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Chapter 80
Deborah’s eyes twitched with a hint of hurt.
But she also knew the truth. For some reason, disasters always seemed to happen whenever she met Liana. And most of the time, they happened to her.
Perhaps this was what it meant to have utterly incompatible personalities.
Like Liana, Deborah raised her voice.
“Exactly! The frequency of our meetings doesn’t determine friendship!”
“Even if we’re far apart…!”
“Let’s trust in each other’s friendship!”
“Yes, let’s do that!”
The two of them quickly reached an agreement and simultaneously let go of each other’s hands. Immediately, Liana bolted off in the opposite direction from Deborah.
The longer they stayed close, the more it felt like they might get struck by lightning together.
Tap- tap- tap-tap-
The raindrops that had lightly tapped the window gradually turned into a heavy downpour, covering the glass in a misty blur.
Kim, looking out from the main building, drew the curtains. With the view blocked, there was little reason to keep staring outside.
“On rainy days, it’s got to be matcha latte,” Bastian’s chatter came from the tea table. Kim walked over from the window, giving him a mild scolding.
“Stop drinking so much caffeine. What’s so healthy about it anyway?”
“My body has already given up since last week. At this point, I think it should just produce caffeine on its own,” Bastian replied.
Kim, giving him a look full of pity, sat down across from him and spoke.
“You’ve been having a tough time with personnel, haven’t you? I heard you had to deal with another horse manager recently.”
“Ugh… yes, that too. I wonder when I should report that to the Duke…”
Kim, filling her cup from the teapot, froze.
“You haven’t reported it yet? I thought it had been closed immediately.”
“Well… I kind of delayed it. After all, it was such a low-ranking personnel matter that the Duke probably wouldn’t care.”
“Isn’t that related to Mr. Gray? Even a special recruit knight is no trivial matter.”
As soon as the topic shifted to work, Kim’s tone turned cold.
Bastian, hesitating with the teacup at his lips, finally put it down and confessed.
“The full details of the incident aren’t known. You know how things inside the knight corps rarely become public knowledge.”
Knights generally didn’t care about rumors. No matter what happened, they would quickly forget and move on. What mattered to them was probably just their protein intake and muscle loss for the day.
“Also, back then, the gossip about the Duke was so scandalous that other matters were out of the public’s interest.”
Bastian nodded.
“That’s true. And the only external witness, the horse manager, also kept quiet—maybe because the senior officer who was expelled got promoted afterward.”
Or perhaps they learned a lesson from the senior officer whose mouth slipped at the wrong time.
Muttering quietly to himself, Bastian said, and Kim looked curious. The public overview of the incident contained no mention of a “slip of the tongue.”
“Slip of the tongue? Wasn’t it a fight between Mr. Gray and the horse manager, during which the horse manager’s misconduct was exposed?”
Bastian’s expression flickered ambiguously, nodding and shaking his head at the same time.
“Well… it’s both true and not entirely.”
“What on earth happened then?”
“Rather than what happened, the important part is which ‘other person’ was involved.”
Kim furrowed his brow in confusion. Bastian leaned closer and whispered.
“Miss Liana was also involved in the incident.”
Kim’s pupils dilated.
Liana. A name he had been hearing everywhere lately.
“The reason Mr. Gray assaulted the horse manager was that the wretched man had been harassing Miss Liana from behind.”
Kim’s eyes, which had grown round in surprise, now narrowed sharply.
After a short pause, he spoke slowly.
“But why hesitate to report that to the Duke?”
“Well…”
Bastian hesitated before finally confessing.
“The Duke acts differently when it comes to Miss Liana. Unlike the way he dealt with the other isolation tower maids before…”
Kim stared at Bastian’s flustered expression with a complex, subtle look. Normally, he would have dismissed Bastian’s nervous worries with a sharp remark, but…
“…You noticed it too, didn’t you?”
“…And you as well?”
Bastian flinched as Kim placed a hand on his shoulder to calm him. A few steps away, the Duke and the Prince were having a conversation.
Understanding the signal, Bastian gulped down the matcha latte and placed his hand over his chest. Drinking matcha on a rainy day seemed to calm him a bit.
Lowering his voice again, Bastian began whispering.
“Until now, when an isolation tower maid showed up, the Duke would chase them out relentlessly, right? He didn’t care what happened to them afterward. He would seduce without taking responsibility, arouse but leave the other party as a… pervert—”
“I understand what you mean. Stop there,” Kim interjected.
Bastian cleared his throat and continued.
“Anyway, this time, he worried about Miss Liana’s life. He was concerned that something might happen because she doesn’t get along with the Countess’s daughter.”
“So, instead of expelling her… he ‘worried’?”
Kim raised his eyebrows in surprise, his gaze betraying a mix of confusion and disbelief.
Until now, Killian had expelled all the isolation tower maids deliberately.
Those who got ‘seduced’ were accused of public indecency and forced to leave the country. For most commoners, being forced to leave their home was essentially a death sentence.
Some former isolation tower maids had even gone missing.
So if the Duke worried about their lives, that meant he couldn’t have acted differently.
“What about your secretary?”
At Bastian’s question, Kim recalled the events and sighed. After a pause, he continued with something different from what Bastian had expected.
“Do you remember the night after the Mirage Desert banquet?”
“I haven’t forgotten the start of my overtime… but that was so long ago,” Bastian said.
Kim shook his head slowly.
“Actually, that night, I felt like I had discovered an underground prison and a magic ore mine. I didn’t know how much I could squeeze from the guild using that as leverage. But the Duke made a different choice.”
“Reported it to the Magic Association for official punishment? The Duke didn’t gain or lose anything,” Bastian muttered, and Kim nodded in agreement.
“The only thing gained from that incident was a historic photograph published in the Minitz Daily.”
“It did come out well,” Bastian said.
“But the actual event wasn’t fully captured,” Kim replied.
“Others loved it. That issue sold more than any previous one,” Bastian noted.
“And you, as the steward, contributed greatly,” Kim added.
“The print quality varied slightly—some were blurry and atmospheric, some darker and realistic—”
“In any case,” Kim’s tangent found its way back to the point.
“Back then, it was the first time I thought it strange that the Duke passed up an obvious advantage for another choice.”
Bastian listened and nodded seriously.
“That’s true,” he agreed.
“At that time, it didn’t seem like a big deal, but today, a similar situation happened again,” Kim continued.
Bastian raised his eyebrows and blinked as Kim added,
“The Fosbidge scandal! He could have avoided trouble but instead threw bombs everywhere, making a week-long gossip last a month.”
“Ah, that’s not so—”
“It is. He hates people gossiping, doesn’t he?”
Noble men, especially those good-looking ones, usually had some romantic rumors before marriage. But Killian was different.
“…That’s true. He’s meticulous about management.”
For previous isolation tower maids, that had been extremely unfair. They were recorded and remembered as insane stalkers.
“Yes. He’s done everything to stay as far from scandals as possible.”
Any topic related to Killian Drosch inevitably led to magical consequences.
Kim and Bastian quietly sipped their tea, sharing a fleeting sympathy for their master.
Then Kim suddenly spoke up, his tone sharp.
“Do you see the problem? If the Duke and Miss Liana actually got involved, the Duke would become the biggest liar in history.”
“Even so, surely they wouldn’t really—”
