YSGD 19

Chapter 19

Unlike earlier, the Grand Duke was fairly quiet.
What’s with him?
I was puzzled by this unfamiliar attitude when—

With a slightly irritated motion, the Grand Duke pulled the hood of his cloak down hard over his head.
Only then did I realize the reason.

Beneath the hood, his face was pale as a sheet.
This man… he’s definitely had his energy drained.

Looking at him now, the Grand Duke was clearly an introvert incarnate.
Those hollow, unfocused eyes—one glance was enough to tell they were the eyes of an “I” completely overwhelmed by a crowd of people.
Honestly, it felt like I could slip away while he was mentally checked out and he wouldn’t even notice.

I was just about to seriously start planning when I suddenly realized something.

Huh. Come to think of it… I…

I was a beggar.

“……”

I fiddled awkwardly with the hem of my dress.
Naturally, the beautiful dress Garnet had made had no pockets.
And naturally—tragically—the Grand Duchess in name only didn’t have a single coin to her name.

I couldn’t even think about buying food. I’d just been dazzled by the festival and charged out blindly like a racehorse.
Once again, I faced reality at record speed.

I may be broke, but he probably isn’t.

In that case, there was only one answer.

I stared at him—boldly.

“Hm?”

Perhaps he felt my intense gaze.
From above, his eyes dropped to meet mine.
Arrogant, faintly incredulous… a look that had somehow already become familiar.

“What is it?”

His tone was still gruff.
Still obnoxious! It’s not like I wanted to talk to you either!

But when you’re dealing with the one holding the purse strings, you bow your head willingly.
Damn it—such was the way of the world.
I’d left my pride behind in a previous life anyway.

Swallowing my retort internally, I did my best to look polite and opened my mouth.

“…Do you have any money?”

“……”

Xenos looked at René, who was wearing the happiest expression in the world while holding two different skewers, one in each hand, as if he found the situation utterly absurd.

“This is chicken skewers. Wow, insanely good. Is this heart?”

She probably ate meat every day without wanting for it.
So what was so special about cheap street skewers that she looked this delighted?

Muttering incomprehensible things to herself, René wore the brightest expression Xenos had seen since she arrived at the ducal castle.
His feelings grew complicated.

Just what kind of person is she?

No matter how much he tried to guess, she always—every single time—defied Xenos’s expectations.
Completely unlike the rumors, she was far livelier and more energetic than he’d imagined.
Even though she was treated little better than oppressed at the ducal castle.

What is this? Should I call it resilience? Or is she just gritting her teeth and pretending she’s fine?

In truth, today’s outing itself was a head-on charge for Xenos.
He’d heard countless rumors about her through others.
But since he couldn’t get a handle on her, he’d decided to confront her directly.

Instead, he’d only sunk deeper into confusion.

She was someone who had grown up enduring harsh abuse, branded a filthy bastard child in the Blanche family.
So it made sense she was small and painfully thin…

But not only was she unafraid of him—someone far more intimidating than the marquis’s household—she boldly extorted money and bought the skewers she wanted to eat?

“Hah.”

The strangest thing in all this was Xenos himself.
He clearly despised Blanche—so why did he keep helplessly going along with René Blanche’s words?

“…Why?”

At that moment, sensing his gaze, René narrowed her eyes and asked.
Xenos gave no answer.

Perhaps she reached a conclusion on her own. “Ah,” René said, then slowly held out the fresh skewer she had in her other hand.

“You’re upset because I bought two and was going to eat them all, right? Then you should’ve bought one too… Anyway, I’m not that shameless.”

She said that, but the way her hand wavered back and forth made it obvious she really didn’t want to give one up.

“…No need.”

“Yup.”

The moment Xenos rejected it flatly, René answered as if she’d been waiting, then promptly shoved the skewer she’d offered straight into her mouth.

“……”

At her cold-blooded behavior, Xenos was once again left speechless.

