🔊 TTS Settings
CHAPTER 08
Since it was indoors, Benedict seemed to feel warm, and in that short moment he took off his coat and threw it onto the sofa.
Whenever he visited somewhere, he had a habit of not leaving immediately. Even if he killed time with pointless conversation, he would usually stay for 15 to 20 minutes.
Maria secretly liked that habit of his. Just a little—it even felt warm. And “warm” was not a word that suited Benedict at all.
He was wearing a faint bluish shirt and neatly fastened suit trousers held firmly by a belt. Maria’s eyes drifted to his lean body, his broad shoulders, and the straight line of his back and waist.
It looked as if he dressed in a way that emphasized his entire physique. In truth, he liked shopping and was very interested in fashion. It was extremely harmful to women.
Standing at an angle in front of the bookshelf, he was casually finishing the remaining plums, and it looked delicious enough that Maria brought another one for herself.
Just as she was about to take a bite, Benedict snatched it away.
Maria widened her eyes and looked up. Benedict bit his lip, trying hard not to laugh.
She said indignantly,
“Why are you taking mine? Go get your own from over there.”
“Yours looked tastier. You’ve got a good eye for fruit.”
Amused by her offended expression, Benedict finally burst out laughing. He did not return the plum.
Having what she was about to eat taken away suddenly made her feel hungry.
It had always been like this since childhood. Whenever Maria didn’t eat something properly, Benedict would take it from her—and then her appetite would flare up. Perhaps it was because a rival had appeared.
He often acted as her competitor. Maria’s mother had once said they sometimes looked like real siblings. Looking back, it might have been because she disapproved of how attached her daughter was to him.
While Maria retrieved another plum and ate it, Benedict flipped through foreign legal codes and Geppel case law tucked between fairy-tale books. Then he pointed at the bookshelf.
“Do you read all of these?”
“I will. I’ve already read most of them.”
“Why do you like law so much?”
Maria answered as if taking revenge for the stolen plum:
“So I can punish trash like you.”
At her words, Benedict laughed again.
That genuinely amused laugh had a strange force to it. She didn’t want to look at his face, but she couldn’t help it.
She ended up staring at him blankly.
It really felt like somewhere in Bluegate, he had spun a spiderweb.
Seeing Maria hesitate again with the plum, Benedict motioned toward her.
“Eat.”
“Later.”
“What do you mean later? Eat it while I’m watching. You’re not going to finish it anyway.”
“I will.”
“You eat a lot when you eat, and nothing when you don’t.”
“……”
“You taking it to Alexander?”
He jingled the brooch between his fingers.
Maria sighed and started eating the plum.
Benedict actually waited until she finished it, then held out his hand for the pit.
Even that behavior was the same as before—him trying to take care of her.
Maria hesitated. Benedict looked as if he didn’t understand why she was uneasy.
She wondered if he had cared for her even when he held her in Room 3 and slept beside her while drugged. Of course, back then, she had been the one taking care of him.
He took the pit she handed over along with his own, opened the window, and threw them outside. Then he left the room with the brooch.
After he was gone, Maria collapsed onto the sofa, exhausted by the mixture of relief and fear.
Her body tingled from the tension that had built up in such a short time.
Sometimes he felt like the same person as before, and sometimes like a completely different one. She couldn’t tell which was real.
The election ended, unsurprisingly, with Kohas Chetty’s victory.
Until she returned to school, Maria spent the weekend in nervous anticipation.
She occasionally ran into Benedict. While Maria usually sat reading in one place, Benedict roamed Monte De Plano all day, dealing with constant incidents.
Without a doubt, Benedict Ivy had become Monte De Plano’s fixer.
It was the same on the day Maria left.
As she boarded a carriage to safely return to Saint Teresa Women’s University, she saw Benedict being held up by nearby residents.
“Mr. Ivy! It looks like it’s going to rain—do something about the embankment! What’s the point of draining only the upper hill? The lower town keeps flooding—we’re going crazy!”
“What am I supposed to do about the rain? This is getting worse and worse.”
“So you want us to die because we can’t pay tribute to the Chetti family? Huh? You want us to die?”
“Why is everyone yelling at me? Why don’t you say anything to the Chettis instead?”
“You’ll fix it anyway, so stop pretending.”
The residents coaxed and pushed him forward.
Everything was expected to be solved if it reached his hands. That perception had taken root, so more and more people sought out Benedict Ivy.
Even while cursing under his breath, Benedict walked toward the embankment, followed by residents who still had complaints.
Maria sometimes found it strange that people of Monte De Plano had forgotten the sharp, burning gaze of the fifteen-year-old boy who had first set foot there.
They knew how he hunted down gamblers who couldn’t pay their debts and what he did to them—but they didn’t care. To Bluegate residents, he was indispensable enough that even murder could be overlooked.
Surrounded by residents, Benedict walked past Maria’s carriage. Noticing her behind the curtain, he tossed something inside.
It landed on her lap.
A brooch.
Maria pulled the curtain open and leaned out.
Benedict, taller than everyone around him, was being dragged away by demanding residents.
Feeling her gaze, he briefly turned back. Then he mouthed, “Be careful.” After that, he turned away again and kept walking.
Maria watched his neatly styled black hair for a moment, then looked down at the brooch with a conflicted expression.
He really didn’t seem like someone asking for anything big.
She hid the brooch deep inside her bag and stitched it in more securely than before. Even then, she didn’t feel at ease.
“…This just makes me look like the suspicious one,” she muttered.
A strange man—so strange it could only be described as strange.
After traveling by carriage to the train station, then riding the train for over five hours, she arrived at the central station on the outskirts of Whitehill.
From there, she could either walk or take a tram. In Bluegate, walking meant risking your life, so she couldn’t go down the hill where Monte De Plano stood.
To her, Whitehill felt like a completely different world.
Recently, however, she mostly took the tram because there were always student protests at the square on First Avenue along the route to the university.
Today’s protest was clearly aimed at Kohas Chetty, who had once again been elected.
They accused him of violating the sanctity of the democratic vote and wielding power in Bluegate no different from a feudal lord.
As his daughter, Maria felt there was not a single false word in it.
Afraid of being recognized, she hid her face, but a group of students somehow boarded the tram and surrounded her, hurling insults.
Maria kept her mouth shut and pretended not to hear.
Fortunately, by the time the tram neared the university, the surroundings had quieted.
Just moments ago she had been anxious about the blue brooch, and now she was being insulted by protesters—but she did not feel wronged.
She had never forgotten the guilt that her father’s sins were woven into her life.
