Chapter 10
“Are you going to pounce on me?”
“……No!”
“Annette, your answer seemed a little slower than yesterday.”
“Ugh, that’s…….”
I had simply been flustered all over again by seeing your face up close. I swallowed the words I could not say.
“Your Highness.”
“Yes. Annette.”
The way Seion obediently answered my call looked completely harmless. It felt as though the fierce gaze he once revealed like a wild beast had been nothing more than a distant dream.
I stared directly into Seion’s crimson eyes. The gaze meeting mine without any particular emotion felt dry and empty.
What would it feel like if emotions ever settled into these endlessly calm eyes?
I stopped imagining such a distant future. First, I needed to make sure he neither pounced on someone nor got pounced on by someone anywhere and everywhere.
“If someone tries to pounce on you, this is what you do. Now, repeat after me. ‘No.’”
“No?”
“I don’t want to.”
“I don’t want to.”
I glared at Seion as he absentmindedly repeated my words. Even though I made quite a fierce expression, his face remained perfectly calm.
“Stop it and get away from me right now.”
“Stop it and get away from me right now.”
“No, Your Highness. You have to make the same scary expression as me.”
Seion made a puzzled expression. Apparently, he did not understand my behavior at all.
Though honestly, he already seemed naturally talented at making intimidating expressions without practice, but you never know. There might still be a softer side to Seion that I did not know about.
“You know that expression you usually make, Your Highness. Pressing your lips together and slightly lifting your brows while looking at someone like they’re ridiculous.”
“When have I ever looked at Annette like she was ridiculous?”
“That’s just how the saying goes.”
Like, kneel before my beauty or something. Seion looked at me strangely, but I paid it no mind. Since things had come to this, I needed to teach him properly.
“Now, if someone tries to pounce on you like this. What are you supposed to do?”
When I firmly pushed down on Seion’s shoulder, his body was pressed back against the sofa. Seion obediently leaned backward and blankly looked up at me.
He looked expressionless, but his brows subtly twisted. It probably meant he felt faint discomfort.
However, Seion neither pushed me away nor told me to back off. Which meant he still did not properly understand my lesson.
Was it because he lacked a sense of danger? At the sudden thought, I immediately put on the expression of a villain. The kind that said, *If you don’t push me away, I’ll devour you.*
I slid the hand resting on his shoulder upward and lightly grabbed his chin. As I slowly traced along his jawline teasingly, Seion suddenly frowned deeply.
“This is serious, Your Highness. At this rate, you’re going to get eaten alive anywhere.”
Seion, now openly displaying his discomfort, placed a hand around my waist. If he wanted to push me away, he should have grabbed somewhere other than my waist. Foolish Seion.
I clicked my tongue inwardly. There was still a mountain of things left to teach him. Thinking that, I was just about to pull away when my vision flipped upside down in an instant.
“Ugh……!”
The soft sofa pressed against my back. At what moment had he done this, and how?
Before I knew it, I was lying on the sofa while Seion looked down at me. Resting one hand beside my head, he slowly lowered his upper body. As his beautiful face drew closer, I reflexively squeezed my eyes shut.
Uh……. I haven’t taught this part yet. Why are you advancing the lesson all by yourself so far ahead?!
“When you try to pounce on someone, you also have to consider the possibility of getting turned over instead, Annette.”
His low voice echoed beside my ear. I flinched and trembled, and the presence that had come right before my face gradually moved away.
“It’s the basics of sparring.”
When I slowly lifted my eyelids, my eyes immediately met Seion’s. As if he had never been obedient in the first place, his crimson eyes were sharp and completely devoid of playfulness.
If someone saw him like this, they would probably think I really was his sparring opponent.
“Even when you have the upper hand, be careful not to let the situation reverse.”
“Ah……. I see.”
Seion was truly impossible to understand. One moment he shamelessly said embarrassing things like asking when I would pounce on him, and the next, when I tried to teach him about danger, he veered off in a completely bizarre direction.
Even after several days, I still had no idea how to deal with him. Swallowing a sigh, I removed Seion’s hand from my waist.
More accurately, I *tried* to remove it.
“No.”
“What? No…….”
“I dislike it. Don’t touch me.”
Seion removed my hand from his wrist. The movement was so quick that it felt like he was brushing away a bug.
“Stop it and get away from me right now.”
You’re the one stopping me from leaving, you ridiculous Grand Duke.
At first glance, it almost looked like a joke, but both his expression and the eyes fixed on me were as calm as usual.
“I did as I was taught.”
Ah, that’s not the kind of situation where you’re supposed to use those words. My head throbbed again from the rising blood pressure.
☆☆☆
Bright weather, pleasantly warm air, and a sky where cotton-candy-like clouds drifted by.
While gazing out the window in Seion’s office, I abruptly dragged him outside with me.
“What do you think, Your Highness? The breeze feels nice, and the weather’s really good, right?”
From what I had seen over the past week, Seion practically seemed to live in his office. Of course, as the ruler of the Grand Duchy, he had countless responsibilities, but still, occasionally getting some fresh air was important for clearing one’s head.
