Instant-Love Lucas (Part 2)
The Hero gazed at the brightly smiling face of the girl and sank into brief contemplation.
As he had just said, asking outright whether she was a virgin would be rude to Darin.
Honestly speaking, discovering it through hypnosis would not have been difficult, but…
I don’t want to taint my relationship with Darin, at least.
Though the Hero’s character was close to pure trash, he found himself wanting to be a gentleman toward this girl named Darin. It was like a man and woman cast adrift on a desert island in another world.
Yes—like Adam and Eve.
“Um, well… I’ve thought this since the first time we met, but aren’t you far too beautiful, Darin?”
So he offered a compliment on her looks to win her favor, and at the same time…
“But with looks like yours, men wouldn’t have left you alone since you were young.”
He attempted a virginity probe disguised as concern.
“…Eh?”
The petite girl blinked her amber eyes with a blank expression. She knew she was pretty, yet hearing it from a fellow countryman made the feeling strangely fresh.
“Hehe, what’s that about?”
And she smiled a smile of pure, untainted clarity. He had said he was curious about something, and it turned out to be only this sort of worry? Still, as a fellow Korean, she felt grateful that he had fretted over her.
“……”
Yet she could not answer at once; the awkwardness kept her mouth from opening.
She hesitated over whether she ought to confess that when she was very young her husband had watched over her with fiery eyes, and later even the grown Kael had joined in, cherishing his mother so fiercely that he blocked every danger.
There was a problem with honestly admitting that she was a married woman with two children, and that Kael was her biological son.
She was already known in the capital as Kael’s “childhood friend,” so she could not casually utter such words without consulting him first. Moreover she would have to explain why, as his own blood, they had maintained such an outrageous relationship in social circles.
How was she supposed to confess the reason her biological son Kael had insisted on a lover’s relationship with his own mother in high society?
If Darin wished to explain honestly, she would have no choice but to reveal the incestuous sin she had committed with her own flesh and blood.
Ugh.
Nausea rose unbidden in Darin’s throat. She had briefly forgotten this fact while growing accustomed to the intimate relations with her son of late, yet this filthy truth was garbage that must never be known to a single soul in the Imperial Capital.
That applied equally to Lucas, a fellow countryman. No matter how well they got along, there were things she simply could not tell.
Therefore Darin had no choice but to explain in another way.
“I wasn’t nearly as popular as Lucas seems to think. And when I was young Viscount Bayorn protected me; once I grew older, Kael did the same, so I was fine.”
In a sense it was not entirely a lie. Yet in Lucas’s mind Viscount Bayorn would transform from husband into guardian, and Kael from son into childhood friend.
Haa… so stressful…
Darin let a silent sigh spill from her heart under the rising anger she could not suppress.
In the end, because of the reality that she had committed incest with her son, she was forced to lie even to the fellow countryman she had only just managed to meet, and her heart began to ache.
But what choice do I have?
That, too, was true. It was an unavoidable choice if she was to protect her precious son’s honor and the dignity of a noble lady she had guarded for more than twenty years.
“Ah, I see…”
Lucas, for his part, merely mulled over the words of the woman who would become his official wife. Judging by Darin’s beauty and lovable nature, she must have been cherished and carefully protected as a ward until she came of age.
This much should be reassuring enough…
A typical noble man, no matter how deeply he cherished a woman, would never lay a hand on her before marriage.
So… even if Kael had harbored a crush on Darin, the odds that she was still a virgin remained high.
That guy valued “age difference” and “etiquette” more than anyone…
Above all, considering Kael’s temperament of showing more than necessary courtesy toward his elders, he would never have recklessly stolen the virginity of the older Darin.
Still, something feels off.
At this level he could reasonably be confident Darin was a virgin. Yet Lucas remained uneasy. As he had said, there was always that vanishingly slim “what if.”
It was not as though he knew every corner of the man named Kael. He might act the gentleman on the surface while seething with lust like a beast underneath. They had traveled together for three years, but he had never been curious about another man’s private affairs and had simply remained indifferent.
Therefore he could not completely rule out the possibility that Kael had lusted after Darin so madly that he broke every noble code and already laid hands on her.
No choice, then.
To ease his impatience, Lucas decided to be honest. Unlike her, who seemed carefree, he was already burning with the desire to be joined with her as soon as possible.
“…But Darin, didn’t you say you were in a lover relationship with Kael?”
“Yes.”
“Yet from where I stand, it looks as though Darin doesn’t like Kael all that much.”
“From my perspective, having spent so long together, he feels more like a younger brother than a lover.”
“Hmm. Then from Darin’s position there was no absolute need to marry Kael, was there?”
“Uh, well…”
Darin felt a little awkward when Lucas suddenly changed the subject. Answering itself, however, was not difficult. She was far from stupid.
“I’m a transmigrator just like Lucas, but I don’t have special abilities like cheats or divine powers, right?”
