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chapter 05
[It’s not that you have to marry right away, Minuette. Why don’t you start with an engagement and take your time thinking about it afterward?]
The Countess of Levine, worried that Minuette might faint, gently tried to soothe her.
[Is it that you feel burdened by the thought of joining the Imperial Family?]
She understood well enough that the Countess was trying to appeal to her with reason.
It’s not the Imperial Family that’s the problem.
Minuette sighed softly as she popped a lemon-scented candy from the table into her mouth. Sitting beside her were two neatly wrapped porcelain vases, standing in for Lilianne who was still at the dressmaker’s, busily sweeping up gowns.
They were blue porcelain vases from an upscale shop—perfect, she thought, to place on the bedside table.
What a terrible occupational habit.
While locked away in her room, the thing that had tormented Minuette most was not Lena’s endless questions trying to dig out her memories, nor the daily etiquette lessons she was forced to endure.
It was that the color of the bedding and the nightstand clashed. That mismatch wore her down more than anything else.
‘Is it just that rich households’ tastes don’t match mine?’
Of course, in such a grand count’s estate, you’d expect everything to be perfectly coordinated.
Minuette forced herself to blame her own dulled instincts—after all, she hadn’t worked since coming here—rather than the Levine household for the dissonance of the nightstand and curtains. Still, in the end, she couldn’t resist and bought something to cover up the mismatched color.
“I bought the porcelain to cover the color of the nightstand… Maybe I should have just asked for new bedding instead.”
She had agonized between blankets and porcelain at the shop, but in the end, she walked out with porcelain in her arms.
She wanted both, but…
Even though she now inhabited Minuette’s body, she felt oddly guilty about squandering the girl’s wealth too freely.
“No… even this porcelain was a bit too much.”
She had simply lost her head at the sight of something pretty and carried it away, but she had no money on her. In fact, she hadn’t even seen what money in this world looked like yet.
Coins? Banknotes? Or perhaps you traded in sacks of rice?
[My lady, the household servants will come by to settle the cost, so please don’t worry.]
The shopkeeper, noticing Minuette hesitating with the porcelain in hand, realized she must be the young lady who had only just recovered from a long illness.
That such a delicate girl had been bedridden so long…
His sympathy wrestled briefly with his merchant’s instinct—that a house like the Levines should easily pay for ten of such porcelain. But in the end, he let it go and saw the beautiful young lady off with a smile.
“Still, they really are lovely pieces.”
Unconsciously, Minuette set the vases on the table and turned them this way and that.
Just then, two men walked into the café.
When she caught sight of one of them through the porcelain she was spinning around, Minuette was so startled she almost dropped it.
Even more than when she had first laid eyes on the vase she thought she’d die if she didn’t buy, she felt absolute certainty.
That man.
The man I want to fall in love with.
Not some candy-sucking boy.
A real man.
“Could you put that newspaper away?”
Onyx’s brow furrowed irritably as he saw Aegon stride into the café still holding the troublesome paper.
“Your Highness, Crown Prince—can’t you see that poor boy working so hard to sell those papers? You’ll be leading the great Empire of Visk someday. How can you be so indifferent to the lives of the people?”
Onyx raked a hand through his hair, unimpressed by Aegon’s mock-formal tone. His look clearly said: Go on, keep running your mouth.
“I’m not buying this newspaper for fun, you know.”
This, from the man who never gave such rags—filled with nothing but noble scandals—a second glance.
He looked… entertained. Very entertained.
“Lately I’ve barely slept, chasing after you day and night. Life’s been rough, but I guess boredom isn’t in the cards after all.”
Grinning, Aegon spread the paper open and exaggeratedly nodded as he read line by line.
“Of course, of course. Even if it was just a political engagement, it must sting that Your Highness failed to receive a favorable response from your fiancée. I can understand completely how hurt you must be.”
“…Huh?”
Onyx gave him a look of pure disbelief at his ridiculous head-bobbing.
“Tsk, tsk. And the count’s delicate daughter, frail as she is, personally carried your portrait out of the house? Outside? By herself?”
“Enough.”
Onyx grabbed him by the collar in exasperation.
“Oh? Should I add to the gossip that the Crown Prince throttled a member of Parliament in broad daylight, in the middle of the city?”
“Seeing as you’re probably the only one here who knows the Crown Prince’s face, I could just get rid of you and be done with it.”
Onyx’s eyes glittered with playful menace as he kept his hold on Aegon’s collar.
“But really—can a rejected proposal be such a scandal that the whole Empire is chattering about it? Even if it concerns the Crown Prince? She’s still the daughter of a count. This is going too far.”
Slipping free, Aegon clapped him on the shoulder.
“That’s thanks to the ‘Blue Cicada.’”
