Felix woke up first when morning came.

He liked the slender, long fingers stroking his hair. Reniel’s hands were thin and soft, too delicate to be called a man’s.

And despite having gone through much hardship, they were still very beautiful.

He thought that their soft touch might even make his own rough skin feel tender.

With each stroke of his hair, he felt a pleasant breath and scent.

Occasionally, it would brush his earlobe, and strangely, the tickling sensation was felt not in his ear, but in his heart.

It was as if a butterfly was fluttering and dancing freely inside his chest.

The strangest thing was that while his mind was tense, his body was gradually becoming languid.

Yet at the same time, there was an odd tingling sensation throughout his body.

Felix was confused whether it was lust or killing intent, but when he felt Reniel’s flat chest against his cheek, the lust quickly subsided.

If he didn’t look at the eyes, he felt no lust at all for a man’s body.

He had often felt certain about being a heterosexual throughout his life, but never had it been as ambiguous as now.

The emotions he felt when looking at Reniel’s eyes or when she smiled were somewhat confusing with killing intent, but to some extent, it was clearly lust.

He wanted to embrace her, and kissing felt quite pleasant. It was true that her skin, unusually soft for a man, was tempting.

But every time he realized that her body was not that of a woman, the lust disappeared without a trace, like evaporating alcohol.

It was the same now. When he woke up and raised his head to see her looking at him affectionately, his body heated up.

He could feel his body getting hot as his mind cleared and became excited.

But when he saw the flat chest, slender belly, and disappointing groin, he just felt sleepy.

Felix thought this might be both an advantage and a disadvantage of this sloppy person.

“Reniel.”

“Yes, master.”

“I wish you were a woman.”

He said that and then sighed.

“Why? If I were a woman, would you suspect me of being the Nirnberg princess and kill me?”

“……Pfft.”

Felix let out a laugh, amused by her witty remark.

“You think so?”

“I think you would, master, and then some. Aren’t you glad I’m a man?”

He found Reniel’s cocky words quite cute, so he deliberately avoided looking at her. It would be troublesome if he wanted to kiss her again.

“If you were a woman, it would have been quite enjoyable.”

“For you, master? Or for me?”

“For both of us.”

“Hmm…?”

Reniel made a sound as if she didn’t quite like it, so Felix waited, sensing she was about to say something.

“Is there anything that both could enjoy?”

Felix chuckled like a breath at her innocent question.

“Why not? There should be quite a lot.”

“I’m not sure. If I were a woman, I’d have different physical capabilities, and I wouldn’t have been able to stay close to you anyway, right? Come to think of it, you’ve always kept women at a distance.”

Her words had a point.

Felix had always kept women at a distance because there had been many female assassins targeting him.

Anyone would do the same if being stabbed in bed was a common occurrence.

“You lack imagination.”

“Then please tell me, master. I’m ready to listen.”

“What kind of talk do you think you’re ready to hear in bed?”

“Is it something that shouldn’t be heard in bed?”

“At least not now.”

Reniel responded with a small ‘ah’ to his words and decided not to ask further.

She was a person with very sharp intuition. Though not at all in certain areas.

Felix thought that if she were a woman, the worries he was having now would have been quite easily resolved. But there were also things that made him more comfortable because she was a man.

No matter how much he cared for her, as things were now, it would be nothing to lock Reniel in the basement when he got angry.

But if Reniel were that woman he had seen in that dream before.

Somehow, he felt he wouldn’t be able to treat her so harshly.

After all, those eyes and loveliness he had encountered then, even though it was in a dream, often made him quite troubled.

“Your heartbeat has become irregular.”

“That’s because you’re saying strange things, master. I tend to have an unstable heartbeat when I’m worried.”

“Maintain your composure, Reniel.”

“That’s hard when someone was teasing me earlier.”

“Right, that’s true.”

He responded as if pleased, but he was gradually melting into the sound of her heartbeat.

It felt like he was realizing he was alive solely through the sound of her heartbeat, not his own.

