66.
“What are you looking at?”
The aide glared at me.
“Why, am I not allowed to look? I’m looking with my own eyes.”
“That’s because what you’re looking at is my face. Is it that hard to tear your eyes away?”
“……Baron, you truly are shameless beyond belief.”
The aide ground his teeth.
“Do you think it makes sense for you to be following me right now?”
I hoisted up the stack of approval documents I was hugging to my chest and tilted my head.
“Is there any reason I shouldn’t? I’m even helping carry part of the load Sir Batar should be carrying.”
“Do I look like someone who needs that sort of help?”
The aide’s broad shoulders moved roughly back and forth, as if they were about to strike my forehead.
Just in case, I took about half a step to the side and grumbled.
“We’re both going to report to His Grace anyway. What’s wrong with going together?”
To be honest, it wasn’t as though this walk to see the duke side by side with the aide was entirely comfortable for me either.
It was just that this was my first meeting with him since “that day”…….
I simply needed someone to prevent the disaster of being left alone in a room with the duke.
And there was no one more suitable for that task than the aide.
“I told you I have something to report to His Grace too, didn’t I? We’re going the same way anyway, aren’t we? What, will walking with me make horns grow out of your ass…….”
“Do not look at my ass!”
The aide shouted sharply and pulled his body back as if protecting himself.
I gaped at him, dumbfounded.
“What are you doing? I don’t have the slightest interest in your ass either!”
“Why do you keep bringing up asses? It’s unpleasant, so stop it!”
“No, do you think that ass you’re so disgusted by is something only you have? If anything, the one reacting so sensitively to talk of an ass everyone else has too is you—.”
“Enough! I don’t want to hear it! I’m not curious and I don’t want to listen!”
The aide replied loudly, ignoring what I was saying, then shoved the door open with all his might.
Only then did he realize that, absorbed in arguing with me, he had flung open the door to the duke’s office without even knocking, and his pupils trembled.
But the duke, who had never once neglected his duties, was standing awkwardly in the middle of the room.
As if he had been in the middle of doing something and hurriedly tried to compose himself when the door opened.
I pushed the bewildered, frozen aide with my shoulder and stepped into the room.
“Aren’t you going to report?”
“……Ah.”
The aide finally came to his senses, walked over, and placed the approval documents on the office desk.
“Your Grace, forgive my rudeness.”
Then he began making a brief report.
I also took the hint and set my stack of documents beside his before stepping back, and just then my eyes met the duke’s.
“Your Grace.”
I had merely greeted him with my eyes and called out briefly out of habit, but at that moment.
Bang! Clatter, crash!
The documents, quill, paperweight, the watch he had briefly taken off, and several books on the desk came spilling down to the floor as if something had swept them away.
The one who had swept them all off the desk was none other than the duke.
More precisely, it was the duke’s left hand.
The instant our eyes met, he panicked and braced his hand on the desk; as he took a couple of steps backward, that hand swept across the desktop.
The duke seemed flustered and retreated one more step, and this time, with the heel of his shoe, he kicked his own wristwatch under the bookcase.
Crunch!
No matter who heard it, that was the sound of something being crushed or smashed.
And as if pushed along by the commotion, the window behind him, which had been slightly open, slowly swung wide with a creak.
“…….”
“…….”
“…….”
First, the aide silently began picking up the documents scattered across the floor.
I also went over and picked the books back up onto the desk.
A moment later, finally, the duke picked up the other fallen objects one by one.
When the edge of the bundle of documents fluttered in the wind drifting in through the window, the aide wordlessly pressed the paperweight firmly down on top of it.
Then, as if steeling himself, he tightened his lips and turned to the duke.
“Um, Your Grace. I have suddenly remembered an urgent matter.”
“…….”
“So I believe I must go see to it at once.”
Instinctively, I grabbed the aide’s sleeve where no one could see, but he was a knight.
“I will give the rest of my report this afternoon.”
He shook off my hand, which was clutching his sleeve as if it were a lifeline, with dispiriting ease,
and the aide left the office with firmer steps than ever before.
Without meeting my eyes to the very end, he even shut the door from outside with a thud!
The aide had fled.
“…….”
“…….”
I turned my body with a creak.
The duke stood by the window with his head slightly bowed.
The curtains fluttered behind him in the faint sunlight and breeze.
And then…….
And then I…….
saw it.
His earlobes, the rims of his ears, and the thin skin around them were burning, dyed bright red!
As if lightning had struck me on the crown of my head, I suddenly felt dizzy.
