“Did he look like this?”

The Duke drawn on the crumbling paper was somewhat rough in other areas, but his eyes were vibrantly alive. If not for the explicitly n*de body below, it might have passed for a fairly dignified image.

However, once the body sketch showed through, the Duke posing solemnly on the paper looked more like a seductive and enchanting n*de model.

“……This is revenge for the library.”

Nelie giggled to herself, then added a dot below the collarbone. While taking revenge, she also recalled that guest who had driven her out of her lodgings. At that moment, the source of the déjà vu she had felt from the Duke rang clearly in her mind.

‘They look alike.’

That guest’s impassive gaze and the Duke’s eyes.

It was strange how a guest staying in such a shabby lodging had eyes similar to the Duke’s. They were the most memorable among people who had been particularly unfriendly to her. Even though she hadn’t even had a conversation with them.

Even as these thoughts flowed, Nelie didn’t stop her hand. She added more description and brushstrokes to the originally drawn torso while she was at it. She was in an almost trance-like state.

The completed sketch, empowered by the living pencil lines, looked as if she had drawn the Duke from life in the n*de. Nelie’s uninhibited lines, shooting out here and there without restraint, clearly revealed her characteristic lack of formal art education.

Looking at the completed sketch, Nelie muttered unconsciously.

“This would be quite scandalous if it got out.”

At this rate, she would have no defense if someone accused her of using the Duke as a model for erotic art. Not that she planned to show it to anyone anyway.

Even with such solitary doodles serving as a small revenge, she felt her anger dissipating somewhat. Nelie giggled while examining the sketch she drew, then carelessly put it away and forgot about it. Just like how she had completely forgotten about the first booklet she made.

……And several days later at dawn, she let out a scream full of regret. 

 * * *

 “What are you doing? Want to be reported for assault?”

“What? Assault? Where is……”

“Right here! Get out if you don’t want to be charged right now!”

Let’s go back a bit, to that very moment when Nelie was unfairly evicted from the lodgings she had hastily found.

The lodging owner, who had been arguing, finally drove away the other party and returned. His gestures showed desperation not wanting to lose a high-paying guest because of such a beggar woman.

“This way please, guest.”

“……”

“To think you got caught up with such a shabby woman…… I sincerely apologize.”

Even as the lodging owner kept fawning, Elroy Tevant remained in a rather foul mood.

‘It’s because I deliberately chose a cheap lodging.’

There was no reason for Duke Tevant, whose every act of eating, drinking, and living was set to the highest standards, to come to such a place.

However, whenever Elroy returned to Tevant during breaks, he deliberately came back earlier than the time he had informed his family. And he would spend several days in such worn-down lodgings. Half under the pretense of observing commoners’ situations as the Duke of Tevant, the other half because it was, if anything, his own form of deviation.

In truth, since inheriting the position of duke at a young age after his parents’ early deaths, Elroy had maintained such a busy schedule that he received reports about Tevant’s situation and business even during his studies abroad.

People swarmed wherever he set foot, and those seeking him never ceased. Social circles from various nations and cities called for him, and lavish parties, artificial smiles, and underground battles for family interests always followed the young duke. Elroy silently carried out all these schedules alongside his studies.

And when fatigue reached its peak, he would hide his name and face like this, spending several days in places where nobles would never visit. His schoolmates at the military academy, who knew well how sensitive and fastidious he usually was, would have fainted if they knew.

Still, Elroy repeated this eccentric behavior, if it could be called that. A situation perfectly fitting the phrase ‘loneliness in a crowd.’ Lying down under a borrowed anonymous name, amidst the bustling noise, the brilliant and glittering world would fade away.

The faces of hyenas eyeing how to devour House Tevant while watching the young duke, the faces of relatives trying to seize family shares by finding any weakness, the face of his grandmother sternly rebuking that now as duke he must take responsibility for everything, along with the thick perfume scents and artificial smiles and music sounds.

Lying in such a cramped room with its musty smell, listening to the vulgar sounds of vagrants chattering outside, he could take a handful of sleeping aids and fall asleep, then wake up as if he had never been tired. It wasn’t a bad deviation, as he could also read Tevant’s public opinion and grasp the city’s flow while at it. Though it was somewhat questionable to call it a deviation since his family already knew about it.

