The White Mask Receives a Request
I stared at the sentence for a long time.
Find out whether the Grand Duchess of the North truly cares for the youngest prince.
A letter sealed with black wax. An anonymous request. Expensive but unassuming paper. The handwriting was neat, making it impossible to guess the sender’s gender, age, or status. A ridiculous commission.
A request had come to White Mask. One asking him to investigate the relationship between Noel de Astrea and Adelaine von Ernhardt.
And it had been sent to Noel de Astrea himself.
The world was full of absurdities.
I set the request down on the table and pressed its edges with my fingertips. Thin black shadows flickered faintly beneath the paper.
I needed to find the client. It could be the Empress. It could be the 1st Prince. It could be one of the old nobles. There was even a chance it was someone from within the North.
Many people wanted to know how much Adelaine truly cared for me. That information had its uses.
If she genuinely cared for me, I would become her weakness.
If she was only using me politically, I would become a card in the North’s hand.
Either way, the fact that I was her weakness wouldn’t change. But humans lose their reason the moment emotion gets involved. That was what they wanted to know—whether I was someone who could shake her feelings.
It was also information I needed to uncover at least once.
If Adelaine intended to use me, then I could use her in return. But if her feelings toward me were sincere…
I didn’t know.
I didn’t think something like that would ever happen in the first place.
In the end, was it political calculation? Pity? Amusement? Or…
I stopped thinking there. Thinking only made me tired. Thinking made me hope. And hoping could get me hurt. I didn’t particularly like any of those things.
The best way to soften the impact of a fall is to reduce the height. The higher you fly, the harder you hit the ground.
I closed my eyes and moved my fingertips. The shadows slowly unraveled—silently, thinly, like black water. One by one, I gathered the information I had collected so far.
The shadows I had planted near Adelaine’s quarters began to stir, feeding me what they had observed.
The annex where the Northern personnel were staying was set a little apart from the main palace. The imperial family treated them as guests but never fully welcomed them into the center. Courtesy was maintained, yet subtle rejection lingered beneath it.
Quiet conversations from the Northern knights drifted through.
Nothing important. Shift changes. Tomorrow’s schedule. Follow-up investigation of the royal hunting grounds.
Then my name came up.
The knight spread his arms dramatically as he spoke.
Someone clicked their tongue in disappointment.
Idle chatter followed.
Adelaine von Ernhardt was beautiful yet strong. Dangerously intelligent, too. She only ever showed her foolish side in front of me.
The way she had hidden her ankle. The face she made when she said she liked me. The fingertips that had wiped my hands. The slight relaxation in her shoulders when she received praise.
Just imagining it made me smile without meaning to.
But if I thought about it even a little, it was obvious. What could she possibly lack that she would like the youngest prince? An idiot prince, at that. Someone like me.
There was no reason for her to like me. Emotions could sometimes bloom without reason, but such cases were rare. I wasn’t optimistic enough to believe I could be one of those rare exceptions.
My vessel was too small to contain someone as vast as her.
“Wait, why am I even thinking about accepting Adelaine?”
We weren’t anything to each other.
Hmm. Why had I thought that?
What was that?
I shook my head to clear away the distracting thoughts. Focus on the work.
The next piece of information was from documents Adelaine had been hiding. The recent power structure of the imperial court. A list of nobles aligned with the 1st Prince. Records of visitors to the Empress’s Palace. Changes in personnel managing the royal hunting grounds. Schedules of old noble gatherings. Supply routes connected to the Silver Feather Guild. Potential forces that might back Cayenne.
And my name.
It was systematic and deep. She had grasped a significant portion of the imperial political currents.
The youngest prince’s move to the North may be utilized as an information-gathering route for the Empress’s faction.
At the same time, it serves as valid justification for the North to check the imperial family.
The youngest prince’s outwardly harmless nature holds high political utility value.
Utility. Where it could be used. How helpful it could be. And when it could be discarded.
What exactly was my value?
To Adelaine, how much value did a human being named Noel hold?
