Headache
After the declaration of “childhood friends,” the Viscountess found herself facing an entirely new ordeal.
W-what on earth is this?
When she returned to the central hall, the men were staring at Kael with open envy, while the noble young ladies cast jealous glances her way.
Wondering why, she asked her son…
I’ve introduced Mother to the others as my ward and childhood friend as well.
Kael had given every noble the exact same explanation he had offered the Hero.
“Congratulations, Kael. Your fiancée is no ordinary beauty.”
“Count Gesting, she is not my fiancée but my childhood friend. I am the one unilaterally courting her.”
“Haha, what woman could keep refusing the advances of a man like you? She must already be rather fond of you. Isn’t that right, Lady Orange?”
“Y-yes… ho-hoho…”
Overnight, Mandarin had become the young lady of the Orange family. She was bewildered, yet the setting was far too public for her to show even a flicker of it.
What am I supposed to do about this? The fallout is going to be enormous…
It had been an improvised story, and she and her son had never coordinated their words. So Darin decided the safest course was to hide behind Kael’s broad back and let the nobles pass with nothing more than an awkward smile, minimizing any chance of a slip of the tongue.
— Pinch.
She even pinched her son’s waist while he conversed with familiar nobles. She resented how the lie was spinning out of control, far beyond anything she could contain.
She would trust him when he said he would apologize to the Hero and handle things himself—he was her son, after all. But what did he intend to do about his actual fiancée, going around spreading a lie like this?
“Kael, how exactly do you plan to clean this up afterward?”
The boy with a body like a boulder turned his head toward his whispering mother. The one freely scattering lies looked completely unbothered.
“Please understand. Other noble young ladies keep trying to attach themselves to me, and it’s tiresome.”
“I get what you mean, but you said you already had a fiancée picked out! Why not just bring that young lady here?”
“The fiancée I have chosen is Mother.”
“Kael! Is this really the time for jokes?!”
The vermilion-haired girl’s face crumpled with frustration. Even with her brows drawn, she looked as insignificant as an angry hamster, yet it was clear her son had truly angered her.
“It is no joke. I have told you before, have I not? I am always sincere.”
“No—ugh…”
Her son’s solemn delivery of what could only be a joke was more than enough to sour a parent’s stomach. Even jokes, when taken too far, raise one’s blood. Darin pressed one hand to her forehead and twisted at the waist. She still could not understand why he had introduced her as his childhood friend. Come to think of it, wouldn’t it have been better to explain to the Hero that she was his nanny?
“Haa… And how do you plan to explain this to your father when he returns from the expedition?”
“You need not worry about Father.”
“What do you mean I need not worry? How absurd will he find it when he hears at a social gathering that his wife and son are lovers?”
“Father will not express any absurdity. No—he will not even be able to.”
“What…?”
Faced with her son’s confident tone, Darin could only look puzzled. Had he already discussed this with her husband? Even so, the “childhood friend” story felt excessive.
Even if I’m wearing a mask, once the rumor spreads this far it becomes completely meaningless…
The girl’s face crumpled into a near-tearful expression. She had left home in high spirits for the first time in ages, yet aside from her very first visit to the imperial palace, not a single moment had been pleasant.
“Mother, setting that aside—you do not look well.”
Even to her son’s eyes, his mother’s appearance was thoroughly worn. Cold sweat beaded on her forehead from tension, her face looked far paler than usual, and her slender ankles trembled pitifully.
Darin’s mind was already a complete mess. Insisting on this outing and causing her son trouble was bad enough; now the nobles at the social gathering were gossiping that she and her son were childhood friends, and the dizziness was inevitable. The coming fallout far exceeded anything a mere Viscountess could endure.
How ridiculous must this look from my husband’s perspective?
A woman who ought to wait demurely at home for her husband had not only snuck out, but rumors had spread that she was a long-standing lover entangled with her own child. If he learned of it, he would surely raise hell. He had grown somewhat gentler lately, yet when truly enraged he was the sort who would charge in ready to tear his partner’s lower half to shreds.
Revealing that she was the Viscountess to the other nobles was not an option either. Her husband’s constant warnings still circled in her head.
I may be king in this small territory, but the capital is full of nobles stronger than I. Refrain from going out. There will certainly be men who try to take you from me by harming me. I have no intention of giving up my wife, so I would have no choice but to cross swords with them and destroy myself.
She regretted the days she had scoffed at her husband’s praise of her looks and the flattery of their retainers. Perhaps she had been the one living in delusion all along.
See? Being pretty brings nothing but trouble after all…
At first she had thought it pure self-importance, yet arriving at the imperial capital made it clear her beauty was no ordinary thing. Darin might be a little airheaded, but she was no fool. The fact that no one found it strange for her to act as her son’s lover left no room for doubt.
Above all, the gazes of the young noblemen fixed on her were far from ordinary.
Why… why are they looking at a married woman with those eyes?
Darin knew the meaning of those stares all too well. They were the same beastly eyes the Viscount of Bayorn had turned on her when she first began her monthly courses.
She could feel the raw male hunger that would pin her down the moment opportunity allowed. Considering her son’s fame and martial prowess, it was an extraordinary rudeness.
