Chapter 1
Seion knelt down. His rugged hands carefully wrapped around my wrist. His cheek, pressed against my palm, was damp and wet with tears.
“I am this desperate…… and you say it isn’t love.”
“Your Highness.”
“I refuse. Annette, please…… I don’t want to.”
He rubbed his cheek against my palm as if trying to silence me. He seemed to already know what I was about to say.
“If you can only be happy by abandoning me.”
Seion buried his lips into my palm. My fingertips trembled at the ticklish sensation. It felt as though his breath was seeping into the very lines of my hand.
Feeling me flinch, he gripped my wrist even tighter. My reflection wavered within his red eyes, which were soaked in a terrible emotion.
“Then, I hope you are miserable.”
A sorrowful, yet one-sided confession. He finally vomited out the sincerity he had kept buried deep inside for a long time.
“Annette, I will do whatever you want, so…….”
“…….”
“Do not abandon me. Please.”
The ruler of the Grand Duchy of Fernandi, a man who never broke for anything, crumbled so easily before me.
* * *
“If there are any clauses you wish to revise, please let me know at any time.”
The Head Butler pushed a crisp piece of paper toward me. Beside him, a man with a cold impression was staring intently at me.
He’s going to burn a hole through my face.
The moment I glanced at him, our eyes met. His red pupils, devoid of any particular emotion, made him look like a doll. A incredibly handsome one at that.
I laughed awkwardly and covered my mouth. It would be a problem if I ended up drooling, bewitched by his perfect face. After wiping my dry mouth with my sleeve, I looked down at the paper.
[Seion Fernandi (hereinafter referred to as Party A) shall complete a six-month dating course under Annette Jernias (hereinafter referred to as Party B), and shall pay Party B the amount of compensation she desires.]
Dating lessons. Among the sentences written in the same font and size, that specific term looked particularly bold.
How did this trial befall me……?
“Um…… Your Highness, did you kidnap me because you wanted to date?”
At my question, the beautiful man sitting in front of me, Seion, furrowed his brows. His beauty was wondrous, as if a statue had come to life, but I must never be bewitched by his face.
The ruler of the Grand Duchy of Fernandi, Grand Duke Seion Fernandi. It was because he was the hidden final villain of this novel.
“Kidnap?”
His voice, muttering like a monologue, was chilling. At that, I reflexively swallowed hard.
Anyone watching would think I kidnapped you! I wanted to argue out of a sense of injustice, but my lips felt as if they were glued shut and refused to move.
To be honest, I was a bit intimidated. The pride of the great Annette Jernias, who never lost her nerve in any situation, was thoroughly crumpled.
“It seems there was a misunderstanding during the process of bringing Lady Annette here. Because one of the knights struck her on the nape and knocked her unconscious, she seems to have misunderstood it as a kidnapping.”
The Head Butler explained the situation to Seion.
No, but, that’s not a misunderstanding, that is definitely a kidnapping. When I glared at the Head Butler in indignation, he bowed his head deeply.
“Once again, I apologize. That knight also expressed his wish to apologize to Lady Annette personally, so please wait a little longer.”
The polite apology made me feel awkward, so I scratched my forehead. Now that things had already turned out this way, I wondered what use there was in finding and blaming the knight who found me. He was likely just moving according to orders.
“It’s fine. Since it’s already in the past.”
As a rule, there was nothing more foolish than looking back at the past and harboring resentment. However, Seion’s thoughts seemed to be different.
“Annette. If you wish, I will cut off the hand of the knight who struck your neck…….”
“Anyway! You, you want to date, right? Haha, why hasn’t someone as handsome as you been able to date until now……? Ha ha, ha ha!”
I stopped him before he could say something cruel in that calm voice. Please don’t let this novel stray from the “All Ages” rating!
I laughed awkwardly and changed the subject. Although the contract stated the purpose of bringing me here was for dating lessons, it didn’t seem like that would be Seion’s true intention.
He was a character close to pure evil, with no intention of accepting others’ affection nor the will to understand it.
I lifted the contract with both hands, using my brain while pretending to deliberate. First, I needed to buy some time to think.
“I’d like to read the contract thoroughly and sign it carefully. Could you give me a moment to be alone?”
It’s burdensome when you stare at me like that from the front. I swallowed the words that were about to pop out next. If I said that, I felt like my wrists, rather than the knight who kidnapped me, would be in danger.
“As you wish.”
To the point that my request made while breaking into a cold sweat felt hollow, Seion nodded easily.
“Then I will escort you to the room next door.”
Phew, barely suppressing a sigh of relief, I left Seion’s office and followed the Head Butler.
They say even if you enter a tiger’s den, you can survive if you keep your wits about you. Surely I won’t be eaten by Seion, who is a human!
