Chapter 50
She knew it was an unwise heart. But when did feelings of affection ever come to a person after carefully weighing wisdom?
She understood perfectly well, with her head, that if a commoner orphan and the prince of a kingdom became any more deeply entangled than this, only a path of thorns awaited them. Yet the girl’s heart rejected reason, and she continued to flutter helplessly.
Noxia arrived at her workplace. After greeting the other librarians and organizing the paperwork, she went to the second-floor reference desk as she always did. Sitting at the desk behind the counter, she unfolded Carnen’s letter.
<Hello, Noxia! Did you have a good weekend?
(I’m writing this letter on Friday evening, but if I send it now, it won’t reach you until Monday morning, so I’ll just assume the weekend has already passed.)
The reason I’m writing is that I’m planning to hold a small tea party at my house this coming Saturday. I won’t be inviting many people. In fact, aside from you, I’ve only invited two others. Rachel Dallian and Daisy Loben—you remember them, right? The girls who acted so friendly toward you at the spring ball.
As I’ve said before, I think they really liked you. They told me they wanted to get to know you better, so I decided to set something up. Is that all right? I figured it would be more comfortable for you if you had girls your own age in the capital besides me to be close with.
If you’re free on Saturday afternoon, please write back, Nox. And I hope you have a wonderful day today as well!
Your precious friend,
Carnen Holby.>
“A tea party. A tea party sounds nice.”
For Noxia, who leaned toward an outgoing personality, making new friends was usually an exciting thing.
Unless she had heard bad rumors or had an unpleasant first impression, there was no reason for Noxia to refuse, especially when it was Rachel Dallian and Daisy Loben—girls she had chatted with quite amicably at the spring ball.
Noxia slipped the letter back into its envelope and postponed her reply for now. First, she needed to take care of the work that had piled up.
Holding a materials list, Noxia walked through the library, checking for lost or damaged books and marking those that needed repurchasing or preservation treatment.
Monday mornings were perfect for this kind of task, since there weren’t many patrons asking for assistance. Students usually crowded in around lunchtime or from Monday afternoon onward.
‘Everyone’s so exhausted just from coming to school on Monday mornings that they don’t have the energy to stop by the library.’
Thanks to that, Noxia was able to focus on organizing the list without interruption.
After finishing, she returned to her seat. Confirming that there were no patrons nearby, she picked up her pen to write a reply to the letter.
<To Carnen.>
Just as she managed to complete the very first line, she heard footsteps. Startled like someone caught slacking off, Noxia quickly put down her pen and flipped the paper over.
She lifted her head in a hurry. A patron was walking straight toward her. When she recognized his face, Noxia’s eyes widened.
“Noxia.”
Ah, right. Starting yesterday, the prince had decided to call her by her name. Noxia’s cheeks flushed.
“Your Highness.”
She rose from her seat with a beaming smile before she could stop herself. She lowered her voice to comply with the library rules, but she was so happy she felt like shouting if it were allowed.
The despair and anguish she had felt last night over the fact that she had fallen for the prince of a kingdom now seemed meaningless.
An eighteen-year-old girl in her first love was helplessly swept away by sweet excitement rather than cool reason. Because everything was new, the pull was all the more intense.
“What brings you here so early in the morning?”
“What brings me here? Is it strange for a student to come to the library?”
“Ah—no. That’s not what I meant.”
At Elenon’s joking reply to her reflexive greeting, Noxia blushed in embarrassment. Elenon smiled brightly and continued in a whisper.
“I don’t have any classes right now. It’s a free period until lunchtime, so I came by to borrow some books.”
Came by to borrow books—“to” borrow them—implied that that wasn’t his main purpose. Noxia swallowed her dry saliva as she let her imagination run wild.
‘Could his main purpose be… to see me?’
She couldn’t bring herself to ask outright. If she were the only one drunk on excitement and running ahead alone, she might be so embarrassed she’d want to jump out the window.
Of course, Noxia had no need to leap to her death from shame. In reality, Elenon had indeed come under the pretext of books just to see her face one more time.
However, just like Noxia, Elenon couldn’t bring himself to confess his true feelings outright. Shy and clumsy, because it was his first time—despite seeming bold in everything else, he was just as timid as she was.
“Noxia, could you help me find some books?”
“Yes, of course. What books do you need?”
“They’re books the professor mentioned. I wrote them down during class—just a moment. I’ll take out my notebook.”
In truth, Elenon had always liked books, and ever since he began attending the academy last year, he had frequented the library. He could easily find the books on his own without the help of an assistant librarian.
But right now, he wanted to prolong the time he spent with Noxia as much as possible, even if he had to pretend to be clueless. He wanted to monopolize her completely, so she wouldn’t even have a moment to be distracted by other patrons.
