Chapter 1.6

Her eyes always followed the Grand Duke.  

Because of this, she naturally came to know certain things about him.  

That he always drank a light wine as an aperitif.  

That he never ate carrots and always left them untouched.  

That he never initiated conversations but would unexpectedly answer questions quite earnestly.  

And that, every morning before breakfast, he practiced swordsmanship alone in the training grounds.  

“Well then, today’s plan is…”  

Today’s plan was simple.  

She would follow the Grand Duke to the training grounds and watch him practice swordsmanship.  

While doing so, she intended to casually apply the third rule from her book.  

[

3. The Rule of Compliments.  

There’s a saying that even whales can dance when praised. No one dislikes receiving compliments.  

Some may feel awkward or uncomfortable when complimented. However, remember that this is only on the surface; deep down, it’s not the case.  

Key point: When flaws start to look like strengths, that’s true love!

]  

If I showered the Grand Duke with compliments while he was swinging his sword, saying how amazing he looked…  

The Grand Duke would blush and say something like:  “Ugh, stop it. It’s embarrassing.”  

Hehehe. Perfect.  

It didn’t seem too difficult, but she knew better than to let her guard down.  

She had thought the previous attempts would be easy too, but they had all ended with her looking like someone with a stiff neck.  

‘Well, last time was too sudden. He wasn’t prepared for it.’  

This time, she was confident she could pull it off.  

The corridor connecting the west and east wings.  

For that reason, she had been lingering in this hallway since early morning.  

She had also figured out long ago that the Grand Duke always passed through this corridor on his way from his room to the training grounds.  

There was still a bit of time left, wasn’t there?  

“Mm. Ah. Ah.”

She hurriedly cleared her throat to loosen her voice. Practice was essential.  

It had to look completely natural, as if they had run into each other by chance.  

“Oh my, Your Grace. Good morning.”

Was that too cliché?  

“The morning air is so refreshing. Are you heading somewhere this early?”  

But what if he asked why I was here?  

Maybe I could say I woke up early today and decided to take a walk?  

And so, she stood there like a statue rooted to the ground, rehearsing her lines and acting out a one-person play for several minutes.  

…Why wasn’t he coming?

No matter how long she waited, the Grand Duke was nowhere to be seen.  

Had he overslept? Or had an unexpected schedule come up?  

Perhaps she would have to postpone her plans until tomorrow.  

‘Should I check the training grounds?’  

There was no way to know. Maybe today he had taken a different route after stopping by somewhere else.  

With that faint hope, she headed to the training grounds, and before she even arrived, loud cheers erupted from within.  

“Waaaah!”  

At this hour, he was supposed to be practicing alone…  

Yet the training grounds were packed with knights.  

‘Are they holding some kind of group training this early in the morning?’  

But it didn’t seem like they were systematically training either.  

‘Is there some kind of spectacle going on?’  

The knights, forming a circle around the center, were shouting at the top of their lungs, their voices echoing with excitement.  

“Wooowaaaah!”  

What on earth was happening in the middle of that circle?  

“His Grace’s side is open! Commander Pael, strike!”  

His Grace? Did they mean the Grand Duke?  

Was the Grand Duke in there?  

“Excuse me, coming through.”  

She barely managed to squeeze through the crowd, and the sight that unfolded left her doubting her eyes.  

“Commander Simon, go for it! Take him down!”

The deafening cheers made her frown instinctively.  

‘Two against one?’  

The Grand Duke was struggling alone against two men who were referred to as commanders.  

“Now! Attack together!”  

How unfair.  

“Commanders, keep it up! You’ve got this!”  

This was too much.  

Why wasn’t anyone cheering for the Grand Duke?  

Among all these people, it seemed like no one was on his side.  

Whenever the Grand Duke appeared to gain even the slightest advantage, he was immediately met with jeers.  

Was this some sort of territorial hostility? Even so, this was far too one-sided.  

The Grand Duke had only been in Castia for three years.  

To her, it felt like “three whole years,” but perhaps three years was too short a time for him to gain their recognition.

It was no wonder the Grand Duke had developed such a personality.  

Hurt by others, unable to trust anyone.  

Maybe that was why he always wanted to be alone.  

Confronted with this scene, she suddenly understood the Grand Duke, who had always been so cold and distant.  

