The Grand Duchess Is Left Speechless Twice in a Row
"······And you? How did it feel... when I... did that to you?"
Rebecca couldn't look me straight in the eye, as if something were gnawing at her conscience.
Her tone was different, too—nothing like the bold, spirited princess she always was. For some reason, her voice trembled just slightly.
She seemed genuinely curious what I was thinking, as if my answer mattered quite a lot to her.
"······Are you asking how I felt?"
I asked again, half-suspecting the words had simply slipped out of her before she could think them through.
"······Yes."
But Rebecca, still unable to meet my eyes, only affirmed it.
Watching her like that—
"Well. What do you think it was like for me?"
—the desire to tease the princess began creeping up on me again, smoldering from somewhere deep inside.
It wasn't as though I'd wanted to tease her from the start.
At first, I'd simply been flustered. I couldn't figure out why Rebecca was suddenly saying something like that.
But after a moment's thought, my embarrassment gave way to understanding. Well, of course.
I was her first, after all.
Princess Rebecca might carry the settings of an invincible prodigy, but right now she was nothing more than a girl who hadn't even had her coming-of-age ceremony, much less her debutante.
Even if her partner happened to be me—her sworn enemy of a fiancé who had spent three years beating her, teasing her, and eating her alive at every turn—
this was the first time she'd ever been this close with someone of the opposite sex.
Her reaction was only natural.
"······I'm sorry, what?"
"What do you imagine it felt like for me, Princess?"
Which was exactly why I wanted to tease her all the more.
To think that Princess Rebecca, so effortlessly perfect in nearly every field, had such an inexperienced side.
People called this gap moe, didn't they? Whoever coined the term, it was a masterpiece of a phrase.
"······How should I know."
"What a shame. I only asked because I figured the celebrated child genius, Princess Rebecca, could answer something like this in her sleep."
"···."
Zing—
A sharp gaze brimming with murderous intent bore into me.
I pretended not to notice. In moments like these, playing blind and deaf was always the best policy.
It was a lesson three years of surviving Rebecca had taught me.
"···."
Just moments ago she'd been the one unable to meet my eyes; now it was I who was desperately dodging her gaze. A laughable reversal, really.
It was Rebecca who broke the silence first.
"Stop spouting nonsense and answer the question. How did you feel?"
"Are my feelings truly that important to you?"
"Isn't that obvious?"
"Might I ask why they're important to you?"
"······I'm sorry, what?"
My sudden counter-question threw Rebecca visibly off balance.
She'd thought she was the one conducting a one-sided interrogation, and an ambush of a question out of nowhere would naturally startle anyone.
She'd never imagined I would flip the table and demand a reason of my own.
And waiting for exactly this kind of timing before unleashing an assault was, after all, the basic prerequisite of any good teaser.
"Weren't you the one who said the experience left you less than pleased, Princess? So I fail to understand why you'd care how it felt for me."
"That's... because unlike me, you might have actually enjoyed it..."
"Then if you're so curious about my feelings, why don't you find out for yourself?"
"······I beg your pardon?"
Rebecca asked me to repeat myself, as if she might have misheard.
But as I'd noted before, Rebecca's hearing was in perfectly robust health.
"If my feelings interest you so much, then receive one of my kisses as well. Surely then you'd know exactly how it felt, wouldn't you?"
"···."
"Of course, given how embarrassed you are by anything beyond this level of intimacy, I imagine you couldn't possibly accept—"
"······Do it, then."
"······I'm sorry, what?"
What was this? Had I just misheard something?
Apparently the faulty hearing in the room belonged not to Rebecca, but to me.
Because otherwise, there was simply no way Rebecca would ever tell me to kiss her—
"I said do it. The kiss."
"···."
"I'm curious how it feels too."
Rebecca's pretty, clear crimson eyes—the very ones that had refused to meet mine until a moment ago—
were looking straight at me.
This isn't how it was supposed to go.
"I said do it. The kiss."
Rebecca had delivered the line with all the bravado she could muster.
'······How on earth did it come to this?'
Internally, however, she was already regretting those words with every fiber of her being.
It was the sort of thing her usual self would never, ever have said.
Why on earth would anyone ask Albert—that enemy of a fiancé who did nothing but mock her day in and day out—for a kiss?
She might have demanded a chance to land one good, solid punch instead. But a mortifying gesture of intimacy like this? Never.
And yet the words had spilled out of her mouth anyway, because—
'······He's insufferable.'
Her fiancé had received her kiss and then worn the expression of a man utterly unaffected, and that was unbearable.
She had actually done the deed, and Dorothy had caught her doing it, and the shame of it all made her want to crawl into a mousehole and never come out.
And yet her fiancé carried on as though nothing had happened, needling her exactly as he always did, and that was unbearable.
"I'm curious how it feels too."
So she'd said it. She'd actually gone and said it.
"······I'm sorry, what?"
Albert looked tremendously flustered by her bombshell declaration.
