Chapter 31
Ruan briskly walked past the receptionists, who were still dazed and out of sorts, and headed for the association’s main entrance.
Well, looks like a bunch of Ruan’s followers are about to quit… Falling for him and leaving him all at once. What a revolving door of a man.
Just then, Amelie and Julie’s voices softly carried from behind.
“Damn… He even looks good when he’s angry.”
“Right?! I wish he’d say that to the ugly guys who keep pawing at me…”
Ha… These hopeless, star-struck fools…
As expected, bad boys are a steady favorite for girls that age.
Completely unfazed by Ruan’s utterly tactless behavior, I clicked my tongue, watching Amelie and Julie chatter away with flushed cheeks.
“What’s wrong? Are you hurt somewhere?”
“That’s not it, Ruan. I like gentle men.”
“Huh? Why bring that up all of a sudden…”
“Just because. I’m totally not into types like tsunderes or bad boys. Oh, or sociopaths.”
The male leads in the novels Ye-eun, the romance novel fanatic, recommended to me all had some kind of twisted personality.
Tch. A kind and cute guy… like my bias, Pyo-dol, is the real deal…
“And what, pray tell, is a ‘tsundere’…?”
Ruan muttered with a bewildered expression.
It’s a thing in fans’ worlds. Don’t worry about it.
Brushing off Ruan’s question, I led him out of the association and straight to a merchant selling meat.
“Ruan, let’s buy some meat from there!”
“…Yes.”
Today, I’m going to flex and buy all the meat here.
“Ruan, let’s eat that too!”
Joé, who had wriggled out of Lucien’s arms and was trudging ahead, spotted a fruit skewer vendor and scurpered back to whisper.
Ruan smiled, nodded, and spoke to the vendor.
“Two grilled fruit skewers, please.”
“Yes, sir! Two fruit skewers! I’ll grill them up nice and tasty for you!”
A man with a dark, scruffy beard and a rough-looking face, wearing an apron embroidered with mistflowers that seemed completely at odds with his appearance, answered cheerfully and began grilling the skewers.
“This looks delicious…”
Lucien let out a soft chuckle, watching Joé’s eyes follow the skewers as they browned.
The large honey-rye bread she had eaten just moments ago seemed to have already vanished from her stomach.
‘She’s truly adorable.’
The thought, flowing into his mind as naturally as water, startled Lucien.
The longer he spent days with her, the more he encountered these unfamiliar emotions for the first time. Simultaneously, he struggled to suppress the feelings piling up layer by layer in a corner of his heart.
But no matter how hard he tried to suppress them, when they took over his thoughts entirely, it seemed that even if she used suspicious powers, or even if she were a demon… Lucien felt he would blindly protect her.
Just as she had told him last night, Joé was simply Joé.
“Ugh, what suspicious person are we even supposed to be investigating in this tiny, cramped town?”
“Tell me about it. Well, it’s classified, so what can we do? When the higher-ups say jump, we ask how high.”
Lucien had been watching the knights bustling around in all directions for a while now. His eyes narrowed as he observed them.
This was because the knights’ cloaks were emblazoned with the large, prominent seal of the Imperial Valterga family—meaning they were knights sent by the royal family.
‘I didn’t think they’d come all the way to Belnoir.’
When he saw Joé’s troubled face, his body had moved without thought. However, this was a rural village located on the outskirts of the Belnoir territory, where communication with the outside was slow, and he had grown complacent, thinking the Chevalier knights under his command were stationed everywhere.
Moreover, since he had temporarily stopped transforming into a beast, he planned to return to the ducal house after finishing the restoration of Joé’s hut, quash the messy rumors about making contracts with demons, and make an official statement.
After that, he wanted to properly introduce himself to Joé not as the fugitive Ruan, but as Lucien Penister.
But if he were forcibly taken to the royal family now… his future was as clear as day.
He would be bound in magical restraints like a beast, stripped of his right to speak, and quietly eliminated by the factions that saw the ducal house as a thorn in their side.
