VWTI 13

Chapter 13

“……Do you by any chance want the Martyr Duke family for the imperial court? Is that why?”

“Wow, that was the most chilling answer among all the rejection lines I’ve heard in my life.”

He shook his head slightly, as if to say the steam had gone out of it, so I wondered if he was giving up on a joke that wasn’t even working in the first place.

“Until just a moment ago, we were on such terms that we did even more intense things. Is this difficult?”

“It’s not that it’s difficult, it’s just……, well, this is something you do with people you’re close to.”

This…… that is, this ‘excessively affectionate, frivolous, and burdensome physical contact’ that Yulan demanded, was different from the intense things they had done together.

Logically, he was clearly right.

Even though it was no big deal at all, I felt strangely repulsed.

It was an instinctive feeling, like I shouldn’t cross any further lines here.

Yulan, who had been quietly watching the hesitating Evgenia, let out a small, stifled laugh.

Then he braced himself against the side of the chair she was sitting in and closed the distance in an instant.

His cold skin touched the cheek of Evgenia, who had stopped breathing for a moment.

Lightly pressing his cheek against hers and pulling her waist into an embrace, he bit her earlobe, now extremely close, without hurting her.

“……Eugh.”

Her body automatically shrank back at the breath touching the nape of her neck.

Because the distance was excessively close, she was acutely aware of his every action, every single sound.

Thump, thump, thump.

Just as the sound of her heart was growing louder and louder, to the point she thought he might hear it, Yulan’s low voice came through her ear.

“It’s not black, for sure.”

“……Do you really have to say it like this?”

It felt like her eardrums were getting all damp.

This situation, where she was conscious of him down to each tiny strand of downy hair, was so awkward.

When she pushed against his shoulder with force, his retreating without any resistance was annoyingly irritating instead.

She shot him a sharp glance, and he gave a slight smile and said,

“It’s my principle to be sure about requests. What if my voice got lost in the wind and you couldn’t hear it?”

“……Your excuses are truly something else, absolutely.”

“I make a living off that.”

It still felt like his breath remained, so she fidgeted with her ear for no reason.

Then, suddenly, she felt his gaze and quickly lowered her hand.

If she cleared her throat, even that would seem like she was conscious of him, so she changed the subject appropriately.

“Today……, thank you.”

“Now this is unexpected.”

“It’s sincere, so don’t twist it. If there’s anything you want as compensation, just say it.”

It was a statement filled with gratitude, in its own way, but somehow Yulan’s expression was strange.

It was an expression as if he’d heard something he shouldn’t have.

Yulan, standing slightly askew with his arms crossed, looked down at her and asked.

“Lady, you know that sounds really weird, right?”

“Huh? What?”

Evgenia made a request, and Yulan carried it out perfectly.

Then, isn’t it only natural to pay the compensation for the request?

What on earth is the problem…….

“You seem to have gotten so excited your memory flew away a bit. Even though we called it a request, in the end, what we did was just mingling bodies.”

“…….”

“And now, the lady just told me, the one who offered my body, that she’ll give me anything as compensation. Still don’t get it?”

Only then did Evgenia realize the problem with her words, and her face flushed bright red.

“That… that wasn’t my intention. I mean, so…….”

“I know. You probably just meant you’ll compensate since the request is finished. But given the nature of the request, it can’t help but sound like that, can’t it?”

While she was used to hurting someone with intention — mostly in situations involving Stella — this was the first time she had unintentionally disparaged someone like this.

Unable to hide her fluster, Evgenia stumbled over her words unbecomingly.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. Really. I was taught that contracts involving give-and-take like this should be clearly settled.”

If their relationship essentially ends like this, doesn’t that make Evgenia the person who took Yulan’s first experience while only fulfilling her own satisfaction?

He, who had been quietly watching Evgenia stammering out excuses, tilted his head slightly.

“Lady, right now, it seems like you think this request was a transaction where you didn’t suffer any loss at all.”

“Isn’t…… that right? The name was erased and……”

“Looks like you’ve forgotten everything I said before. We don’t know what side effects there might be, or when and how they’ll come.”

Yulan reached out and grasped the nape of her neck.

It was a completely effortless hold, but the sensation of having her neck gripped by a large hand made her body tense up on its own.

Looking quietly at her, who had stopped breathing, he spoke.

“Like this, in a truly sudden moment, your breath could stop.”

