At the sound of Marquis Ter Giuo’s voice from a distance, I moved further inside the garden.

In my near-running pace, I caught my foot on a small protruding stone on the ground in an instant. Before even a short scream could escape my lips, I was caught by a firm pair of arms.

A platinum-haired man whose hair shimmered with a beautiful color in the moonlight. His eyes were of an enigmatic and beautiful hue, as though they had stolen the moonlight itself.

This man.

This man was the one I could use right now.

“Pardon me for a moment.”

Before the man could say anything, I brought my thumb to his lips. And then I pressed my lips over it.

I positioned the man in front of me so that Ter Giuo, who was entering through the door, could not see me, and hid behind the man’s broad frame.

“Lady Rumania… ahem.”

Having witnessed the amorous display between a man and a woman, Ter Giuo cleared his throat and excused himself. At the sound of his voice, my shoulders instinctively flinched and trembled slightly, and the man tightened his grip around my waist.

And then.

“What was that?”

“Um… a hand kiss?”

“How bland.”

With that word, he took my hand, which had been near his chin, and pressed his lips to it.

There was no time to push him away before the kiss happened in an instant.

Before my startled heart could even settle, Marquis Ter Giuo, who had retreated further into the garden, approached with a suspicious look in his eyes.

“Ahem, excuse me!”

At his voice, my shoulders reflexively flinched.

The man who had been kissing me turned his body to face the marquis. Upon seeing the man, Marquis Ter Giuo widened his already large eyes even further, as if he had seen something he should not have.

“Ah, it was Duke Hylus. My apologies.”

The name that came from Marquis Ter Giuo’s lips was that of the eldest son and current duke of the Hylus family.

Eden Cler.

Good heavens, this man was Eden Cler Hylus?

In Ermensel, the setting of, three founding noble families appear.

One is the Herrmann family, who rendered distinguished service through their vast wealth.

One is Istria, who rendered distinguished service through diplomacy.

And the last is the Hylus family, who rendered distinguished service through war.

The representatives of each family, wishing to build a good nation, sought to place the wisest person on the throne as emperor.

With Hylus declining, saying he was nothing more than a swordsman, and Herrmann declining, saying his mind was only sharp when it came to money, Istria, who possessed the finest intellect among the three, became emperor. Hylus and Herrmann received the title of duke and remained, even to this day, steadfast ally families who supported Istria.

True to his blood as a man from a family that had rendered service through war, he was the head of a ducal house surrounded by terrifying rumors that he could devour even the living.

Come to think of it, his hair color was exactly as it had been described in the novel. Both his hair and his eyes resembled the moonlight.

In the novel, he was an ill-mannered person who would not spare a glance at any woman other than the female lead, Hesse Herrmann.

To think I kissed such a person. Something had gone seriously wrong. I had not even met my favorite character, Siobhan Akane, yet.

On top of that, unlike what I had seen in the novel, he was more affectionate than I had expected.

I wasn’t sure if the word affectionate suited Eden Cler, but since he had been depicted as such a tyrant in the novel, I had a deeply ingrained prejudice that he was the worst kind of ill-mannered person.

In response to Marquis Ter Giuo’s words, Hylus merely sent him a look asking who he was and said nothing.

“My apologies. I am Ter Giuo, the eldest son of the Giuo marquisate.”

Hylus’s response to Ter Giuo’s self-introduction was brief.

“So?”

“It’s just that… I saw my fiancée enter here and I cannot find her. Could it be that the person behind you, Your Grace, is…”

At Ter Giuo’s words, my hand, which had been gripping Hylus’s sleeve, tightened.

That rotten fish. He always manages to be sharp at the worst moments.

As if trying to confirm whether the woman behind Hylus was me, Ter Giuo kept craning his neck to peer around.

If Hylus were to turn around and hand me over to Ter Giuo here, it would be a disaster, so I gripped his sleeve with everything I had.

But somehow, it seemed Hylus had no intention of handing me over so easily.

“Are you saying I kissed your fiancée just now?”

“That’s not it, but just in case. Even if you are a duke, kissing another man’s fiancée is not something that should be done, is it not?”

“That is true.”

Having conceded to Ter Giuo’s point, Hylus turned his head slightly and looked at me.

“Have I unknowingly acquired a fiancée?”

