The Creditor Is My Husband? - ✿ dusk blossoms ✿

It was a perfectly reasonable request to ask him to treat her as his future spouse.

‘I absolutely won’t give in.’

She thought he might scold her for saying something absurd. She could even imagine Lucas laughing in disbelief and dismissing her words.

Still, she was determined to insist on calling him ‘Lucas’ and addressing him as ‘you’ without hesitation.

“Hmm…”

Just as Giselle, who had been trembling, gathered her resolve once more, an indecipherable sound escaped from Lucas’s lips, who had been silent.

Then he rubbed his face with both hands and spoke.

“I hadn’t thought that far. No, I hadn’t, Giselle. I’m sorry.”

“……!”

He unexpectedly said it in formal speech¹. Giselle’s eyes widened at Lucas’s words, and she stammered as she spoke.

“N-no. Why are you using formal speech? I just…”

“Giselle, as you said, we are on equal footing.”

Lucas continued to speak formally to her in a calm tone. If anything, Giselle was the one flustered by it.

“Aaah, no! Don’t use formal speech!”

“Of course, it might feel awkward at first, but we’ll get used to it soon, Giselle. It’s not like I’ve never spoken formally to you before, even at the company…”

“That’s exactly why! That’s why I don’t like it!”

Giselle cut off Lucas’s attempt to persuade her and quickly retorted.

“It feels like I’m facing ‘President Taylor,’ my former employer!”

We’re supposed to live as a married couple for the rest of our lives, and I have to treat him like my employer?

She shuddered at the mere thought of it.

“Absolutely! I absolutely can’t accept that!”

“Well, you don’t have to go that far…”

Lucas unconsciously made a sour expression at Giselle’s somewhat extreme reaction.

“Never use formal speech. Understood?”

Giselle, no longer trembling, approached him with her eyes wide open, as if she was trying to extract a promise from him. Not that she appeared threatening to him.

Lucas quietly looked down at the pink chick chirping furiously under his nose and chuckled. Then, as if he had never spoken formally, he reverted to his usual casual speech.

“If you hate me using formal speech that much, well… Then let’s do it your way when we’re at home or alone together, Giselle. As you wish.”

‘You,’ he said…

He repeated the word once more in his mind. It was just changing from the casual ‘you’ to a more formal ‘you,’ but for some reason, it made his heart flutter.

It felt like being tickled by pink fluff resembling her hair.

“Um… So you’re allowing me to call you by your name?”

“Of course. I should have been more considerate. I’m sorry.”

He had been speaking informally to the woman who was to become his wife. It was a manner of speech he should have corrected earlier.

As he apologized for his thoughtlessness, Lucas noticed Giselle’s lips twitching.

“Are you that happy?”

“Ahem. Who said I’m happy? This is just claiming my rightful due.”

Giselle quickly lowered the corners of her mouth and replied with a prim expression when Lucas asked with a smirk. But she couldn’t hide the smile that soon followed.

Lucas chuckled again seeing her like that. He could have teased her more but didn’t feel the need to.

Instead, his gaze turned to their surroundings.

The sunset had faded, and darkness had settled in the park, where occasional people could be seen out for an evening walk like them. Most appeared to be couples rather than families.

‘…Do we look like one of them?’

It had gotten dark, so no one would recognize them. This suddenly made him feel strange.

The fact that they too would appear as just one of many ordinary couples.

Sniff.

At that moment, he heard a sniffling sound right beside him.

When Lucas turned his head to look at Giselle after admiring the surrounding scenery, she was wiping her nose with a handkerchief. She flinched when she noticed him looking, then pretended as if nothing had happened.

Of course, he wasn’t considerate enough to pretend he hadn’t seen it.

“Your nose is running, Giselle.”

Here, this side.

Lucas pointed to the area between his nose and lips with a serious expression.

“Ah! Really? Oh no.”

As soon as he pointed it out nonchalantly, Giselle stopped pretending and hurriedly tried to wipe her nose again with the handkerchief she had hidden. But before she could, Lucas continued speaking.

Just as seriously as before.