“Commander Pael, to the right!”  

A burly knight shouted, pretending to thrust his sword. 

How infuriating.  

She felt anger.  

Or maybe sadness.  

“Grand Duke, you can do it! Stay strong!”

Immediately, all eyes turned to her.  

For the first time, she realized her voice could be that loud.  

That was how desperate she was.  

“Win!”  

She hoped her voice would reach him.  

She hoped her feelings would reach him.  

At that moment, the Grand Duke’s body visibly flinched.  

Clang!  

With a clear metallic sound, the Grand Duke’s sword flew far away and fell to the ground.  

“Wooooaaaah!”  

“We won!”  

The training grounds were instantly filled with cheers.  

“Hahaha! Your Grace, it seems you’ve lost. We’ve won. Hahaha.”  

The man called Commander Pael pointed his sword at the Grand Duke and laughed heartily.  

Why did it feel like mockery to me?  

She walked boldly to the center of the grounds.  

“Stop laughing, all of you. You call yourselves knights, yet you attack two-on-one? That’s just too cowardly!”  

Her sudden appearance caused the cheers to quickly turn into murmurs.  

“What? No, young lady, it’s not like that—”  

“Don’t make excuses. All of you here are the same. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”  

She glared at everyone with fierce determination in her eyes.  

“…Ugh.”  

A faint groan escaped from the Grand Duke, who was sitting on the ground with his head hanging low.  

It seemed he had hurt himself when he fell backward at the end.  

Or perhaps it was a sigh born of frustration and humiliation.  

“Your Grace, are you alright? You’re hurt, aren’t you? Let’s get you treated quickly.”  

She grabbed the Grand Duke’s wrist and tried to pull him up.  

She wanted to get him out of this place as soon as possible.  

Perhaps he felt the same way because he quietly stood up and followed her lead.  

“Step aside.”  

Her firm voice startled the knights, who hesitated but eventually parted to make way for them.  

Then, as if snapping out of their daze, they began to shout.  

“Y-Your Grace, you can’t just leave like that!”  

“Your Grace! Are you running away? Come back!”  

Their belated cries echoed behind her, but she ignored them and kept walking forward.  

“I’m always on your side, Your Grace. Even if everyone else turns their back on you, I’ll always stand by you.”  

“…”  

For some reason, she felt tears welling up, so she gripped his wrist even tighter.  

“It’s just too much. How can they use such cowardly tactics to assert dominance? Can’t you replace those knights?”  

The Grand Duke, who had been silently following her, slowly opened his mouth.  

“…I think you might be misunderstanding something.”  

I had seen it with my own eyes—what misunderstanding could there possibly be?

Even those kinds of people—he still defended them. The Grand Duke was as kind as ever.  

“You don’t need to take their side. Even if you think of them this way, they don’t understand anything.”  

“All the knights here followed me from the Imperial City.”  

“I knew it.”  

Wait.  

“What?”  

They followed the Grand Duke?  

“Does that mean…”  

“It’s not about asserting dominance.”  

When she turned back, expecting him to look dejected, the Grand Duke was smiling instead. And it wasn’t just any smile—it was as if he found the situation genuinely amusing.  

“Th-then… why… why did that happen earlier?”  

A fair duel turning into a two-on-one fight? She had never heard of such a thing.  

“That duel was more like a handicap.”  

“A… handicap?”  

“Yes. Since I’m too much for them to handle on their own, they agreed to team up against me.”  

“What?”  

“Because of you, I couldn’t even congratulate them on their first victory. They had thrown away their pride as knights just to win once…”  

What? So that’s what it was?  

She suddenly recalled the knights’ dumbfounded expressions.  

Everything had been her misunderstanding.  

She had made a mess of things.  

It wasn’t that they were mocking or belittling the Grand Duke.  

They had all been united in cheering for their commanders in hopes of achieving their first victory.  

I hadn’t known that and had accused them of cowardice…  

“Sigh. What should I do? I was so rude earlier, wasn’t I?”  

“Well, won’t they understand? If you think about it, their victory was thanks to you.”  

Wait. Did that mean… the Grand Duke losing was also my fault?  

Realizing that all her actions had been pointless and that she had failed to even attempt the “rule of compliments,” she fell silent for a while.