The Grand Duchess Grants a Wish
The Grand Duchess grants a wish.
"I would be most grateful, my lady, if you would grant your beloved fiancé a kiss on the cheek."
That was me, demanding a cheek kiss as my prize for winning.
"······Have you lost your mind?"
Naturally enough, Rebecca stared at me as though I were a lunatic.
Her expression dripped with contempt, as if to say, what kind of insane creature walks this earth? If Rebecca had aimed that look at a stranger, I suspect the poor soul would have run out of the room in tears. That was how murderous her gaze was.
"No, I am perfectly sane at the moment."
But even in the face of Rebecca's reaction, I resolved to press forward shamelessly. Sometimes, after all, sheer audacity is the finest weapon a man can wield.
The Grand Duchess's expression grew considerably uglier.
"A person in his 'perfectly sane' state... asks for a kiss as his wish?"
"Yes."
At the sight of me nodding with complete confidence, Rebecca seemed to ascend to a new plane entirely—no longer viewing me as merely insane, but as something beyond human categorization.
"You're telling me that my wish—the wish of the only daughter of House Valencia, one of only two ducal families in the entire Empire—amounts to a kiss on your cheek?"
"Yes. Is that a problem?"
"Isn't it obviously a problem? Name a different wish."
I had expected it, but Rebecca's revulsion ran deeper than I'd anticipated. Well, of course it did. To Rebecca, 'Albert Zernias' was her sworn enemy—a man who had spent three years handily beating her at everything and flicking her on the forehead for good measure. The fluttery excitement that ought to exist between ordinary fiancés had never once existed between us. And no one, not if you searched the whole world until you dropped, wants to kiss their nemesis.
And yet.
I was not the sort of man to surrender in the face of such a trial.
"Well, if it displeases you, my lady, so be it. As I said before, you're free to simply let it go. In return, however, I can't promise I'll honor your wish the next time I lose."
"No, that's not— I'm not saying I won't grant it, I'm saying..."
"Refusing the wish I've named is the same as refusing to grant it, is it not?"
"······"
Faced with my invincible logic, Rebecca appeared at a loss for words. She looked like a woman with a hundred things to say and no way to say any of them. Argue, and there was nothing in my words she could actually refute. Stay silent, and she'd end up kissing me. The Grand Duchess's face looked as though every worry in the world had convened upon it at once.
"······Do you want my kiss that badly?"
"Of course."
"Why? Do you like me or something?"
"Of cour—"
Close one.
For a split second, swept up in the mood, I nearly answered yes.
'······Absolutely not. She'd never let me live it down.'
Until the Grand Duchess's insufferable personality showed signs of improvement, I resolved never to breathe a word about liking Rebecca. If I did, I might well spend the rest of my life being jerked around at her every whim.
"······No. Why on earth would I like you, my lady?"
"Then why in the world..."
Why in the world are you so obsessed with a cheek kiss? One look in her eyes told me exactly what was coming next. So before Rebecca could finish, I got ahead of the question and began my answer.
"Think about it, my lady. If you were forced to do something as embarrassing as kissing me, you'd be too afraid of losing to ever challenge me to another contest, wouldn't you?"
"······So. You're saying you found my constant begging for rematches so tiresome that you set up this whole wager to make me stop."
"Yes. You've hit the nail squarely on the head."
"······"
Rebecca looked profoundly wounded in her pride at that. And yet—at the same time—did a flicker of something like hurt pass across the Grand Duchess's face? As if my words had genuinely disappointed her.
That expression, threaded with the faintest trace of letdown, vanished in an instant—so quickly that Rebecca herself seemed entirely unaware she'd ever made it. But my eyes, trained on the Grand Duchess as they always were, caught even the smallest shift. And since watching Rebecca feel hurt or disappointed was not something I wished to do, I quickly smoothed things over with a different explanation.
"The truth is, there was something I was curious about."
"······What."
"I've heard that the other young lords and ladies think nothing of small gestures of affection with their fiancés. Yet you and I have never once done anything of the sort, have we."
"That's... true."
Only now did Rebecca's face soften into something like grudging understanding. Seeing her mood lift a little, I found mine lifting in turn. And in that spirit, I repeated my demand with all the confidence I'd shown a moment ago.
"So go on and grant my wish, my lady."
"······Isn't there anything else? If it's small affection you want, there's holding hands, or a hug. Plenty of other options."
Having realized that a flat refusal wouldn't sway me, Rebecca came to me offering alternative compromises.
"No, I refuse. What I want is a kiss on the cheek, brimming with your love, my lady."
Not that I had any intention of letting her off the hook regardless.
