#38
“You misunderstand, Your Highness. It seemed that His Highness the Second Prince was not adapting well to the ballroom.”
The young lady spoke while forcing up the corners of her mouth. Her tone was still kind, and her expression remained composed. However, the faintly trembling eyelids and tightly clenched jawline within revealed her true feelings completely.
“Did I do that, young lady?”
I tilted my head diagonally and laughed lightly. My tone was playful, but my eyes were staring directly at her.
“I saw you going beyond the curtain earlier as well. I wanted to let you know that places like this have terraces, but there was distance between us so I couldn’t tell you, Your Highness.”
When the young lady spoke with a regretful expression, the surrounding nobles began exchanging sneers directed at me and habitual praise toward the young lady.
Subtle murmuring began leaking from every corner of the ballroom. The eyes of noble ladies covering their mouths with fans glanced at me, and the sons of earl families nudged each other’s arms while sending half-mocking gazes. Though there were no words, each expression contained full meaning. Words like ‘abandoned prince,’ ‘one who forced his way into this place,’ and ‘one not acknowledged by the Emperor’ flowed on the quiet currents.
The praise toward the young lady was the opposite. Even when she stopped speaking, everyone smiled and nodded, spouting ridiculous praise about her facial features or dress decorations. Even for a single ribbon embroidered with gold thread, some showed admiration while others fanned themselves vigorously to hide their jealous gazes.
They all seem to think it’s not obvious.
Their acting was crude. They avoided eye contact when it was made and smiled at each other with closed mouths. Nobles who maintained their presence in this ballroom through such methods. Their schemes were so familiar they were boring.
“I see. The young lady is truly a kind person. As they say, beautiful people have beautiful hearts too, right? Our hyung is the same. Yesterday something like this happened…”
I smiled lightly and received a macaron from hyung standing beside me. It was a green grape macaron.
I took it with a “yum” and continued speaking while munching.
The sweet fragrance of green grapes spreading in my mouth permeated through every word. My voice was natural, casually delivering it as if hyung in front of me had really done such affectionate things.
I was acting immature while fabricating how affectionate our hyung was to his one and only younger brother.
I shrugged my shoulders and slightly raised the corners of my mouth, drawing all the surrounding gazes to myself. The key was making it sound truthful each time I continued speaking. I made the rhythm of my voice leisurely and naturally paused between words.
The repertoire was endless.
The flow of the story continued endlessly. From trivial anecdotes to absurd embellishments. It flowed smoothly like reading an old fairy tale book. I embellished the situation with sentences that would make nobles exclaim “Oh my!” when they heard them.
“Once, I fell in the middle of the garden because of a trap set by some spiteful person, and somehow hyung knew and came to personally help me up, brush off my clothes, and even apply medicine to my knees.”
When I said that, I casually looked toward the opposite side of the ballroom. I could see several people holding back laughter with twitching corners of their mouths. The truth didn’t matter. What mattered was the atmosphere.
The young lady’s eyes trembled slightly.
She subtly lowered her eyelids. Through her briefly trembling eyelashes, emotions that nearly contorted passed by. Her expression was still a smiling face, but even though the angle of her mouth corners didn’t change by even one degree, the grain of emotion had changed.
“What an affectionate person.”
The ending was calm, but her tone had slightly lowered.
“Right, the young lady knows hyung is affectionate too!”
I spoke as if pleased and laughed. I turned my head slightly to the side and waited for hyung’s reaction.
“I do have attentive aspects.”
Hyung’s words fell indifferently. There was leisure in his voice.
At those words, I could see Marcus hyung in the distance opening his mouth slightly in disbelief.
Though he said nothing, the expression on his face clearly conveyed the meaning ‘what nonsense.’ His hand holding the wine glass had also stopped, and I could see one of the accompanying knights quietly chuckling.
The Archduke was staring this way without much change though.
He sat in a chair quietly looking our way. With both hands placed on his knees, in an upright posture. His gaze was unwavering and strangely peaceful. Expressionless, yet that very expressionlessness contained even more.
Hyung leisurely smiled and nodded his head.
Just the corners of his mouth slightly, very neatly. That alone said a lot. Each of his movements was restrained, and within those small gestures was the leisure of ‘go ahead and try.’
