Chapter 69
Accustomed to the assistant always understanding cat language perfectly, the Grand Duke didn’t think for a moment that the assistant wouldn’t understand what he was trying to express.
That’s why the Grand Duke couldn’t comprehend the current situation at all.
He had clearly showered the assistant with every courtship expression he knew. To be honest, he had expressed his courtship almost to the point of obsession.
But… the partner who should respond to this courtship.
Was just sitting on the bed, looking at him as if to say, ‘What on earth is wrong with this cat?’
‘What exactly is the problem?’
The Grand Duke, feeling frustrated, once again let out a low growl filled with seductive intent.
“Grrrrrr.”
Then.
The assistant’s eyes, which had been watching the Grand Duke, widened.
“Your Grace.”
The assistant called out to the Grand Duke in an excited voice, leaning towards him with both arms on the bed.
It was the first dramatic response since the Grand Duke had started courting.
The Grand Duke’s tail stood straight up in response.
Finally.
‘Is he going to respond to my courtship!’
As the Grand Duke’s pupils dilated and contracted repeatedly in anticipation, the assistant, with wide eyes, said:
“You don’t usually make sounds other than purring, why are you suddenly making noises?”
At the assistant’s innocent question… the Grand Duke’s tail dropped straight down.
Of course, the Grand Duke didn’t make sounds in his cat form. Cats only make sounds other than during courtship when they’re kittens lacking the ability to care for themselves and calling for their mother. That wasn’t something an independent adult cat like the Grand Duke would do.
Adult cats can usually communicate sufficiently with body language alone.
But now, this guy…
‘Does he think I’m making kitten sounds looking for a mother instead of courting?’
The Grand Duke felt extremely wronged at this humiliating misunderstanding.
So wronged that he could do nothing but look at the assistant with his tail drooping to the floor.
As the Grand Duke stared at the assistant in frustration and shock, he suddenly realized.
What the assistant had repeatedly referred to as a “misunderstanding”.
The Grand Duke was now being misunderstood by the assistant.
* * *
The Grand Duke sat in his place in the office, lost in thought.
He had never before cared about being misunderstood by someone.
That was because it didn’t pose a threat to the Grand Duke.
In fact, in the same context, he hadn’t been very interested in how humans thought about him, so the Grand Duke often didn’t even realize when humans misunderstood him.
And truly, it had never been a problem until now.
There had been a time when he failed to properly understand a nearby human and faced a great threat… But even then, the threat was the human’s ambition, not how that human perceived the Grand Duke.
Following this train of thought, he briefly recalled a human who had begged for his life, claiming that the loyalty he had shown while serving the Grand Duke for many years was genuine, pleading to spare his life for old times’ sake… But the Grand Duke quickly pushed away that unpleasant memory.
Anyway.
After that incident, the Grand Duke had made efforts to closely observe the humans around him and assess whether they posed a danger to him, but he had never thought about how they perceived him. He didn’t think it would affect him.
That’s why he had dismissed the assistant’s words about humans misunderstanding the Grand Duke or whatnot…
But now that the assistant himself had misunderstood him.
The Grand Duke was realizing for the first time in his life what it meant to be misunderstood.
Certainly, until he decided to court directly for the first time, the Grand Duke thought everything would go smoothly.
That was because the courtship target was his assistant. The assistant who could uncannily sense his mood with just a flick of his tail tip.
So he thought that when the Grand Duke expressed his courtship, the assistant, who had been hesitating about whether to court the Grand Duke, would quickly understand the Grand Duke’s intentions and respond…
Incredibly, that assistant had interpreted the Grand Duke’s best efforts at courtship as something not just strange, but humiliating.
As a result. The Grand Duke was now ruminating on the “frustration of being misunderstood” that he had felt for the first time in his life.
Despite courting so earnestly, to be treated like a kitten in return. The more he thought about it, the more twisted his mood became.
Being misunderstood was truly an unpleasant experience.
‘Is that why he kept talking until he was blue in the face about clearing up misunderstandings?’
The Grand Duke flicked one ear in an odd mood.
After dwelling on this unfamiliar unpleasantness for a while, the Grand Duke licked his lips to change his mood.
Yes. Feeling bad was feeling bad, and since there was a problem, the Grand Duke needed to think about how to solve it.