The insufferable smirk he perpetually wore had vanished to wherever such things went, and his cheeks were flushing faintly pink—he looked, in truth, genuinely stunned.
She had landed a clean blow on the fiancé who, every single time before, had been the one hitting her.
"Is something the matter? Or perhaps you lack the nerve to actually kiss me?"
Her own mood lifted along with it.
It was the taste of victory over Albert, after an achingly long absence.
She had always been perfect.
Swordsmanship—flawless. Magic—flawless. She even excelled at her studies and at managing the family assets.
And she was already the designated successor to the Dukedom of Valencia.
She had lived her whole life believing that no one in the Empire could surpass her.
— I beg your pardon?
— Shall we make a little wager?
Right up until three years ago, when she met her fiancé, Albert Zernias.
The fiancé she'd first encountered at fifteen could be defined in a single sentence.
— To think that's the best the Princess has to offer. How disappointing.
The most insufferable man in the world.
The man who was forever proposing games and wagers, who won them through cunning tricks and then smacked her hand for her trouble.
The man who would never once dare settle things through swordsmanship or any test of physical prowess—precisely the arenas where he could never beat her.
The most infuriating person alive.
At first, her pride had taken a bruising.
She had carried within her the unshakable conviction of her own perfection.
And then a fiancé who looked remarkable at absolutely nothing had defeated her, again and again.
There had been dark days when she wondered if she was, in the end, worth only this much.
And yet, if someone asked her now whether every defeat still left a bitter taste, she couldn't confidently say yes.
Her competitive fire being what it was, losing did sting—there was no denying that.
But was it as unbearable as that very first loss? No, it wasn't.
Perhaps, through all those battles, affection had quietly taken root. Or perhaps she had simply resigned herself to the fact that she was never going to win.
Or maybe it was because the penalty was nothing more than a smack on the hand or a flick on the wrist.
— From now on, let the loser grant the winner's wish instead.
Which was why she had thrown herself into this game of chess with everything she had.
Determined to land one blow on that insufferable man if it killed her.
She hadn't given any thought to what she'd demand if she won.
She had never once beaten Albert at chess in her life, after all—and she had never once seriously considered what she might want from her fiancé.
In the end, there had been nothing to think about, and she had granted the wish he named: a kiss on the cheek.
Why he would demand such a thing while insisting he didn't even like her, she couldn't fathom.
But having lost, there had been no other path open to her, so she had done it, mortifying as it was.
That first kiss on the cheek, though forced upon her, hadn't been bad.
When Albert had asked whether she'd enjoyed it, teasing that she'd gone red as a beet, she'd spat out a vehement no—
but inwardly, she'd been thinking it was rather nicer than she'd expected.
Getting caught by Dorothy afterward had been an unforeseen complication, granted.
— ······And you? How did it feel... when I... did that to you.
Asking that had been a rather impulsive thing.
She had decided the experience was perfectly fine—so she'd found herself wondering what Albert, who'd been on the receiving end of it, had thought.
It had been asked out of the purest, most innocent curiosity.
— Well. What do you think it was like for me?
But her fiancé, far from sharing his thoughts, had turned the question back on her and studied her reaction instead.
As if he wanted to tease her even further.
And that had been so maddening, so infuriating, that she couldn't hold it in—and her failure to hold it in was how she had arrived at this very moment.
"······I'm sorry, what?"
Her fiancé, staring at her with the face of a man whose brain had stopped—
"I said do it."
—and the princess, outwardly defiant while inwardly wailing, why did I say that...
Seen from a distance, it was a comedy. Seen up close, a tragedy.
"······If you keep talking like that, I really will do it."
Albert, who had been wearing that slack expression, finally declared himself—as if to say the joke ended here, and no further.
As if to say that if she crossed this line, he truly meant to carry it through.
"Yes. I'm telling you to do it, aren't I?"
"···."
And she trampled clean over that line.
Because she was winning against Albert for the first time in ages, and because she was, in truth, genuinely curious what Albert had felt when her kiss landed on his cheek.
So she declared, unbending: If you're going to do it, then do it.
"······Very well. I will."
The moment her declaration ended, Albert strode toward her in long, unhurried steps.
At a distance of barely a handspan between their faces, he spoke one last time.
"I really am going to do it."
"···."
Here, Rebecca hesitated—just slightly.
She too had a dim sense that after this question, there would be no next question.
That from here on, exactly what her fiancé had promised would truly come to pass.
"······Yes."
"···."
Not that her answer changed by a single syllable.
Just as she had predicted, Albert asked nothing more of her willingness—
Mwah—
and against her cheek came a soft, warm pressure, and the same distinctive little sound that had once sounded against her fiancé's cheek now rang out against her own.
Click—
And at that very instant, an identical sound came from the door.
"Rebecca! Is it true? You kissed Albert—!"
Though the star of this particular scene was neither her maid Dorothy nor anyone else—it was her own mother, the Duchess of Valencia.
"······Ah."
That her cheeks flushed crimson enough to burst this time, too—
needless to say, saying it aloud would do nothing but make her mouth ache.