I Didn't Know I Was Secretly Dating the Emperor
I was caught completely off guard when she suddenly tossed out what sounded almost like a challenge, then smiled while locking eyes with me. She was a good half-head shorter than I was.
It was the kind of smile you might give someone while offering them a roasted spring potato.
What on earth am I supposed to say to that?
When I froze in confusion, Nadan stepped in as translator.
Into Imperial.
Even though I’m a native speaker of Imperial.
“Ah.”
It was a transcendent level of interpretation.
Beth nodded as if to confirm that Nadan had gotten it exactly right.
“Well… I haven’t actually visited the Inner Palace staff cafeteria yet. Maybe once I try the food today, I’ll be able to tell which one is better?”
I answered in sync with Nadan’s translation, and Beth broke into a bright grin.
“The Inner Palace one is definitely tastier. One hundred percent!”
It was such a sunny, decisive smackdown that if I’d had any close friends working in the Outer Palace cafeteria, I would have felt obligated to argue on their behalf.
“Uh…”
I, who had actually been perfectly satisfied with the Outer Palace staff cafeteria, found myself at a loss for words again.
No wonder the food is so good here. This is a romance fantasy world written by a nation that takes eating seriously.
I’d thought I was starting to get used to Beth during our short tea time, but that had clearly been wishful thinking.
Nadan let out a small sigh and translated once more.
“Oh, I see.”
Nadan seemed to find the final stretch of his transcendent translation a bit painful, judging by the way he’d hesitated.
Beth must have liked his version, because she gave him a subtle thumbs-up.
Sophia, who had been watching Beth from a short distance away, walked over and gently placed a hand on Beth’s left shoulder.
Her smile was as tender as an aunt’s looking at her adorable niece, yet at the same time carried a hint of sternness.
Beth shrank in on herself, clearly bracing for a scolding.
“Beth, we talked about thinking before you speak, didn’t we?”
“Yeees.”
Sophia’s warning must have injected some tension into Beth’s brain, because her speech suddenly became much more polite.
Thanks to that, I was able to keep up a conversation with Beth on the way to the cafeteria without needing Nadan’s translation.
“…The sky today is really clear, isn’t it?”
“It is. And the sunlight isn’t too harsh either.”
This feels exactly like practicing conversational phrases with a foreigner.
Her wording was a little strange, but since Beth wasn’t even trying to hide how much she liked me, it was actually kind of fun.
When we finally reached the cafeteria and were in the middle of getting our trays, a sudden wave of people pushed through and created a bit of distance between Beth and me.
Sophia took advantage of the gap and leaned in to speak quietly.
“This is going to sound like a classic line, but she’s not a bad kid. She’s just a little lacking in social skills. She doesn’t usually make this many verbal slip-ups. It seems she really took a liking to you, Lina. I’ll keep reminding her, so could you just let it slide when it happens?”
It looked like Sophia had been bothered by Beth’s free-spirited way of speaking the entire time.
“I wasn’t uncomfortable at all. I actually found it pretty entertaining in its own way.”
My answer carried a fairly high percentage of sincerity, and Sophia’s expression visibly relaxed.
She gave my forearm a light squeeze before letting go.
“Thank you. Everyone’s known Beth since she was little, so we tend to be a bit too soft on her.”
Lucy, who had been quietly listening to our conversation, chimed in.
“To be honest, it’s not just ‘a bit.’ We’re pretty much always soft on her. We basically all raised her together.”
So she doesn’t just look young—she really was that young?
Visually, Beth looked about the same age as the twins back home.
In the Inner Palace, where geniuses rolled around like pebbles on the street, it wasn’t all that strange for there to be a slightly younger genius among them.
Come to think of it, there isn’t actually an age restriction for becoming a palace administrator.
I was still wondering exactly how old Beth had been when she first entered the imperial palace when Derek pushed back against Lucy’s comment.
“She was already ten years old when we first met her. Isn’t calling it ‘raising her’ a bit of an exaggeration?”
His objection wasn’t about the part where they were soft on her.
So she’s the quirky but adorable youngest member that everyone dotes on?
For a brief moment, Annika’s equally unique personality flashed through my mind before vanishing.
Right then, as if she’d sensed we were talking about her, Beth turned around and called out to us.
“What are you guys doing?”
“Talking behind your back.”
Derek’s instant comeback made Beth’s eyes sharpen into points.
