Chapter 117
Two seasons…? It’s already been two seasons since we started dating?
When exactly…?
Faced with the incomprehensible statement from the Northern Grand Duke’s mouth, Ruan first came up with the most plausible explanation he could think of.
Is it a joke?
Some exaggerated joke like “I’ll love you for a hundred years, a thousand years”? But the oddly specific yet neither too long nor too short period of “two seasons” bothered him, and he couldn’t understand the context at all. If he just assumed it was some kind of cat-like joke, maybe…
‘Hmm. So a cat lover has a different sense of humor. How should I respond to this?’
Trying to somehow respond to the joke he didn’t understand, Ruan looked at his lover, with whom he had only confirmed mutual feelings less than ten days ago.
“What’s wrong?”
And the moment his eyes met the strict, serious, and solemn expression of the Northern Grand Duke, who seemed incapable of understanding even the concept of a joke, Ruan had no choice but to realize.
Joke? This cat was dead serious right now. Incredibly, unquestionably so.
Come to think of it, there’s no such thing as a cat-like joke in the first place. How could a cat, who only knows how to be straightforward, make jokes?
Perhaps it was wrong to try to understand cat thinking with human-like confined thoughts. No matter how he tried to cover it up, he couldn’t understand where the period of “two seasons” had come from.
Ruan finally gave up trying to guess how this strange timeframe had been derived and decided to ask the person in question directly.
‘It’s better to ask than to make assumptions on my own. If I ask, I’ll know what’s going on in that head of his.’
“It’s been… two seasons since we became a couple?”
“Yes. It’s already been two seasons since you courted me and I accepted, making us a pair. I didn’t know then that we’d only now be mating.”
And Ruan fell into even greater confusion. This was serious. This seemed like something even a random street cat named Cheese wouldn’t understand if you asked it, let alone a human incapable of cat-like thinking.
‘I courted the Grand Duke two seasons ago? And he even accepted it? When I only realized my own feelings less than ten days ago? And even after that, I was so heartbroken thinking the Grand Duke was proposing to someone else?’
Did we experience different events…?
Could it be that this fantasy world, whose standards I don’t understand, has thrown another curveball and brought a Grand Duke from a different timeline? Just when I thought I had somewhat adapted, did this world have more bombs left to drop?
Half-dazed, Ruan blurted out a question without thinking:
“By any chance, which iteration of Your Grace are you?”
The Grand Duke responded with an expression as if he had heard the barking of a creature belonging to the Canidae family of the order Carnivora:
“What are you talking about?”
“Ah. It’s nothing. Just nonsense.”
Ruan inwardly felt relieved at the Grand Duke looking at him as if wondering what on earth was wrong with him. Right. Even in this world where cat people suddenly appearing might be possible, it would be too much for a cat person to also be a regressor.
Narrowing his thought process back to common sense, Ruan calmly began to retrace his memories.
Two seasons ago… So that would be last autumn. What happened then?
He clearly remembered Ralph coming to Ardenheim at that time. He also remembered the Grand Duke becoming inexplicably gloomy and then regaining his majestic demeanor. But no matter how much he thought about it, he had no memory of exchanging courtship with the Grand Duke and becoming a couple. Could it be that the memory loss he had used as an excuse to cover up his lack of knowledge after being possessed was…?
Just as Ruan was about to fall into fictional thinking once again, the Grand Duke’s voice brought him back to reality.
“By the way, I recently heard from the knights that humans seem to value timing when courting. Did you make your courtship while in the middle of trimming claws or something?”
The rare experience of being criticized for lack of mood by a cat made Ruan completely forget about the memory loss hypothesis he had been seriously considering until just a moment ago.
No, to be treated as a human who understands mood even less than a cat. When did he ever confess while trimming claws…
‘Oh?’
Just as Ruan was about to refute the Grand Duke’s words, a memory from last autumn suddenly flashed through his mind.
The Grand Duke who had voluntarily offered his paw, which was like a black sesame rice cake, telling him to trim his claws. The Grand Duke who had allowed all 18 claws to be trimmed without biting or scratching, sitting in one place. Overwhelmed with fondness and love for such a Grand Duke, he had…
“I kissed you.”
