95.
“Count! No! Rohwinas!”
Meriana screamed as if she were about to stop breathing.
The boatman, nearly toppling over, staggered and landed hard on his backside at the stern.
The boat rocked wildly.
Meriana held on to the railing and endured it.
Rohwinas had already thrown himself into the lake.
‘How did it come to this?’
It was already widely known through the grapevine that Anastasia Roxan liked gardens.
After all, for her sake, Rohwinas had taken her everywhere there was a famous garden to be found.
Anyone who had ever taken an interest in Rohwinas would know as much.
So Meriana had been able to guess easily.
Given her recent movements, Anastasia Roxan would attend this glass greenhouse party.
And so…….
She had suitably incited a few followers to humiliate Anastasia Roxan.
While also hinting that the opposite side of this lakeshore would be appropriate.
She had intended to watch with Rohwinas from the boat.
So he could see with his own eyes what state the woman he had failed to let go of was in now.
So he could realize for himself that such a woman was not worth lingering over.
Yes, she had thought Rohwinas might perhaps be displeased.
That was why she had boarded the boat.
Because even if the desire to save her brushed past him for a single instant, it was a space that completely excluded any opportunity to approach.
And yet, the very man who disliked even getting his sleeve wet, who had not even thought to retrieve the handkerchief that was practically a token of their relationship.
Into the lake, which, though its water quality was maintained, was no different from stagnant water, full of leaves that had drifted in, green algae, and water moss.
Without the slightest hesitation, without even looking back, he had jumped in.
Even though he had not even properly seen who had fallen!
He had been looking nowhere near that side……. Surely he had not even cast a glance that way.
As if he had no interest at all whether Anastasia Roxan was standing there or not.
Then why?
‘This can’t be happening.’
She had asked the Imperial Consort for help, but because she could not simply stand by and watch, the scheme she had devised had become her fatal mistake.
Meriana gripped the boat’s railing so tightly her nails seemed about to break.
Meriana’s mind was spinning madly, but even so, only a few seconds had passed.
A man strode out, pushing through the people gathered close around the lakeshore.
Duke Gladineer.
In that instant, Meriana thought of a way to smooth over this situation.
Rohwinas…….
Yes, she had lost to Roxan when it came to the handkerchief, but what if the one who had fallen into the lake was the princess herself?
At the same time, however, an unpleasant fear reverberated deep within Meriana’s lungs.
‘Still, there’s no other choice.’
Even if the end of this decision led to an even more terrible result.
She could never stop here.
‘After coming this far.’
The moment the boat lurched and tilted to the side, Meriana loosened the strength in the hand gripping the railing.
Splash!
It had been only a few seconds since Anastasia Roxan had fallen in.
They might have stupidly watched Rohwinas leap into the lake like a beast,
but they could not remain unmoved when a delicate princess lost her balance and collapsed as well.
The boatman shouted like a scream.
“The princess has fallen into the lake! The princess fell in the water!”
The small rowboat rocked wildly, and the only person left on it was the boatman, sitting there in a heap.
In an instant, the commotion spread from the nearby boats.
“Th-the princess seems to have fallen in!”
“The count is gone too!”
“Did the count fall in first?”
“I think he jumped in to save her!”
Water was splashing near the boat.
However…….
It was in the exact opposite direction from the blond head cutting fleetingly across the surface of the lake and moving far ahead.
People hesitated at the gunwales.
‘Should we jump in?’
‘But her fiancé was with her, wasn’t he?’
‘Didn’t her fiancé jump into the lake too?’
Meriana thrashed about in the water on her own and moved away from the boat.
The hem of her dress, now as heavy as a thousand pounds, clung to her legs.
Her breathing grew ragged.
“Rohwinas! Sa, ve me, Rohwi, nas!”
She struggled, but the strength gradually drained from her body.
Her tangled hair and the cloth wrapped around her whole body were terribly cumbersome and heavy.
Gurgle…….
She could not breathe.
She was going to sink like this.
A chilling fear, a visceral terror, surged up within her.
The surface of the water was right before her eyes.
Sunlight lay upon it, and she could vaguely see the shadows of the boats around her.
But…….
“Hah!”
Someone pulled Meriana above the surface with powerful force.
It was Rohwinas.
“Kuh, hng……. Cough!”
Meriana leaned her head against his shoulder and wiped at the reddened corners of her eyes.
Then she squeezed her eyes shut and wrapped her arms around Rohwinas’s neck.
She felt as if she might burst into tears, and at the same time, as if she wanted to let out an excited laugh.
‘I won.’
As Meriana panted in quick, shallow breaths, the corners of her mouth rose ever so slightly.
* * *
“I’m soaked.”
Water dripped down at my feet as I climbed up onto the lakeshore.
Perhaps my shoes had slipped off while I was swimming to land, because I could vividly feel the dirt beneath my bare feet.