“The wind is not blowing. Annette is running around, which only makes it feel that way.”
I skillfully ignored Seion’s honest comment. I had gotten excited and started walking a bit too fast, so for a moment I mistakenly thought there was a breeze.
“An outdoor lesson like this once in a while isn’t such a bad idea.”
I turned to face Seion. While maintaining eye contact and slowly walking backward, he slowed his pace to match mine.
“Annette is the first person to suggest holding lessons in the garden.”
“Really? Then everyone else must have been rigid teachers.”
Whatever else, flexible thinking is incredibly important when it comes to romance!
Bathed in the warm sunlight, I smiled calmly. I stopped in the middle of the garden, sat down in front of the neatly arranged flowers, and looked up at Seion.
“Your Highness, there was still one question from the mistake notebook that we haven’t gone over yet, right? Let’s talk about that today.”
At my words, Seion bent his knees and crouched beside me. Just like when he burned those dark romance novels.
I shook my head after recalling the titles of books whose contents automatically came to mind. Seion Fernandi, that kind of genre no longer exists in your future!
“The flowers are really pretty, aren’t they?”
Question number three from the test. *The other person says the flowers are pretty. Describe the proper response.* It was one of the questions where Seion had earned partial credit.
Since he had gotten it ambiguously wrong back then, surely he would give a different answer this time. The moment I thought that, Seion reached out his hand.
Crunch. Along with the sound of something being torn out, the flower was ripped out by the roots.
“Your Highness. May I ask…… what exactly you’re doing right now?”
“I pulled out the flower.”
Who asked because they didn’t know that?
“Why?”
“Did Annette not say the flower was pretty? I understood it as meaning you wanted it. Was I mistaken?”
With an indifferent face, Seion held out the flower whose roots were fully exposed. Despite being words from someone who had mercilessly ripped out the flower, it somehow sounded surprisingly gentle. Even if his voice itself lacked emotion.
I looked once at his face, then once at the flower. The tiny roots trembling in the wind looked pitiful.
“Will you not take it?”
As he said that, Seion grabbed my wrist. Perhaps making him write punishment lines had not been entirely ineffective, because unlike before, his grip was light.
The dirt and roots brushed against my palm, tickling me. When I instinctively flinched and pulled my hand back, Seion let out a quiet “Ah,” as though he had realized something.
“May I hold your hand?”
“You already are holding it.”
“Even so, I controlled my strength.”
Looking at his calm face, I had nothing to say. Well, he *had* improved.
I accepted the flower from Seion with both hands. Then I placed it back where it originally had been and covered it with dirt again. I’m sorry on his behalf, flower.
“I didn’t mean I wanted to own it.”
“Did you not say that when you see something pretty, you drool over it?”
Ah, damn it. I desperately ignored the embarrassment washing over me. Seion had an annoyingly good memory.
“This flower is pretty, but not enough to make me drool.”
“Like how I’m handsome, but not enough for you to pounce on me?”
On top of that, Seion tended to obsess over pointless questions with that excellent memory of his. Once he became suspicious of something, he dug into it until he found an answer.
Whether I pounced on him or not, this was absolutely not the kind of topic to discuss in broad daylight in an open garden.
“Why do you insist on pulling flowers out by the roots anyway?”
I skillfully changed the subject. Seion, who had been silently watching me, thankfully followed along with my intention.
“So they can be replanted.”
The gaze Seion had fixed on me the entire time shifted away. At the end of his gaze was the flower that had been pulled out and replanted.
“I was taught that life is precious, and that it should not be broken carelessly.”
Then why did you throw other people out the window? I almost jokingly asked before stopping myself.
Because Seion had that expression again. Even though we were not directly making eye contact, complicated emotions overflowed even from his profile.
Was it his first love who taught him that life was precious? I gave a small nod at the reasonable conclusion.
“Your Highness, saying something is pretty doesn’t always mean someone wants to possess it.”
I also turned my gaze toward the awkwardly replanted flower. Rather than comforting him over something that was only my speculation, it seemed better to treat him normally like always.
“But the thought of preparing a gift to make someone happy is still wonderful.”
“You were not happy.”
“Your Highness……. You suddenly handed me something completely wild. Normally people would be startled.”
When I secretly glanced at Seion’s face, it looked no different than usual. It seemed the memories of his first love that had surfaced had safely settled down again.
“If you’re going to pull it out by the roots to give it away, then put it in a flowerpot first. If you just hand it over directly, then there was no point in pulling out the roots in the first place.”
“I will keep that in mind.”
“Even if it takes a little longer, wouldn’t giving it that way let the flowers last much longer, and help the other person remember the feelings Your Highness gave them for a long time too?”
As if he had realized something, Seion nodded. That small nod pleased me so much that a quiet laugh escaped my lips. This was the first time he had understood my explanation all at once.
You’re learning quickly. Good job. My first student!
Though exactly two days later, after seeing my room completely covered in flowers, I realized it had all been a perfect misunderstanding.
☆▪︎▪︎☆
