Chapter 6

“Ah, that’s…”

I placed the newspaper down on the table in front of them without preamble. As the woman’s face drained of color upon seeing the front-page article, the man remained utterly unshaken.

“Ahaha… How did this happen…?”

“Fix it. Now.”

I had not come all the way to the guild just to get my money back. Getting a refund would mean nothing.

“Hmm… Why are you angry?”

“Why am I angry?”

The man looked as though he genuinely did not understand. His face was so innocent, as if he had done nothing wrong at all. Naturally, that expression only fueled my anger further.

“What I requested was an article saying that I was cheating.”

My goal had been for my reputation to be torn to shreds beyond recovery. If there were even the slightest chance of salvaging it, Gizelle would simply engage me to some random man again. She would try to get rid of me from her sight that way.

“…Then what kind of resolution do you want?”

“Naturally, you need to publish the article again.”

“Are you hoping, by any chance, that the responsibility for the broken engagement falls on you?”

“Yes. That’s what I want.”

Unlike last time, I answered without avoiding the man’s gaze.

His violet eyes rippled strangely within. Rippling eyes—it must have been my imagination.

“Is that related to your leaving the capital?”

If he had simply asked whether I wanted to break off the engagement and suggested that finding fault with the other party would be faster, I would have evaded the question or told him it was none of his concern. I did not want to explain my circumstances in that much detail.

His intuition was unnervingly sharp.

“That’s right.”

I could sense a stubbornness in him—that he would only do the work once he understood exactly what results his actions would bring.

‘If only he’d applied that stubbornness to doing the job properly.’

“Understood. For now, I’ll do as you wish.”

The words “for now” grated on me, but the woman beside him strode forward and grabbed my hand, cutting off my thoughts.

“Th-that’s right! Don’t worry about the cost!”

The woman finally soothed me and offered me a seat.

“Do you have a method in mind?”

I had rushed here the moment I saw the article, so I had not had time to think of one.

“That’s…”

“Since we’ve already published a correction, the newspaper won’t print another correction no matter how much we pay.”

That was exactly what made me angry. Just as I was about to ask how on earth he planned to fix it, he was faster.

“How about this: we have other people witness you together with your lover.”

That method was not bad. In fact, if people saw me walking around with my lover even after the correction article came out, they might despise me even more.

And it would be an even greater insult to Redic Bangeger, who was still maintaining our engagement.

“Not bad. Then, for the lover…”

“I’ll do it.”

“What?”

“Excuse me?”

Honestly, it did not matter who played the role of my lover. Anyone would do, as long as they could act the part without awkwardness. Seeing the man’s unexpected enthusiasm for cleaning up the mess, my anger gradually subsided.

I was not the only one surprised. The woman who worked with him also seemed startled by his words, her eyes wide.

“Dahlia, get things ready so we can resolve this.”

“Ah, yes, yes! I will. Don’t worry.”

The woman called Dahlia came to her senses belatedly and answered.

Before I could say a word, the two of them were already smoothly laying out a plan.

“Since the article came out today, the sooner you’re seen the better. Let’s say you have a date with me tonight.”

Tonight, of all things. And it was not even a real date, but it was hard to argue over every detail, so I simply nodded.

“Fine.”

As long as the job was handled properly, who cared whether it was a date or whatever else.

“Then I’ll come to pick you up.”

His eagerness—greater than when he had first accepted the request—was puzzling.

‘Perhaps he’s the type who can’t stand to see something fail.’

Still, it was a hundred times better than turning a blind eye and refusing to solve the problem.

That night, I was waiting for him at the agreed location. The meeting place was not a secluded alley but right on the main street. Because of that, I could hear people whispering here and there.

“How shameless…”

“It’s Lady Gizelle I feel sorry for.”

Such insults were nothing to me. I pretended to pull my hood down to cover my face and kept waiting for the man.