There were many documents. The incidents I had experienced in the imperial palace. The Empress’s changing attitude. The 1st Prince’s reactions. The hunting competition accident. Even the diary the Empress had given me.
Adelaine knew. Almost everything.
I let out a slow breath.
“So that’s how it was.”
Adelaine wasn’t a fool. She understood the political implications surrounding me. She knew what benefit I could bring to the North. She knew how useful my harmless exterior could be. She knew exactly how I could be used in the imperial palace and how I could be utilized in the North.
“That’s all it was.”
I thought I hadn’t held any expectations, but apparently I had. It hurt more than I thought it would.
Why did my breath keep catching in my throat?
Fine. The information was sufficient.
The Grand Duchess of the North only intended to use the youngest prince for political gain. Every action was an act; none of it was sincere.
A report saying she was using me politically would be far easier to handle than one claiming she genuinely cared for me. Once emotions became entangled, judgment turned irrational and unpredictable. But political use was something I could predict.
I pulled out a single sheet of black paper—stationery reserved for White Mask’s reports. I picked up the pen.
Interim report on the requested matter.
The Grand Duchess of the North, Adelaine von Ernhardt, has shown a certain level of interest in the youngest prince, Noel de Astrea.
However, this interest appears to be based on political objectives.
Every time the pen nib scratched the paper, it felt like something inside my chest was being scraped raw. That had to be my imagination.
I wrote down the grounds for my judgment. I filtered out any information that could threaten her, summarizing only what was safe to reveal. After all, she and I were in the same boat. Until I escaped, that boat must not sink.
Therefore, the Grand Duchess’s behavior is highly likely to be an act and difficult to view as sincere.
The pen stopped above the paper. Strangely, my hand refused to move.
I just had to write it. It wasn’t even a difficult sentence. There were no hard words, no need to worry about spelling. Yet my hand wouldn’t move.
The image of Adelaine hiding her ankle rose in my mind. The way her face had turned red when she said it would smell. The way her eyes had grown watery when I jokingly pinched my nose.
Had that been an act too?
I tightened my grip on the pen.
Next came the face she had made when she said she liked me.
“Yes. I like you. Truly.”
Her face drawing closer. The tremor deep in her eyes.
Had that been an act as well?
A hollow laugh escaped me. It was ridiculous.
I had lived my entire life acting. I had spent my days deceiving others. Who was I to judge anyone?
“I don’t even have the right to do this.”
Ah, why do I feel so disgusting?
Sudden memories flooded in. The fingertips that had wiped my hands. The cold hands after removing the gloves. The touch that had carefully cleaned each of my fingers, still carrying the faint scent of medicine. It had been so cautious, as if handling something precious.
“Your Highness is more precious than anyone.”
I bit my lip. Pain bloomed. A faint taste of blood rose.
Why did it hurt so much?
I set the pen down. My fingertips had gone numb. The final sentence still remained unwritten on the paper.
I stared quietly at the report.
An informant must not be swayed by emotion. We observe facts, organize them, and deliver them. If necessary, we refine them, sometimes conceal them, sometimes leak them. That was the job of White Mask.
Yet right now, I couldn’t organize the information.
I had enough data. The conclusion was already prepared. I even knew the sentence I needed to send.
But the moment I wrote it, it felt like I would lose something.
Not Adelaine. She had never been mine to lose. There was nothing to lose.
Then what was I losing?
Hope? Delusion? Or…
The small sense of relief that someone had given me for the first time?
I laughed. It was a silent laugh.
How stupid. Truly stupid.
I must have acted like an idiot for too long; now I had really become one.
There was no way Adelaine von Ernhardt could truly care for me. There was no way the Grand Duchess of the North could like the youngest prince.
To her, I was nothing more than a politically useful card. Justification to check the imperial family. A link to expand the North’s influence. Bait to draw out the Empress and the 1st Prince.
That was the most rational interpretation.
Yet even with that rational interpretation right in front of me, I kept remembering her flushed face.
In the end, I sent the report I had forced myself to finish writing. Even in this situation, what rose in my mind was still Adelaine’s face.