Content Warnings: S*xual harassment, objectification, and predatory behavior.

Henry’s associate teased him with a bright laugh.

“Ugh, so annoying…”

Henry’s face fell into a sulk, and at the same moment, a female student with murky green eyes shrugged and sniffed.

“Hmph. Everyone’s just worked up over the Saint Rose’s uniform. Strip the clothes off and they’re all the same, whether they’re from there or here. What’s the difference?”

That one remark lit the fuse.

The expressions on the male students’ faces shifted in an instant to crude curiosity.

“Hee, Stephanie. If a worn-out girl like you changed the packaging, would you actually look pretty decent?”

“Wh, what! How dare you insult me like that to my face! Fine! If I put on a Saint Rose’s uniform, you wouldn’t be able to keep your hands off me! You’d be so worked up you’d wet your pants!”

“Oh yeah? A uniform doesn’t cost that much, so should I get you one? Want to try it on? The idea of even a ragged thing like you looking brand new is tempting enough, but what about the real thing?”

The male students turned their gazes back to Julia in the rear grounds.

Now those eyes held something far more unsavory and filthy than before.

“Would a Saint Rose’s uniform suit her, looking like that?”

“She’s got a decent chest too, right? Do you think Henry touched them?”

“Just touched? She’s his fiancée. He’s probably chewed her up, torn her apart, and had a taste of everything.”

The stares converged, no longer hiding their vulgarity at all.

It was no longer a simple curiosity. It felt like something crawling and sticky, a repulsive kind of humiliation that pricked at her skin.

“……”

Suddenly reduced to a s*xual object, Julia found her brow creasing hard before she could stop it.

She kept ignoring them, but the vulgar conversation drifting through the window clung stubbornly to her ears.

Talk of women’s br*ast shapes, large ones, small ones, inverted n*pples, protruding ones, and so on.

The female students mingling with the boys were joining in too, trading crude and obscene words with the same snickering ease.

Julia neither showed any interest nor turned her head.

Instead, she gripped the soil in her hand more firmly and quietly finished the rest of the lesson.

***

That night.

The quiet stillness of the annex room, where only the scratching of a pen and the turning of pages should have existed, was shattered without mercy by a loud crash.

“Hey! Fiancée?”

The door flew open with enough force to break it off its hinges, and the figure who stumbled in was Henry, drunk and swaying.

Disheveled, his cravat hanging crooked, he stepped boldly into the bedroom in a state of complete disarray, holding a wine bottle in one hand like a proud trophy.

“Heh, studying hard even this late at night?”

He looked like he had been rolling around somewhere. His hair was a mess, and his ornate coat with its gold buttons was thrown carelessly over one shoulder.

Through his wide-open shirt came a wave of nauseating perfume mixed with the sour reek of alcohol.

Drunk enough to be thoroughly stupid, his slack mouth hung open in a dull, idiotic grin.

“Quite the dedicated student.”

“…What do you want?”

Julia was seated at her desk, going through a thick domain report, and the moment her eyes met Henry’s, she felt the blood drain cold from her body and her expression went flat.

“Lord Rodev?”

She fixed him with a guarded look, her crimson eyes sharp.

An uninvited guest, appearing without warning.

And the room was as good as a sealed chamber.

Two people alone in an enclosed space.

She turned her mind quickly to how she might get out of this.

She wanted to call for help, but it was useless.

Unfortunately, this was Henry’s home, and she was his fiancée.

A fiancé visiting his fiancée’s room late at night would raise no objection whatsoever within this household.

Ordinarily, an unmarried man and woman sharing a space without supervision was itself impermissible, but in the face of the young master’s misconduct, the powerless servants would never dare take Julia’s side.

‘Right now, the marquis and his wife…’

As she searched her memory, despair washed over her.

The two of them left for the domain last week.

They went to inspect the reservoirs and embankments in preparation for summer flooding.

At this moment, there was no one in this vast estate capable of stopping a drunk Henry.

In a situation like this, she had no choice but to protect herself.

