<Episode 17>
“Why’s she like this?”
“Don’t touch her, please. It seems Irenne is having her young lady’s day.”
“Huh? What’s that? And why are you holding her like that?”
“According to Surviving as the Capricious Young Lady’s Maid, young ladies sometimes become unusually sensitive and melancholy. In such times, an able maid like myself must wisely offer an embrace.”
“…You’re insane. That flaming-red sensationalist novel from ages ago? Don’t tell me you crammed your maid training with that?”
“Yes. Is that a problem? It explained, in great detail, how to serve an aristocratic young lady.”
So that was why she kept trying to sleep in the same bed.
She’d learned maidwork from a trashy romance novel.
I almost pointed out the absurd service I’d endured until now, but my mind felt hazy, dreamlike. I couldn’t even muster the strength to complain.
“Hey! Throw that book out right now!”
“No.”
“Sigh… not one normal bone in your body.”
Clicking his tongue like he’d seen something repulsive, Nishe resumed attacking his plate. His portion of the meal vanished as if swallowed by a greedy ghost.
“Pig.”
I muttered without thinking as I sliced the steak before me.
My eyes couldn’t focus, but the hands of a noble lady—disciplined through brutal etiquette lessons—moved automatically, out of habit.
My mind and body drifted apart.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t have meekly gone along with Ellie’s bizarre maid theories, nor would I be sitting on her lap like this.
“Hey. If you’re just going to keep mangling it and not eat it, give it to me.”
“Nishe. Try being delicate for once.”
“…I beg you, please, be quiet.”
“You heard him? He said to shut up.”
The not-quite-competent-but-earnest maid completely missed the point and scolded the pig—no, Nishe.
Nishe, who had never quite grown into adulthood, snapped back.
“Obviously he meant you! You don’t even act like a maid—you’re just obsessed with the role, chirping nonstop.”
“…Not even act like one? You sure you want to say that out loud? How about a spar? Been a while.”
Ellie gripped her knife in a reverse hold, murderous intent flaring.
“Fine. I was bored anyway.”
Even as he bickered, Nishe finished his meal with remarkable speed, rotating his arms as he stood. He looked ready to draw the sword at his hip.
No one at the table even tried to stop them.
They don’t give me a moment to be properly distressed, do they.
Crack!
Spearing a bit of finely cut meat with my fork, I rose with a long sigh.
Then I offered, with polite sweetness, to the storm-about-to-erupt that was Nishe:
“You eat it, Nishe.”
“Huh? Uh… yeah…”
“I’m going to sleep now, so don’t come to my room.”
“Me too?”
“I’m talking to you, Zeffy. And you, Ellie.”
I needed time alone.
Perhaps because of everything that happened earlier, my appetite was gone; even Coco’s delicious dinner couldn’t go down.
I locked my door behind me and collapsed onto my bed. The moment I closed my eyes, Emma’s face drifted up—smiling the way I once loved most, but speaking in an icy voice I had never heard from her before.
Don’t rely on people.
You know how futile that is.
Of course I do.
I do not trust hearts or feelings. Hearts change; feelings fade.
What I trust is my value—my usefulness. And yet, despite that creed, I made agonizing mistakes.
Emma, Valtres, Chesire.
Three times I trusted. Three times I was betrayed.
Once is enough in a lifetime—three is too many.
The villainess who once wished for revenge and ruin no longer exists, but who knows—if I’m betrayed a fourth time, perhaps she will be reborn.
So no.
I will let no one into me but myself.
After Irenne fled like a startled deer.
Nishe, now seated in her vacated place, broke the brief silence as he stabbed savagely at a piece of meat.
“She’s… the same as we thought, isn’t she?”
Giselle, wiping her lips with a napkin, nodded.
“Exactly. She clearly hasn’t forgotten the Crown Prince.”
“No, Irenne said she doesn’t like him anymore.”
“Idiot, you actually believed that? Obviously a lie.”
Zeffy—who had taken Irenne’s words at face value—objected but was immediately shut down by Nishe.
Scratching his curly pink hair, Zeffy pictured the dark-haired girl who had just left.
“Really?”
“You didn’t see her face earlier? The moment you mentioned the Crown Prince, she froze like she’d stared straight into Medusa’s eyes.”
Now that he thought about it, she had.
This time, Zeffy accepted Nishe’s judgment.
