38

Klen had been testing her.

He spoke as though cutting his hand were something quite serious.

He expected some kind of reaction, even if not concern for the wound itself. Something like telling him not to make a fuss.

“Yes.”

But again, Lavian simply answered and made no move to check his hand.

The response wasn’t like her, and Klen felt a faint flicker of something awkward. Still, he watched her closely and spoke.

“Wait and we’ll go in together.”

“I’ll only be in the way.”

“Are you planning to run laps around the office?”

“No. Of course not.”

Lavian shook her head.

“Then it’s fine.”

“Is it really all right to just pull me in like this while you’re working?”

“My call. Who’s going to say anything.”

“You do whatever you want.”

Lavian answered with a small pout before she even realized she had.

“What can I do. That’s just how I am. You can’t survive in this world without doing things your own way.”

Klen responded to the small, sulky voice without much thought. Inside, though, he was thinking, she seems strangely out of sorts today. He took her hand and headed back to the office.

He didn’t forget to take the basket from her either. He lifted it from her hand naturally, and Lavian gave it up without protest. As though it were the most natural thing in the world.

“By the way, did you go to your family home? That’s your father’s cologne.”

“Ah…… well.”

“Looks like you did.”

“I’m sorry. I should have asked permission before going out, but my sister came and I just. It won’t happen again. I’m sorry.”

Lavian had planned to come clean herself, but hadn’t expected to be caught this way. Her mother had never made mistakes like this no matter what came up, and it stung to know she had. She didn’t want him to see her failings, and yet she kept failing to hide them. The feelings she had pressed down and buried and smothered were leaking out, crack by crack, like a hairline fracture in a glass.

She felt like a child caught doing something wrong and rambled on with excuses. She was flustered in a way that wasn’t like her at all.

“Lavian.”

“Yes.”

“Since when is my house a boarding school?”

“……”

“Or a prison, for that matter?”

For Lavian, home had always been exactly those things.

No different from a boarding school, not unlike a prison. Without her father’s or mother’s permission, she couldn’t step a single foot past the front gate, and the surveillance was constant.

She couldn’t find an answer right away, and after a long pause, she spoke slowly.

“No.”

“Then did I tie your ankles to the house?”

Klen stopped walking and looked down at her, letting a faint trace of displeasure show.

She asked his permission every time she went out, and he had wondered why she bothered with something so tedious. But he hadn’t minded it. It felt like complete ownership.

So he had let her keep doing it, but seeing this today, it seemed to come from something deeply, fundamentally wrong.

Strange. This puts me in a bad mood.

Klen set the basket down carelessly beside him, shoved one hand into his pocket, and used the other to tilt Lavian’s chin up. Her trembling eyes and the anxious, doll-like blankness of her face were not to his liking.

He felt something like satisfaction when her usually numb, dry expression shifted, even faintly, because of him. But today, for some reason, it only made him feel worse.

“Dear……”

Lavian moved her red lips without pulling away from his hand, as she always did. But she didn’t know what to say next and let it go.

She had braced herself for his anger. She had assumed that was coming.

But she hadn’t anticipated this kind of response, and she had no idea how to handle it.

In front of people, it’s because he has to perform. But why now. Or am I the strange one.

He had been cruel enough to her just last night.

And yet, in these unexpected moments, Klen made her feel the way she did when they were standing in front of others. The way it felt when he had said that protecting her was his duty and responsibility. The way it felt when he had said it was the right thing to do.

“I never tied your feet down.”

“……”

Those words felt like being told she was allowed to open the door of her cage herself.

And alongside that, a quiet doubt crept in. Was this not how other people lived. Was she the one who was unusual, or was he. She couldn’t tell anymore.

“I never said I’d kill you if you left.”

Klen’s offhand words stirred something in Lavian’s quiet chest, and she couldn’t bring herself to ask the question she wanted to ask.

Her red lips couldn’t form the words, is this normal, and she gave only a short reply.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Klen ran his fingers along her smooth chin and started walking again.