Her small, bean-sized heart was cutely pounding.

“Stroke my hair.”

“I am.”

She stroked his hair as he said. Then she gently patted his back as well.

Very slowly like that.

Drowsiness began to overwhelm him.

As he felt he was about to fall asleep, he uttered as if in relief.

“If you were a woman, I might have called you master.”

And then he soon fell asleep again.

****

Felix was dreaming.

And that dream was of the past that he always saw when he was intoxicated.

He had returned to when he was eight years old.

The room he was standing in was very familiar.

The faces of the many brothers standing with him were also familiar. They were all boys, children of different mothers, but not far apart in age.

Ironically, Felix, being the son of the duchess, was the youngest.

The previous Duke Le Pelique had many children with women other than the duchess.

However, it was clear that having a child with the duke was not necessarily a happy or good thing.

At least, if one knew how those children were educated and desperately struggled for survival.

No one would think they would be happy.

“Everyone, open what’s in front of you.”

This room was the punishment room.

The punishment room was a place that the ten brothers had to come to every year, starting from the age when Duke Le Pelique began to acknowledge them as sons.

Most of the brothers were between eight and twelve years old. There used to be older children as well, but they were no longer alive now.

Felix, having already gone through this, could guess what was in the sack.

“Ah.”

“This is…”

“Why is this…”

Voices of shock were already flowing from around him. Felix thought they wouldn’t survive for long.

“Everyone, pick up your knives. And prove your loyalty to this father.”

All the boys of the Le Pelique ducal family had to go through the same procedure.

What was in the sack was the pet they had received as a gift on their birthday.

Some were rabbits, some were canaries. They were just tied up and put in sacks.

Everyone started to faint as they saw their precious pets in the sacks.

“Father…! I, I can’t do it!”

“Me neither…!”

“Pepe is like my sibling!”

Felix was the youngest among them, but he knew enough not to say such things. Last year, all the children who had spoken like that…

“I see. If you want to give up, eat this cookie. Then you can give up.”

The children who were acknowledged as sons for the first time this year, not knowing any better, put down their knives and accepted the cookies offered by Duke Le Pelique.

Five of them.

They were hugging their pets that had nearly died, eating the cookies.

“What will the rest of you do?”

Felix blankly stared at his pet rabbit.

He listlessly picked up the knife and cut the throat of the white rabbit he had named ‘Ser’.

As he had been taught, very hard, as if to pierce the cervical spine so it wouldn’t be painful.

Eventually, Ser lost its life in Felix’s hands.

And four of the children who were trembling next to him, as if understanding something.

They too began to take the lives of their pets.

“Sob…”

“Ugh…”

“Damn it.”

He was now used to them crying.

“Why don’t you just give up too?”

“Yeah.”

“It doesn’t matter if we don’t become the young duke anyway.”

The children who had eaten the cookies were laughing and mocking those who had killed their pets with their own hands.

Felix stared at them blankly.

And then it began.

“…Huh?”

Drip.

Blood started to flow from the nose of the child who had given up first and eaten the cookie.

“Urgh…!”

“Ack!”

Soon, the child next to him started bleeding from the eyes, and the one next to that began to vomit blood.

As the children who had eaten the cookies suddenly started bleeding from all over their bodies and writhing in agony, the expressions of the children who had dealt with their pets grew even paler.

“Only five passed the test this time. This father’s heart is truly aching.”

“Fa, father…”

“Keurgh…!”

Duke Le Pelique looked coldly at his dying children and smiled.

“Useless parasites must die. I will not give any affection to disloyal vermin.”

Even those words were familiar to Felix.

Not just Felix. The other brothers around him also just lowered their gaze with devastated expressions.

Felix blankly stared at the young brothers at his feet who were still writhing as if asking for help, not yet dead.

But their lives soon came to an end.

“What this father desires is loyalty. My beloved sons.”

The only thought that came to mind was that killing one’s heart and following orders exactly as his father wished was the best way to survive.