"······"
The Grand Duchess still looked reluctant, fidgeting with her fingers and hesitating. I thought the sight adorable, honestly—like a cat that had been caught misbehaving—but I knew better than to let that cuteness melt my resolve and throw my wish away.
"To hesitate over a single kiss on the cheek for your own fiancé. You've managed to disappoint me yet again, my lady."
"······What did you just say?"
As I always did, I had struck at the Grand Duchess's one true weak spot: her pride. The effect was immediate.
"······Come here. Let's get this over with quickly."
The moment her pride was pricked, Rebecca beckoned me over, ready to dispense the kiss at once.
'······Is she actually a robot?'
I thought it every time, but for someone welded together entirely out of pride and competitive fire, there was simply no more effective lever to pull than this.
"If it's a kiss from you, my lady, shouldn't it be you who comes to me?"
"······Just you wait. The next time I win, I'm making a wish so humiliating you might actually die of shame."
So spoke the Grand Duchess, her eyes and expression brimming with killing intent and malice.
It was terrifying. So terrifying that I let the reaction slip straight out of my mouth.
"How frightening, my lady. Hearing such words from someone who has never beaten me a single time—I hardly know where to hide from fear."
"······"
Tremble, tremble—
Rebecca shook all over, so aggrieved she seemed on the verge of losing her mind. The tremors radiated from her body right into mine, standing mere inches away. She was, at this point, a volcano on the verge of eruption.
"Whenever you're ready. I thought you said we'd finish this as quickly as possible?"
"······I'll do it whether you rush me or not, so just wait quietly."
Hoo—
Rebecca let out a long, deep breath, as if to say that the moment of reckoning had truly arrived.
"······Fine. I'll do it."
So declaring, she drew close to me—and her eyes were filled to the brim with a vow of vengeance, a promise that one day she would make me pay for all of this.
"Understood. Now hurry up and get on with it."
"······"
Of course, as I'd said a moment ago, I wasn't scared in the slightest.
'······Wait. Didn't I just say I was scared?'
While I sat briefly bewildered by what appeared to be early-onset dementia, the sound of Rebecca's breathing reached my ears—she had somehow drifted right up beside me. Her gaze was fixed entirely on me, and as I met her eyes, an old truth came surfacing back to me, fresh as ever.
"······You're beautiful."
"······?!"
Rebecca's face flared red, as if to demand what on earth I thought I was saying.
"I mean it."
I had simply spoken what I felt. After all, Rebecca, drawing near to kiss my cheek, truly was beautiful.
Her vivid, clear red eyes were so crystalline that I could see myself reflected whole within them. Her cheeks, flushed crimson by the words I'd just spoken, seemed to shimmer in kinship with her scarlet hair—something almost otherworldly. And those lips, pressed together shyly, were unbearably cute.
'Am I... kind of a creep?'
I couldn't claim to be entirely normal myself, cataloguing her features point by point like this. But what could I do? I had only spoken the truth.
"······Just stand still."
"Yes, my lady."
Rebecca took another deep breath. After a brief moment of steadying herself, this time she closed the distance without hesitation, quick and decisive.
Mwah—
The Grand Duchess's lips met my cheek with that unmistakable sound of contact.
My impressions of the experience were... well, none, really.
'······Soft.'
That was about the extent of it—the sensation of Rebecca's lips registering as soft against my cheek. The moment of contact was far too brief, and besides, the human cheek is hardly the most sensitive of instruments for receiving such things.
"······There. Satisfied now?"
Asked the Grand Duchess, her face burning scarlet as if to proclaim finally, it's over.
I decided the occasion called for applause.
"Yes. Well done, my lady."
"The next time I win, I'm making you do something at least ten times worse than—"
"······?"
Mid-declaration of her revenge, Rebecca stopped dead. Her eyes were trembling violently, and she was no longer looking at me. She was looking at the door.
'What's at the door that...'
Following her gaze, I turned to look at the door as well.
'······Ah.'
And only then did I discover the reason the Grand Duchess had fallen so abruptly silent.
"······"
Dorothy, the Grand Duchess's personal maid, was peering at us through the crack in the door, nothing but her face visible.
"Dorothy...? How... how much... did you see?"
Rebecca forced the question out through a shaking voice. Her words carried a desperate prayer—please, let it not be what I think it is.
But the Grand Duchess's prayer proved utterly useless, and quickly.
For her maid Dorothy turned and fled out the door, leaving only these words behind:
"I saw—I saw nothing at all! I did not see my lady kissing Lord Albert!!"
"Ah..."
As for how furiously red Rebecca's face turned—
Any attempt to describe it would only be a waste of breath.