Before long, a carriage with no crest at all drew up in front of me. Contrary to my expectation that he would arrive in some ordinary commercial carriage, it was far more luxurious than I had imagined.

‘This must be it.’

The moment I thought so, the carriage door clicked open.

“…I’ve never seen him before. Who is he?”

“Perhaps a gentleman newly arrived in the capital?”

The whispers immediately shifted from me to the man. The person who stepped down from the carriage was exactly the man I had been waiting for.

His attire was so elegant it would not have been strange to believe him royalty rather than a noble. Against the contrast of his piercingly bright hair, he wore pitch-black formal clothes, and the lace at his sleeves and neck suited him far too well.

I found myself blinking unconsciously as I stared at him, and then he spotted me and smiled. At the same moment, gasps rose from around us, but I had no time to pay them any mind.

He approached with a face glowing as though he had truly found his lover, and took my hand.

“Did you wait long?”

“…N-no.”

“Then let’s go inside right away, Saya.”

I could not afford to show my flustered state. I put strength into our joined hands with a look of determination.

As we entered the dimly lit coffee house together, the murmurs outside faded into the distance.

His fingers encroached between mine. I had thought, when I saw them in the daytime, that they were long and delicate, but his hand felt firm at every joint.

‘Pull yourself together. Think of him as your lover.’

Since he was acting exactly like my lover, brainwashing myself was not difficult.

* * *

Ever since Saya’s confession, Kirill’s dreams had been unsettled.

For several nights in a row, Saya appeared in his dreams. In them, she laughed, then cried, then screamed.

Unable to sleep properly, Kirill clutched his throbbing head and closed his eyes. Doing so eased the headache, if only for a moment.

Gizelle was inside the dressmaker’s shop. She had said she needed to stop by the shop for a corsage and ribbons she had ordered.

He had said he would wait outside because he felt stifled, and he was standing guard in front of the shop when it happened.

Strangely, he heard a commotion from one side of the busy street.

In the distance, he saw Saya. She looked as though she was waiting for someone.

Kirill clenched and unclenched his gloved hand, trying to shake off the restlessness that had continued for days.

“…Then I’m sorry I didn’t know. Anyway, I’ll be going now.”

Saya’s voice as she said that held nothing. No resentment, no hurt. That, in fact, made Kirill sink deeper.

He forced himself to hold back the steps that had been about to carry him toward her. He did not trust himself to go and hear anything good.

Saya had always been kind to him. Even after the time he spent with Gizelle had grown overwhelmingly longer, it was the same. The two of them had grown distant after Saya became engaged.

Gizelle had shown Kirill a photograph of Redic Bangeger.

“Bangeger? Do you have some business with him?”

“Ah, he’s Saya’s fiancé.”

“…Fiancé?”

Gizelle reacted indifferently, as though dealing with a tiresome matter. Kirill could not understand it. Even so, it was her sister’s affair.

Then Gizelle looked up at him with a bright face, as if she had thought of a good idea.

“Could you say you introduced him? If you say you introduced him, Saya will trust him a little more. Right now she won’t listen to anything I say. You’re… her friend, aren’t you? Please?”

Engagement was essential for a noble young lady. If she missed the right time, her reputation could suffer simply for having been left behind.

Gizelle would not want her sister to end up in such a situation. Kirill believed that Gizelle must have carefully chosen her sister’s match.

“I didn’t know either that he was that kind of person.”

After witnessing Redic’s behavior, Gizelle fretted over having become entangled with such a family. Words he could not bring himself to say rolled around in his mouth.

‘Did she really not know?’

Whatever the process, the fact remained that he was ultimately responsible for Saya’s engagement.

Just as Kirill was about to look away, a carriage stopped in front of Saya. It was a carriage he had never seen before, with no recognizable crest.

Then a man stepped out. Saya glanced around and pulled her hood up. The man smiled brightly and took Saya’s hand.

The unease and restlessness that had weighed on Kirill for the past few days swallowed him in an instant.