“I’m kidding.”

“……!”

At first, because of Lucas’s serious expression, his words didn’t register properly in her mind. Then belatedly, Giselle’s face started changing colors.

But unlike her, Lucas’s expression remained perfectly calm. There wasn’t even a hint of a mischievous smile.

“What kind of joke is that without even smiling…”

Just as Giselle was about to protest with her reddened face, Lucas took off his coat and draped it over her shoulders. The warmth of the coat that had been trapping his body heat automatically silenced her.

“……”

She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times at the unexpected consideration from this indifferent yet mischievous man, then kept it shut. She then tightly wrapped his coat around herself and started walking again, matching his pace.

Silence fell between the two. But neither of them found the silence uncomfortable.

How much time had passed like that?

Giselle, who had been walking while fiddling with the coat buttons, suddenly spoke as if she had just remembered something.

“Oh, by the way, Sen–… I mean, why didn’t you receive a title?”

She swallowed the ‘Senior’ that kept trying to come out unconsciously, then looked at him.

Lucas, who had been walking while looking at the night sky in the distance, stopped at her question, then tilted his head and asked back.

“A title?”

Seeing his expression as if he didn’t understand the question, Giselle added more details.

“People at the office used to talk about it. Like how Lady Dalton’s father received a baronet title, they wondered why you don’t accept a title when you could easily get one if you wanted. They said you could even get a higher title than baronet.”

“What’s so great about a mere title?”

Lucas finally understood the question and responded with a tone of disbelief. Giselle, her pride hurt by his attitude that suggested she was asking something unnecessary, frowned and argued.

“A title isn’t something to be dismissed so lightly. It’s a formal entry into noble society.”

Commoner and nobility.

No matter how times have changed, and even though money has become more important than status itself, people’s fantasies about nobility are not easily broken.

Especially for a capitalist who has achieved great success as a commoner.

People tend to have more fantasies and desires for what they don’t have than what they do.

That’s why Baronet Dalton paid a large fortune to the royal family to receive his title.

After all, it’s just an empty title that doesn’t even qualify as a fifth-rank nobility.

But despite Giselle’s passionate rebuttal, Lucas snorted lightly before speaking again.

“Does that mere title help me make more money?”

“Pardon?”

“I’m asking if it helps me earn more money than what I’d spend to buy the title.”

“……”

“I only invest in things that make money. Whether it’s people, objects, or anything else.”

“I don’t think that’s always the case…”

She didn’t find his words very credible, considering he had proposed to her with a large sum of money that wouldn’t bring him profit.

But Giselle mumbled her words and rubbed her reddened earlobes with her palm.

“Why? Are you displeased with the thought of becoming the wife of a commoner, not a noble?”

“Of course not! I know better than anyone how meaningless a noble title is.”

She shook her head seriously in response to Lucas’s smirking question.

While others might have fantasies about nobility, she certainly didn’t. She knew well that the person was more important than titles or family names.

Just look at her father who had plunged the Anticia family into debt…

“……”

Her face darkened at the thought of her family, which she had momentarily forgotten.

Giselle clasped her hands behind her back and looked up at the night sky.

She couldn’t believe she had left home on a whim last evening and hadn’t returned since.

‘…But I should go back today.’

Staying at a man’s house before marriage was just the kind of thing people would gossip about.

Well, even if she didn’t care, it could be a blemish on Lucas…

“Oh, and Giselle.”

Just then, Lucas called her as if he had suddenly remembered something. Giselle composed her complicated feelings and turned to him.

“Let’s go together for the final fitting of the wedding dress.”

“Really? Is that okay?”

Giselle asked with wide eyes, surprised by the unexpected statement.

“Just let me know in advance when it is. So I can clear my schedule for that day.”

Lucas nodded and spoke, then rubbed his mouth with an awkward expression. It seems he had been feeling somewhat guilty for not going with her to see the wedding dress before.

Pfft.

Giselle burst into laughter without realizing it and nodded.

“I will.”

Somehow, her heart felt ticklish. Enough to shake off the heavy feelings.