Why Chloe Went Hungry
This was how it had happened.
After the commotion last night, the Royal Guard had been restless since morning. The newspapers had buried the story about the king, but the Royal Guard was, in the end, an organization made up of nobles. Here and there, people whispered about what they had heard from their parents or siblings.
It only made matters worse that Brigadier General Berk, the man at the center of the scandal, had converted the Royal Guard’s officer training room into an interrogation chamber last night and had been summoning one person after another for questioning ever since.
“I mean, isn’t it absurd that he used the 8th Regiment when the Royal Guard was right there?”
“The whole thing happened because the Royal Guard failed to protect the Duchess of Glintland in the first place.”
“Still, the 8th Regiment is…”
Amid the unsettled atmosphere, opinions were split in every direction. Some treated the whole situation as simple gossip; others saw it as an international incident.
And then…
“Everyone else manages to get married quietly. Why is it only the brigadier general who has to make such a damn racket?”
Of course, there were also those who looked on with disapproval.
“Ahh.”
Chloe, who had spent the night roughly curled up in the aide’s office, woke early.
I was so exhausted after last night’s banquet, too.
Habit was a frightening thing. Her eyes had opened all on their own. On top of that, perhaps because it had been so long since she had slept in the aide’s office bed, her whole body felt stiff and sore.
Fortunately, Julia, who had heard last night that Chloe would not be able to return to the Berk ducal residence, had quickly brought her indoor clothes, so she had at least managed to sleep in relative comfort.
“Mm…”
There was no one in Curtis’s office, which connected to the aide’s room. Now that an interrogation chamber had been set up, most matters would naturally be handled there, wherever the Grand Duke was.
Even Noel had returned to the Montfils house because of Agathe, so the office was remarkably quiet.
It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to go to the dining hall for breakfast.
Chloe carefully opened the office door. One of the sergeants Curtis had posted as a guard greeted her with, “Ah. Your Highness.”
It was a familiar face.
The people who had been whispering in the Royal Guard corridor stretching from the office door to the stairs all turned toward her at the sound and bowed their heads. Chloe, embarrassed, returned the nod, then stood with the door half open and asked the sergeant,
“Excuse me. How is the investigation going?”
“It is still underway.”
“Has my turn not come yet?”
“Most likely not. When it is your turn, a message will be sent from the interrogation room, so you may rest until then…”
It was not as if she had asked anything particularly grand.
The investigation had continued from night into morning, and Chloe, as one of the important witnesses, ought to remain on standby as well. Only, given that she was a victim in the incident, a member of the Royal Guard by origin, and the Grand Duchess besides, her waiting room happened to be the aide’s office.
Apparently, however, there were people who disliked even that.
“Whore.”
Someone said it.
The gathering went silent in an instant, as though cold water had been thrown over them. Chloe, standing by the door, looked down the corridor without meaning to.
The brigadier general’s office sat at the center of the first floor of the Royal Guard building, at the far end of a hallway that ran straight to the main entrance between two wide galleries.
There were far more than one or two Royal Guard members standing in that hallway, and because of the echoing galleries, it was impossible to tell whose mouth the word had come from.
“…”
Chloe was silent for a moment, then turned her head.
After what had happened yesterday, she had expected that some people would now show open hostility toward her. Hadn’t everyone seen the king treat her with such contempt?
Once that happened, the truth of the incident no longer mattered.
The woman the king was desperate to bury.
That mattered far more.
The vase incident had been revealed as a misunderstanding, but what of it? People often ignored the truth when it suited what they wanted to believe. There had, in fact, been people who thought that woman had planted someone with great cunning to divert suspicion toward the Duchess of Glintland.
“I beg your pardon, Sergeant. Might I ask if a meal from the Royal Guard dining hall could be brought up to the aide’s office?”
So Chloe decided to have breakfast.
Asking for a meal to be brought to the aide’s office was something she had often done when she was busy back in her days as an aide. Everyone knew that the aides under Brigadier General Berk were extraordinarily busy, so whenever such a request came in, the dining hall would usually prepare food and send it up quickly.
But now, it seemed even that did not look pleasant to some eyes.
“Well, would you look at that. Royalty gracing us with her presence. Coming out of the office in her damn nightclothes, too.”
Someone sneered again.
This time, it was plainly meant to be heard.
Chloe recognized exactly who it was. He was one of the captains whose face she knew well.
The sergeant standing by the door now looked extremely troubled.
“Perhaps you should go back inside for now…”
“…Yes. Please cancel the request I just made.”
She was pressing down the sigh that threatened to escape and had just turned around when—
“Captain Henri.”
It was a voice she had heard many times before.