I shook my head to fling off the water.
The ribbon decorations on my dress, which I had tied firmly, had all come undone, and dirt and debris from the surface of the lake blotched the cloth in patches.
Green algae clinging to my hair slid slimily down onto my forehead.
“Pfft, what a sight.”
“That’s the disgrace you get for trying to mingle and play among young noblemen.”
“I knew she’d end up like that from the moment she went around without watching her conduct.”
As if my appearance were some amusing spectacle, the gathered people were each throwing in a word.
Whether they did or not, I checked on the bastard who had so splendidly shoved me into the lakeshore.
The bastard whose balls I had kicked with all my might was curled up in a corner.
Beside him, the friends who had been grinning and egging him on were patting his back with pale faces.
‘I told you to go into the water, didn’t I? If you give me a good show, all the gold in this pouch is yours, I said.’
‘Looks like the beggar baron still has some pride left, doesn’t she?’
‘Just from the way she stuck her head back among the nobles, it’s obvious she’s run out of money, so why is she pretending otherwise?’
‘You’re going to flatter men and take a little fee for your trouble anyway. I’m saying I’ll spare you that trouble, so what’s the problem?’
‘Baron, I said go into the lake.’
‘This isn’t fun, is it? You can’t even understand what I’m saying.’
Thanks to the fact that he himself was the one who could not understand words, he had tried to knead my shoulder and ended up getting kicked in the balls.
With a wheezing scream like a deflating balloon, the bastard, face twisted with spite, lowered his head and shoved me with all his strength.
And I, struck right in the abdomen where I happened to be injured, staggered for an instant and fell helplessly into the lake.
For a while, I could not move my body and kept sinking.
When I began to suffocate, it was a little dizzying, but I was still at a level where I could somehow swim out on my own.
Because it was near the lakeshore, the water there hadn’t been as deep as it was in the center.
In any case, even after falling into the lake and coming back out, it had been such long-awaited nonsense that my ears still felt unpleasantly unwashed.
So much so that calling it that felt like an insult to every canine creature in existence.
I moved my damp bare feet and approached the man, who was still crouched and panting intermittently while I climbed back onto land.
When my shadow fell over him, he trembled and lifted his head.
In that short time, his eyes had become bloodshot.
‘Looks like it hurt like hell, huh?’
I snorted inwardly and forcibly pried the pouch out of his grasp.
“A-are you robbing me right now?”
“Why? You said you’d give me this money if I went into the lake.”
“You’re really going to take that money?”
“Y-you shameless—!”
“No, give it back! My money!”
While they squawked and produced noise utterly useless to anyone’s life, I gripped the heavy pouch and returned to the lakeside.
Then, avoiding those who rushed at me in a panic to take the money pouch back, I threw it across the lake without hesitation.
The pouch flew far in an arc.
And then, splash!
It sank beneath the lake’s surface, leaving only the concentric ripples on the water as its final trace.
And once even those disappeared.
Clutching beneath his lower abdomen as though supporting himself, the man staggered toward me.
The sight of him approaching while pointing his finger as if to stab me in the eye was quite something.
“I won’t let you get away with—aaagh!”
But the foul-smelling finger that had thrust right up to my nose was bent upward by more than ninety degrees, and the man collapsed again with a thin, hoarse scream.
The one standing in front of me, blocking his way while bending his finger, was the duke.
He was only standing slightly in front of me, yet I couldn’t see anything.
His shoulders were too high to see over, and even when I moved my head to the side, his build was too large.
While I craned my neck this way and that.
“Ah, aaaaah, aaaaaah!”
The man’s scream gradually took shape, revealing unmistakable fear,
and I could sense him flailing his legs wildly as he rolled across the dirt.
His sluggish, grating scream stopped all at once.
I couldn’t see the scene itself, but I looked at the expressions of the people around us.
‘It broke.’
And I thought so indifferently.
“Ugh, uhuuuh…… I was wrong…… please…….”
Soon, I heard the voice of the man who had burst into tears over a single broken finger.
“D-Duke, isn’t this going too far?”
“Are you in league with this man too?”
“…….”
His tone was decisive, as if to say he would make them end up in the exact same state if they were.
Having sealed everyone’s mouths with a single curt question, the duke finally turned toward me.
Isitan pulled free the knot fastening his cloak with one hand and held the heavy cloak out to me.
I had been aware for a while now that my clothes were clinging to my whole body in an embarrassing state.
I accepted the cloak without refusing.
‘Usually, at times like this, wouldn’t he drape it over my shoulders himself?’
Suddenly, I felt like I understood.
Isitan Gladineer was that kind of man.
No matter what he wanted, he was someone who put my will first.
Even if that went against his own heart.
That was why, even in moments like today when he helped me, even when he got angry on my behalf.
He could not readily express it, remaining cold and blunt all the while.
That was who he was.