After a quiet glance around, she slipped away from the group and headed for an empty classroom.

No one would notice she was gone. Her hair, her skin, her eyes, the clothes she wore, every color that made up her appearance was unremarkable, and her presence always seemed to blur at the edges. That was why Olivia had put lipstick on her this morning, saying important guests were coming.

‘I really shouldn’t do things I’m not used to!’

The memory of her stained teeth surfaced alongside the lipstick, and her cheeks burned.

She already needed to cut back on everything to scrape together her brother’s tuition. Cosmetics and she were clearly never meant to get along.

❖ ❖ ❖

Once the Crown Prince went to the auditorium to spend time with the children, Carlyle excused himself. He needed a closer look at that woman.

The blank-canvas woman Davis had described.

To fulfill Michel Bardo’s requirements, he needed exactly that kind of backdrop. Someone who would draw the eye not to herself but to the jewels.

Carlyle had spotted her the moment he arrived, having caught only a glimpse of her through the car window. She had glanced his way briefly, then spent the rest of the time trailing silently at the very edge of the group, as though trying to fold her already faint presence into something invisible.

Sure enough, when she slipped away at some point, no one noticed. That told him plenty about just how blank her presence was, even among her own colleagues.

Even so, it was Carlyle’s view that blank paper still had quality. No matter how fine the materials used, something painted on inferior paper could never become the masterpiece that fine paper made possible. Naturally, he had no intention of investing in anything substandard.

What quality of paper was she, exactly.

“……”

He moved through the building at an unhurried pace, and the sound of chalk on a board reached his ears.

Down a sun-filled corridor with no one else in sight, finding the classroom the sound was coming from was easy enough. Carlyle looked through the half-open door, and a satisfied smile touched his face.

The woman was writing numbers on the chalkboard.

Henry’s tuition. This month’s salary. Rent. Food……

Among the rough figures, only one entry, someone’s tuition, was written in a size worth reading. It didn’t take Carlyle long to reach the obvious conclusion as he ran the numbers in his head.

The woman needed money.

As always, he knew the weapon he held would give him absolute advantage. The knock he gave on the classroom door was light.

“W-who’s there?”

Everyone should have been gathered in the auditorium, so the sudden knock made Iris’s shoulders fly up in alarm.

Without even turning around, she threw herself into erasing the chalkboard first. There was no room to think about manners. No one in the world would want their financial struggles laid bare for a stranger to see.

“Excuse me.”

Only after the man announced himself did Iris finally turn around.

Through the pale cloud of chalk dust, the sound of Iris’s quickened breathing was audible. The small, rapid sound stopped the moment she recognized the man visible through the haze.

“……”

She had even imagined pushing through the crowd to thank him in person, yet now that she was face to face with him, her lips wouldn’t part.

More precisely, she couldn’t quite tell what was real. Through the drifting chalk dust, Carlyle Berthheimer’s clear blue eyes were looking directly at her. Iris’s long lashes rose and fell over her light brown eyes, blinking as though trying to make sense of the strange situation.

In person, with color in him, he was far more… that is to say, devastatingly beautiful.

“You seem startled. I apologize.”

“Oh, no. I’m the one who should apologize.”

She was fairly sure she was the one who owed an apology, yet his voice came out first again. Flustered, Iris quickly dropped her gaze from his face and, without thinking, raised the back of her hand to rub at her lips, where nothing remained. The memory of the lipstick on her teeth had suddenly nagged at her.

‘I should be looking at his eyes when I speak. Oh no…… and I just touched my face.’

The thought that she had been rude again made her snap her face back up, already flushed red. Her hand was already back at her side.

“Are you lost?”

Her voice trembled slightly, and beneath the effort to compose herself, a thin thread of flustered feeling still showed.

“It seems I am. Is there somewhere on the grounds where one can smoke?”

“Oh……”

There was exactly one smoking area on the school grounds. The problem was that it had been tucked away in a very out-of-the-way corner to keep it away from the students. Iris stood briefly lost in thought, working out how to explain the mental map in her head, and then her eyes cleared.

“I’ll take you there. It’s in a different building.”

“Thank you.”

Carlyle accepted her offer as naturally as though he had been expecting it.

“Your name?”

He asked with a slight curve at the corner of his eyes as Iris stepped toward him.

Her voice had more color to it than her appearance suggested. Up close, she wasn’t a great beauty, but her features were pretty, and the faint eyes that had been hard to read from a distance held a fresh, lively brightness.

“Iris Mora.”

From between those lips, still faintly red from scrubbing, came a name as quiet as she was.

Carlyle’s mouth curved into a gentle crescent, as though he had decided the quality was not poor after all. Enough to become a masterpiece with the right time and resources invested.

“A pleasure to meet you, Miss Mora. Carlyle Berthheimer.”

“Ah, yes…… I’ve seen you in the papers.”

“I’m honored to be recognized.”

“Everyone only talks about you, sir.”

“Is that so.”

Carlyle looked down at Iris as she walked beside him, guiding the way.

Her head reached his shoulder, so she wasn’t particularly small. He liked that. He liked the pale brown eyes that turned transparent gold when they caught the light, the wheat-colored hair as full as an autumn field, and the smooth, luminous white skin like drawing paper with a few drops of pink blossom water in it.

Each feature had its own character, but together they made a muted impression. She would certainly serve well as a backdrop to make vivid, richly colored jewels shine. The rhythmically designed pieces would in turn bring out the quiet yet lively quality about her.

“I’m so glad I got the chance to repay you.”

“Repay me?”

“You had your car bring me here. I wanted to thank you earlier, but they said you were busy……”

“Ah. So you’re the one.”

“I-it’s not that I was trying to pretend I hadn’t noticed. I did think I should thank you in person. But today…… it seemed impossible to find a way to approach you. Still, I’m glad it worked out. It must be my lucky day.”

“Something good must have happened.”

“People kept saying it was lucky, falling and ending up in your car by chance. And now here we are, actually having a conversation.”

‘People kept saying.’ The way she said it, her own opinion seemed conspicuously absent.

“What do you think, Miss Mora? Do you think it’s lucky, the way everyone says?”

Whether she thought it lucky or not was no concern of his. Still, the impulsive question came out because the woman had stirred something like a competitive instinct in him.

“Hmm……”

The voice that had been flowing freely just moments ago seemed to dry up entirely. Iris fell quiet mid-sentence.

Lucky or not lucky. Her lips moved as she turned it over carefully, and they wouldn’t open easily. Carlyle’s eyebrow rose with something like amusement.

“I think it’s unlucky.”

The answer that finally came made the situation all the more entertaining. It was so absurd it was almost impressive.

He was on the verge of a helpless laugh, wondering if he owed her an apology, when Iris continued.

“How am I supposed to survive everyone’s jealousy from here on? Having received a kindness from Lafreia’s darling, after all.”

She steered the conversation deftly toward somewhere he hadn’t expected, and looked up at him as she did, wearing a composed smile, her expression giving nothing away about what had just passed through that small head of hers.

“……You have a sense of humor, Miss Mora.”

Carlyle let out a hollow laugh.

“That’s a compliment, isn’t it?”

“Of course.”

He meant it. The woman had a way with words, unexpectedly.

Most of the people he had met since coming of age either put on exaggerated expressions in front of him or shrank so small they could barely answer a direct question. This woman had stumbled for a moment and then immediately pulled herself together and fired back a cheeky remark. His estimation of her went up another notch.