Chapter 10

Of all things, to go to the restroom, it was a situation where she had to pass behind Kyle. Since they happened to be sharing a conversation about Hazel herself, she had briefly fallen into deep thought, wondering if she should make an excuse that they weren’t in that kind of relationship. While doing so, she had even committed the rudeness of barely acknowledging the Criscentian reporter who was warmly greeting her.

But from the start, it was a distance that required no worrying.

Hazel raised her head from looking down at the washbasin. Her bright face was reflected in the mirror splashed all over with water, as if someone had washed up rather vigorously.

“……”

To be called pretty was certainly praise. She tried to take comfort in that, but her sensitive nature kept pulling out the sharp truth hidden in the context.

It felt as though her wounded heart was throbbing. Hazel pressed firmly over her chest.

‘Only pretty……’

Hazel was not a fool. She knew what Kyle had meant.

For Hazel to become a special woman to Kyle, her circumstances were nowhere near enough.

But her pride was still alive. Once the fluster faded, spite suddenly surged up.

She looked in the mirror and pulled the most spiteful expression she could.

“And what makes you so great?”

A little tall, a little handsome, a lot of money, good at business, popular……

D*mn it. 

Hazel admitted it readily.

“You are impressive. Yes, you are. Right, that’s why I liked you.”

Even now I still do, Hazel swallowed even that much back inside.

“……That’s too much.”

She had never expected her first love would work out. But at the very least, she had hoped they might remain as friends who cheered each other on.

Though she hated to admit it, Hazel’s wish had probably also contained the small measure of vanity girls that age usually had. To be able to say, I’m close with that impressive person, I see him sometimes, he’s a good person.

But whatever vanity Hazel possessed was not even a quarter of half the average. So the feelings she held for Kyle were surely not something that could simply be dismissed as bragging rights.

“That’s what makes it worse. Someone like me, what was I even……”

No. Hazel changed her mind. At the very least, Kyle had told her she was pretty. That meant he acknowledged her looks. Even if beauty alone could not lead to friendship, much less anything more.

So all she had to do was use her looks as a foundation and meet a better man. Not some ill-mannered brute who was merely tall, handsome, and rich, but someone whose character was at least properly decent.

That would solve it. A timid splash of water was flung over the mirror above the washbasin.

* * *

A brown-haired young man walked down the carpeted corridor, twirling a key round and round. Humming softly under his breath, he inserted the key and was not surprised even though someone was in the room.

[She was interesting, that woman.]

“Must you speak Criscent even in front of your mother?”

“Ah, sorry. It’s become a habit. And as for you, Mother, I see your habit of entering my room without a word is still going strong.”

‘Eugene Fawkes’—or rather ‘Yuan Strauss’—flung the key he had brought onto the bed with a flick.

Even at her son’s rather impudent behavior, the noblewoman seated on the sofa did not bat an eye.

“Yuan, stop wandering around and take your place. We can only excuse it by saying you are ill and recuperating in the countryside so many times. I cannot live forever, so secure your position before it is too late.”

“Ah, that again. I’m only eighteen.”

“Kyle nearly inherited the hotel at that age.”

The woman answering in a flat tone had brown hair much like her son’s. The woman, Eliya Strauss, picked up her handbag and rose gracefully. Her skirt, free of even the slightest crease, showed just how harshly trained her every movement had been.

Clicking her way past the table, she turned halfway back toward her son with smooth precision. Yuan, who had been undoing his wristwatch, frowned when his eyes met Eliya’s.

“Would you mind leaving now so I can change?”

“I forgot there was one more thing I wanted to ask about what you said earlier. That woman—who were you talking about?”

“The country girl that brother was going to marry.”

“Ah, that girl……”

Eliya searched her memory. She thought her husband had said something like that once. Laughing heartily, he had said that a girl’s name had started appearing in his son’s letters, and that the boy had grown up.