‘Keep going’ was what this meant.
I muttered inwardly and picked up another macaron.
“Actually, I get hurt often. I’m a bit clumsy. So hyung has emergency medicine that he doesn’t even need stocked in his reception room.”
I continued speaking while swallowing the sweetness lingering in my mouth. This time I lowered my voice slightly and used a refined tone. To make nobles lean in to listen, it was good to give slight variations.
“What a troublesome younger brother indeed.”
Hyung added matter-of-factly. His expression maintained composure along with that subtle hint of amusement.
The nobles were making surprised expressions.
Before long, people nodding their heads increased throughout the ballroom, and some even murmured among themselves. The people who had been mixing in mockery just moments before were now being swayed by the affectionate conversation between brothers.
With the young lady standing in front of us, carrying on a conversation only with me without giving her any chance to interject was discourteous.
For the Crown Prince and Second Prince to have a prolonged playful conversation in a ballroom was discourteous, especially when there was a separate protagonist standing in this place.
How this would look to the nobles was certain.
It would seem like the older brother favored his younger brother, and because of that, he was publicly ignoring Lady Marsien, a marriage candidate.
Something like the Crown Prince being angry at the young lady for looking down on his beloved younger brother?
That level of interpretation would be relatively refined, and more provocative interpretations were probably already circulating with every word.
Since this happened at the young lady’s coming-of-age ceremony of all times, it would have good topic value.
High society’s grand events, especially coming-of-age ceremonies, only happen once. The rumors from this day were likely to be talked about for a long time.
‘For now—I think I’ve more than adequately portrayed being very close brothers.’
…While watching the young lady’s expression reveal her true nature moment by moment, I suppressed my slightly complicated feelings.
The angle of her eyebrows, the minute trembling cast over her eyelids, the modulation of her mouth corners. Her face was like a canvas where emotions were being painted over with a brush. It appeared expressionless but constantly wavered, and currents that could be understood without words lightly rose above her skin.
Within her expression was not emotion but calculation. Emotion packaged to keep that calculation from being noticed.
Then occasionally, in moments when the calculation went awry, sincerity showed through. Like now.
“Ah.”
The air froze at that single short exclamation.
“Ah?”
The young lady narrowed her eyes and asked back. It was a question without emotion, but before those words could even finish, Theodore hyung moved.
Perhaps intending to let me continue tasting desserts that had stopped while talking, Theodore hyung held a lemon macaron to my mouth.
His movements were slow, his fingertips practiced. Hands that moved without awkwardness, matching the timing of me receiving the macaron. As if it were an old habit, he acted naturally.
When I took it with a “yum,” he smiled while raising one corner of his mouth with a “pfft.”
That smile was a type rarely seen on Theodore hyung’s face. Not a polite smile maintaining courtesy, but laughter containing emotions of truly enjoying himself.
“Make sure to brush your teeth when you get back.”
The pitch of his voice was slightly lower than usual. Hyung, who always used only restrained speech in front of people, was allowing some private jokes just for now.
“I do that without being told, you know? Hyung. I’m not a child.”
I replied bluntly while slowly rolling the sour aftertaste of the macaron remaining in my mouth. I deliberately stuck my lips out slightly to make it sound like whining.
When I replied bluntly while savoring the sour aftertaste of the quickly swallowed macaron, hyung even curved his eyes and laughed.
He naturally raised the corners of his mouth while completely folding his eye shape. His eyelids slightly creased, and his usually sharp eyes became as soft as in childhood.
It was a precious expression rarely seen from the Crown Prince.
The pupils of nobles who saw that smile all enlarged at once. Far away on the terrace side, two noble ladies simultaneously drew in their breath. Some were whispering something while hitting the person next to them, their faces half-covered with fans.
Perhaps because of that, the way the young lady looked at me was on a different dimension than before.
Her gaze, which had been calculatedly layering emotional strata until just moments ago, instantly became smooth. Eyes mixed with curiosity and displeasure, wariness and jealousy. Those eyes reorganized again, changing to a completely different grain than before.
More quiet.
It was quiet as if even the afterimages that had held madness or threat, down to their very traces, had been washed away.
Just like when Sercil openly showed his lovey-dovey relationship with Theodore hyung.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
