Three Chopsticks Don't Break
After the three of them gathered in one place, a strange silence settled over the room.
More precisely, it was a situation in which no one could speak.
The servants of the Goldren family kept pouring in, endlessly laying out tea and refreshments, fruit and desserts. The clink of teacups, the set of plates, even the rustle of curtains being straightened all layered over one another until the drawing room, for all its quiet, felt restless and crowded.
It was only natural.
This was the first time a member of the imperial family had ever set foot inside Goldren Mansion.
Even in the days when the late Emperor had praised the Goldren family, it had never been royalty who came in person—only high-ranking nobles. Today was different. Luang was the first of the imperial bloodline to enter this house.
So the servants were not merely twice as busy as usual. They were roughly ten times as frantic.
And yet what finally put an end to the whole commotion was a single line from Luang.
"The three of us have something to discuss. Would you leave us?"
Every servant's hands stopped at once.
For a moment, the air in the drawing room went oddly stiff.
Leaving a young lord and a young lady alone together usually meant something obvious. Good or bad, it suggested that something intimate might take place. But three people? That was harder to read.
The servants exchanged glances. And every one of them was looking at the same thing: the fact that Luang had his arm around Bianca's shoulders—not Angela's.
Rumors that Luang had laid hands on Bianca as he pleased were already circulating. But Bianca was not one of this household. She was also the one who had picked a fight with their young lady and come out the worse for it. From the Goldren servants' point of view, there was no particular reason to be especially careful of Bianca.
Bianca half-raised a flustered hand.
"Um, just a moment—"
But it was already too late.
"Then we shall withdraw."
The servants filed out in a rush. The door closed, and the drawing room fell quiet.
Only then did Angela carefully open her mouth.
"Um, Your Highness Luang?"
"What is it?"
"Bianca looks like she can't breathe. Could you let her go?"
Luang looked at Angela with mild curiosity.
Not only had she forgiven Bianca—she was already calling her by name. A noble young lady did not usually tear down that wall so quickly. They might know how to forge political alliances, but friends did not come easily. When the bond was one of mutual interest, they were even more likely to start with the family name.
And yet Angela had said "Bianca" as if it were the most natural thing in the world. That was not a noble way of thinking. It was closer to the mindset of a transmigrator.
"Hmm..."
Luang made a short sound and slowly took his hand from Bianca's shoulder.
Only then could Bianca let out a breath.
"Hah... hah..."
Her shoulder still burned. The place where his hand had rested remained strangely hot. Her heart was racing, and her legs felt weak.
It was only shock. It had to be only shock—and yet the sensation was unnervingly vivid.
"Are you all right?"
Angela asked, worried.
"Yes, I'm fine."
Bianca forced herself to sound unaffected. At once Angela's eyes lit up, as if she had just remembered something else.
"Then can you tell me what you were trying to thank me for earlier?"
"...What?"
Bianca stared at her for a moment.
Don't tell me.
Had she held on to yesterday's incident just so she could put Bianca on the spot here and now? But there was not a trace of vengeful pleasure on Angela's face—only pure, genuine curiosity.
They say a child's curiosity can kill a cat... Even innocence becomes dangerous when it goes too far.
Bianca muttered that to herself and turned her head the slightest bit. Then she looked to the side.
Luang was lounging in the seat right beside her, leaning back at his ease. He looked like a lion that had already eaten its fill—not sharp enough to tear into anyone this second, and yet carrying the quiet danger of a creature that could do so whenever it chose.
At that sight, Bianca made up her mind. Better to speak now than keep her mouth shut. A sated lion did not hunt for no reason.
"I... I wanted to thank you for saving me when I was in a difficult position at the banquet hall."
"Oh, that!"
Angela brightened at once.
"It was nothing. Hehe."
She accepted the thanks with such pure goodwill that Bianca only grew more uneasy. If she took it like that, Bianca had no idea how the Luang sitting beside them would read it.
But Luang showed no particular reaction at all. That very composure was more frightening. So Bianca changed the subject at once.
"Then, Your Highness Luang—what business brought you here?"
"Me?"
Luang smiled lazily.
"To tell you about what I did today."
"What? You could have sent a letter for something like that..."
"The story seemed to be rolling along a little too fast."
Luang went on as if it were nothing.
"There's a rumor that you and I mixed bodies out on the veranda."
"...What?!!!"
Angela nearly jumped out of her seat. Bianca, by contrast, was not especially shocked. She had already more or less guessed. That only made Angela turn on her with an even more stunned expression.
"Bianca, you knew?!"
"...You mean you didn't?"
For a second Bianca sincerely wondered whether this girl was pure—or simply an idiot.
That was when Luang cut in casually.
"She is a bit of a fool, isn't she?"
"Ah, yes..."
Bianca answered on reflex, then froze. Luang laughed.
"It's the foolishness that makes her cute, though."
"...Yes."
This time the answer came a beat late. The foolishness she could feel for herself. That there was something cute about it, too—she could understand that much, after watching Angela barge in demanding they be friends. But she looked so thoroughly dense that the cuteness did get diluted. Even a puppy was only adorable when it bounced around in moderation. Too much chaos just made you tired.
"What is that supposed to mean?!!!"
Angela shouted, her face flaming red. Luang propped his chin on his hand as if he found the reaction entertaining.
"Bianca. You'd better be the one to explain."
"Understood."
Bianca straightened her posture.
"Lady Angela. Do you know what has been the greatest topic of conversation among the nobles lately?"
"Um... what could it be."
"Talk of your cosmetics."
"Oh, really?"
Angela was genuinely surprised. Bianca looked at her in silence for a moment. This girl truly knew nothing.
