All this to say, Art was here to work. He didn’t even glance up as he tried to smooth me over.
“Who knows? She looked normal to me. Maybe she really is just busy? Speaking of busy, sit down and help. Here, this giant stack needs signatures.”
“No, there’s definitely something wrong.” I sighed as I begrudgingly took my seat. “Liese hasn’t even called me by my name recently.”
I opened up further, but Art was so exhausted from his recent schedule that his tired eyes remained fixed on his work. He tilted his head in a conversational way, but his hand was still scribbling.
“Really?” he asked. “Then I guess it’s a case of wedding blues. I feel like not openly flirting is the bare minimum for etiquette anyway. She might be watching out for single people like me, and honestly? I couldn’t care less.”
“Don’t be so mean.”
“You know what’s mean? Making me plan out your wedding, of all things, when I’m suffering from a broken heart.”
Art’s quiet grumbling caused my pen hand to stop. I stared at his face in shock.
“Did something happen?” I asked.
Art hadn’t told me about any particular girl he was set on as of late. The thought that I’d been totally oblivious to my best friend’s suffering made me go pale. However, his response was very matter-of-fact.
“The girl who worked at that café on South Street followed her boyfriend to the countryside.”
I couldn’t care less.
Sifting through my memory, I recalled that he’d once told me about the girl in question. “She’s a bit of a bumpkin, but that’s what makes her cute!” he’d said in excitement.
However, Art reported on the beauty and charm of every woman he came across, so this was little more than a verbal tic. What I mean to say is, this sort of episode was business as usual for him, failure included.
“It isn’t as if she cheated on you or swindled you out of money, right?” I resumed my work as I kept the conversation going with a casual question.
“No, she didn’t do anything like that.” Art also seemed rather aloof as he answered. “She was a really nice girl... After asking her out a bunch of times, she finally agreed to a handful of dates. But even then, our relationship was really pure, and she even turned down any money I tried to give her. Just when I started to think about marrying a simple and honest girl like her...someone whisked her away.”
Surprisingly, Art had been relatively serious for once. Still, crying over a girl who wasn’t even in the city anymore would do him no good.
“I’m glad to hear that respectable young lady managed to escape your venomous fangs,” I said with a joking scoff.
“You’re terrible!” Art broke out into a smirk. “Not you too.”
I looked at him curiously. The word “too” piqued my interest. Noticing my gaze, he flashed me a bitter smile.
“You know, that girl told one of her friends, ‘Lord Artur is so dreamy, but someone like him would never truly love someone like me...’ I tried my best to love her in my own way, but girls have a sixth sense for this sort of thing, so I figured maybe she was right, and... Look, anyway, I’m seriously bummed out.”
Art hung his head. To me, it seemed less like he was hung up on a special girl and more that he was sick of his own frivolity.
Seeing that he was legitimately depressed, I pondered what I could say to cheer him up. At the same time, I had my own bout of self-loathing to overcome; my first instinct was to wish for a play-by-play and analysis to help me out.
“Well, for now,” Art said, stretching his back with a grin, “we need to do something about this mountain of work. Chop chop, get those hands moving or we’ll never get out of here. I want to go home, man.”
Stewards periodically came into the room to drop off more documents, so the ever growing pile of papers truly was a mountain.
“And once we’re finished, you can go visit Lady Lieselotte. Make some time to have a slow, unrushed conversation. Maybe you can visit her at home, where she’s more relaxed? You, Lady Lieselotte, and I have been so ludicrously busy lately—even though this dumb wedding shouldn’t be my problem... Anyway, it’s hard to open up when you’re in a stuffy place like this, and I doubt you’ve been a good listener when you’re worried about making us priests wait.”
Art nonchalantly tacked on his suggestion at the very end of our conversation, but I thought it was great advice. I began chipping away at our mountain of paper with renewed vigor.
For a few minutes thereafter, the sound of pen on paper dominated the room. Then, Art’s voice cut through the scribbling.
“Maybe if I’d gotten more time to go to that café...” he mumbled.
“In this case,” I said, “I think the result would’ve been the same.”
“Don’t say that. I think you’re right, but don’t say it. Let me dream a little.”
I glanced up to meet his eyes and we exchanged loose grins.
“Just you watch,” Art said. “Finding a lady to escort to your wedding is a walk in the park for a man of my caliber!”
In truth, the confident gentleman staring back at me was undeniably a good guy. He was kind, handsome, popular, and he was of reputable heritage. I genuinely wondered why his romantic endeavors always fell flat. Was it truly because of his flippancy?
Art must have caught on to my rude musings, because the smile on his face vanished.
...Anyway, I got to work. I didn’t want to keep him too long, after all.
────
By the time I managed to swing by Liese’s house, dinnertime had already come and gone. I bowed away the excessive hospitality of House Riefenstahl’s servants and somehow managed to get an audience alone with my bride-to-be.
Unfortunately, I’d come so late that we decided to just have a short chat in the parlor room. Now that she was in her own territory, Liese’s expression was significantly more tender than when I’d seen her at noon. That being said, she was clearly troubled by my sudden visit: she sat down beside me on the sofa and immediately began to fidget.
“Liese, have I done anything to upset you?” I asked, trying to be frank.
“I’m not upset at all,” she said, puzzled. “Um, have I done something to offend you, Your Highness?”
“Of course not. Your demeanor lately has been perfectly polite...but, well, you’ve been sort of distant.”
My roundabout speech only caused the angle of Liese’s tilted head to deepen. Seeing her so mystified almost made me believe that Art had been right when he’d attributed her attitude to how busy we were. However, I knew for a fact that something had to be wrong.
After all, I hadn’t seen Liese’s tsun in days! She’d gone around with a gentle smile, slipping away from trouble and keeping her thoughts to herself. Of course, these were the obvious foundation of aristocratic culture, and I was a prime example of all these things.
But in private, Liese was not that boring of a person. She was much cuter than that. Thus, I could only conclude that there was something wrong. With this in mind, I sighed and continued my questioning.
“You’ve been so cold as of late, treating me like any other stranger... Your smiles have been as phony as mine, haven’t they?”
“Your Highness, please,” Liese said. “Your smiles are anything but phony, and—”
“Come now. Even I can tell that my grinning feels like nothing more than a mask. I know there are times when our social positions force us to act in certain ways, but I felt so much closer to you back at the academy.”
“Um, well, I would venture to say that my behavior in those days was hopelessly poor etiquette...”
Unable to refute me, Liese trailed off. And in that moment, the words of Lady Kobayashi and Lord Endo flashed in my mind.
“From my perspective, today’s Liese-tan seems more dejected than angry.”
“It looks like there’s something on her mind that’s making her clam up. Maybe someone said something to make her lose confidence!”
Of course, these voices were a trick of the mind. My brain was automatically imagining what they would have said if they’d been here. Yet real or not, the gods’ advice gave me the courage to push forward.
“Liese, there’s no need for etiquette between you and me. We’re engaged and on the cusp of marriage, so our standing should be as equal as can be. You don’t need to speak politely; in fact, it’s your responsibility to scold and correct me when I stray from the noble path. If anybody tells you that you need to offer me your respects, they are the ones who are wrong.”