“Bashuport?”
“The Last Resistor?”
“Did Bashuport not only have a child named Ellaion?”
People murmured.
House Bashuport.
Everyone already knew they were the dirty cleaners who handled the palace’s filthy affairs.
That alone was sufficient cause for other nobles to shun them.
Yet under the reign of the current monarch, Queen Seorin, Bashuport was treated even more poorly.
As someone had said, in the rebellion Seorin raised, the elderly couple’s only son, Ellaion Bashuport, knowing full well the image his house held, had deliberately fought to the end in the camp of the tyrant Orban.
Even if he died, he had wanted to build honor for Bashuport as one who kept his loyalty.
His tall stature and refreshingly handsome features were unlike the gloomy Bashuport name, and he welcomed the rebel army with a longsword rather than daggers and hidden weapons, perishing gloriously.
However, the tyrant Orban’s infamy was so terrible that Bashuport fell from dirty cleaners to a house abetting the axis of evil.
After displaying Ellaion’s head on a pike, Gyuren Derbek and Anthony Hairan mocked it as a worthless friendship between villains, and Seorin too had a history of suffering at Bashuport’s hands, so she did not stop them.
This became a grudge for the baronial couple, and it was the reason they joined Yurien’s faction.
It was not for nothing that the baronial couple treated Lea harshly.
And it was not for nothing that the nobles gathered at this very moment, at this debutante ball in the social arena, distanced themselves from Lea upon hearing the name Bashuport.
“No, Lady Bashuport. Surely you did not prepare bread as party supplies?”
Syuren asked, pointing at the pile of bread Lea was holding in her arms.
Lea did not answer.
But that was a mistake.
“Ah! I suppose it was not bread! Of course. Would our Last Resistor Bashuport bring mere bread to eat? Hmm?”
Under normal circumstances, Ursel Puyol would have sighed and reined Syuren in.
He was from the same south, and House Puyol had risen to nobility as the Hairan stewards and was their second-in-command.
But this time, the target was none other than Bashuport.
There was no reason to save them.
“Belgit!”
“Yes, Young Master! All the staff ran away, but that is not my fault!”
“What?! No, forget that. There is something more amusing.”
“Then why did you call me?”
“Look at this.”
Syuren forcibly snatched a piece of bread from Lea.
“To think this measly bread is the party supply prepared by Bashuport. What do you think of that?”
“Goodness, Young Master! Please throw that bread away at once! If it was prepared by Bashuport, it must surely be coated in poison on the outside, or else filled with poisoned jam inside!”
“Ah! I see! As expected, Bashuport does not disappoint! Truly the Bashuport of poison and hidden weapons!”
At Syuren and Belgit’s ridiculous farce, the audience looked at Lea not with doubt but with conviction, their gazes filled with revulsion.
Robian, who had eaten the bread Lea handed him, raised his hand and spoke to Syuren.
“I ate the bread that lady offered just now, yet I am still alive?”
“Regurgitate it at once! If it is from Bashuport, they surely used a poison that slowly kills you after several days to avoid suspicion, or a brainwashing poison to use you as their puppet!”
“Hah, if such a poison existed, I would rather recruit them for it.”
On the contrary, when Robian Mashel expressed admiration, Ortega clanged his axe down and clicked his tongue.
“What is it, Mashel? Do you intend to challenge Derbek’s hegemony with such vile means as poison?”
“Do not delude yourself. If such a poison truly existed, I judged it better to extort the antidote from Bashuport. Derbek, we shall crush you under the command of our Mashel.”
“Hwahahahat! Just try! Commanding weaklings—I shall crush such command with the martial might of Derbek himself!”
Ursel also stepped forward to support Belgit.
“Young Lord, please discard that bread at once. As your servant says, there is no telling what poison may be in it.”
“Hmm… If it is Bashuport’s poison, perhaps it could end this pathetic life of mine a little more easily?”
“Young Lord!”
“Do you not think so, Lady Bashuport?”
Lea’s breath caught in her throat.
Everyone was looking at her.
Filled with gazes of distrust and loathing.
She slightly parted her lips, then swallowed.
It is fine.
She had received such gazes even from the one she loved most.
From none other than Seorin.
She was used to it.
So hurry and speak, Learie.
“This bread is…”
Hurry and speak.
Smile.
“It is delicious even eaten plain…”
Wrong.
The corners of her lips would not rise.
“Or dipped in stew… or topped with meat or fruit, it is delicious….”
“Ha!”
Syuren waved the bread in front of Lea, then bit into it in one go.
Belgit panicked, but Syuren raised a finger to stop him, chewed for a moment, and then swallowed completely.
“Hmm, the taste is surprisingly good.”
“Is that so?”
Lea’s face brightened a little.
When she faintly smiled, Syuren was flustered by her beauty yet admired it.
But soon he clutched his throat and hardened his face.
“Kck…! Kehek!”
“Young Master! Oh, Young Master!”
“Kuaaack!”
“My lords! Our young master is dying! If our young master dies, I die too, and if I die, my family of six siblings dies! Please, save our young master!”
Syuren eventually collapsed onto the floor.
Even Ursel rushed over with his attendants and pushed Lea aside.
“Bashuport! What is the meaning of this?!”
“I did nothing. This is simply bread!”
