretending not to suddenly fell silent.
The one who spoke was a woman sparkling as if covered in glass dust from head to toe.
Under the light of the chandelier, her silver hair, even more brilliant, flowed softly as she tilted her head to one side. Her noble purple eyes crinkled slightly, harboring a smile.
“Miss Claire, have you ever tested just how sharp those thorns are?”
Her pert lips curved into an arc, and her slender gaze moved toward a nearby vase.
The woman pulled out a single rose that was tucked there. The woman, as she made a show of smelling its fragrance, was certainly beautiful.
Though she had a pale impression, even that could not steal the woman’s light.
However, the people around who saw her thought:
It has started again.
“Hmph, you only speak words with no meaning and offer no rebuttal. See. I am right, aren’t I?”
“Hehe…… So that is what you think, Miss Claire.”
“Rumors are already rife in the capital. That Lady Waluer goes around giving plenty of openings to gentlemen. Does Sir Leopold know that you are acting like that?”
When the woman maintained only a beaming smile without any particular reply, Claire, who was dealing with her, began to put on even more airs.
However, when the woman holding the flower took a step toward Claire, those who knew the woman tightly closed their eyes in advance.
Sure enough, what erupted next was a scream.
“Kyaak! Wh-what is this! L-Lady Waluer!”
“Why are you calling me?”
The rose stem tangled with the fabric and made a ripping sound. It was the sound of the lace decorating Claire’s arm being miserably torn apart.
Despite this, the white woman still harbored a refined smile and did not stop wielding the rose stem.
Several more times, the decorations wrapped around Claire’s dress were torn away.
“Rumors. To dare mention such rumors with your mouth. There is something you don’t know.”
People could not bring themselves to approach that mad appearance recklessly.
Beautiful flowers have thorns.
If one were a noble of the kingdom who heard those words, there was one person they would surely think of.
That was the woman right there, Eliza Waluer.
“My nickname is the Lily of the Valley of the Capital, My Lady.”
The Lily of the Valley is a poisonous plant.
A fatal, deadly poison that contrasts with its pure beauty.
Claire eventually burst into tears, and only then did Eliza hurl the rose at her chest.
The shabby rose, its petals already fallen away, thudded onto the floor.
“This is my gift. I hope you accept it happily, Miss Claire.”
Eliza turned around gracefully and lightly left the scene.
As soon as she exited the hall, the sound of busy footsteps following from behind was heard.
Eliza pretended not to notice and slowed her pace slightly. Then, the man who appeared from behind familiarly took her hand.
“You really have no knack for this. Getting yourself hurt.”
The man who brought Eliza to a halt held her hand and examined it.
Her hand, which had wielded the rose so, was also pricked all over by thorns, with blood welling up.
When he, displeased by this, frowned and tried to say more, Eliza suddenly raised her hand and gave the man’s cheek a long push.
“What is it?”
The man frowned, yet he tilted his head and pressed his cheek firmly against that palm.
Ignoring the stinging pain rising from her palm, Eliza let out a loud laugh.
“You’re not a dog, yet you’re rubbing against me.”
“I am a son of a bitch, though.”
A chuckle leaked from Eliza once more.
A man with the blue of the vast sea held in his eyes beneath brilliant blonde hair.
Leopold Hagen. He was her only childhood friend and the man whose nickname behind his back was ‘the Knight Order’s son of a bitch.’
As she looked up at Leopold’s handsome face, she suddenly pinched his cheek.
“Ah! What was that for all of a sudden?”
“Because it’s unfair.”
“What is?”
Eliza did not answer and moved her feet.
Leopold Hagen was also Eliza Waluer’s fiancé.
Even if Eliza tried to act as a wallflower, the fact that someone kept approaching her with hostility was partly due to that.
Because Leopold Hagen was such a remarkable man that he stained the hearts of many women with sweet sighs, to the point that even his fierce temper felt like a charm.
At first, she intended to stay somewhat quiet and endured whether they spilled wine on her or pushed her into a fountain.
But then, she was either confined by her father for failing to protect her honor or heard nothing but being called a ‘useless thing.’
Deciding that it was better not to be victimized in the first place, Eliza had been busy biting and scratching with all her might.
‘If they like him that much, they should just seduce him and take him away themselves.’
Eliza snorted as she watched Leopold snatch a bottle of champagne from a servant.
Though they had entered into an engagement, there were no romantic feelings between the two at all.
Because it was nothing more than an alliance to find some breathing room for their respective families.
“Rumors are rife that the Countess of Waluer is already looking for a matchmaker.”
“Mother is? But I……. It hasn’t even been a week since my debutante.”
It was when she was fourteen that Eliza was dropped into the marriage market.
It was because the Count and Countess of Waluer wanted to quickly get rid of their daughter, who was nothing but a nuisance.
A girl who would belong to another family once she grew up anyway. It would only be a waste to cherish her.
The marriage prospect the Countess brought in to sell Eliza as dearly as possible was a nouveau riche man looking for a young woman.
He was a man the same age as Eliza’s father. Even so, there was nothing Eliza could do at that time.
Until Leopold, having found out and raged as if it were his own business, spoke like this.
“Let’s do it with me, the engagement.”
“Pffft—!”
Eliza spat out her tea as soon as she heard that proposal.
The fact that she got goosebumps because of a word that couldn’t be placed alongside ‘friend’ was a secondary issue.
The circumstances of Waluer and Hagen did not match for marriage. Not only was Waluer’s family strength significantly weaker compared to Hagen, but they even had debts to Hagen.
Whenever Count Waluer engaged in investments, it was Marquis Hagen who had lent the necessary funds.
Even while wearing the mask of a close friend who received no compensation and did not press for the debt.
Eliza had always thought it was a strange way of acting to be explained simply by saying he was a good person.
So, Leopold’s proposal was something that could not be realized in the first place.
“Are you crazy?”
“And here I said it after thinking so much for you.”
“Or have you finally lost your mind?”
“Aren’t those the same thing?”
Discovering Leopold’s dumbfounded face, Eliza picked at her ear with her pinky finger.
Well, thanks to that, her mood did improve a little. So Eliza appropriately went along with the nonsense that followed.
Leopold offered the conditions of the engagement more seriously than expected. She wondered why he was stepping up for such a thing, but come to think of it, he was the heir of the family.
The sole male heir often had his marriage arranged several years earlier than the ladies.
Since Leopold was naturally of a free spirit, Eliza understood his words that he wanted to postpone his marriage with a fake engagement.
But she never imagined that the Hagens would actually push forward with this marriage.
“Well done, Eliza!”
The Count and Countess of Waluer accepted this with their mouths hanging open in joy, without a second thought.
Eliza was bewildered. Was Marquis Hagen truly a pushover?
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