The Two-Timing Hypothesis
“Thank you for verifying that for me.”
I offered Cynthia my thanks with a genuinely calm expression, quite different from the one I’d worn moments earlier.
“It was nothing. It wasn’t difficult at all.”
Cynthia hesitated briefly before asking.
“By the way, what did you need to know about Sir Rohas?”
Connie had asked about Everett Rohas’s reputation several months ago, and now that I was inquiring about him again, Cynthia seemed curious.
“Well, it’s…”
Even I could see how strange it must sound—someone barging in out of nowhere and asking if this person was Everett Rohas.
Because I’d been in such a rush that I hadn’t considered how to clean up the aftermath, I simply smiled vaguely.
Before the mood could grow any more awkward, Connie stepped in.
“What we’ve come to ask about is a secret. You understand what that means, right?”
Connie kept winking exaggeratedly.
“Ah! So the man you happened to meet who perfectly matches your taste is actually the same person you wanted to connect with through networking?”
Cynthia, having drawn her own conclusions, beamed at me.
“Sir Rohas is incredibly diligent at work, but he’s also perfectly decent as a man. To be honest, as an administrator I hear quite a few unsavory rumors about the knights, but there isn’t a single bad rumor about Sir Rohas.”
Cynthia clenched both fists and gave me an encouraging look.
“Don’t worry about keeping it secret. My lips are sealed.”
She reassured me with eyes sparkling with intense interest in someone else’s romance.
“Ah, yes. Thank you.”
“Right, I should get back to work! Make sure to tell me if there’s any progress next time!”
Apparently having spent more time with us than planned, Cynthia hurried back to her duties.
The moment Cynthia left her seat, Connie’s gaze pinned me in place.
“I’ll go buy two sets of the limited-edition desserts. Want me to give one to Cynthia?”
I spoke while avoiding Connie’s eyes.
Cynthia had no idea I was dating Everett.
So she seemed to have interpreted our cryptic conversation as me simply trying to confirm the identity of an ideal man I’d met by chance.
But to Connie, who knew the full story, it could only look suspicious.
“What’s going on?”
Connie asked carefully.
With her usual playfulness set aside, Connie looked serious enough that she wouldn’t laugh even if I confessed to doing something utterly foolish.
In the end, I poured out the whole story.
“So Ed—I mean, Sir Rohas suddenly told me he couldn’t meet for a while because of a mission. I went to the Imperial Guard hoping to see his face one last time.”
I couldn’t tell her I’d gone to find out what mission Everett had been assigned.
Instead, I framed my visit to the Imperial Guard as the bittersweet longing of a lover who wouldn’t be able to see her beloved for a long time.
“But the knight I met there told me Sir Rohas was away on a long-term assignment and hadn’t returned yet.”
“On assignment? And not back yet?”
Connie, who had heard plenty about my dates with Everett, tilted her head in confusion.
“Keep talking.”
Connie spoke like a detective tackling an unsolved case.
“Yet Sir Rohas, who was supposedly on a secret mission that required him to deceive even his fellow guards, has been meeting me in the palace every single day without a care in the world.”
“Oh, every day, huh.”
Connie chimed in with a meaningful tone.
If the story I was telling hadn’t been rather serious, she would have seized the opportunity to tease me mercilessly.
Fortunately, Connie knew when to restrain her mischief.
She gestured for me to continue and firmly pressed her lips shut again.
Hoping Connie would forget about this soon, I went on with my explanation.
“It just felt strange. The Inspectorate and the Imperial Guard are right next to each other. How could he wander around like that? What if we ran into each other?”
“Couldn’t Sir Rohas have been careful about that and arranged the meetings secretly?”
Connie pondered for a moment before hesitantly offering her opinion.
“Last time you said he suddenly started wearing a hood in this weather.”
“Ah.”
Now that she mentioned it, Everett had always sought out places with few people around.
I’d assumed it was because he wanted to be alone with me, but Connie’s theory that he was avoiding prying eyes sounded entirely plausible.