Contrary to my gallant inner shout, my mind was already imagining me being devoured by Seion.
Haha, damn it.
* * *
Annette Jernias is a character in a novel I wrote. The genre of the novel is angst, and the Annette I possessed is an extra who dies at the hands of the male lead.
It was the worst. I briefly regretted writing angst instead of a healing story full of clichés.
However, like any other possession story, I couldn’t just die easily.
From the moment I possessed her, the genre of this novel became a normal romance. Obsession? Throw it away! Confinement? Break it down!
I knew the psychology of all the children born from my hands, and changing their fates wasn’t that difficult.
How much I praised myself for remembering even the settings of the moles under the male lead’s collarbone and on his left buttock. Like that, I led the novel to a happy ending three years earlier than the original.
Thanks to that, rumors spread within the Ardifen Empire—the stage of the original work—that I was a talented dating consultant specializing in political marriages, but I didn’t know it would escalate things to this extent.
“In fact, since it’s a tightly closed happy ending, Seion is a character who doesn’t even need to appear…….”
I only needed to leave the Empire to spend the rest of my life in peace. To think I would be kidnapped by the Fernandi Duchy at that exact moment.
The edge of the contract became wrinkled because I was gripping it so tightly.
Seion was the final hardship the protagonists were meant to face. Because the pace until the conclusion was long, he was a character I had only set up with the intention of having him appear in the side stories.
His nature was fundamentally different from other characters. I had certainly conceived a rough outline, but I had never directly written him down.
In the first place, the situation where he wants to date was laughable. Based on his settings, let alone dating, he would view the opposite sex as nothing more than stones rolling on the street.
“Ugh……”
The more I thought about it, the more my head ached. No, in the first place, is it even possible to refuse a proposal from the ruler of a Grand Duchy? I wondered if a refusal from me, a mere fallen noble of the Empire, would even have any effect.
Damn this wretched class society.
Thud, as my head hit the desk, a knock sounded at the door. The “time to deliberate” they thought of was truly short.
“Have you signed?”
Even though I hadn’t answered yet, the door opened. Beyond it, Seion’s face was still blunt and unnecessarily gorgeous.
I wondered if his white skin would feel hard if I poked it. Perhaps he was actually a statue, not a person.
“It’s clean.”
While I was thinking useless thoughts, he approached and looked down at the clean contract. Then, he picked up a pen and signed next to his name.
[Seion Fernandi.]
It was an elegant handwriting.
“Your Highness, actually. The rumors about me are a bit exaggerated. I don’t have the ability to make someone’s romance successful.”
“It does not matter. I don’t know about dating, but I have many other abilities.”
“Pardon?”
Does that even make sense? In the end, it was a conclusion that neither of us had any dating skills.
Are we even having a conversation about the same topic? I said I wasn’t qualified to be a teacher, but the response coming back was strange.
“You said I was handsome. Is that not so?”
“No, why are you attacking with your face here…….”
“Or. Do I look like someone you’d want to curse?”
Not a chance. What does dating matter? Within a few days, it would be possible to turn the Duchy into his harem.
“No?! Even a harem is totally possible……. Hup!”
I didn’t intend to let that fact out of my mouth. I covered my mouth with both hands and checked his reaction. I felt like I would be despised at any moment for such a vulgar expression.
However, unexpectedly, Seion had no particular reaction. He just stared at me with his usual expressionless face.
His eyes resembled an abyss. I had the illusion that if I were bewitched even for a moment, I would fall into those depths and flounder.
“Your Highness, you have no will to date.”
Before being bewitched by him, I held onto my senses and spoke. From what I heard, it seemed that kidnapping me was not Seion’s will. It was merely the solo action of the Head Butler, who was worried he would live his whole life as a bachelor.
Seion was probably just playing along to some extent because the butler’s efforts were commendable. There was no way he would sincerely want to draw others into his world.
“Why do you think that?”
“……Just a hunch?”
Because that’s the setting for you in the world I created.
Since I couldn’t say that, I avoided his gaze with ambiguous words.
“Annette.”
My head lifted at Seion’s call. Gripping my chin, he leaned down and met my eyes. Overwhelmed by his red eyes, I couldn’t avoid him.
“I have sufficient will for a relationship with you.”
Because we were so close, his breath touched my cheek. Goosebumps rose along my arms at the unfamiliar sensation.
“W-we aren’t in a relationship…… it’s dating lessons, right?”
Hearing the counterargument I barely managed to voice, Seion let go of my chin. Then he slowly straightened his body and shrugged his shoulders as if wondering what the problem was.
With that movement, I realized two facts.
Whether by difference in status or whatever else. I would have no choice but to sign this contract he held out.
“Yes. What is the difference?”
And the fact that I would be swayed quite a lot by that innocent face, which was so unlike him.
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