‘How on earth did the information leak?’
Lost in thought for a moment, Lucien soon recalled the face of the Merchant Guild Association Head, Count Lasben, who had been grinning at him with a sinister smile, baring all his teeth.
Count Lasben had once been the lord of a small northern territory called Norbein, but he abused his power behind the scenes, embezzling the territory’s funds and resources and engaging in all sorts of vile deeds, including human trafficking.
When his dirty deeds were finally uncovered by Lucien’s father, the Grand Duke Penister, he was driven out of Norbein and effectively demoted to this place.
‘Is he planning to sell my information to get a connection with the royal family?’
Making a mental note to thoroughly raid the association soon, Lucien pulled the hood of the robe he had hastily bought at the clothing store lower over his face.
Just then, Joé, who had been waiting for the fruit skewers with bated breath, whispered softly.
“By the way, Ruan, why did you buy the robe all of a sudden?”
“Just… because the sun is strong.”
“Ah-ha, you’re sensitive to UV rays… Well, the paler face suits you better anyway, Ruan.”
“…Is that so?”
‘Darn, if I go back to the ducal house and resume training, my face will get tanned…’
Thinking he should order the servants to stock up on good sunblock as soon as he returned, Lucien meticulously fastened the robe shut, determined not to be exposed to UV rays.
“Here are your fruit skewers! Enjoy!”
As he turned and took the skewers from the vendor, let them cool for a moment, and then placed one in Joé’s mouth, her large eyes sparkled brightly.
“How is it that everything here is so delicious?” Joé marveled, munching on the fruit skewer, her belly already noticeably rounder. If you touched that stomach now, it would probably feel as soft as a marshmallow.
Is that why he touched it so freely? Lucien’s mood instantly soured as the scene from the association came back to him.
“Ah, that’s right. You’re an out-of-towner, sir?”
“…And your point is?”
Wondering if this was a plant by the royal family, Lucien quickly turned around, narrowing his eyes as if sizing up the other man.
“Well, then, be careful not to lose your pet. That over there… that’s your companion foal, right? Lately, there’s been a pet thief on the loose in this village… Last time, they even stole a rat I cherished and raised so carefully, without a sound! Sob… Where on earth did it go…! Anyway, just let me catch who it is, I’ll really…!”
“I see. I’ll be careful then.”
Lucien’s expression turned serious upon hearing the vendor’s story. As if Joé wasn’t conspicuous enough, now there was a kidnapper targeting pets. Lucien’s face contorted in disgust at the village’s abysmal public safety.
Just then, Joé, who was behind him, tugged on the hem of Lucien’s robe, pulling him toward her.
Lucien smoothed his expression as if asking when his face had gotten so scrunched up, then bent his knees to lower himself to Joé’s eye level.
“You called?”
“That talk just now! A pet kidnapper? What’s wrong with this town’s public safety? Kidnapping someone’s precious family member, are they a psycho or what! Since we’re here, why don’t we catch them?!”
Joé always got this excited whenever the topic of animals came up. Lucien recalled Joé calling herself a ‘dong-chin-ja’.
‘She said it was short for ‘someone crazy about animals,’ right?’
Joé often used strange expressions.
“I’ll make a suggestion to the public safety team in the village. To strengthen their patrols.”
“Yes! We absolutely must catch a lunatic like that.”
“I agree.”
Lucien nodded and picked Joé up into his arms again. A small warmth brought peace to Ruan. He felt he could understand Joé’s heart, which loved animals so much.
“Since there’s a chance Ruby could be kidnapped too, it would be best to just find the registration certificate and leave quickly.”
Of course, there’s probably no madman out there who would kidnap a high-level disaster-class magical beast. Lucien decided to use Ruby as an excuse to leave this town quickly.
“Ah… I should catch that guy with my own hands… But there’s no helping it. Our Ruby is precious too.”
So a magical beast can be useful sometimes.
Looking at Joé, who was grumbling but agreeing, Lucien smiled quietly and quickened his pace back toward the association.
