The Scandal and the Savage
After her illicit tryst with Hans, Emily managed to slip back into her residence just before the first light of dawn cracked the horizon.
Having stayed awake all night, she was undeniably exhausted, but she felt not a single shred of regret. After all, fatigue was nothing a single bottle of the invigorating draft she brewed herself couldn't instantly wash away. Before drinking the potion, however, a bath was in order to erase the traces Hans had carved into her flesh.
The moment she slipped into the steaming tub, infused with a specialized restorative tincture of her own design, the purple bruises and inflamed bite marks that marred her skin vanished like a trick of the eye, smoothing out into flawless, porcelain perfection.
Staring down at her unblemished skin, an unexpected pang of wistfulness tugged at her chest. It almost seemed a shame to wipe away the marks of his possession so swiftly, so effortlessly. Running her delicate fingertips over the places where the bruises had just faded, trying to console herself, she let out a low, amused giggle.
Soon, the sun would rise, and when morning fully broke over the realm, the empire—no, the entire continent—would be turned upside down. The Solarion Empire, which had basked in hard-won serenity ever since concluding the long war, was about to be plunged right back into chaos. So much so that some people might find themselves wishing they were back in the midst of the Demon War instead.
At that thought, the lingering disappointment melted away, replaced by a dark, bubbling anticipation. A fleeting thought crossed her mind that she might truly be insane to relish this, but she brushed it aside without a second thought. Come what may, she did not regret a single thing she had done.
And above all else...
"Heheh..."
She couldn't hold back her laughter picturing how Hans would be tearing his hair out and howling in despair any minute now. How would he handle it? Would he pack up his bags and try to flee to the ends of the earth? Would he ever suspect that she was the architect of this disaster? Oh, I almost feel bad for him...
Because she still had one very big card left to play.
Morning arrived, bringing the sun over the horizon after that torrid night with Emily. But instead of the usual peaceful dawn settling across the capital, the Solarion Empire was violently thrown into utter uproar.
All because of a single explosive headline splashed across the morning papers.
"Are you fucking kidding me?!"
Closest Confidant H? Who the hell else could that possibly be besides me? If it were just an ordinary scandal claiming I'd had an affair, I would've swallowed my guilt, cursed my luck, and accepted that the sins of my flesh had caught up with me. But a smear campaign claiming I was rolling in bed with another man? I hadn't seen that coming in my wildest nightmares.
Who on earth spread this garbage? It was a bold-faced lie from top to bottom, but the fact that they nailed the initial 'H' meant whoever wrote it knew me personally. Had one of the five male leads cooked this up to eliminate a romantic rival and dragged me into the crossfire? Decided they'd gotten enough mileage out of their humble errand boy, so they might as well discard me like trash?
God damn it. This is exactly why you never adopt or take pity on RoFan male leads.
Whoever the bastard was, I swore I wouldn't let them off easy. Still, looking on the bright side, not many people outside the immediate inner circle would be able to pinpoint my exact identity just from an initial. To the general public, I was merely the commoner flunky who struck gold by latching onto the Hero's coattails. Nobody in their right mind would ever jump to the conclusion that a nobody like me had seduced the fiancé of the continent's greatest beauty.
So my plan was simple: keep my head down, pack my bags, and skip town before anyone put two and two together. Or at least, that was the plan until I found myself intercepted.
"Now then, Hans. While I am still gracing you with an opportunity to speak, you will answer me. Which one of these men did you lay with?"
"I've told you a hundred times already, I never did anything of the sort!"
"Heheh, despite committing such an unspeakable indiscretion, your loyalty to your paramour is truly magnificent. Do you love him that much?"
"Hans... no matter what, an affair is wrong. Please, I'm begging you, come to your senses and tell us the truth."
"Continue this stubbornness, and I will have no choice but to lock you in the Northern Ice Prison."
Before I could even hoist my pack over my shoulder, I had been bagged, tagged, and dragged into an impromptu interrogation room. The men standing over me, demanding answers with looks that could freeze blood, were none other than Emily's prospective grooms: the male leads themselves.
