“So why is it I seem to lose all sight of such things when it comes to him?”
It was all about me. My own person. It should have been easy, and yet even then I couldn’t work it out. As someone who’d been reborn into this world, my value system differed from those around me. As such, I’d always believed love would be a complicated thing for me, and I had long ago assumed that it was my fate to live alone.
When it came to the heart and feelings of love, the nearest example I could think of was Wendel and Blacky. Yes, Blacky was a cat, but there was a fierce attachment and connection between them that would put any girl to shame. Did I want what they wanted? Did I want to be side by side every day, attached at the hip, occasionally rubbing cheeks...?
Hmm, perhaps this could do with some thought...
I was reminded of a time when the margrave was still alive and Reinald had come to the Conrad domain. He’d brought his face close to mine to play something of a prank on me. Was that what I wanted? For him to stare at me with a fiery passion in his eyes?
I pressed the pause button on my imagination before things got out of hand.
But I went so red. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t possibly go through that again.
For Reinald, the moment had been nothing more than a jest. And yet remembering his eyes and his long lashes turned me red all over again. When I thought back on it, Wendel had been there too... And he hadn’t been alone...
“Ugh...” I groaned, covering my face with a pillow.
Then I stopped myself from thinking about it any further. If I were going to consider things seriously, I’d need to take a different tack. I put that particular memory deep in a safe in the corner of my mind and locked it shut. That moment was just too real for me. I couldn’t use it.
Anyway, love. Yes, love. When most people thought of love they thought of passionate embraces and that kind of thing, but was that the sort of thing Reinald himself sought? I went through a number of considerations, thoughts, and imaginations I did not want shared with another human being, and I arrived at a conclusion. For Reinald, I placed such ideas of love into a folder labeled “highly unlikely” and turned my thoughts to a different topic.
Namely, that of what Elena had hinted at.
What did I want?
To be brutally honest, it was near impossible for me to imagine Reinald whispering sweet nothings into a lover’s ear. But having gotten to know him and having seen how he held himself, I’d developed trust in him, and it led me to an answer of sorts.
I did not want to see, nor did I even want to imagine, Reinald in love with somebody else...
It was at this realization that I finally felt the haze clear. I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to believe I was playing a joke on myself. It was true to say that I didn’t think Reinald was an awful person, and I certainly didn’t hate him, but why in the world would my heart choose someone so dangerous, and someone with whom my chances were so infinitesimally low?
But now that the genie was out of the bottle, so to speak, there was no putting it back. Every single thought, emotion, and imagining was far too much to bear, and so I clutched a cushion tight to my chest and curled tightly around it.
I may as well have been admitting that yes, I did want us to have matching ribbons. Elena had also said that Reinald rarely parted with his own belongings, and so I think I’d wanted to believe that, by his kind gesture, there might have been something, anything, like a hint of possibility.
But I doubt it, I really do...
And then it was as if both my heart and mind cooled in an instant. Unrequited love was fine, and I took no issue with it, but I couldn’t expect Reinald to feel likewise. The size of what he was reaching for was simply beyond me. We’d been able to get along just fine as allies until now. He’d placed my family under his protection, but the scale of it all went well beyond the scope of our mere family. I just didn’t think I’d ever be able to keep up.
Of the people more suited to standing as an equal by his side, there was Duke Tuna, of course, and then there was Nika, one among his most trusted. Outside of those two, there was only Ern, as I’d mentioned earlier. But then there were all the rumors of Reinald indulging in countless one-night stands. The more I thought about it, the more it left a gaping hole in my heart.
“So maybe one night is fine, then,” I thought stupidly, for a single fleeting instant. I knew Reinald wouldn’t want that from a loyal retainer, and I didn’t really want it either. Besides, if it was going to destroy our entire relationship, I did not want it at all. In the end, the idea of us out in public as a couple was nothing more than a distant, far-off wish.
“Come here, Charlot.”
The cat had poked her head in through the cat door, and she hesitated slightly at the sight of me occupying the entirety of the bed. She was all too happy to come aboard when I made adequate space for her, however. Today, she was also okay with me patting her, which—I’ll be honest—was just perfect. I took the ribbon from the box and took my time tying it to Charlot’s collar.
Oh my, that’s simply adorable.
The idea of wearing the same ribbon as Reinald, of knowing that we had matching accessories, was just beyond embarrassing, and a little saddening at that. But by decorating Charlot’s collar with it, I felt like my relationship with Reinald could persist unchanged. Charlot, for her part, seemed to have grown sick of my playing with her and kicked me.
“Ugh, I wish I’d never realized it at all,” I sighed.
It was selfish of me, I know, but I wished that the emperor’s birthday would be canceled for some reason or another. Me worrying over things like this really was pitiful. I already had dancing practice living rent free in my brain, and I really did not need more up there. But now I had to ensure that I could look completely unfazed by the sight of Reinald and the duke, hand in hand.
I wondered if perhaps I could learn the way of the emotionless by more carefully observing Moritz in his natural state. I thought that, at the very least, I could do my very best to sculpt a mask not unlike his own.