Ruan muttered with a slightly dumbfounded expression. To this, the Grand Duke, seemingly recalling the same moment, replied with a strangely majestic air:
“That’s right.”
Indeed. At that time, Ruan had reflexively hugged the cute and admirable ball of fur and kissed him. And after that…
“Your Grace pressed your… lips against mine.”
“At that time, you hadn’t taught me the courtship method involving tongues yet.”
Ruan, who had been staring at the Grand Duke puffing out his chest majestically for a moment, recalled how he had said a few days ago that their kisses until then had been ‘human courtship expressions’.
So… this cat…
He thought that kiss was human-style courtship, and has been thinking we’ve been dating since that day? All this time?
“…”
After staring at the cold-faced Northern Grand Duke sitting elegantly with his long legs crossed for a moment, Ruan spoke.
“Your Grace.”
The Grand Duke’s cat ears perked up at Ruan’s call. Ruan patted the space he had made by slightly raising his body and said:
“Come over here, please.”
“What is it?”
Though he flicked his tail as if puzzled, the Grand Duke moved over to where Ruan was sitting. Ruan stared at the Grand Duke sitting beside him and began to pat the space between the two pointed ears sticking out from his jet-black hair.
He should have realized it when he was earnestly pressing his lips in the name of courtship. What to do with this frustratingly innocent cat? How is he going to survive in this harsh world being so innocent…
Ruan lamented inwardly as he watched the ears automatically lying flat for easy petting as he stroked them.
‘It’s frustrating how pure he is, but… he’s so kind. Volker, Louise, Marquis Elenroth. How can I let him out into a world crawling with snake-like humans? What if he gets scammed somewhere?’
As he patted the dense black hair on the crown of the head, Ruan, sinking into worries about what to do with this cat, made a decision.
What else can I do? I’ll just have to stay glued to his side for life.
Having steeled his resolve, Ruan said solemnly:
“I will protect Your Grace for life.”
At those words, the Grand Duke’s eyes, which had been narrowed in satisfaction at the petting, sharpened.
“You seem to have some strange misunderstanding every time you say that.”
It was a piercing gaze that would have made the people of Ardenheim scream “Eek!” and run away if they had seen it. But to Ruan, who was currently immersed in worry for the innocent cat, even that suspicious look seemed endearing.
“Yes. You should live with a bit of suspicion for the world like that. Do you understand?”
The Grand Duke, who had been eyeing his mate suspiciously as he kept saying strange things today, let out a small sigh. Then, entrusting his head to Ruan’s hand again, he said:
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but… I like the word ‘lifetime’.”
As if he liked it even more after saying it, a purring sound leaked from the Grand Duke as he rubbed his cheek against Ruan’s hand.
Letting out a low laugh at the sight, Ruan recalled the word that had just come out of both his and the Grand Duke’s mouths, and that many lovers use.
Lifetime.
Come to think of it, what the Grand Duke did that day wasn’t just a love confession, but a proposal.
He had thought it was just a sudden development due to the knights’ misunderstanding that the Grand Duke and Ruan were already lovers, but… It seems it was also the intention of the Grand Duke, who had been under the same misunderstanding as the knights—at this point, Ruan felt that he might have been the only one misunderstanding, rather than the other way around—and Ruan felt a tickle in his heart anew.
Of course, since the Sirah Empire law, like the law of the place where Kim Ha-jin lived, doesn’t recognize marriage between same-sex couples, the Grand Duke and Ruan couldn’t actually get married.
So it was essentially a statement without practical effect, but… Still, doesn’t that statement contain the meaning that the Grand Duke also wishes to spend the rest of his life with Ruan? The current Ruan was extremely happy just with that.
‘By the way, when we return to Ardenheim, I’ll have to tell my family about my relationship with the Grand Duke.’
Until now, no matter how much he denied it, it wasn’t accepted. And he had glossed over it thinking it was a temporary misunderstanding that would soon subside, but now that their relationship was no longer a misunderstanding, he couldn’t do that anymore.
As Ruan was pondering how to explain this to the Daen family, the Grand Duke, who had eerily sensed his distraction and complained that his petting had become less sincere, made Ruan focus on petting him again.
He didn’t know then what he would face when he returned to Ardenheim.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