He didn’t know how they had ended up in a situation where the one who used to tell him to clear up misunderstandings was now misunderstanding the Grand Duke… But anyway, since there was a misunderstanding. It seemed that now was the time to “clear up the misunderstanding” as the assistant had repeatedly said.
Clearing up a misunderstanding.
The Grand Duke, who had never cared about being misunderstood in his life, had never thought about how to clear up a misunderstanding.
So the Grand Duke recalled what the assistant, who had always talked about clearing up misunderstandings, had said.
‘He said to express in a way that humans can understand.’
So, does that mean he should court in a way that humans can understand?
Human courtship expressions.
The Grand Duke of the past might have known how human mating systems worked, but not how humans courted. But now, the Grand Duke knew how humans courted.
Because.
Having finished his thoughts, the Grand Duke shifted his gaze to the assistant sitting at his desk, reading and writing replies to letters.
There, the assistant, whose lips had become a bit rough as winter approached, had told him before.
‘A kiss, is it.’
It’s best to solve a problem as quickly as possible if it can be solved.
The Grand Duke, staring at the assistant’s lips with slightly raised skin, stood up.
And strode towards the assistant’s desk.
“Your Grace?”
The assistant, who had been sitting quietly, raised his head from the letter he was buried in and looked at the Grand Duke, apparently puzzled by the Grand Duke’s sudden movement.
During this time, the Grand Duke’s gaze was focused solely on the assistant’s lips.
Keeping his gaze fixed, the Grand Duke stopped in front of the assistant’s desk. Then, cupping the cheeks of the assistant who had raised his head to look at him.
“Your Grace? What are you-!”
With that, he leaned down and pressed his lips against the assistant’s.
Through the thin skin, he could clearly feel the assistant’s dry lips and slightly lower body temperature.
Finding this quite pleasing, the Grand Duke tilted his head to deepen the contact with that texture and temperature, and fell into thought.
He had done it, but…
‘How long am I supposed to keep doing this?’
When the assistant first courted, the time their lips were pressed together was short. So at that time, the Grand Duke also briefly pressed his lips and pulled away.
But thinking about it now, he remembered that the knights he had seen on the ramparts had their lips touching for quite a long time, long enough for the Grand Duke to wonder what they were doing.
‘How long should this courtship expression last to be well conveyed without misunderstanding?’
The Grand Duke, who had just pressed his lips without knowing anything other than the fact that pressing lips together was a courtship expression, became a bit perplexed.
During this time, their lips remained pressed together.
Just as he was about to move his hand from the assistant’s cheek to the back of his head, thinking that doing it for longer might convey the message more clearly.
A breath escaped from between the assistant’s tightly closed lips, tickling the Grand Duke’s lips.
Then the assistant suddenly pulled back.
This revealed the assistant’s face, which had been too close to see before.
“Your Grace, this is, um…”
The assistant seemed to be trying to say something, but it didn’t reach the Grand Duke’s ears.
The Grand Duke was looking at the assistant in front of him as if seeing something strange.
The area around his eyes and ears, darker than usual.
The slightly parted lips where the Grand Duke’s lips had just been.
The confusion that rose in the blue eyes, wide open under the eyelashes that had tickled the Grand Duke’s cheeks, and…
And.
The moment he saw an unknown emotion in the assistant’s eyes.
The Grand Duke felt an unfamiliar sensation flowing down his lower back for the first time in his life.
His body heated up, and his muscles tightened.
His thoughts became hazy, and for some reason, he felt thirsty.
His whole body was screaming with nervousness, but having never experienced this sensation before, he didn’t know exactly what to do in this situation.
But even amidst all this, one thing was certain.
He wanted to touch his partner right in front of him.
The Grand Duke reached out with a stiffened hand, tense from the nervousness that was tickling his stomach.
Towards the assistant’s eyes, which had darkened in color and were clearly warmer than their usual temperature.
And just as the Grand Duke’s hand was about to touch the thin skin covering the assistant’s eyes.
Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong-
The sound of bells rang out.
And not just that,
Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong-
A very long,
Ding-dong, ding-dong-
And urgent bell sound.
The Grand Duke and the assistant’s eyes met.
It was the bell sound announcing a large-scale monster invasion.
