I put a candied fruit pie in his mouth and momentarily stopped my action.

Who’s calling whom cute?

I was surprised at myself for having such an absurd thought.

“Why is that?”

“Uh, it’s nothing.”

As the snack in his mouth disappeared, Nathaniel looked irritated.

I stared blankly at his red eyes looking down at me and put the pie in his mouth.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but your stupid lineage is here.”

“What?”

At Nathaniel’s words, I looked behind me.

As he said, the foolish Maximilian was looking around.

He was dressed shabbily somewhere, looking like a madman.

“How did that madman get here?”

Shouldn’t that guy be living as a worker in a new country in the duke’s domain?

Fortunately, it seemed that no one else had noticed Maximilian’s presence.

After all, Maximilian had always shown a perfect appearance.

I was amazed at how he got in here.

I had never invited Maximilian, but I was uneasy because I had invited Teresa.

If they ran into each other again, the headlines in tomorrow’s newspaper were obvious.

“I’ll have to go talk to him.”

I quickly grabbed Nathaniel’s hand and headed toward Maximilian.

Nathaniel flinched and tried to pull his hand away, but now was not the time to worry about that.

If persuasion didn’t work, I would have to chase him away by force.

“Brother!”

“Ah, Jaina. Crown Prince… Your Highness.”

He looked gaunt as if he had been suffering in the domain.

His eyes were sunken, and his swollen appearance did not seem like he had slept properly.

In short, he looked like he was dying.

He certainly wasn’t like this before he went down, I wondered if something had happened in the domain.

“What’s going on here?”

“I came to see Teresa…”

At Maximilian’s shameless answer, I was at a loss for words.

What’s the big deal?

“What are you doing looking at Lady Menisil?”

“No, I didn’t come to meet her; I’m just worried… I came to check on her face.”

“Worried?”

Something was strange.

He was not his usual confident and shameless self.

I had planned to chase him away right away, but he looked like he was struggling.

“Go in and rest first… Brother?”

Maximilian suddenly looked startled and turned his body to hide his face.

When I looked behind to see why, Teresa was coming in with Casius.

She didn’t look so well either, but she was better than Maximilian.

“You’re living well….”

Teresa, now more confident, headed toward the young ladies with Casius.

Maximilian’s affectionate eyes followed Teresa.

I was so incredulous that I looked at him and said,

“So what, I thought you’d die if you broke up?”

“That’s not it, but…”

I was about to swear, but I decided to ignore it.

The emotions in his eyes as he looked at Teresa seemed genuine.

It was pitiful to act like this now, but it was also sad.

But the two of them were over.

Teresa and Maximilian both needed to move on and live new lives.

“I don’t know why you came, but if you really care about Teresa, don’t be noticed.”

“……”

“You’ve seen she’s doing well.”

“Yes……”

His reaction was strange, so I looked behind.

Count Dmitri, whom I had met at the last banquet, approached Teresa.

He kindly asked her to dance, and they began to dance on the floor.

“I didn’t know Teresa liked these parties.”

“Brother never took her.”

“She never said she wanted to go……”

At his words, I sighed deeply.

Teresa, who had been engaged to Maximilian early, was always ridiculed.

The ugly duckling sitting in the wrong place. The nobles saw Teresa like that.

Because of that, Teresa thought Maximilian was ashamed of her.

So she waited.

For Maximilian to reach out to her.

Certainly, I will follow your guidelines and translate the passage as provided:

“Big brother must have waited for you to go together first.”

“I’m……”

“I know. You must have thought that Teresa would hate this noisy place.”

Indeed, fundamentally, the two didn’t match at all.

They claimed to care for each other but kept it inside and did not express it.

As time went by, the absence of expression grew, and what they knew about each other gradually disappeared.

And they became so distant that they could no longer reach each other.

I sighed deeply and patted Maximilian’s shoulder.

“It seems best to go home early today.”

Without a word, he nodded his head, turned his body to watch Teresa dancing.

His hunched back looked more pitiful today.

“I don’t know why he’s like that.”

I sighed deeply again, leaning against the wall.

I took a refreshing drink from a passing servant and gulped it down.

But the feeling that something was weighing on me didn’t easily go away.

It seemed like I was going to die of anger first.

“The viscount is an interesting person.”

“You said it.”

“If you like him so much, why don’t you just go and talk to him?”

I glared at Nathaniel’s words.

Breaking up and then confessing. It’s not even like pouring ashes on cooked rice.

“Anyway, your strange plan completely failed, didn’t it?”

“Well, yes, but……”

Right.

The plan I originally set up failed spectacularly.

After all, I ended up marrying Nathaniel.