Kyle, the legendary Hero. Silverin, the elven Archmage and Academy professor. Leonhardt, the First Imperial Prince. And Edel, the future Grand Duke of the North. When four men who had literally saved the world leveled murderous glares at you in unison, it was enough to make your knees turn to jelly.
To be perfectly honest, having thoroughly rutted with Emily just hours ago, I wasn't exactly in a position to look them in the eye with a clear conscience. But regarding this particular allegation? I was completely innocent. I cried out with genuine, incandescent outrage.
"I'm losing my goddamn mind here! Fine, why don't you people speak for yourselves, then?! Did any of you ditch Lady Emily to fool around with me?!"
"Insolent cur, how dare you spout such filth!" Leonhardt roared, his chest heaving. "In my heart, there is only Emily! The only woman worthy of standing beside the future sun of this empire is her and her alone!"
"I-I'm the same!" Kyle stammered hastily, his cheeks burning red. "Betray Emily? That's impossible! On my sacred name as the Hero, Emily is the only one for me!"
"To me, Emily is a peerless blossom that I spent centuries searching for," Silverin stated smoothly, though his sharp eyes flashed with an icy threat. "How could I ever bring sorrow to such a delicate flower?"
"Agreed," Edel grunted in his usual clipped, flat cadence. "Emily is the only woman who thawed my frozen heart. I have no intention of allowing anyone else inside. Especially not a man."
One by one, every single one of them declared their total innocence. And I knew they weren't lying. Because frankly, no such homosexual romance had ever occurred between me and any of them. The one who had actually committed adultery was their sweet, precious bride-to-be.
Of course, if I let that little truth slip, my head would be severed from my shoulders within the second. I desperately needed to steer the conversation elsewhere.
"Fine, great! If none of you did it, and I didn't do it either, then this whole thing is obviously a pile of fake news! Shouldn't you be hunting down the gutter journalist who penned this slander instead of grilling me?"
"Naturally, we attempted to seize the vermin immediately," Leonhardt scoffed, crossing his arms. "However, he does not exist."
"Doesn't exist? What do you mean?"
"Neither the press agency nor the reporter behind the byline have any physical presence," Silverin chimed in, adjusting his spectacles. "No matter how thoroughly we investigated, we found nothing. It appears to have been a paper company. When we questioned journalists from established publications, none of them had ever heard of the entity."
Wait, really?
That meant someone had gone through the trouble of establishing a bogus publishing firm just to print this single defamatory story before immediately burning the operation to the ground. Given the colossal sum of gold required to set up a printing press and distribute papers empire-wide, this wasn't the work of an ordinary commoner. It had to be a high-ranking noble. A ridiculously wealthy one, at that.
"We're... still looking into it," Kyle muttered, his shoulders slumping, "but the chances of tracking them down are slim. That's why we came to talk to you first, Hans."
"Like I said, I'm the biggest victim here, man... But wait, have you guys gone to see Lady Emily yet?"
"Y-Yeah, of course we ran straight to her estate the moment we saw the paper, but... well, Emily was exceedingly furious..."
"Angry? She got angry?"
That knocked me off balance. Emily was famous for maintaining an unshakeable, aristocratic composure; she rarely let intense emotions show on her face. Granted, any woman would hit the ceiling if she woke up to read that her fiancé was cheating on her with another guy. But given what she had been doing with me in secret, throwing a fit felt a bit rich. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
Then again, maybe she threw a tantrum precisely to keep anyone from suspecting her own dirty secrets. Either way, her wrath had clearly rattled the four heroes to their core. Their faces were all pale and drawn.
"Ugh...! The frigid glare she leveled at me still haunts my waking thoughts," Leonhardt muttered, gripping his temples in agony. "To dare drive a wedge between Emily and myself in this manner...! Whoever is behind this, when I drag them to light, they will face the absolute harshest judgment the Solarion Empire can muster!"
"The chill in her eyes was colder than the deepest winter of the northern expanse," Edel murmured, visibly shaken.
"Seeing her so wounded felt like a blade twisting in my heart," Silverin remarked, his fingers resting thoughtfully on his chin. "Though, I must admit, witnessing such a novel, passionate side of her was rather fascinating in its own right. Still, soothing her anger must be our highest priority. Which brings us to the point, Hans. Do you have any brilliant ideas?"