Julia deliberately put steel into her voice and spoke stiffly.

“Lord Rodev. Coming here unannounced at this hour is completely unacceptable.”

“Come on, it’s just us. We’re engaged, aren’t we?”

“We are only engaged. So if you have no business here, please leave. You’re interrupting me.”

“Pfft, what could you possibly be doing that’s so important?”

Henry swayed forward and looked down at the documents she was reading with a mocking air.

Julia tapped the papers on the desk lightly with her fingertips.

“The marquis instructed me to finish reviewing the domain’s financial accounting report by this week. The month-end settlement is coming up.”

“Hah, back to those d*mn documents again?”

Henry lifted the wine bottle straight to his mouth and drank from it, then twisted one corner of his lips into a grin, seemingly amused by something.

“You really do love our family’s ledgers, don’t you? What, does all this wealth and comfort appeal to you? Look at those numbers. Look at the digits. Quite something, isn’t it?”

“Not at all. I’m simply handling what I was told to handle.”

“Managing the Rodev Marquisate as you please, fiancée… Lady Wilroy! Very capable indeed!”

Henry’s giddy voice dripped with open mockery.

“What are you trying to say?”

“No, I mean, think about it. If it were the Wilroy County, you wouldn’t need to bother reviewing these headache-inducing numbers and documents, would you?”

Henry tilted his head back with a loose grin and looked up at the ceiling as he continued.

“That place is pretty destitute, isn’t it? No surplus budget to speak of. Still running a deficit? I heard the debts pile up every year. Because of that, what was it, some failing mine.”

“……”

Julia pressed her lips shut.

It was a fact she couldn’t argue with.

Because of the cursed Aurite mine, the Wilroy County ran a chronic deficit, and sooner or later something had to be done, whether selling the townhouse in the capital, liquidating part of the domain, or shutting the mine down entirely.

Her family home stood at a crossroads of painful choices.

And it didn’t end there.

The accumulated debt was so enormous that even paying the interest alone was draining the domain’s funds dry.

After every hardship, her younger brother Vincent recovered his health, but aside from that, the Wilroy family had nothing but grim news.

Tasting victory in Julia’s silence, Henry’s smile turned crueler.

“Oh, and now that I think about it, the count came to my father separately not long ago to request a cash loan. Has it really gotten that desperate?”

“Wh, what did you say……”

In that instant, Julia felt the color drain from her entire body.

Her whole frame went cold and rigid, like ice water poured over her head.

“He bowed and begged, then took the check and shuffled out groveling. Didn’t you know?”

“……”

It was something she truly knew nothing about.

Two weeks ago, when her father came to visit the Rodev marquis, she assumed it was simply a routine courtesy call.

‘A cash loan…’

It must have been because he lacked the cash to pay the interest on the mountain of debt.

“Fiancée? Heh heh, you know, right? You were sold. That’s why you do whatever your family tells you.”

Julia stayed silent, and Henry tilted his head with a loose smile, then abruptly thr*st the bottle toward her.

“Here, drink. When you’re upset, you should drink, right?”

Julia turned her gaze firmly away from the round, grimy mouth of the wine bottle.

She was still a year away from coming of age, so she couldn’t drink yet.

But even when she came of age, she had not the slightest intention of touching alcohol.

Her deep aversion to it was because of the man right in front of her, Henry.

Barely a day went by without him stumbling around drunk or clutching his head in a hangover and making everyone around him miserable.

Watching his reckless, dissolute, undisciplined life up close, she swore to her bones that she would never become like that.

“Haha!”

Whatever he found so entertaining about being looked at with contempt, Henry burst out laughing, his shoulders shaking.

Then, as if to make a point, he brought the wine bottle back to his own lips and tilted it high.

Gulp, gulp.

His masculine throat moved with vigor as the remaining wine was emptied completely.

“Ah, delicious! The heat rising up inside feels great. Julia, want to feel good with me?”

He usually called her “fiancée” in a mocking tone, but tonight he was using her name with casual familiarity, and the intent behind it was unpleasant.