“That might be true… but.”
It might have felt more convincing simply because I wanted to believe it.
Still, I had one more lingering question.
If, as Connie suggested, Everett had taken some risks wandering the palace to meet me, there was a point that absolutely needed to be explained.
“Last time when the Saintess went to the poorhouse, Ed went with her.”
“Ah, so you call him ‘Ed’ when the two of you are alone.”
Connie added yet another peculiar interjection.
She made a strange face, as if she was fighting back a sneeze, clearly struggling to contain her playful impulses.
Fortunately, since our friendship mattered more to her than mischief, Connie let it slide once again and refocused on our conversation.
“That is a bit strange. I thought he only needed to avoid being spotted by the Imperial Guard who believed he was away, but then he showed up right in front of them.”
“Exactly. It seems like the situation allows for Everett Rohas to exist in two different places at once.”
“Does Sir Rohas know how to use some kind of duplication magic?”
Connie tossed out speculative comments one after another until she apparently realized how ridiculous it sounded and fell silent.
Since I’d entertained a similar ridiculous thought myself, the silence stretched between us.
“Wouldn’t the more realistic explanation be that the guard knight simply didn’t know Sir Rohas had returned?”
Connie, having returned from the realm of wild imagination to reality, offered another guess.
“Then what about him telling me he couldn’t see me for a while?”
No matter which way we speculated, there was always a hole in the theory.
Connie’s expression gradually grew serious.
“I really thought he was a genuinely good person this time…”
Her inner thoughts must have slipped out, because Connie quickly closed her mouth.
Then she looked at me with pitying eyes.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
I wanted to know the reason before accepting any sympathy.
“It’s nothing. It can’t be. It’s nothing at all.”
Connie deliberately dragged out her words, trying to brush it off as unimportant.
It was exactly the kind of tone designed to make someone anxious and restless.
“Just tell me your guess already! You’ve already gotten me curious—refusing to say it now is even worse!”
I grabbed Connie’s shoulders and shook her, pressing for an answer.
Connie went completely limp, letting her upper body flop around in my grip for a long moment before reluctantly opening her mouth.
“Just hear me out as a random thought that occurred to me while listening, okay? Take it with a grain of salt.”
The long preamble only made me more nervous.
Without dragging it out any further, Connie spoke carefully yet directly.
“Could he be two-timing you?”
“What?”
It was so far from anything I’d considered that I wondered if I’d heard her correctly.
“I mean, his pattern of behavior reminds me of something I’ve seen before.”
Connie was a devotee of mystery novels and sensational romance novels, with an especially keen interest in gossip.
Whatever source she was drawing from, it clearly wasn’t a fairy tale.
“Like how a business trip that’s supposed to be five days gets told to the girlfriend as six days, and the extra time is spent with another girlfriend. That sort of thing.”
Since Connie couldn’t come up with a logical explanation for Everett’s unexplained absences, she seemed to have concluded he must be hiding something.
Such as the existence of another woman besides me.
“No way.”
I immediately rejected Connie’s speculation.
Ed was a kind and passionate lover.
He wasn’t the sort of cunning man who could fake the eyes of someone deeply in love.
Besides, it simply wasn’t realistic.
We were both quite busy people.
We had to carve out time from our packed schedules to meet seven times a week. Another woman? Unless Everett’s day had forty-eight hours, there was no way he’d have time to see anyone else.
“Cynthia said earlier that Ed has a good reputation, remember?”
Yet at that very moment, one particular scandal from my academy days surfaced in my mind—the one that had turned the entire school upside down.
A liberal arts professor who taught the mandatory freshman course and was beloved by both students and faculty for his warm, affectionate nature had been dismissed after being caught having an affair with his sister-in-law.
Even after his dismissal, everyone kept saying, “I never would have thought he was that kind of person,” and the memory overlapped with my current situation.
Why am I thinking about this right now!
I vigorously shook the distracting thoughts from my head.
I did trust Everett, but the occasional moments of unease I’d felt over time refused to leave my mind.