Then—

Her eyes suddenly went wide like a rabbit’s.

“Cough—cough!”

She started coughing violently, as if she’d choked, yet her gaze remained fixed in one direction.

At the end of her stare was someone even more extreme than René.

“Wow, I’ll take everything from here to here.”

“All of this?”

“Yes!”

The man who swept up every skewer the woman had been diligently grilling began threading them between his fingers like claw weapons.
With long green hair flowing down his back, he laughed with deep satisfaction.

“Crazy ba—”

René’s face twisted sharply, a small curse slipping out before she cut herself off.
That was far too vicious a reaction to merely encountering a rival skewer-lover(?).

…Wait.

A scene flashed through Xenos’s mind.

“I saw it with my own eyes. René Blanche was standing in front of the annex with a suspicious man!”
“Wasn’t it just a servant from the ducal castle running an errand?”
“No way! If there were a servant that handsome, I would’ve known!
“…?”
“Ahem—! No, that’s not the important part! The man had green hair—long green hair down to his waist. As far as I know, there’s no servant in the ducal castle with hair like that!”

It was exactly as Katarina had said.
A suspicious man with a fairly handsome face and long green hair.

Xenos’s eyes narrowed instantly.
He quickly checked René.

René stood frozen like a statue, a skewer still in her mouth.

So it really was true?

It was hard to fully believe Katarina’s words.
But René’s reaction was strange as well.
Especially the way the woman who’d been so brazen suddenly started watching his reaction.

As Xenos fixed the man with a gaze sharp as a honed blade—

“!”

Their eyes met.

There was no mistaking it.

“Oho.”

The man with peculiar, bright yellow eyes—just as unusual as his green hair—silently mouthed an amused exclamation.
Then he smiled and gave a light wave.

Even with his face partially hidden by a hat, it was clear he recognized Xenos.
Yet Xenos had never met him before.

With an appearance that distinctive, forgetting him would’ve been sheer idiocy.

And then—

…What the?

For a brief instant, the man’s round pupils narrowed vertically into slits.
It was only for a blink, returning immediately to normal—but…

I didn’t imagine that.

Xenos’s keen senses were certain.
At the same time, a shiver ran through him, every nerve on edge.

At this point, the situation had become serious.

Xenos was one of the empire’s foremost swordmasters.
And yet he felt an overwhelming pressure even he couldn’t ignore.

This wasn’t something you felt from a human.

In other words, that man was less a person and more like—

A natural disaster.

The kind that struck without warning, rendering humans utterly powerless.
He’s no ordinary individual.

The fist Xenos had unconsciously clenched began to tremble.
Still, he never once looked away from the unidentified man.

Perhaps it was stubbornness.
Xenos Celeste was that kind of man—
better to break than to bend.

So, as always, he chose to confront things head-on.

Without hesitation, Xenos strode toward the suspicious man ahead.
René, flustered, hurried after him, arguing as she went.

“W-Where are you going?”

Once again, Xenos gave no answer.

Even the dense crowd parted strangely, never blocking his path.
Stopping directly in front of the man along the shortest possible line, Xenos kept his gaze locked on him.

Up close, the man was slightly smaller than Xenos, yet his presence was in no way inferior.
No—in terms of sheer composure, the mysterious man overwhelmingly outclassed him.

“Who are you?”

Xenos growled in a low voice, as if chewing on a curse.

The man merely shrugged nonchalantly.

René, who had scurried after them with her short legs, grabbed the hem of Xenos’s cloak.

“What are you doing? To a random passerby?”

“Do you know him too?”

Xenos finally turned to René and asked.
For a question, his tone was strikingly aggressive.

Startled, René clamped her mouth shut.
Her small hands, tightly clasped together, trembled faintly.

Watching her, the green-haired man let out a snort of laughter.

“So the mighty Grand Duke and lord of the land scares his wife first thing? Outside, they call you a benevolent ruler—inside the house, you’re just a complete bastard, huh.”