“…That’s true.”
“So for survival I had no choice but to entrust myself to the Bayorn family, who showed me kindness. Inevitably I came to owe them a debt. Now that I’ve grown, the time has come to repay that debt.”
Lucas nodded as though he understood. The only way for her—the daughter of the fallen Orange family—to repay Bayorn’s favor was obvious.
To offer her beautiful, pure self to Kael, the young heir of the Bayorn house.
Pitiful.
Unlike himself, who possessed transcendent power, Darin must have been forced into countless compromises with reality—armed with nothing more than the pathetic ability of not dying even if she ate oranges.
“Then I understand. Even if you don’t love Kael, if he wants it you must marry…”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“…Huu.”
Though he had more or less expected it, Lucas felt genuine pity for Darin. She had crossed over from the same planet Earth as he had, yet she had lived a life of being swayed by others with nothing to her name…
Of course, living under Bayorn’s protection meant a more comfortable existence than a commoner’s. Even so, from a modern person’s standpoint she would have endured many humiliations hard to accept.
This “contract marriage” must be one of them.
Lucas felt both kinship and compassion for the woman named Darin.
He wanted to save her—his fellow countryman—with his own power.
To free her from the shackles of being a “medieval person,” and to let her live in luxury as the Hero’s wife.
Somehow, though he was no easy man, every minute and second spent with her made his heart crumble without pause. Lucas thought many times that he absolutely did not want to lose Darin, and in the end…
“Darin. This may be a little sudden to bring up now, but I’ll be honest.”
He resolved to confess his feelings without reservation.
“You’ve probably noticed to some extent. I have romantic feelings for you, Darin.”
“…Ah.”
Darin was a little flustered, yet…
“I see.”
Since she had more or less expected it, she answered nonchalantly.
She had hoped he would treat her as a friend, but having recently realized how young men in social circles looked at her, that hope might have been greedy.
Lucas shared so many commonalities with her that it was only natural for him to feel this way. Had she been in his place, if the only comrade she met in this other world were of the opposite sex and pretty-faced, she too would have felt strong romantic interest.
“But, though I understand, we’ve only met twice so far, haven’t we?”
“Haha, that’s true… yet there are times when a single moment steals eternity.”
Well, the confession felt like a sudden acceleration, but the line itself was superb. Had he built his harem by toying with women using that silver tongue?
“I understand for now, but I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to say.”
“Rather than pairing with a man you don’t even care for, wouldn’t I be better?”
Hearing Lucas’s words, Darin raised one eyebrow and wore an embarrassed expression. Liking her was one thing, but that remark seemed a bit rash.
She had no intention of accepting the confession in the first place, and their meetings were far too short to open her heart. And above all…
“As far as I know, Lucas, you keep a harem, don’t you?”
“…That’s right.”
“So are you telling me to join as a harem member?”
“Ahem—the word ‘join’ seems a bit excessive.”
“But becoming a harem member is still correct…?”
“That’s true, yet if Darin becomes my partner I promise treatment differentiated from the other women.”
“Differentiated treatment?”
“Well… you can think of it as something like an official wife.”
Darin’s expression gradually hardened.
She was a little disappointed in Lucas.
Whether official wife or anything else, inviting her to become one of his countless women was something hard for a person with modern sensibilities to accept—yet he voiced the idea so casually.
Still, getting angry over every little thing was not something a noble lady should do. Even with a fellow countryman there could be one or two points she disliked, and feeling disappointed itself seemed rather ridiculous.
Besides, he had been a member of a chaebol family in his past life and was the Hero in this one. Keeping multiple women might feel perfectly natural to him.
So should she be grateful that such a great man was appointing her “official wife”?
Unfortunately, Darin was a woman very far removed from ordinary girls.
“I’ll pass. I know Lucas is a capable man, but I’m not interested in men themselves.”
Darin had long since accepted that she was a woman, yet that did not mean she had come to love men as romantic partners. Having sex with her husband, committing the incestuous sin with her son—those acts had occurred only because she had been given no choice.
Thus, to Darin, “men as romantic partners” were simply tiresome.
The Hero fixed his golden eyes on the girl with a look full of longing. He was not particularly dejected. Rather, he thought that a woman of Darin’s caliber had every right to play hard to get with him.
“Is there truly no way? Of course discarding a fiancé is difficult, but I’ve never seen a ‘pure and clean virgin like Darin’ before, so I can’t control my heart.”
The cunning Hero courted the girl once more while naturally probing her feelings.
Pure and clean virgin.
The moment Darin heard those words she realized Lucas was laboring under a serious misunderstanding. She already knew full well, through her son, that the Hero was an extreme virgin fetishist.
Her eyes flew wide at the remark, and—
“What’s wrong, Darin?”
Catching it at once, the Hero, eager for any clue about the virginity of his crush—
“Is there a problem with what I said?”
—flashed his golden eyes with sharp intensity.