“The Duke sent it. He asked me if I wanted to rise to a higher position than the harem.”
“A higher position?”
“When I refused, he suggested the position of national secretary, but there’s no way. Obviously….”
Recalling that Aksian is Hyacinth’s aide, Klein closed his mouth, unable to continue.
Even if Hyacinth wouldn’t, if they were estranged brothers, just the fact that his halfbrother had received such a proposal could be perceived as a threat.
Thinking this, Klein got angrier than before.
“No wonder. Unless his guts were spilling out, he wouldn’t say that so easily. I didn’t expect him to come prepared to die. If I knew this, I would’ve knocked him out!”
“What does the Duke want?”
“My brother doesn’t move as he wishes, and it doesn’t seem like a successor with his blood will be born, so he probably wants to change the puppet. Or sow discord between me and my brother!”
“Is that so?”
“What else could it be?”
“….”
“What? Is there another reason?”
“If it’s for that reason, there’s no need to specifically choose Prince Klein.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why should you be selected among the other halfbrothers and sisters? Especially someone who has already become the harem of another country’s emperor? Rather the most difficult opponent?”
Is that so? Klein, who was not very knowledgeable about such issues, cocked his head, then suddenly reached up to touch his neck.
Then, as his face turned pale, Aksian asked in surprise.
“Why are you doing that?”
“It’s gone.”
“Pardon?”
“My bell button!”
Klein lifted the cord that tied his cape.
“There should be a bell button here, but it’s gone!”
“!”
“Did the vice ambassador tear it off during the fight?”
Aksian, taken aback, looked in the direction they had left, but by now there would be people crowded there. He couldn’t go back to check.
“We can’t go looking for it now.”
“Damn it!”
“And you can’t go back to the harem now. Everyone will think it’s strange. Give me your cape, and you return to the banquet.”
“But….”
“I will handle this. Does the missing button have a symbolic pattern?”
“No. It’s not that.”
Klein, whose face had turned pale, ran a hand across his face.
“The Emperor personally put this cape on me. She might remember its design.”
[This is the time separator]When Aksian left for another place saying that he would handle the cape first, Klein chose an unpopulated route and returned to the banquet hall.
Fortunately, people’s attention was focused on the noisy place, so Klein could sneak into a corner of the banquet hall and act as if he had been there from the start.
But the thought of the bell button that the vice ambassador might have torn off made him so anxious that he kept biting his lip.
‘Did he really tear it off? Or did the string just break and it’s rolling around on the floor? The attacker… couldn’t be. He was too weak.’
Klein paced nervously around the room, his gaze focused intently on the murmuring crowd.
He was terrified about what evidence they might possess, about the conversations they might be having.
‘Running away isn’t the solution.’
Finally, he summoned up the courage and approached the crowd.
[This is the time separator]In the meantime.
Upon returning to the harem with his cloak, Axian looked for a place to burn it. But since it was summer, the only place with an open fire was the kitchen.
He couldn’t burn the cloak there, either. People were in and out of the kitchen all day. If he asked them to clear the area, they would find it strange.
Feeling agitated, Axian eventually headed towards Klein’s room.
“What are you doing?”
Banil, who was cleaning Klein’s room, spotted Axian and asked.
“You’ve been told to stay by His Majesty’s side, haven’t you?”
“This needs to be buried. Even if we burn it later. Quickly.”
“What?”
“Details later.”
Banil’s gaze shifted to the cloak in Axian’s arms.
“Is this the one I gave to the crown prince……?”
“Later.”
Banil seemed completely puzzled, but knowing Axian wouldn’t speak nonsense, he quickly nodded.
“Then let’s bury it in the private garden. Few people go there.”
[This is the time separator]“Where did Klein go? Klein?”
I intended to keep him by my side all day, but where did he disappear to in the meantime?
“Klein!”
Latil was moving about in search of Klein.
She knew in which direction people were running, but since hardly any screams could be heard from where she was, she decided to find Klein first.
“Your Majesty.”
While she was doing so, Soneut approached her and called her name.
“Sir Soneut, have you seen Klein?”
Feeling relieved, Latil quickly asked. But Soneut’s expression wasn’t good. Latil immediately sensed that something had happened.
“Why?”
“The Karisen deputy ambassador is dead.”
“What do you mean…… How did it happen?”
“I’ll explain as we go.”
As Latil moved towards the crowd, Soneut walked beside her and began to explain quietly.
“The deputy ambassador appears to have stabbed himself in the heart. A more detailed investigation is necessary, but from the way he was holding the knife, it seems likely. The problem is……”
“There’s a problem bigger than the deputy ambassador dying during the banquet?”
“There are signs of a struggle in the vicinity.”
“That’s not good.”
“Yes. Plus, he was clutching something that seems to have been torn from an enemy.”
The scene of the incident was crowded with people, obscuring the inside view. However, when Latil appeared, people hastily cleared a path.
Latil entered with Soneut. Everything was as Soneut had described the deputy ambassador lying on the ground, the direction of the knife, signs of a struggle.
And then……
Latil bent down to examine the deputy ambassador’s clenched hand herself. The hand opened easily.
As the palm opened, its content revealed itself.
A button with a soft ball attached. Latil picked it up with two fingers and examined it closely.
‘I think Klein’s clothes had something similar.’
Male lead is a Divorced Husband
She said to him: “Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change it!”
Liu Changning transmigrated into a female cannon fodder character in a female-dominant novel.
After reading the first half of the novel’s plot, the first thing she did upon transmigration was to divorce the Pan Jinlian-style male protagonist she had just married.
She indulged herself, pretending to be ugly and poor.
But as time passed, the way that man looked at her became more and more unusual…
Liu Changning was dumbfounded: Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change!
――
This lifetime, Pei Yuanshao was rejected by the same woman twice!
The first time, she drove him away. Forced by the situation, he endured the waves of anger in his heart, yielding and humbling himself.
That person lay slanted on a rocking chair, her sallow face emotionless: “If you don’t want a divorce, go cook!”
Pei Yuanshao’s face was dark and gloomy: “You!”
The second time, after the crisis in Jinling City was resolved, the new emperor sent someone to pick him up. He turned around, stammering: “I… I have to go. If you keep me…”
That person lay on the kang bed, her back to him, as if she had long anticipated this day, crisp and clear: “Goodbye!”
Pei Yuanshao was so angry his fingers trembled: “You… you!”
The mission of family and country made him restrain himself, averting his eyes and turning to leave this broken household.
Two years later, they met again. Seeing her ethereal face, his body shook like a sieve.
“She was originally a ‘she’!”
At the Qionglin Banquet, the top scholar of the imperial examination, a talented person with exceptional speech and conduct, all the unmarried young gentlemen from aristocratic families looked at her with shy and timid eyes.
The peerless imperial official Pei Yuanshao felt the anger in his heart erupt. He pointed at the woman surrounded by the crowd at the Qionglin Banquet, his thin lips slightly curled: “Little sister, I wants that person to be the wife-master of my Mingde Prince Manor.”
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