I sighed. At that moment, something suddenly appeared in front of me. It was the bizarre porcelain rabbit I saw. If I broke it and pretended I had slipped by mistake… would I be scolded?
Without a choice, I accepted the rabbit. Father looked at me.
“Let’s go.”
For some reason, his expression was more relaxed than before. If someone he knew had seen him, they might’ve even asked if he had heard some good news.
I didn’t think that he was pleased with annoying me… or was he?
I sighed and glanced at all the things he bought. Maybe he was the type to relieve stress by shopping. I followed him without a word, careful not to plunge him into a bad mood.
Then, something caught my eye again. This time, it was a person. She was carrying a sword. The empire had clear-cut gender roles, so it was difficult to find swordswomen. As such, she couldn’t help but stand out. I knew that the steady stream of swordswomen stopped coming after Sir Yulia, the first empress’s captain of the guard, went missing, though…
People around us began murmuring, but I thought that it would be nice to see more women wielding swords again. At that moment, Father also caught sight of the swordswoman and stopped in his tracks.
“Wait here for a minute,” he told me. Then, he approached the woman everyone was looking at.
Did he know her?
When they disappeared into the crowd, people’s conversations shifted. “Was that person Duke Floyen?” I heard someone wonder. The people were whispering, but I could still hear them. I felt awkward with all the unwelcome gazes on me.
I just wanted to rest at a quiet place…
I cautiously stepped away from the crowd, but my movements were noticed by Geraldine, my escort knight and my older cousin.
“Where do you think you’re going, Jubelian?” he asked.
I frowned at Geraldine, who met my gaze with suspicion. He must’ve thought I was planning on making some mischief.
“There are a lot of people here. You should speak to me with respect, Sir Geraldine,” I said.
He sulked at my remark, embarrassed, but then quickly composed himself. “So, where are you going, Lady Jubelian?” he asked more respectfully this time.
“I want to buy something from that shop.”
Geraldine’s expression hardened when I carelessly pointed to a lonesome shop at the corner of the street. He spoke haltingly. “Is that… really… where you want to go?” The strange tone he adopted confused me, so I turned around to get a better look at the place and flinched.
The sign advertised it as the ‘Growling Bear Armor Specialty Shop.’
Ugh… why did I have to point at a place like that? I was starting to regret my actions.
“I will respect the lady’s wishes,” Geraldine said sarcastically.
Unable to change my decision now, I simply nodded. “Thank you.”
I entered the store with Geraldine and was greeted by an owner who was built like a bear. How fitting.
“Welcome to… huh? Is an angel arriving at our store?”
Although the shop was mostly empty, I was still embarrassed by his exaggerated praise. “Oh, I…” I trailed off.
“What do you need?”
I couldn’t say that I didn’t need anything if I was already here… I glanced at Geraldine for some aid, but he was already distracted by something else. “Oh, I love this gauntlet!” he gushed.
Wow. He was here to protect me, but he just started shopping for his own stuff.
“Price?” a new voice suddenly asked.
I peeked at the source, and I found a man wearing a black cloak that draped over the length of his entire body standing to the side, his face concealed by a hood. Although he had only spoken a single word, his frigid and saturnine voice made me tremble.
He looked a little suspicious…
“Ten silver coins, sir!”
In response to the owner’s lively statement, the man searched through his pocket. He was so tall. I could tell he was handsome just from the glimpse I got of his nose…
At that moment, his eyes—red, a shade that I could barely make out from under his hood—swerved over to me. I hurriedly avoided his gaze but not before our eyes briefly met.
Well, that was embarrassing… I probably needed to apologize, right?
Then, I heard him speak up, his tone incredibly distasteful. “What are you looking at?” he sneered.
Wow. Rude.
It was true that I stole a glance at him, being the first to display some bad manners, but I didn’t want to apologize to someone who spoke so impolitely to a stranger.
“Oh, um… I was looking for the thing you’re buying right now,” I answered, making up an excuse.