“The Blue Cicada? Why bring up that name?”
“That gossip-monger has been gnawing away at you relentlessly. The other papers are just piling on.”
The “Blue Cicada” had appeared in society a few years ago like a comet.
Writing insider tales even the most talkative busybodies couldn’t dig up, this mysterious contributor became instantly popular among noble ladies.
Buoyed by fame, the “Blue Cicada” launched a newspaper, The Cicada, and began bleeding the aristocracy dry.
Though derided as base trash, noblewomen could not resist—relieved when their own names were absent, gleeful when others’ scandals surfaced, gossiping for days on end.
So prized was information that befriending journalists to get scoops early was considered a social skill.
And in this environment, the Blue Cicada reigned as a star of the shadows, constantly dropping exclusive, secret bombshells. Despite servants’ desperate efforts to unmask the writer for their masters, the Cicada’s identity remained hidden—and their stock only soared higher.
Rumors abounded: a royal attendant with access to state secrets, a globe-trotting merchant… but no one knew.
“And now this woman is the Cicada’s latest prey?”
If he married her, it would all be dismissed as petty scandal.
If he didn’t, she was irrelevant.
That was the extent of her importance to Onyx.
Normally he would have cared nothing for what was printed about her—but because it was the vicious Blue Cicada, he felt a twinge of pity.
“The Cicada bears no grudge. They’re just fulfilling the nobles’ ‘right to know.’”
Sensing Onyx’s displeasure, Aegon folded up the newspaper and signaled the waiter.
Tidying his clothes, he shed the jester’s mask and resumed the air of Aegon Berkshire, heir to the Berkshire viscounty and a member of Parliament.
Putting gossip aside, the two spoke not as childhood friends but as Crown Prince and legislator—of the Empire’s finances, of global changes. As always, their talk wound toward the magic-stone industrial revolution they both labored so hard to bring about.
“If the Cicada’s influence is that great, they could at least write about how hard His Highness is working on the industrial revolution.”
“I have no need of articles.”
Onyx’s flat reply made Aegon sigh in frustration.
“Do you know how important public sentiment is? If the papers spread your name, the Assembly would be more inclined to back you.”
“I can win over Parliament without newspapers. If only those sly bankers would be a little less shrewd.”
“Even those sly old bankers can’t ignore the people’s will.”
As their heavy talk wound down, Onyx picked up the scattered papers with a bored expression.
“Cecilia’s not here today.”
Normally, Cecilia had a knack for appearing like a shadow whenever he left the palace.
“You know very well why.”
“Miss Blenched is upset about my marriage, is she?”
“Of course. You could at least have mentioned it to her.”
“Mention it? Was I obligated?”
Onyx took a sip of the tea the waiter had set down, indifferent.
“A royal marriage isn’t some game. I don’t have to clap along to her expectations.”
“Cecilia is Federico’s sister.”
“Yes. Cecilia Blenched, sister to Federico Blenched. That’s why I’ve tolerated her this long.”
“Then why not go further? Marriage is just a duty for the Crown Prince, isn’t it? Why not give that place to her?”
Onyx set his half-empty cup down with a look of disbelief.
Cecilia. Cecilia. Cecilia.
It was undeniable that marriage was a duty for him. But he could not agree with Aegon’s insistence that if it were Cecilia, then she was the obvious choice.
“If marriage is duty, then I should marry the woman most advantageous to me. What good is a family like the Blencheds, known only within Visk?”
“Still, it wouldn’t hurt to show her a little kindness.”
“I think your attention is more than enough for her.”
At Onyx’s cold remark, Aegon exhaled a low sigh disguised as a chuckle and fell silent.
“My lord, forgive me…”
Just as Onyx and Aegon rose to head to their next meeting at the Analphie Bank, the waiter approached nervously.
“M-my lords, that young lady over there… she sent this tea to your table. May I set it down here?”
He kept glancing behind him, stammering as if embarrassed to say the words aloud. If Onyx refused, he looked about ready to burst into tears.
If he was this terrified just thinking Onyx was a high noble, Aegon mused, he’d have wet himself instantly had he known the man was actually the Crown Prince. He quickly accepted the tea from the waiter.
Who on earth would dare send tea to the Crown Prince?
As Onyx turned his head toward the source of the waiter’s glances, he saw a woman smiling brightly at him—even in this perilous situation where the act could be mistaken for an attempt at poisoning the heir to the throne.
“…What is this?”
Aegon, recognizing her first, tapped the illustration printed in the newspaper lying on the table.
Whoever the artist was, the likeness was so perfect even a professor of the Royal Academy of Art would cry.
The only flaw: the drawing failed to capture the true beauty of the woman before them.