What a foolish man he had been. Talking so casually about the child he had with another woman. After that brief look back, Eliya asked her son again,

“Where did you see her?”

“A few days ago, in front of the hotel. It was a coincidence. And yesterday there was a party here, wasn’t there? That was the second time. Ah, if I see her one more time, will it become fate?”

“Don’t say dreadful things. With some country bumpkin of unknown background…… It upsets me enough that you keep roaming around. I hope that within this year I will be able to put you before the public, Yuan Strauss.”

“You’re still healthy. And you like work too. Ah, though maybe you could like it a little less. People have a lot of complaints here and there.”

Yuan sneered. Eliya stared at her son for a moment, then left the room.

* * *

On the crescent-shaped curve of white sand, the emerald sea rippled softly. The low rock walls surrounding the beach would naturally distinguish the hotel’s guests from outsiders.

The sand, weathered smooth over a long time, slipped in soft streams through his fingers. Even the tiny horn snails left on his palm were pretty in their varied colors. It was a natural environment so blessed that one could not even find ugly mussels, tough shells, or fishy-smelling seaweed.

As Kyle dusted off his hands, Viscount Dietrich approached him.

“The moment word spread that a hotel would be built on this land, the prices of the nearby plots started rising with it. The faces of the locals have brightened.”

“That is fortunate.”

The thirty-thousand pyeong of the Westburn area including this beach had belonged to Earl Nett until ten days ago. Earl Nett, who had no talent for business at all, had not known the value of the land he possessed and had idly used it only for family vacations.

Lighting his pipe, the Viscount stared at the horizon. Emerald sea, blue sky—even to Viscount Dietrich, who had visited every famous tourist attraction worth mentioning, this land was considerably beautiful.

“The customers will love it. I can already picture them enjoying sea bathing.”

“It will give a different impression from Bukata’s ‘El Cortida.’ We will have to leave an appropriate gap between the opening dates of the two hotels. We must be able to draw the customers who come to trust us in Bukata to spend their holidays in Westburn. If we secure that customer base, then bringing Strauss down will not be impossible.”

“Why not say ‘Eliya Strauss’? Do you know how uncomfortable people become every time you say that?”

“I will correct it.”

He said it well enough, but the lesser Strauss would surely say again next time that he would bring Strauss down. Viscount Dietrich did not add anything further.

“This hotel must become a place people boast of having visited. It must satisfy them enough that they recommend it to acquaintances. There is only meaning in creating a place people return to not once, but twice, three times.”

The Viscount looked gravely at the young man.

“Your plan is perfect. Except for one thing.”

Kyle knew what he meant. Calmly, he recited the fatal flaw in the plan.

“You mean the transportation.”

There was no train to Westburn. Its poor transportation had greatly contributed to why, despite its beauty, it was not well known to the world. If he had not had the eye of a real-estate developer, Kyle too would not have paid attention to the land.

While trusting Kyle’s discernment, Viscount Dietrich was worried at the same time.

‘If only Marquis Fitzroy had taken an interest in Westburn. That old man is impossible to read.’

If the bourgeoisie had Peter Strauss, then the nobility had Charles Fitzroy.

Charles Fitzroy was the spiritual pillar of the noble class. At the same time, he was the man who, after the first railway was laid in Holdland, introduced private railways throughout the Empire, and by an old-fashioned nickname was also called the ‘Railway King.’

With a single word from Marquis Fitzroy, a railway might be built to Westburn. But after his daughter and son-in-law died in an accident some years ago, he had stopped attending most social functions.

Unfortunately, the Marquis, noble to the bone, was not especially friendly toward Kyle, who was a nouveau riche among the nouveau riche.

Watching the young man’s expression, Viscount Dietrich hesitated, then began carefully.

“It is time for you to think seriously about marriage as well. To tell the truth, I was rather worried. I heard you brought some young lady into your home.”

“So even rumors have reached your ears, Viscount. I suppose I should have a word with the secretarial office.”