Unknowingly…?

Were Hylus and I acquainted?

His question was a little strange, but since that was not what mattered right now, I simply shook my head vigorously.

“She says no. Then she is even less likely to be the marquis’s fiancée.”

“Even so, if I could just confirm…”

As Ter Giuo moved a little closer, Hylus’s voice dropped noticeably lower. If a moment ago he had been playful with me, his attitude now was clearly different.

“I don’t have a great deal of patience.”

It was a warning.

A warning to leave quickly while his generosity still held.

Fortunately, Ter Giuo was not so foolish either, and he fled the scene. Once he left, only the two of us remained in the moonlit greenhouse. Just as I was thinking I should quietly slip out while reading the mood, I looked up at a voice that came with no particular inflection.

“Well then.”

“……”

“Shall we have a little talk, Lady Eloa Rumania.”

I was slightly taken aback to hear my name come from Hylus’s lips.

If I recalled correctly, the original Eloa had almost no connection with Hylus…

“Do you know me?”

“How could I not? You are the lady who is the talk of the town for winning first place at the hunting competition.”

“I did not think you would be interested in such rumors.”

“Other people, perhaps. But I was present at the very event where you took first place.”

At Hylus’s answer, a look of surprise appeared on my face before I could hide it.

“Did you not know that the hunting competition you attended was held on Hylus territory?”

“……”

“It seems you did not. Well, if you had known who I was, it would have been difficult to be as bold as you were just now.”

“B-bold! I gave a hand kiss, and the lip k… anyway, that was you, Your Grace!”

As I fumbled over my words out of embarrassment at the word kiss, Hylus teased me by going one step further.

“Yes, a kiss.”

“This wasn’t a kiss, it was a peck!”

“Well said.”

I had been drawn in by Hylus.

This man, honestly!

“Lady Rumania, you have taken my first kiss, so you must take responsibility.”

“I’ll take respon… What?!”

“Why? Don’t tell me you intended to steal a duke’s first kiss and take no responsibility for it?”

“No, it wasn’t even a kiss, it was a peck… and it was your first?”

Being swept up by Hylus was already overwhelming enough, but the things this man said were even more so.

Above all, the idea that Eden Cler Hylus, known throughout the empire as the ‘Black Rose of Enchantment,’ was having his first peck? To think that not even a simple brush of lips had ever happened before, it was unbelievable.

Of course, in the novel he was also portrayed as a devoted lover for whom Hesse Herrmann was his first love, but…

If I stayed here any longer, I felt I would be completely at this man’s mercy.

“In any case, thank you for your help. I am not in a position to deal with that ‘responsibility’ right now, so I will attend to it at a later time.”

After placing emphasis on the word responsibility that he kept bringing up, I hurriedly left the greenhouse.

On my way back to the party hall, I came face to face with Marquis Ter Giuo, who had been lurking about.

“My lady, I searched for you for quite a while. Where on earth were you?”

Right, I cannot keep running away like this. I have already entered the world of the novel, and since I have decided to live in this body, I will marry my favorite character.

“Marquis, let us break off our eng…”

“You’re not about to say you want to break off the engagement, are you?”

“No, that is exactly what I’m saying. Please break off the engagement. I do not want a relationship bound by money. I want to marry someone I truly love.”

At my answer, Ter Giuo was quick to open his mouth.

“But, my lady, was it not you who proposed marriage in exchange for helping your family?”

“……!”

It was an answer I had not anticipated. Of course, I had assumed that Eloa had made the decision to marry Ter Giuo on her own, but to think that Eloa had been the one to propose marriage to Ter Giuo first!

What on earth was Eloa thinking when she proposed to Ter Giuo and then came to regret it?

“For your family to prosper, you must be the one to make the sacrifice.”

It was a line I had seen in Eloa’s diary. Every time Eloa showed signs of reluctance, he must have appeased her in this manner.

But that won’t work on me. Go to hell, Ter Giuo!

“No, I will restore my family without sacrificing myself. Above all, I have someone I must take responsibility for.”

It’s not a lie. I have to take responsibility for the Rumania family in this novel as the eldest daughter, and I also have to take responsibility for my own life.

“Responsibility? Who is there for you to take responsibility for…”

At that moment, a familiar low voice reached my ears.

“That would be me.”