“Simply bread, you say, yet why does the Young Lord foam at the mouth?!”
Lea did not know what to do.
She looked at Viscountess Nerasmun, but the woman merely stared blankly.
Syuren intuitively felt it was time to end his act.
“Kuuugh…!”
“Young Masteeer!”
“Kuuuugh… Hahahahahahaha!”
“Eh?”
Syuren burst into laughter while lying on the floor, pounding it.
Belgit and Ursel looked at him blankly, then sighed.
Yes, this is it.
Feeling his usual coldness, he rose and revealed the hidden bread.
“Did you think I would actually eat something that might have poison in it?”
Lea looked at Syuren silently.
“I would not eat this kind of bread.”
“…Then give it to me.”
“What?”
Lea extended her hand.
“The bread you will not eat… Do not throw it on the floor, just give it to me.”
Her fingertips were trembling finely.
Her eyes were reddening.
Syuren threw the bread.
“Here, take it.”
Lea hurriedly clutched the bread to her chest.
“That was close. I nearly died. Is that not right, Belgit?”
“Young Master, you must not go dying on a whim!”
As always, while exchanging idle chatter with his servant, Syuren clearly heard it.
“Hic…”
So he turned his head and looked at Lea.
How shall I tease her again? That thought came to a complete halt the moment he beheld her figure.
Lea turned her head to the side, and her bangs fell down to veil her eyes.
Her reddened nose tip and quietly sealed lips were holding back a sob.
And finally, when a single tear, neither thick nor thin, rolled down her cheek, Syuren and all those present felt a brief pang of pity for Lea’s wretchedness, soon replaced by a deep, dense pleasure and ecstasy at having shattered it.
Her tightly sealed lips gradually trembled.
A few more tears glistened.
“…It is just bread.”
A frail voice protested.
“Just bread I baked earnestly from dawn until evening….”
“Ha!”
Stop. Do not say another word.
His body would not obey even his own voice.
As he arbitrarily opened his mouth again to insult her and obtain that ecstasy, someone intervened.
“Insolence toward the royal family ends there, Lord Hairan.”
“Ahng? Who?”
“Young Master! It is His Highness the Prince! Even a lowly one like me knows, how could you not know?”
“Ahh.”
Syuren smirked and took a swig from his bottle.
“A comrade suffering at the hands of a capable brother, I see.”
“Young Masteeer!”
It was a remark shocking enough to make even Belgit greatly alarmed.
The more he did so, the colder Yurien’s gaze became.
“Because Her Majesty exists, I am able to remain a prince.”
“I am able to be a lord because my father is Anthony Hairan. And what disrespect to the royal family am I committing?”
“Bashuport received Her Majesty’s pardon and is a proper member of our society. How can you humiliate them so before others? This is no different from mocking Her Majesty who granted the pardon.”
“That is a different matter, Your Highness the Prince. Bashuport received Her Majesty’s pardon, while we participated in the revolution and received rewards. Are those who received rewards not allowed to speak a word to those who received pardons?”
Yurien stared at Syuren for a moment.
Seeing him stand his ground and argue stubbornly even when the Prince told him to step down, he was no different from one who had given up on life.
A dog with nothing to lose was more frightening than a mad dog.
But Yurien too had nothing to lose.
Chomp.
Yurien picked up one of Lea’s pieces of bread and brought it straight to his mouth.
“Ah…!”
Leaving the flustered Lea behind, he took a large bite, chewed vigorously, and gulped it down.
“Delicious even plain.”
He had his attendant bring stew, dipped the bread in it, and also tried it with meat and fruit.
“Delicious dipped in stew, and delicious topped with meat or fruit.”
In that manner, Yurien ate all of Lea’s bread.
Syuren silently watched the process, occasionally drinking.
To him, Yurien spoke coldly.
“Lord Syuren Hairan, I heard the Grand Duke named you after the last character of Margrave Derbek out of respect for him.”
“So they say.”
“You who rode at the very forefront of the northern army in the revolution, cutting down enemies, were the very picture of dignity.”
Brushing the breadcrumbs from his lips, Yurien smiled softly.
“Now you have become a coward who even resorts to clumsy acting out of fear of poison.”
The atmosphere sank in an instant.
Syuren felt his anger surge while contemplating how to land a blow on this absurd prince.
“Look here, Your Highness the Prince.”
A mere bookworm who only knows fancy words.
“Someone who only stayed in the rear—when did you see this coward fight?”
Protected just because you are royalty, yet you dare put on airs…!
The images of those dying and killing flashed by like a kaleidoscope.
That kaleidoscope made Syuren speak words that crossed the line.
“If it is the horrors of war, I can show you even now…”
“Please stop.”
Surprisingly, it was Lea who cut him off.
“It is my fault.”
Lea gathered the breads into her wrapping cloth.
“I overstepped my bounds.”
She detested both the humiliation Syuren had dealt her and the help Yurien had given her by landing a blow on Syuren because of the humiliation she received.
“I shall take my leave for today. I wish you all a peaceful night.”
Without even wiping away the traces of her tears, Lea walked out of the banquet hall.
No one stopped her.
Only Viscountess Nerasmun gathered her things and followed Lea.
Shortly after, faint sounds of weeping were heard in the banquet hall.
Those were Lea’s tears.