Didn't Plan to Become a Companion - Chapter 44

“I’ll go meet the Chancellor for a moment, so wait for me in the Crown Prince’s garden. The weather is nice, so you can take a walk if you’d like.”

Though spoken gently, there was a somewhat anxious tone to his voice. I nodded reflexively and grabbed Ricardo’s arm. I felt him flinch slightly.

“Alright.”

“Don’t go too far, stay where Freddie can see you.”

“Yes, don’t worry and go. I’ll stay put right there.”

“…Okay.”

Ricardo looked at me for a moment before leaving my side, and Freddie personally escorted me to the Crown Prince’s palace as Ricardo had ordered.

The garden of the Crown Prince’s palace was larger in scale than the other gardens I had seen on the way.

Seeing trees taller than the average adult man standing so densely that sunlight could barely pass through, I realized this must be the garden maze I had only heard about.

The thought that a directionally-challenged person like me might not be able to get out even by nightfall if I went in there made my steps turn automatically towards the opposite side of the maze.

Freddie stood in a spot where he could see the entire garden. Even when told he could sit and wait, he stubbornly insisted on standing. I took a short walk with Freddie behind me. It was a bit hot for walking as summer had quickly approached.

Partly because of the weather, but also because the Emperor’s face I had just met kept lingering in my mind, the walk was not easy. He gave an ambiguous impression that made it difficult to distinguish whether he was a villain or a good person. The Emperor’s golden hair formed a perfect contrast with Ricardo’s black hair.

If he was the sun in the sky, Ricardo felt like the dark god ruling the underworld.

‘Is it okay for me to stay in this imperial garden whose owner calls me a phoenix?’

A sigh escaped involuntarily.

There hadn’t been a single peaceful day since coming to the Empire. How vulgar and crude the system of such a great country was.

I was starting to miss even the dry desert winds of Lesotia that had felt so tiresome.

Walter had developed a habit of staring at his empty palm recently, more precisely since the day after returning from Count Enehaz’s evening party.

In the rattling carriage, he repeatedly clenched and unclenched his hand, ruminating on the memories of that day. Then a smile escaped. There was no way he could have memories to ruminate on.

Walter remained buried in the back seat for a moment without getting out of the carriage that had stopped in the Crown Prince’s garden. He thought he would be able to find that woman within a week at the latest.

But among the women who disappeared around the same time that day, there was no woman matching the description given by the servant.

Of course, it wasn’t that there were none at all. It was just problematic that the woman was Ricardo’s prospective fiancée.

Ricardo had said he introduced that woman to people late that day.

He had also considered the possibility that she might have been the woman who came to his bedroom, but it didn’t make any sense at all. Even if she had accidentally touched his body and been enveloped by his power, why would a woman who was to become part of the Rochester family be holding a yellow rose?

The more his suspicions grew, the more his unpleasant feelings piled up.

“You must get off now.”

Only when the anxious-looking chamberlain in front urged him did Walter rise from the carriage.

“After meeting the Crown Prince and the young lords, you must definitely have an audience with His Majesty the Emperor.”

For some time now, the Emperor had been persistently sending messages for Walter to come to the palace. He had postponed using personal reasons as an excuse, but the situation could no longer be ignored.

The Chaplins were a family that traditionally maintained neutrality from any political pressure.

Until now, as the will of God and Schneider had been the same, there was no need for Chaplin to be swept up in unwanted currents.

But the Crown Prince had fallen ill, and the Emperor wanted to lend Chaplin’s power to the Second Prince.

For that reason, the Emperor kept pressuring him to choose one of his daughters for marriage.

One of his daughters, he said.

Unless the Emperor had finally gone mad, he wouldn’t have thrown his daughters in front of him as if asking a bull to choose a cow.

From the 8-year-old princess to the princess who was already married and had left the palace, the Emperor placed no restrictions on the daughters he could choose from.

If one must go mad, one should do so gracefully.

Walter understood the Emperor’s urgency, but such pressure didn’t work on him.

Moreover, the Emperor’s daughters were all so splendid and noble that they reminded him of the Emperor every time he saw them. Being close to them was far more difficult than enduring being near other women.