“…….”

“On the other hand, I have no risk to my life, nothing that will hurt. That’s my ability. And thanks to you, Lady, I even gained new experimental data.”

‘Ah, now that you mention it, that’s right.’

Since she had long thought that matters of life and death were out of her hands, hearing this talk only made it feel novel.

But having her situation explained so objectively like this made her truly feel that she must seem like a rather strange person.

While she was pondering how to explain herself so as not to seem weird, a white finger touched her chin.

Gently lifting her chin to make eye contact, Yulan asked.

“Lady. Do you still think this is a transaction with no loss for you at all?”

Calm green eyes glinted darkly.

As if they had absorbed all the darkness of the night sky, just like that.

Unable to say anything in response, she just firmly pressed her lips together, and he was the first to react.

“Alright, I understand clearly now.”

“…….”

“The lady is either thoughtless, or foolish. One of the two.”

If it had been a tone of voice as if he was angry, frustrated by her attitude, she might have just accepted it, even if she didn’t quite understand.

But his voice, devoid of even a speck of emotion and utterly dry, sounded as if he was disappointed in her, which made her chest sting for no reason.

‘Ha. He’s someone I’ll never see again anyway. Whether he’s disappointed or not is none of my business. What gives him the right to be disappointed in me in the first place? Ridiculous.’

Even as she grumbled internally to the fullest, Evgenia subtly hid her hands behind her back.

If she left them be, she felt she might unconsciously grab him and start making all sorts of excuses.

“……I’ll be going.”

“Please go inside, Lady.”

“Anyway, to the very end……”

Thud. As soon as the carriage door closed, all the strength drained from her body.

It felt as if all the fatigue accumulated overnight rushed in at once.

Leaning back against the plush carriage cushion, she let out a deep sigh.

“For us to have that kind of talk after barely seeing each other a few times means what we did was truly insane, this.”

Of course, Evgenia knew that what she had done didn’t exactly look sane.

She knew it all too well, but precisely because of that, in this situation…

That is……, she wanted to escape from the reality of not being able to break free from Raymond.

Regardless of the fact that Raymond wasn’t objectively a good person, being caught between that couple and pointlessly suffering day by day was excessively stressful.

Just listening from the sidelines to the process of a friend’s couple breaking up, getting back together, breaking up, and getting back together is exhausting enough. Imagine being the foreign object stuck in the middle of that.

And not by my own choice, but by force!

‘Especially if you know the end is a miserable death in the future, you definitely couldn’t blame me…….’

But she couldn’t possibly spew this insane talk in front of Yulan.

It wouldn’t be strange if he sent a letter to her father saying the young lady had gone mad, believing hallucinations to be reality and acting wildly.

“Sigh……”

The sighs just kept flowing out without rest.

Evgenia, who had been silent for a while holding her throbbing forehead, lightly slapped her own cheeks.

“Whatever a complete stranger says, it’s something I decided. Let’s not regret it, let’s not look back.”

Regardless of the fact that Yulan seemed like a decent person, he was a stranger with no connection to Evgenia.

Meaning, whatever evaluation he makes of Evgenia’s decision is none of her concern.

She was too busy rejoicing over the reality of the name disappearing to waste time chewing over a stranger’s words.

Once she finished sorting out her feelings like that, the view before her brightened.

“We have arrived, Miss. The Martyr Duke’s residence.”

“Ah, yes.”

The splendid mansion, brightly lit even in the dim dawn.

To Evgenia, it was an endlessly familiar and reassuring place.

Though it might change again depending on her father’s reaction tomorrow when he hears her story.

‘I think Father will like it too. He always looked at Raymond with disapproving eyes.’

Every time she went to see — to stalk — Raymond, her father would relentlessly throw in a word or two.

‘Evgenia, does it really have to be that guy?’

‘There’s the son of my friend’s son’s father, you know, he’s quite a decent fellow. How about meeting him at least once? Not like that good-for-nothing, but a very steadfast…….’

There were dozens of such times, with introductions serving as a pretext for his loathing of Raymond.

Even now, it seemed like he wasn’t opposed to the annulment itself, it was just the name issue.

So, if I tell him that I woke up and the name was gone, surely Father will also annul the engagement……

“Absolutely not. The wedding will proceed as planned. The name…… since we’ve never revealed it anyway, you can just keep it covered up from now on.”

Uh, uh?

This isn’t right?