‘Th-this, this, this can’t be happening, can it?’
The situation was already embarrassing enough with only me feeling ashamed, so why, why was none other than the duke, right now…
‘I, I, I thought he wouldn’t remember?’
Suddenly, it was hot.
Even without seeing it, I could feel my face turning red.
“Ah, um, Your Grace……?”
I edged closer hesitantly.
It was because I felt responsible for somehow resolving this situation.
So this was what it meant when people said getting close while drunk only made things awkward when you met sober the next day.
“At the time, I was drunk too…….”
Feeling sheepish, I touched the back of my head and nodded.
“I was very rude. Your Grace also, um, needn’t concern yourself too much over it.”
At that, the duke hesitated for a moment before answering.
“……Very well.”
“Khh, ahem.”
I barely disguised my laughter as a cough.
‘Your Grace. Do you want to be dignified?’
Because I just had to remember what he had said back then.
That solemn way of speaking…….
So it really wasn’t his original way of speaking after all.
The duke let out a short sigh.
Then, after carefully studying my face as I struggled to maintain a serious expression,
“……I apologize as well if I was discourteous, Baron.”
he said.
It was as though the drunk duke from that day had disappeared like a mirage, and the duke I knew was standing before me.
Even so, I could feel that they were the same person.
His ears were still faintly red.
I shrugged.
“Not at all. Did you get home safely that day?”
“Did you get home safely as well, Baron?”
When I smiled and nodded, the duke’s stiff expression finally softened.
The relief was plain to see in his eyes.
‘When it’s just the two of us, it would be fine if he spoke comfortably like he did then.’
I shook my head and brushed away the thought that had flashed through my mind.
‘Why would I go that far?’
Instead, I decided to rescue the poor watch that had been driven under the bookcase.
I bent my knees, crouched down, and tilted my head.
At the very end of the shallow gap beneath the bookcase, I could see the faintly glinting edge of the watch.
“Ah, there……”
Just as I was about to reach out, I felt someone gather up my hair, which had been scattered messily across the floor, and hold it in his hand.
I snapped my head up from where I had been keeping it close to the floor.
“……!”
At that moment, thud.
A large hand covered my vision, as if blocking the way before my eyes.
When I blinked beneath that hand, my eyelashes brushed back and forth against his palm.
“Um…… Your Grace, I can’t see.”
Where the hand abruptly disappeared,
was the duke’s face.
“……I didn’t want you to hit yourself again and get a bump.”
Saying that, the duke slowly drew his upper body back.
Because I had suddenly lifted my head, he must have felt, for an instant, as though we were about to collide.
After all, we had bumped into each other once recently.
His hand had simply moved first on reflex.
“I was rude……”
“Fortunately, I don’t think it’ll bruise.”
When I answered like that, the duke’s gaze touched briefly on my forehead before withdrawing.
I lowered my head again and reached under the bookcase.
My fingertips just caught on the watch.
“Oh, I’ve got it.”
The watch I pulled out from under the bookcase was, as expected, shattered to pieces around its center.
“It’s too badly broken. I don’t think it can be fixed and used again.”
“…….”
“Still, we can’t just leave it under there forever.”
When I held out the watch, he slowly took it.
Then, when he stared silently at my hand, I opened my bare palm to show him.
“I’m not hurt.”
“Good.”
Only then did he lower his gaze and release the hair he had still been holding gathered in his hand.
He did not seem particularly accustomed to tending to others.
While he awkwardly picked off, one by one, the strands of hair that had stuck to his fingers because of static, I deftly swept my hair behind my back.
The duke dropped his suddenly emptied hand, then loosely clasped both hands behind his back.
When I glanced up at his face, I could read hesitation there.
“I……”
As our eyes met, he opened his mouth, then stopped.
He finds honesty difficult.
It also seemed as though he feared how he would appear.
Since the duke usually seemed not to care in the slightest about other people’s gazes, a part of me found it unexpected.
But if I hadn’t seen wrong, it was an emotion I knew well too.
And then there was something I wanted to say.
“I didn’t think it was strange or anything.”
“…….”
“Actually, I had fun back then. It was comfortable, too. And it seemed like you felt the same way.”
The duke listened in silence.
“Am I right?”
“…….”
I hesitated, then added one more thing.
“I think,”
“…….”
A smile came naturally to my lips.
“that’s more like you.”
When I lifted my head, he was looking at me very quietly.
As if he believed that could take the place of breathing itself.