Chapter 194
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 194
His ash-gray hair was still damp, as if he had only just finished bathing. He even held a towel in one hand.
“…….”
Vigorously rubbing his head dry, Klaus strode right into my bedroom.
“Why are you coming in?”
“Doesn’t opening the door mean ‘come in’?”
“No, it doesn’t. Get out.”
“Fine, fine. If you say don’t come, I won’t.”
He turned back surprisingly easily. Klaus stopped right at the threshold between the terrace and my room, staring at me blankly.
He didn’t forget to occasionally wipe the moisture from his hair.
What on earth was going on?
“Why are you here? No, why are you holding a towel like someone who lives in the room right next door?”
“What? Didn’t your father and grandfather tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
The three of us had just had a quiet dinner together today.
Well, my father and grandfather mostly spent the time trading barbs, but they were smiling whenever they looked at me, so I suppose you could call it a pleasant formal banquet.
“Hah. They didn’t tell you on purpose.”
Klaus puffed out his chest and spoke.
“I got permission from your Emperor. Starting today, I’ll be staying in the Grand Duke’s Annex as an honored guest for the time being.”
“What? Why?”
Since when did the Grand Duke’s residence become the Imperial Palace?
“What do you mean ‘why’? Because I’m an honored guest.”
“No, then you should be staying at the Imperial Palace. Why stay at the Grand Duchy?”
“It’s the guest’s whim. I told your Emperor that the Lupinus Kingdom has a custom like this, and he agreed to everything.”
As I turned around to pull the curtains shut, Klaus reached out.
“Hey! Hey! Tulia Frezier! Why are you walking away in the middle of a conversation!”
“Who are you trying to scam? The Brillant Empire isn’t some backwater kingdom. Do we look so weak that we’d grovel to a mere prince from the Summer Continent?”
“……You didn’t fall for it.”
Despite my growling, Klaus actually looked amused. His voice was full of a clear, bright laughter, like the lush greenery of a summer day.
“Your Emperor is very interested in trade with the Summer Continent. He’s trying to establish a sea route through me.”
“So, what does that have to do with you coming to my house?”
“I told him I wanted the Grand Duke of Frezier to be the representative for the Brillant Empire.”
“What?”
I whipped around at his unexpected words.
Even without a detailed explanation, I could guess how much profit Klaus was promising to bring to the Grand Ducal House.
As they say, the hands that move the rice cakes end up covered in bean flour.
‘Should I take this chance to force-sell him some White Tulips…?’
I was lost in thought, cupping my chin, when I suddenly flinched.
Klaus, who was much taller than me, had leaned down and was looking up at me from below.
As I stepped back in surprise, Klaus caught my waist as I stumbled and steadied me.
Perhaps because of the shock, my heart was pounding.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You look best when you’re full of greed. I was just admiring the view.”
‘Should I just tell him to get lost?’
Contrary to my harsh thoughts, the words didn’t come out.
Ridiculously enough, Klaus was a prince with the blood of the Wolf King, and the full moon tonight illuminated him more beautifully than anyone else.
Klaus’s eyes, swirling with a wondrous wildness, took on an even deeper hue under the pale moonlight.
“Hold off on telling me to get lost for a second.”
“Can you read my mind?”
“……Was that really what you were thinking?”
Klaus let out a deep sigh, shrugged, and leaned down slightly. Meeting my eyes, he spoke.
“Actually, I came here because I have something to tell you.”
“What is it?”
Klaus didn’t answer immediately. He just stood there, staring intently at me. His gaze was so fixed it felt as if he were counting my eyelashes.
“You know, I know you have a nasty personality.”
“What?”
“So I was a bit worried. That I might get beaten up by you?”
In an instant, all sorts of thoughts swirled through my head, and my eyes narrowed dangerously.
“If you’re about to confess that you secretly made off with the White Tulip seeds, I’m going to knock every single one of your teeth out right here—”
“No, no. Hey!”
Klaus grabbed both of my shoulders as if he were exasperated.
“Am I crazy? I want to live, too! And I’m not the kind of guy who steals other people’s things without permission!”
“Is stealing with permission not stealing? What are you even talking about?”
“Ugh. Every time I talk to you, I get all tongue-tied.”
Klaus ruffled his still-damp hair.