"...And why are you asking me that?"
"Because you have always been the most capable when it comes to resolving such delicate matters," Silverin replied smoothly. "Did you not render distinguished service in assisting all of us to win Lady Emily's affections in the first place?"
Motherfucker. You want me to run around like a headless chicken doing your dirty work all over again?
I thought my days of playing royal matchmaker were finally over, and here they were, trying to rope me into another circus. But right now, short of hunting down the phantom journalist and ripping their head off, there didn't seem to be an easy way out of this mess. Still, hunting a ghost wasn't an immediate option. Which left only one avenue.
"Did Lady Emily say anything else? Like... what it would take for her to forgive you?"
""Urk...!""
All four of them stiffened simultaneously, their expressions freezing in sheer dismay. Wait. What was that reaction?
"Wait, what?" I pressed, narrowing my eyes. "She actually said something, didn't she?"
"W-Well, she did mention something, but..." Kyle stammered, his eyes darting away.
"She did? What did she say?"
"A-Absurd! Absolutely not!" Leonhardt bellowed, frantically waving his hands as if fending off a foul stench. "I belong solely to Emily! Do not even think of laying your filthy eyes on me, commoner!"
"Could you please stop barking nonsense for five seconds, Your Imperial Highness? If you want to appease the lady, we have to try something, don't we? Help me out here, Kyle."
"H-Huh? But... but Hans...!" Kyle flailed his arms, his face flushed in absolute terror. "I can't! Even for me, that's completely impossible...!"
"For me as well," Edel muttered grimly, his knuckles whitening as he crossed his arms. "Completely impossible."
What on earth did she ask for that has these legendary badasses shivering in their boots?
At this rate, I was going to have to walk over to Emily's mansion and pry the answer out of her myself. If only Khagan were here, that meathead would have blurted it out without a second thought. Come to think of it, where was he? He was one of the five suitors; he should have been storming the room alongside the rest of them.
"By the way, where's Khagan?"
"Khagan...? Ah, well, Khagan is..."
Khagan, the future chieftain of the Valkar tribe, destined to rule the Great Plains. Though absent at the moment, he was the quintessential alpha male lead—boasting a boisterous, sun-drenched personality, unmatched wild charisma, and a physique carved out of granite. Because of his straightforward nature, he was prone to rushing into things without thinking. For all I knew, he had already charged off to smash every newspaper press in the capital to pieces.
Just as an uneasy pit began to form in my stomach at his absence—
BAM—!
The heavy wooden doors blasted inward off their hinges with a deafening crash.
"Hans! I have arrived!"
"...Right on cue," I sighed, rubbing the bridge of my nose. "Would it kill you to open a door like a civilized person just once? Do you really have to shatter the entryway every single time you show up, you absolute barbarian?"
Speak of the devil. Ready to chew out the chieftain for the property damage, I lifted my head to look at him.
"...Who the hell are you?"
"Hans, do not jest!" the newcomer bellowed, hands planted firmly on a pair of shockingly slender hips. "We are brothers-in-arms! We recognize one another by a mere glance!"
"No, seriously. This is literally the first time I've ever seen your face in my entire life."
I wasn't joking. I had genuinely never seen this person before. Granted, the stranger possessed towering height, sun-kissed bronze skin, bright amber-orange hair tied back in a wild warrior's braid, and wore the traditional leather harnesses and furs of the steppe nomads. The style was practically identical to Khagan's. But one decisive, undeniable feature was completely wrong.
"Hmm? Ah, forgive me. My form has altered slightly. It is only natural that you failed to recognize me. Allow me to introduce myself once more!"
Thump—!
She slammed a clenched fist against her chest, sending a violent ripple through the leather vest straining against two massive, voluptuous breasts.
"My name is Khagan! The one who gallops across the Great Plains, the next Chieftain of the mighty Valkar tribe!"
"...Khagan? You? ...Why?"
"What do you mean, 'why'?! I have been Khagan since the day I drew breath! It is you who should answer why you cannot recognize your own comrade, Hans!"
"No, I mean... Khagan is a dude."
And the person standing in front of me was, without a shadow of a doubt, a towering, ridiculously stacked woman.