Why did those flat, blunt words strike her so deeply.

Lavian’s cheeks felt warm and she couldn’t follow right away. She lingered, feeling ridiculous for it, which made her even less able to move.

She couldn’t believe herself. After everything she had heard last night, these ordinary words were the ones that got to her.

But there was something she should have understood in that moment. She had heard cruel words all her life, just at a slightly lower intensity, which was why she could brush off what he had said so quickly. Words like these, plain and ordinary, had only ever come to her through him. Of course they would stay with her longer.

“What are you doing back there?”

Klen reached back toward her and spoke bluntly.

“Coming. I’m sorry.”

Lavian took his hand gently and walked beside him toward the office.

A few steps later, they arrived, and Klen let her go in first. Quite the gentlemanly gesture.

“Oh? My lady?”

“You work so hard. Thank you, Amelia.”

“I failed to contact you last night. That was my oversight.”

“Not at all. I know how busy things are.”

“Even so, I didn’t fulfill my responsibilities. I’m sorry.”

Amelia bowed deeply, and Lavian had been about to shake her head when she simply said “Yes.” instead.

“Sit. It won’t take long.”

He settled her on the couch in the office and returned to his desk.

He went through the documents meant for the Emperor one final time and added his signature at the end.

“That one’s done. Send it to the palace, and next……”

Klen closed the file and handed it to Amelia, and she held out the next set for review. The whole sequence was so seamless that Lavian found herself watching, momentarily transfixed.

The crisp suit. The red hair pulled up neatly. The confident, unhesitating voice that answered every question without pause.

He’s impressive. They work well together. They might suit each other.

The thought came without warning, and Lavian felt a small, quiet shame.

She looked away from Amelia and turned toward the window. But even with her eyes elsewhere, the thoughts kept needling at her.

Her unfinished studies in particular kept drifting back, like something she hadn’t let herself grieve.

I’ll have to withdraw from the Academy for good.

When her marriage to Marquis Batl was confirmed, Count Elder had advised Lavian to withdraw. She still had coursework left, but she’d had no other choice.

Then the withdrawal application had been rejected at the professor’s discretion. On the professor’s recommendation, she had chosen a leave of absence instead, without her father knowing.

Next year would likely be her last chance to return.

I should have just withdrawn from the start.

Lavian kept her expression still while sighing inwardly, and gripped her hands together in her lap hard enough to hurt.

She hadn’t expected to be able to continue.

But now that she was actually facing the end of it, her chest ached.

Still, she was someone accustomed to resignation. The grief that had been gathering in her eyes drained away, leaving them empty and hollow, like someone who felt nothing at all.

As though she were erasing even her own presence.

“You’ll need to start thinking about a birthday gift for Her Highness the Princess.”

“A doll.”

“She won’t be satisfied with what’s already available.”

“I’ll sketch a few designs. Have them made. And arrange for her favorite opera singer.”

“Yes.”

“Anything else?”

“That’s everything for now.”

“Then go.”

Klen finished the most urgent matters and turned, calling her name.

“Lavian.”

But she was lost in thought and didn’t hear him, still staring out the window.

Klen looked at her, sitting there like a painting. Or a doll.

Like a decoration.

That was the brief, indifferent impression that passed through him.

He was about to get up when he reached for his sketchbook instead.

Soon the white pages were filling under his hand.

A doll took shape, quite like her, and beside it he noted the size, skin tone, eye color, fabric for the dress, all in careful order.

Ding-dong. Ding-dong.

Klen looked up from the sketchbook, satisfied with what he had. Lavian, who had been staring blankly out the window, also turned toward the source of the sound filling the office.

Klen slipped a sheet of paper between the sketched pages so Amelia could find them and placed his hand on the communication device.

“Are you there?”

“Yes. I believe so.”

The device rang loudly, then a bright flash of light appeared and a round screen materialized in the air.

On the slightly hazy screen, a girl appeared with softly waved golden hair and a red ribbon.

“Her Highness the Princess?”