The cosmetics Angela had made were already a considerable sensation in noble society. Part of it was that they were products built on a modern person's knowledge. Part of it was that she had split them into a commoner's line and a noble's line, slapped a premium on the latter, and sold them at a steep price. And it had worked. The enormous profits meant the nobles' response had been just as heated.
But something else mattered more.
"Lately, high society hasn't had a single story more entertaining than cosmetics."
"Uh... really?"
"From now on, you will attend social gatherings with me."
Bianca's voice hardened.
"What on earth have you been doing with your life that you haven't heard a single scrap of gossip?"
"Ah, sorry... I, um, was busy making cosmetics."
Angela shrank a little.
For a noble not to know the rumors was more fatal than it sounded. The way a student who couldn't keep up with trends got left out at school—high society was far crueler than that. Nobles especially had to keep reading the center of the conversation. That was how they knew who was rising, who was falling, and who was in danger right now.
Angela was the type to throw herself into whatever she loved without regard for day or night. When she had first fallen for cosmetics, she had even slept through the day and worked through the night. Her father had once taken a switch to her and forcibly rebuilt her living habits after seeing it.
"Stories about me spread as well, of course."
Luang picked up the thread at his leisure.
"But so few people have seen me in person that it never went beyond an interesting legend."
That was true enough. The stories nobles loved were fixed. Who had risen. Who had fallen. Who was how splendid. It was not so different from modern people getting a nationalistic thrill out of someone's success story, or tearing into a celebrity the moment a single rumor stuck.
Luang had been a hard-to-see prince shut away inside the imperial palace. With so few who had met him face to face, the imagination had run wild. Angela was a noble of common birth—the sort that wounded other nobles' pride to praise openly. And those two had suddenly collided in reality. Entangled with each other, no less. From high society's point of view, it would have been stranger if that bait had failed to catch fire.
"I imagined what kind of person Angela might be while buying the cosmetics myself," Bianca said. "I just never expected someone like this."
"That's embarrassing..."
"There will be plenty more to be embarrassed about going forward."
Bianca drove the nail in calmly.
"Sooner or later everyone will ask you directly how you got involved with His Highness Luang."
"Ah—auh..."
Angela went red to the tips of her ears. She had barely ever held a man's hand in her life. Touching abs once was the farthest she had gotten—and already every wild fantasy was circulating as if it were established fact. How could she not be mortified?
Luang snorted a quiet laugh at the sight of her.
"So it would be best if we got our stories straight."
"What?"
"For now, I said nothing direct happened that night—only that you confessed you loved me."
"What? You said that?"
"I did."
"Wh-who gave you the right?!"
Angela reeled under the blow. As if her life weren't already hanging by a thread—Luang himself had gone and poured oil on the fire?
"How exactly did you put it?"
Bianca asked, not quite hiding her interest.
"I said we didn't mix bodies on the veranda—that you whispered a confession about what kind of man I was and how much you liked me."
Luang was utterly unbothered.
"They kept running their mouths in that strange direction about us mixing bodies on the veranda, so it was better to twist it this way."
"That's a good approach."
Bianca nodded.
"You don't stop a river by damming it. You cut a new channel if you want to avoid a flood."
"Bianca, not you too!"
Angela nearly shrieked. Bianca pressed on without mercy.
"Lady Angela. The nobles will already have the two of you on their tongues. To stop that, you need a larger, more persuasive rumor. Do you have any other story that would serve?"
Angela shut her mouth. In her head she raced through the various incidents of the original work. But most of them were stories that erupted in the course of the villainess and the saintess colliding. There was nothing she could pull out and use right this moment. Even if there had been, she couldn't calculate what kind of backlash it might bring.
Luang watched her quietly. Just from the speed of her darting eyes, she was no empty-headed girl. She knew things. She knew a great deal. The only problem was that her head had not yet sorted out how to bring any of it out.
"No help for it, then."
Luang settled the matter first.
"For now, we'll let it ride as is."
And then, perfectly naturally, he added,
"I've also encouraged the knights to move for love, so before long romance stories will spread like a fashion. Your story will get mixed in among them and diluted."
"You encouraged the knights?"
Bianca's eyes changed.
"What will they be doing?"
"I gave them the courage to confess to the people they have in their hearts."
"Oh, really?"
Angela's eyes sparkled.
"Then lots of couples will form!"
She really did think that simply. What mattered most to the Goldren family was not the usual noble bragging about bloodlines—it was keeping the house from splitting apart, keeping it bound as one. Their power was money, and money grew weak when it scattered. So they believed marriages joined by love were better. Couples forced together fought; parents and children drifted apart; in the end the house tore. For a rising noble house that might end after a short history, that was fatal. So Angela's reaction was natural.
But Bianca took it in an entirely different way. A chill ran down her spine.
The Imperial Guard Knights who had taught Luang the sword. He had arranged to stir up romantic chaos in those very houses, building a stage to bury his own rumor under. It was a noble's method. Thoroughly, classically noble.
And what made it stranger still was that the one who had devised it was Luang—the man usually treated as a madman. That was why it felt so wrong. Between his everyday madness and this present calculation, some other face seemed to be hiding.
Set beside Angela, who sat next to him sparkling with total ignorance, that dirtiness only felt thicker. Without meaning to, Bianca began to edge her seat a little farther away.
In that instant, under the table, a hand closed around her wrist.
"What's wrong?"
"Ah—it's nothing..."
Bianca's body locked up. The moment skin touched skin, yesterday's memory flashed through her. Her heart plummeted. Her breath shortened. Her mind went white.
It was fear.
And yet—
That fear was so sharp that the sensation where he touched her only grew more vivid.
Luang looked at Bianca without a word. She knew at once. He had read her. He had already noticed that she had been trying to pull away.
The thought that she had to run did cross her mind. But her body would not move any farther.