‘To be interrupted from the start like this.’

Besides, now he had to settle down in this Tevant. The small sense of liberation he could enjoy while staying abroad was truly over. So the interference he received while feeling an even stronger sense of suffocation was quite irritating.

The woman who rushed at him smelled of pigments and ink.

Though he saw the desperation in the woman’s meekly downcast eyes, Elroy felt no guilt. His purpose was merely to observe Tevant’s direction while having some time alone, not to directly help struggling commoners.

He was already doing enough of that through the charity organizations established under the duke’s name. This woman too would probably end up sleeping in the welfare facilities set up by the duke’s family after being evicted like this. Any vagrant who knew this city well would do so.

However, that smell of pigments and ink, and the swaying brunette and clear face in his vision… Above all, the way she boldly grabbed his clothes or held his hand without any fear was irritating. Though he had experienced escorted ladies wearing gloves, he had never had a woman’s bare hands entangled with his like that.

‘Perhaps she’s a woman used to men.’

To readily grab and entangle her fingers with a stranger’s hand, she must surely be that kind of woman. Looking at her shabby appearance, she might even be a street pr*stitute.

‘Though she did look quite young for that.’

Had Tevant’s situation become that bad already? While thinking this, the sensation of the woman’s small hand, soft yet with calluses embedded at various joints, briefly lingered in his mind. It grew stronger when he entered the room where traces of the woman still remained.

“……”

The woman’s scent still lingered in the room. Elroy cleared away the long brown hair strewn across the bed and lay down. Then he let out another irritated laugh.

“Ha.”

Just as he was about to stretch and swallow the medicine in his pocket, he noticed a small mark remaining on his forearm. It was something, either ink or pigment or who knows what.

Elroy rubbed it hard to wipe it off. However, the sticky mark ultimately left a trace on his forearm. It was a light blue mark resembling the woman’s eyes.

“Just my luck.”

Elroy gave up trying to wipe off the remaining mark, swallowed the sleeping pills prescribed by his doctor, lay down and let out a long breath. As he closed his eyes, thoughts of the woman faded away. When he opened his eyes again, a line of duties as Duke of Tevant would be waiting for him.

And a season later…

Elroy unexpectedly saw the woman’s face again.

“Duke! Please look this way!”

“Is the scandal with the Princess of Lambert Kingdom true?”

“I love you no matter who you had scandals with, Duke!”

It was at a place where he appeared as the Duke of Tevant.

Among the people gathered for the free admission event at the historic Central Art Museum, some journalists were noisily gossiping. Instead of answering them, Elroy responded with the calm demeanor and enchanting smile befitting a high noble.

“Wow! Duke!”

“So the answer is……”

“Look this way too, please!”

The journalists’ voices soon disappeared, buried under the cheering crowd.

‘No need to respond to words not worth answering.’

In truth, Elroy knew well what people were saying about him. Even what those who acted pompously claiming to create art with him as their muse were making with him when he wasn’t looking.

He knew well, not from arrogance but from calm self-objectification, how his appearance and body appeared to others. He also knew how much attention his position as duke and title as artists’ muse drew. Despite never having embraced a woman, the reason countless scandals broke out and rumors spread about him was because he occupied such an alluring position.

Not a few people he had met treated him internally like the male lead of an opera house. And Elroy deliberately maintained silence about most of the rumors.

The reason he knowingly turned a blind eye was half because they didn’t surface publicly, and half to maintain the family tradition as Duke of Tevant, the city of arts.

House Tevant ostensibly held the position of protecting artists’ freedom as their patron. Freedom of expression, freedom of creation, freedom to make art without oppression, and such.

Moreover, some scandals helped the family business. When scandals broke with factory owners’ daughters, industrial stocks stirred; when scandals emerged with opera actresses, theater tickets in Tevant sold out in succession. A suitable profit for everyone, you could say.

Thanks to this, even now when many nobles had fallen, Tevant could firmly maintain its position as a family leading the metropolis and as protectors of art and freedom. That was also why journalists, while making such a fuss, still maintained certain boundaries.