“You need to meet a mage from the Lupinus Kingdom soon.”
“A mage? Why… Ah.”
Having a hunch, I asked just in case.
“Is it to break the oath? Does a mage break it for you?”
For a moment, Klaus looked down at me with a strange expression and then let out a short laugh.
“How could a mere mage possibly break the oath of the great Wolf King at will? It’s not that.”
“If not that, then what?”
“The way I see it, you…”
Klaus narrowed his eyes and observed me before continuing.
“I don’t know if it’s just my imagination, but I can smell something on you.”
“What? A smell? I just bathed.”
I lifted my arm to sniff myself, but Klaus grabbed both of my wrists and pulled them down. His brow was slightly furrowed.
“I don’t mean a foul smell. I mean an ominous one.”
Not foul, but ominous?
‘Is that an insult?’
“How exactly should I put it……”
Klaus pondered for a moment before lifting his head.
“Right. A curse……? Let’s just say it’s the scent of a curse.”
I blinked.
‘A curse?’
“It’s like the trace of a curse that passed through. I don’t know. Anyway, I have the lineage of the great Wolf King, so it doesn’t hurt to be sure.”
In that instant, what struck my mind was the content of the system window that had appeared as a reward for completing the hidden quest with Schuls Schmidt.
‘The system window definitely mentioned something about a Bloodbath Curse. Does he know about that? How?’
Because he’s a dog?
Because he’s a wolf?
‘But was the system window something that could be detected by characters other than me?’
No matter how developed his sixth sense was, wasn’t this a matter of a different dimension?
Or perhaps…… was that mysterious curse not a problem of the system window, but an actual curse placed on Tulia’s body?
‘If so, why did the system window say it was cleared?’
Even amidst these thoughts, the fact that Klaus only smelled it after the curse was cleared bothered me in many ways.
‘Does that mean I’m…… like an airtight container?’
Even if food inside an airtight container grows moldy, the smell doesn’t leak out until the lid is opened.
But to wash out the rotten food, you have to open the lid, and no matter how hard you scrub, a faint trace of the rotten smell lingers in the container for a while.
In short, my body, now that the curse was cleared, was like a dish that had just been washed after holding moldy, rotten food…….
“…….”
And that’s why Klaus, with his keen nose, noticed it…….
‘Why am I thinking of myself as an airtight container?’
It was all because of this arrogant wolf prince in front of me.
When I glared at Klaus, he tilted his head and then, surprisingly—truly surprisingly—he gave a broad grin.
“Do you like my face that much?”
“…….”
‘What is he talking about……’
I was momentarily dumbfounded.
But thanks to that, the layers of masks covering my expression were stripped away all at once.
At the same time, my stray thoughts vanished, leaving only one thing: ‘confusion.’
That was it.
I was very confused.
Why did Klaus, who should be nothing more than a male lead in a game, notice a penalty from the system window?
Then, is this place inside a game, or is it reality?
Is it even true that I entered a game?
What is the truth?
I don’t know what kind of confusion was written on my face. However, for a moment, I fell into an illusion where the color pink filled my vision.
It was because a warm night breeze blew in through the open window.
My loose pink hair fluttered long, and for a moment, my vision was as brilliant as if I were buried in countless tulips.
Klaus’s hand tucked my hair behind my ear. It was an action so intimate it was startling.
No, to be more precise, it was an unfamiliar action.
Far too unfamiliar for Klaus to be doing.
“Hey.”
“Huh?”
“And there’s one more thing I want to say.”
Was it because of the shadow cast by the moonlight?
Klaus’s vivid blue eyes staring at me looked like sapphires. A hardness that felt like it wouldn’t take a single scratch no matter how hard you struck it.
Deep within those jewel-like blue eyes, some emotion seemed to be clustered, something that wasn’t easily recognizable. Like a mineral that had held layers of time for a long, long period.
Few people wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the sight of massive, exposed geological layers. I was one of those people, or perhaps it was because Klaus was staring at me with such unbelievable intensity.
I couldn’t urge him on and just stared back at him. We were submerged in silence for a moment.
“I don’t care if you don’t break the oath.”
Was Klaus’s face flushed as he said that? Or were his ears red?
“……I’d just like it if things stayed like this.”