Chapter 2

After a brief silence, Charlotte stood up first. She smiled awkwardly and extended her right hand, meaning to shake hands and go her own way.

“Anyway, nice to meet you, Chris.”  

Chris silently grasped Charlotte’s right hand. His rough palm, deeply callused, bore clear traces of a harsh past. Soon, her soft hand slipped from his rugged fingertips.

After the light handshake, he opened and closed his hand in the air, then dipped it into the remaining potato soup.

“……?”  

Charlotte’s round eyes grew so wide they seemed about to fall out at his unexpected action. She took a deep breath and quickly left the dining car with quick steps.

‘Why is he putting his hand in the soup? He really must be sick.’

She hoped never to run into him again, but starting the next morning, she kept seeing him. He was already tall and big, standing out even in a crowd, but now he lingered nearby, staring at her, making her feel extremely uncomfortable.

From the dim morning until the sun hung overhead, their eyes met four or five times. She wished he’d just come up and talk, but instead, he stayed about ten steps away, staring, making it impossible to ignore.

Charlotte, who had been enjoying the breeze on deck, returned to her cabin, burned by his gaze hotter than the sun.

“Why is he doing this? Could he have fallen for me?”  

She shook her head at the ridiculous thought. She believed she had decent looks, inherited from her mother, but still fell far short of her mother’s memory, so she felt she wasn’t vain enough to be arrogant.

“Mother……. Father…….”  

Thinking of her parents suddenly made Charlotte feel sharply depressed. Through the round cabin window, her parents’ hazy faces appeared.

Ten years ago, they had become cold corpses from the bombing of Dalteum.

Slap—!  

She lightly slapped her cheeks with both hands, as if she had no time to wallow in sentiment. Dwelling on sorrowful memories was no help in living.

In a world full of children who lost parents and parents who lost children, it was an unwritten rule to bury one’s personal grief in their own heart.

Besides, Charlotte was better off than other orphans. Her father was a lawyer, and her mother came from a prestigious family, so the inheritance left behind was quite substantial.

Thanks to that, Charlotte grew up cheerful, based on the abundant love she received in childhood and her comfortable finances.

She attended the best girls’ school in the Western Empire, living as a naive and bright student, intoxicated by the fanciful dreams of girls her age.

That was, until she became entangled with the great noble, the Roimond Earldom.

“Charlotte! The Roimond family sent you a letter—do you have any connection with them?”  

“Roimond?”  

“Yes. Earl Roimond is looking for you.”

The letter from Roimond stated that Earl Edmund Roimond’s son, Richard Roimond, had died, and they were searching for a new heir. The Earl’s only son and successor to the Roimond family had perished in the war.

The Empire awarded a first-class medal to the successor of Roimond, who had fought bravely against the Dalteum allied forces, but it could not offer even the slightest comfort to Earl Roimond, who had lost his son.

Three years ago, the Countess had also left the Earl’s side due to illness, and his only sister had long since died, so it was no different from his having lost all his family and being left alone.

Except for his sister’s daughter, Charlotte.

It was right after finishing his son’s funeral that the Earl learned of Charlotte’s existence.

While searching for Roimond’s new heir, he discovered that his sister’s daughter was alive, and he was overjoyed enough to leap for joy.

“Katrina had a daughter? Dear God, thank You!”

If not for Charlotte, he might have ended up naming some nobody, with hardly any Roimond blood mixed in, as his successor.

To think that the daughter of the sister with whom he had once been close, before they severed ties because of her marriage to a lowborn man, was still alive.

Edmund Roimond learned that a blood relative connected to him by blood still remained in the world, and found the hope to keep living.

That very day, the Earl summoned Charlotte to Roimond.

He had never even dreamed that his own niece had been living such a stifling life, receiving undignified education at a girls’ school.

But even after receiving the letter sent by the Earl and the registration papers stating that he would take his niece in as his adopted daughter, Charlotte was not especially delighted.

Rather, it was the headmistress of the academy who was delighted.

Because a donation amounting to one year’s budget from Roimond had arrived.

“Mary, it’s clearly a good thing, so why am I not happy? Is it because I’m still stunned? Because it doesn’t feel real?”

“Don’t say things like that anywhere else. You’re gaining a dependable father and becoming a member of the great noble house of Roimond, so of course it’s a good thing. Complaints from someone with a full belly aren’t welcomed anywhere.”

“You’re right. But my mother disliked the life of the nobility. She didn’t want to enter a political marriage with a man she didn’t love, so she cut ties with the family and ran away.”

“Honestly, your mother was the unusual one. Even most of the girls attending the academy shout about abolishing class distinctions in public, but behind the scenes, they’d be dying to marry some noble lord.”

“Is that so……. I really don’t care, though. Just as father loved my mother, as long as he sincerely loves me, status doesn’t matter.”

Charlotte rolled her eyes as she recalled the vulgar novel that had swept through the academy recently.

Mary, reading that innocent little mind of hers, clicked her tongue and stopped her.

“There you go again, saying things that show you know nothing about the world. What happened to the female lead in that novel? So what if she enjoyed a passionate fling with a retired soldier. In the end, she was abandoned. That distinguished officer went and married a young lady from a noble family.”

“No, she was not abandoned. The male lead had his reasons….”

“Either way, the heroine never learned those reasons until the very end. So she believed she had been abandoned, and lived her whole life wounded before dying.”

Charlotte’s delicate lips pressed tightly shut.

Mary’s words were blunt, but they were true, so from that day onward, she resolved to gladly accept the unexpected gift of rising in status.

Of course, unlike her resolve, her heart still churned with a confusion she could not put into words.

Grrrrk-.

After blankly passing time while gazing at the sea, she grew hungry.

Unfortunately, there was nothing in the cabin except a little cheese and some dry bread, so if she wanted a proper meal, she had to go out to the dining room.

“What should I do? If I go out, I feel like I’ll run into him again.”

Charlotte hesitated for a moment, but in the end, hunger overcame her and she opened the door.

Her naturally optimistic nature had encouraged such a careless action.

“His name was Chris, right? If I run into him again this time, I’ll just ask outright. Whether he’s following me.”

But a resolve was only a resolve.

When her eyes met his at the entrance to the dining room, Charlotte could not say a single word.

She hastily turned her head away and received his fierce gaze on her left cheek.

Her cheek, seared by that blatant stare, burned hot as if it had been singed.

Somehow, it even felt as though the air on the passenger ship heading north was growing hotter and hotter.

‘What is this, we really ran into each other again.’

Even if they were on the same passenger ship, was it possible to cross paths this often?

At this point, she almost wondered if she was the one going around looking for him.

Charlotte gave up her dream of ordering a steak and enjoying an elegant mealtime, and instead hugged a cold sandwich wrapped in paper to her chest.

‘Even a mediocre steak would have been fine, I was trying to have a decent meal for the first time in a while……’

She walked down the deck corridor with her head lowered deeply, trying not to make eye contact with anyone, when a boy who looked about ten years old ran straight into her from the opposite side.

Thud!

Before she could even say to be careful, Charlotte and the boy collided.