“I’m telling Sophia!”
The childishness of it gave me an intense sense of déjà vu.
I swear I heard that exact line at home during my last vacation.
“Sophia probably started it, didn’t she?”
Derek was no slouch in the childishness department either.
“Really?”
Beth’s eyes sparkled as she looked back at Sophia.
“I only said that Beth seems very innocent.”
When you look at it positively, it does have a similar nuance.
Sophia’s gift for packaging words was on the level of a master gift-wrapper who had worked at a specialty store her entire life.
Thankfully, Sophia’s words restored Beth’s energy immediately.
“She says it wasn’t her. So Derek’s the only one with a bad personality, huh?”
I followed slowly behind Beth and Derek as they bickered, keeping my voice low.
Wait… if Beth is the youngest member of Blue Hawk, then she’s…?
Beth Robertus.
Kyle’s distant relative, and…….
“Just a moment, Oswell. Put that over here and bring me the Eastern Border Defense Force report first.”
Kyle stopped Oswell, who was heading toward the Emperor’s office with an armful of documents.
“Ah, yes sir.”
Oswell carefully added the documents he was carrying onto a desk already so packed that no empty space remained.
“It looks like you’ve gone through all the documents on the right. Shall I clear them away?”
He asked cautiously while reading Kyle’s expression, since the man hadn’t even glanced at him. Thanks to the fresh stack Oswell had just added, the desk was now in a state of total saturation.
They needed to make space in advance for the next wave of documents that would soon come flooding in.
“Please do.”
When spoken to, Kyle’s gaze flicked to Oswell for the briefest moment before returning to the bundle of papers.
Not wanting to disturb Kyle while he was focused, Oswell quietly gathered up the rather sizable pile of completed documents and left.
I heard that to become a high-level mage, you need to be able to perform several calculations in your head at the same time.
It seemed Kyle was applying parallel processing to paperwork as well. The speed was unbelievable.
Oswell could only shake his head in awe.
Kyle, who had only ever come to the palace when the Emperor summoned him, had taken up residence in this very office—the one used by the Emperor’s secretaries—only this morning.
He had mixed several magical potions together, gulped down the resulting suspicious-looking concoction of an odd color, and then begun working at a frightening pace.
And yet he was also managing to distribute tasks to the secretaries with perfect efficiency. He was like a skilled conductor leading an orchestra.
As a result, the Emperor’s workload, which had always been piled up to the chin, was slowly beginning to decrease.
Of course, Kyle himself was losing vitality at about the same rate.
Still, for the Emperor’s secretaries, who had been repeating overtime and all-nighters just to keep the mountain from growing any higher, it was an incredibly encouraging development.
No wonder he could confidently declare that he would create holidays for His Majesty.
Oswell recalled the fragments of conversation between the Emperor and Kyle that had drifted out through the slightly open door.
The moment Kyle entered the office, Edwin’s gaze snapped straight to him.
It was almost a reflexive reaction.
So he really was just sitting there staring at documents.
Kyle looked at Edwin with faintly disrespectful eyes for a brief second.
“What about Lady Diaz?”
Apparently even that short pause was unbearable, because Edwin immediately pressed him for an answer.
Edwin was extremely interested in Lina’s first day of work.
Kyle swallowed a sigh and obediently opened his mouth.
“At this point, I imagine she’s sitting in the ergonomic chair that Your Majesty abused both his power and wealth to specially order—the one designed to prevent musculoskeletal disorders?”
This was the same Kyle who had once made a single joke and ended up having to completely renovate the Inspectorate’s office.
And he’d been forced to finish it in an absurdly tight timeframe because his boss had kept pressuring him to get it done before Lina started work.
Keeping a smile full of many complex emotions on his face, Kyle added as if he had just remembered something.
“In an office equipped with limited-edition magic that helps prevent vision deterioration, of course.”
However, Kyle’s subtle rebellion had little effect.
Edwin simply nodded with a satisfied expression that said everything had been handled exactly as he wanted.
Now thoroughly frustrated, Kyle let out yet another sigh—he’d lost count of how many it had been.
When someone in power falls in love, the people beneath them suffer.
Quickly giving up on his solitary sarcasm and solitary suffering, Kyle straightened his posture and continued his report.
“I also delivered the artifact that was taken out of the imperial palace records. She seems to have a good eye—she picked the Protection of the Blue Dragon right away.”