Ellie, who only spoke informally to her fellow age-mate Zeffy, snapped at him.
“Idiot. Why bring that up without reading the atmosphere?”
“I was curious. I don’t know anything.”
All he knew of Irenne’s past was that she was a noble lady, the Crown Prince’s fiancée, and that she had tormented the saint favored by him.
And even that was secondhand information he’d gathered right before leaving for the Empire on a saint-abduction mission.
Giselle, who had told him this, warned him not to cross paths with the noble lady with black hair and red eyes—lest the mission get tangled.
Zeffy obeyed that advice. He tried to, at least.
But that day, at that moment—
When he met Irenne in the mountains, the first color he perceived was not her wind-tangled hair or her crimson eyes, but…
…a beautiful sea.
The color of her soul resembled the emerald ocean lingering in his old memories, and Giselle’s warning didn’t even enter his mind.
Truly, he couldn’t help it.
He had never seen a soul like that before.
He hadn’t been in any state to think straight anyway.
He had been starving, his abilities depleted, monsters at his back.
And it was Irenne who saved his feeble life.
Zeffy didn’t fully understand the complex theories about soul colors and human essence. He simply liked Irenne—instinctively.
Simply.
Because she was pretty. Because he was starving and she fed him.
That was all. Her past did not interest him.
By temperament, he rarely cared about anything around him. Let alone the Empire—why should he care about events in a distant land?
And yet, strangely, curiosity was growing.
About the Irenne of that place. The life she had led.
“…Why though. She’s ugly.”
Zeffy muttered without thinking, picturing the Crown Prince Irenne supposedly could not forget. The blond man came to mind vague and indistinct.
He had felt nothing toward the man before—but now, inexplicably, he found himself irritated, worse than when he lost a spar to Ellie.
“Tsk. He’s secretly a romantic, that kid.”
At Nishe’s remark, Ellie snorted.
“He’s not secretly anything, Nishe. Obviously those ridiculous rumors are all lies. Irenne is… a pushover.”
“I agree.”
Juanxi, having finished his meal, rose. Recently rediscovering the joy of warmth and food, he was bright with gratitude.
“Someone who cares for others to this extent—no way her actions match the rumors.”
“That’s what I’m saying. With how absurdly kind Irenne is, there’s no way she did any of that. The Crown Prince must’ve used her.”
Having ‘served’ Irenne long enough for her bias to break its own spine, Ellie unloaded her machine-gun assumptions.
“I bet those nasty rumors were spread by the Crown Prince to justify breaking the engagement.”
“Typical Hilbarcia scum. Petty and cowardly—that’s who they are.”
Nishe, shaped by the border conflict, spat his prejudice at the Empire.
“Irenne is too compassionate. She couldn’t hurt anyone—she probably couldn’t kill an ant.”
Even the witch chimed in.
“She seems to have been forced into sacrifice. That explains her selfless, defensive way of living.”
Soon, tales that would make Irenne faint from shock were being exchanged as fact.
Some were true. Some were misunderstandings.
For Irenne Valtres was indeed the type to return a punch with two—so a number of her notorious misdeeds were, in fact, true.
For example, the rumor that she rendered the eldest son of a certain count’s house… nonfunctional.
“Your brain seems to be located somewhere lower. Allow me to kindly relocate it. No thanks necessary.”
“Scre—Aaaagh!”
Reason: he told her that if the Crown Prince abandoned her, she could become his mistress.
And the rumor that she destroyed the atelier of a famous madam in the capital? Also true.
Madam,
In gratitude for your previous ‘gift,’
I send you my reply.
May your enterprise meet eternal ruin.
—Irenne Valtres
Reason: the madam had tampered with her custom dress using a substance that induced rashes.
And yes—she had overturned the temple during the saint’s consecration ceremony.
“Did God call me that? Fine. They say if you’re insulted for no reason, you might as well give them a reason.”
“You… y-you wicked demon!”
Reason: the priests blocked her, saying, “We cannot bestow the saint’s blessing upon a villainess.”
Naturally, none of these justifications made it into the rumors. In the stories, Irenne was always the heinous perpetrator.
But here in Bellmeier, deep in their misunderstanding, they dismissed everything as fabricated lies.
Zeffy asked, sulking:
“Then… how long is Irenne going to like the Crown Prince?”