Chloe turned her gaze without realizing it.
It was Ezra.
She had not even known he was there.
“What?”
“I’ve always found that face of yours intensely irritating. How about you and I have a go?”
“What? Have you lost your mind, Warrant Officer?”
“Not really.”
No sooner had Ezra said that than his fist flew.
With a heavy thud, the captain took the blow and toppled straight backward. At the crash, the surrounding Royal Guard members shouted in shock.
“Hey! Ezra Dubo—!”
The captain had been about to say Ezra Dubois, but before he could finish Ezra’s name, Ezra drove a fist into his stomach.
It would have been nice if the one-sided beating had continued from there, but…
“You 2nd Squad bastards, have you all gone insane?”
“The insane one is your squad leader! What did he say in front of the office? Whore?”
“Was he wrong?”
“If that was right, then your head’s worth less than a mosquito’s!”
“You son of a bitch, I never liked you!”
Without anyone quite realizing how, it escalated into a collective brawl among Royal Guard members who had disliked one another all along.
It was so ridiculous that Chloe’s mouth nearly fell open.
In the end, Chloe made a decisive call.
Bang.
At the sudden gunshot, the Royal Guard members tangled in the fight froze in an instant.
Their eyes turned toward the front of the office.
There stood the sergeant, belatedly patting himself down after only now realizing his pistol had been taken.
And beside him stood the Grand Duchess, blowing across the pistol in her hand to scatter the smoke from the powder.
“…Are you insane? Have you lost your mind, Warrant Officer?!”
The one who shouted was Captain Henri, whose face had just been punched by Ezra after his sarcastic remark.
And with reason. The bullet Chloe had fired had lodged in the wall right in front of Captain Henri’s nose.
If her aim had slipped even slightly, he could have died.
But Chloe, the one who had fired the gun, replied calmly.
“Captain Henri Devreux. I’m not here as a warrant officer right now. I’m here as the Grand Duchess.”
The captain’s face turned scarlet, unable to tell whether she was mocking him or pointing out a grave act of insubordination.
“You…!”
Of course, Ezra, who was holding him by the collar, stopped the captain when he flailed and tried to rush at the Grand Duchess.
In the end, the fight only stopped after the 1st Squad, which had been standing guard outside the Royal Guard building, came running in and restored order.
As every bastard who had taken part in the brawl was dragged away, Chloe stood there the entire time with the gun held conspicuously in her hand. At the very end, her eyes met Ezra’s as Georges hauled him off by the scruff of his neck.
“Why did you do that?”
At her blunt question, Ezra let out a scoff and twisted up the corner of his mouth before spitting back,
“What, Your Highness? You got a problem with it?”
Then, suddenly, he started laughing like a madman all by himself.
He did not seem to care that his split lip had torn open again and blood was welling there.
It was a sight no different from watching a lunatic.
Georges, who had Ezra by the back of the neck, looked at Chloe with a dumbfounded expression and twirled a finger beside his head as if to say, This bastard’s gone off the rails.
Chloe watched the back of her friend being dragged away for a long while before covering her face with both hands and bursting into laughter.
She did, of course, apologize to the teary-eyed sergeant who pleaded, “Um, could I have my pistol back now…?”
It was absurd. Unbelievable.
And yet, for some reason, she could not stop laughing.
…That was the story of how Grand Duchess Chloe Le David Berk ended up coming to the Royal Guard interrogation room hungry.
After hearing the entire account, Curtis slowly turned his head and looked at the one remaining guard in the interrogation room.
The guard had clearly received word of this from outside, and Curtis’s eyes demanded to know why he had not been informed.
More precisely, they said, You dared omit a report?
Something along those lines.
The terrified guard raised his voice.
“G-Grand Marshal Victor said that Brigadier General Your Grace was busy and that he would handle it himself, so he ordered us not to inform Your Grace until the investigation was finished…”
“…Go tell him that if the result isn’t out before six o’clock today, I’ll handle it myself.”
“Yes, sir!”
The last remaining guard also ran out.
He seemed convinced that if he did not deliver the message immediately, Curtis Shan Berk would strangle him to death.
Chloe asked, incredulous,
“Are you not planning to leave work?”
“I would like to, but Captain Devreux seems determined not to let me.”
As he said it, Curtis gathered and straightened the reports Chloe had been reading. From the look of him, he was ready to forget all about the Duchess of Glintland and bury the entire Royal Guard beneath the training ground at once.
Chloe quickly reached out and grabbed Curtis’s hand.
“What?”
At the sudden glare, she flinched and withdrew her hand.
You’ve been grabbing my hand just fine all this time.
She wanted to complain, aggrieved, but the Duchess of Glintland came first.