It was a selfish and childish possessiveness. But when anyone is blinded by first love, they inevitably become a little childish. No matter how mature and rational a person might be, they couldn’t entirely escape its clutches.
“Ah, here it is. I need all the books written down here.”
“Hmm, most of these are on the fourth or fifth floor. Follow me—I’ll guide you.”
“Thank you, Noxia.”
Noxia didn’t truly believe that Elenon, a second-year student in the academy’s college course, was incapable of finding these books on his own.
Still, using a librarian’s ethics—that she couldn’t refuse a reasonable request for help—as her excuse, Noxia willingly played along with Elenon’s transparent act.
The two of them climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. All the while, they carried on a warm, whispered conversation.
“Did you sleep well last night, Your Highness?”
“Yes, thanks to you. I think I walked around more than I realized yesterday. Maybe because my body was tired, I fell asleep earlier than usual.”
“I see. I’m glad you slept well.”
In truth, Elenon was lying. It was true that he was physically tired from walking a lot yesterday, but like Noxia, he had tossed and turned late into the night, lost in thought.
Unable to be honest, Elenon added the lie.
If they were lovers, wouldn’t he have been able to say without hesitation that he couldn’t sleep because of her? That thought left him with a twinge of regret.
‘…Or is that regret mine alone?’
Even as he was helplessly drawn to her, a sharp sense of unease occasionally surged up. Not knowing whether the other person felt the same way made him suddenly afraid.
Some might argue that nearly tilting their heads and almost kissing at the same moment yesterday was practically confirmation of mutual feelings.
But Elenon still wasn’t certain. Yesterday’s events felt so dreamlike that he even began to suspect that some of them might have been fantasies unconsciously created by his desperate heart.
He had encountered countless love stories in literature and had seen fellow students at the academy date one another, but this was the first time he himself had been in such a situation. Naturally, everything felt confusing.
Utterly inexperienced in this regard, the prince had no idea how to skillfully probe the other person’s feelings. He couldn’t artfully ask, like a novel’s protagonist, whether she too had lain awake thinking of him last night.
Born into royalty and raised amid façades all his life, he had prided himself on being fairly seasoned and shrewd. Yet now, struck by first love, he was nothing more than a naïve chick.
“You should start looking from this shelf. Let’s see…”
While he quietly agonized, Noxia diligently ran her fingers along the spines of the bookshelves.
Separate from her racing heart in front of the prince, she didn’t lose her professionalism as a librarian. She soon immersed herself sincerely in finding the books.
Elenon stared at Noxia’s serious profile with a sense of wistfulness. Compared to himself, internally floundering without grace, she seemed so calm and composed that it made him sulky for no reason.
‘Is she not nervous at all? Am I the only one acting like an idiot?’
Maybe that was the case. As that thought settled in, his mood sank and petulance bubbled up.
‘I kind of want to tease her a little.’
How could he make this girl flustered? Reduced in an instant to the childishness of a five-year-old, Elenon brooded sulkily while pretending to search for books alongside Noxia.
“Ah, found it.”
Noxia spotted a book first and brightened as she reached out. Pulling it from the shelf, she turned to Elenon with a radiant smile and held it out to him.
“Your Highness, here you go.”
Elenon stared at Noxia blankly. All his sulkiness melted away like snow under the sun at the sight of her sunshine-like smile. All that remained was the pounding of his heart, threatening to tear out of his chest.
He reached out with a trembling hand to take the book. It was merely the act of passing an object, yet the brush of bare skin made the pit of his stomach tingle.
“Thank you.”
Elenon forced himself to smile calmly. In that moment, all the worry and anguish he had gone through alone felt utterly pointless.
“There are three books left now. Let’s go find the rest.”
“Yes, Noxia.”
Elenon replied obediently. Though Noxia had said “let’s hurry,” he wished this time would flow very slowly—so he could linger by her side without feeling the slightest guilt.
Their current relationship was safe and proper. On the surface, Elenon had simply come to find books, and Noxia was merely helping him as a librarian.
There was a justification for this situation, a respectable name for this moment. If anyone asked what they were doing, they had an answer they could give without hesitation.
But outside the library? Outside the academy? What would happen then? Yesterday, Elenon had wandered around with his face hidden behind a mask and sunglasses, anxious that people might recognize him.
‘Someone like me… how could I…?’
In the end, was the library the only place where he could truly be with Noxia?
Yet even here, the two of them were not entirely free. They still needed an excuse just to come here.
Rushing to the library the moment his free period began on Monday morning, Elenon couldn’t bring himself to say it plainly to Noxia—that he had wanted to see her, that that was all, that in truth he didn’t need books at all.