The owner stiffened at my claim.
“Miss, you want to… buy this?”
Wait a minute. Was that armor polish?
I tried to maintain a serious expression after realizing what I was looking at. Knights were usually associated with armor, but in reality, they didn’t have to wear any unless they were fighting in a war. In other words, armor polish was functionally useless to me.
Nevertheless, I made a firm declaration. “Yes, I need it!” I didn’t want to admit that I had been secretly looking at the cloaked man instead. “It’s a shame, but the decorative armor sets in my house have lost their luster.”
The owner nodded. “Of course, but one would not be enough to shine everything in a house.”
“What? No, I just need one…”
I tried to refuse him, but it seemed like the owner didn’t hear me. He continued to speak. “Wait here. I’ll go through the warehouse to find some more!”
After the owner had disappeared, it sunk in that I had purchased something wholly unnecessary out of impulse.
I… I just bought some useless polish… I couldn’t criticize Father for his thoughtless spending when I had just done the same…
I sighed. I had dug my own grave. The man next to me placed a gold coin on the table, picked up his polish, and turned around.
I would’ve ignored him if he had just placed a small amount of money down, but a gold coin held enormous value. This amount could feed a commoner’s family for two weeks.
“Hey, what about the change?” I shouted after him loudly and clearly, but he didn’t respond, so I followed him and shouted even louder so he wouldn’t miss it. “Your change!”
He should’ve been able to hear me, so I began to wonder if he was a little hard of hearing. Maybe he had heard the wrong amount from the owner. Suddenly, I felt sorry for him.
“Hey, can you hear me?” I asked again.
At that moment, the man stopped in his tracks. He turned around and stared at me.
His hearing was fine, apparently.
Despite my embarrassment for having caused a commotion, I said, “I think you heard the shopkeeper wrong. The amount you paid is ten times the price.”
While I was explaining this to the man, I heard Geraldine call for me. “My lady, what’s going on?”
“Um… this guy…”
I tried to explain what was happening, but the man took my distraction as an opportunity to leave the shop. Was he just that rich or something? I was frowning, more than a little embarrassed, when I heard the owner of the shop’s voice return.
He laughed. “Miss! It turns out that we have ten more of these.”
“No, I don’t need ten…”
I tried telling him that I didn’t need that much, but the owner wouldn’t listen to me.
“One gold coin for all of these!” he paused. “Oh, you’ve already done the math!”
One gold coin. It was the same amount that the man in the hood had paid before leaving.
I tried to clear the shopkeeper’s misunderstanding, but he continued to make his own assumptions.
“By the way, did that guy take my stuff without paying?”
“No, you’re mistaken—”
“That damned bastard!”
The owner began to curse at the man. Despite my attempts to interject, I wasn’t able to get a word in until he was finished.
“He paid you that gold coin!” I finally burst out.
The owner of the shop became sheepish. “Is that so? You should have told me earlier.”
Was he really trying to blame me for this? I had been trying to tell him this entire time!
In my exasperation, I decided I’d never step foot into this shop ever again.
✤ ✤ ✤
Next to a carriage parked in a vacant lot, a short-haired woman was anxiously waiting for someone.
Where was he?
She was nervous, but when the man she had been waiting for arrived, she sighed in relief. “My Lord, I have informed Duke Floyen of your appointment,” she reported.
“Good.”
Although his voice was as cold as usual, he sounded somewhat annoyed. The woman took notice of this and asked, “Did something happen?”
The man was thinking about the lady he had encountered in the shop. He recalled how she had called out to him repeatedly. “Hey, can you hear me?” he remembered her saying, her voice echoing in his mind.
She had no fear, even around someone like him, a vicious dog who bared its teeth to warn people around it to stay away. He had been annoyed for a second, but the moment he turned around and met her eyes that last time, all of his hostility had disappeared. Reminiscing, the young man frowned.
“Nothing happened,” he said.
✤ ✤ ✤