“To marry one of those women, I’d rather go hang myself somewhere.”

Even his muttering to himself was uttered politely. Leaving the chamberlain who tried to follow him in the carriage, he walked alone in the Crown Prince’s garden.

And there he saw a certain woman.

In the garden resembling a forest where trees much taller than elsewhere repeatedly emphasized the long history of the imperial family.

A woman of slightly tall stature, thin body, and though he couldn’t see her face, with distinctly silver hair. It was a mysterious color he had never seen before in this imperial palace.

The imperial family had been blonde or red-haired for generations.

Walter unknowingly approached her. As he got closer, he could hear the woman’s voice muttering something to herself.

“No matter what, isn’t it a bit too much to call someone a phoenix to their face?”

As he thought that her voice was clear and somewhat low, not grating on his ears, the woman suddenly turned around. She tapped the ground with her foot and raised her head, and their eyes met immediately.

“Oh?”

Being close, her surprised voice pierced his ears. For a moment, Walter felt embarrassed at the thought that he had approached too close to the woman.

Women had always been nothing but unpleasant beings to him. She would probably recognize him and approach him snorting like an angry bull.

“Oh!”

But for some reason, the woman in front of him took a hesitant step back. Walter’s eyes narrowed.

‘What’s this?’

The moment he thought that, Walter realized. These were clearly the eyes of someone who knew him.

Silver hair and blue eyes. A gesture as if trying to run away despite knowing him. Moreover, she knew him, but he had no memory of her at all.

Normally when eyes meet, any nobleman would show courtesy to the other. But she averted her gaze as if she hadn’t seen him. This series of actions aroused suspicion in him.

He showed the gentlest smile he could muster to put the other person at ease.

“Hello, I am Walter Shaw Chaplin. And you are, my lady…?”

He introduced himself first and left the end of his sentence hanging to find out her name, but no answer came from her.

“Perhaps… do you not know me?”

A gasp, ill-fitting her elegant appearance, escaped her. At that, he was certain. This woman was the protagonist of the strange incident that night.

“We’ve certainly met before… Have you perhaps lost your memory?”

The woman was trying to maintain her composure. So much so that it was plainly visible how hard she was trying. Walter felt a sense of crisis that giving her time would work against him.

“You came to my bedroom, didn’t you?”

So he made a rude remark that the usual him would never make. The woman straightened her back and composed herself as if trying not to be shaken. But she didn’t seem to have the skill to hide the wavering in her eyes when their gazes met.

“I, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re being rude.”

Walter didn’t back down. Rather, he took another step closer and gave a slight smile. It was a smile so much like his that Julian would fall over in surprise if he saw it.

“And with a yellow rose, at that.”

The woman covered her mouth and this time undoubtedly retreated.

‘Ah, it’s definitely her.’

A proper smile appeared on Walter’s face.

As the woman’s clear bewilderment was conveyed to him, Walter was certain that he had won this game. It was clearly a game that no one had ever held, but isn’t winning always a pleasant thing?

He approached the woman, enduring the unpleasant feeling as if immersing his body in a container full of insects.

The more Walter approached, the more the woman retreated. Every moment was fresh. The words she muttered quietly through her teeth clearly sounded like curses, but he dismissed it as mishearing.

There was no way such vulgar curses that only come out when men are in the pallidum could come from the mouth of a woman who looked so innocent.

But suddenly, a realization overwhelmed him.

It wasn’t unpleasant.

This moment of getting close to this woman. The scent coming from this woman.

Far from being unpleasant, he felt a slight irritation at the woman’s movements as she kept trying to avoid him.

“You had no problem barging into my bedroom, but now you run away like this?”

Even as he spoke, Walter found it hard to believe that these words were really coming from his mouth.

But then, a strange thing happened. An unbelievable response came from the woman who had been looking like she would keep running away.

The bewilderment that had been on the woman’s face until now disappeared in an instant. Rather, it was Walter who was taken aback by this gap. She firmly stopped her hesitant feet and threw a challenging look at him.