Did they look down on her because she was the daughter of a fallen house? Or were the capital nobles simply more dissolute than she had imagined? Perhaps, since they were not yet lovers, they believed a chance still remained for them. Whatever the reason, the Viscountess felt nausea rising from multiple causes at once.
“Kael, I’m so dizzy…”
Darin had no choice but to voice her honest feelings in answer to her son’s concern. At this rate she truly might make a worse mistake. Better to leave the gathering entirely.
“I… I think I was wrong. I never should have left Bayorn territory so carelessly…”
A faint sheen of tears gathered in her small amber eyes. Had the country mouse, forgetting her place, wandered into a setting that did not suit her? If so, she wanted to crawl back into her mouse hole this very instant.
“Let’s go somewhere else. Somewhere just the two of us can be alone… just for a little while…”
“Just the two of us…?”
“Yes, hurry.”
Her tiny, sweat-damp hands wrapped around her enormous son’s wrist and pulled. Kael’s face flushed. The lines his mother spoke somehow sounded like those of a seductress luring a man.
Whatever her son felt, Darin was simply frantic. The hall was full of young, vibrant noble ladies, yet every male gaze fixed on her face and the swell of her chest. Already unsettled by old wounds, the blatant stares made her head feel ready to split.
— Click, click.
Kael led Darin wordlessly to a private room. He had intended something of this sort, yet his mother’s rejection was far stronger than he had anticipated.
— Clack.
He pushed open the prettily decorated latch door, and the pair stepped inside. The private chamber held a red bed and an oddly charged atmosphere, yet Darin, her mind fogged by the headache, paid it no mind. The moment the bed entered her vision she simply buried her face in it.
“Mother, are you all right?”
“I-I’m fine.”
She told her son she was fine, yet she was anything but. Had it not been her beloved son’s investiture ceremony, she would have sprinted to the carriage and returned to the Viscount’s estate at once.
“Your complexion is far too pale.”
“It’ll get a little better with time…”
To others it might seem an overreaction, yet for a woman who had suffered deeply from trauma toward men since childhood, such fits were only natural.
Now he regarded her as both woman and mother, yet when she had been forced into her first night with her husband she had been only fourteen. Intercourse forced upon her before she could even accept herself as a “woman” had left a wound deep in her heart.
“Kael, for a while I mustn’t leave the castle. Being mistaken for your childhood friend is… uncomfortable enough…”
“…Understood.”
Kael’s expression turned faintly disappointed, yet Darin failed to notice. She felt only revulsion at being misread as her own flesh and blood’s lover.
Kael gently dabbed the sweat from her face with a handkerchief. Under her own son’s care, the dazed Darin gradually regained her composure.
Looking at his cute mother with her eyes tightly shut, Kael smiled. Here there were no other nobles, no need to mind the servants. It was a perfect “secret room” containing only the two of them.
Mother…
Her feminine scent seeped from between the soft swell of her breasts. Between her underarms and thighs an even stronger female fragrance would linger. The warm air swirling in the sealed space began to fill Kael’s nostrils.
“I am sorry.”
Kael offered an apology to his mother. To Darin the words must have seemed sudden, yet from her son’s perspective they were not.
The acts he would soon commit against a woman who felt such aversion to men would certainly wound her deeply. Yet the affection he had nurtured since childhood, and the compensatory urge born from watching another man take her before his eyes, left Kael with only one possible choice.
Darin, however, merely offered a faint smile and stroked the back of her son’s hand with her slender fingers. She mistook the apology for regret over startling her with today’s events.
“You don’t have to feel so sorry. I’m sure you had your reasons. Your mother doesn’t know much about social gatherings…”
Alone in a space with her reliable son, she felt safe at last. Seeking even a little relief from the constriction, she quietly loosened the front of her dress.
“Haa… finally I can breathe.”
The moment her full breasts, previously bound by the corset, were freed, a far richer body scent flooded the secret room. Kael’s lower half began to swell in response, yet his own mother would never notice.
Mother and son, holding completely opposing emotions, simply clasped hands in silence. In the man’s face before her eyes, Darin saw the little boy who had once scraped his knees and cried his heart out. Even now, the only one who truly cared for her was her own flesh and blood.
“Lately I have been thinking of a fairy tale Mother used to tell me when I was small.”
“…Hm? What fairy tale?”
The silence had stretched long enough that Darin had nearly drifted off; she blinked rapidly and pulled herself awake. The triumphant return ceremony would begin soon—she could not afford to fall asleep.
“I told you so many stories. Which one do you mean?”
Most of the fairy tales Darin had told her son were drawn from the myths and legends she had read in her previous life. The range had been broad, and Kael had always listened with sparkling eyes.
The expression on her son’s face as he looked at his blank-faced mother was complicated. Opportunities to be alone with her were rare; this was one of the few chances to ask her opinion, yet he feared another negative reaction.
Still, without courage he would remain stuck in place. He had already made his feelings so plain, yet she continued to treat them as a joke. Of course, considering the nature of their relationship, such a reaction was only natural.
“Why the long pause? Just tell me.”
When the answer dragged on, the woman could no longer bear the frustration and began to pout softly. The cold sweat that had coated the hand gripping her son’s wrist had already evaporated. She seemed to have regained some composure; it should be safe enough to bring this up.
“Do you by any chance remember the life of Oedipus?”