Dalia, who had been blankly staring at the man’s eyes that were redder than before, quickly turned away.

Leaning her back against the vine-covered cabin wall, Dalia tried to calm her startled heart.

‘Did… did he make eye contact with me…?’

The pounding heartbeat in her ears asserted its presence.

It’s over. It’s all over.

In the original story, the female lead only found out about the mistress’s existence at the emperor’s birthday celebration!

Dalia sighed and cursed as she recalled the situation just now.

Worry began to flood in, fearing that the future might be altered due to this current situation.

‘Let’s get out of here first.’

Just as Dalia, who had been anxiously biting her lips, was about to take a step, she sensed movement inside the cabin and hurriedly hid on the opposite side.

No sooner had Dalia hidden herself than the cabin door opened. It was Clayton.

He stared at the window where Dalia had been standing for a moment, then turned back towards the mansion without hesitation.

Once Clayton’s presence had completely vanished, Dalia, who had been hiding, cautiously revealed herself.

‘Phew. He didn’t see me, I guess.’

Dalia let out a sigh of relief and smoothed her chest. Perhaps the eye contact had been just her imagination.

As a result, feeling much more at ease, Dalia was about to move her feet to return to the mansion.

“I thought I was going to suffocate.”

An unfamiliar voice was heard. It was a voice too deep to be that of a woman.

At this, Dalia instinctively turned her head towards the source of the voice.

Through the glass window, she saw someone roughly taking off a teal-colored dress.

“Why is this dress so cumbersome?”

Perhaps it was from that moment. When she realized that the situation was going in a strange direction.

Dalia stood there blankly, unable to properly comprehend the situation unfolding before her eyes.

Thud, thud.

In an instant, breast forms began to fall one by one onto the sprawled dress, and then the red hair that had cascaded down to the waist was strewn on the floor like seaweed.

And standing crookedly above it was one person. Roze Hertz.

The woman known as the male lead’s mistress in the original work was actually…

“…a man?”

He was a man.

With the shock of being hit on the head with a hammer, Dalia’s eyes met with Roze, who was changing into different clothes, and without anyone taking the lead, both of their bodies stiffened.

“…”

“…”

After about 10 seconds that felt like ten days had passed.

The two people, both dumbfounded by the unexpected situation, screamed simultaneously.

“Ahhh!”

“Kyaaa!”

As soon as she screamed, Dalia, who had come to her senses, covered her mouth with both hands.

‘Wh-what? The duke’s mistress is a man! This wasn’t even in the original story!’

Dalia was overwhelmed with shock.

She couldn’t even imagine that such an important fact wouldn’t have been revealed, even though the mistress’s story wasn’t greatly dealt with in the original work and was a character who died and disappeared midway.

‘Am I actually possessing a BL novel?!’

Therefore, she even had the reasonable suspicion that perhaps the genre of the novel she had possessed had changed.

My goodness, the person known to the people in the original world as the male lead’s mistress turned out to be a cross-dressing man.

She was so dumbfounded that she couldn’t even close her mouth.

Moreover, look at the face of the man who had been pretending to be a woman until just now.

He was undoubtedly a beauty that couldn’t be mistaken for a woman, a universally acknowledged pretty boy!

At this, Dalia carefully asked, trying to calm her trembling heart. To properly confirm the genre of the novel she had possessed.

“…Is my husband, I mean… Clayton, by any chance…”

Just as she was about to ask if he was gay, the man, having grasped Dalia’s intention, hurriedly exited the cabin. Then he shouted towards Dalia.

“N-no! D-Duke Sayer is not a homosexual!”

“…”

“I fully understand what the Duchess might be misunderstanding. So, how should I explain this…”

Roze, who immediately recognized Dalia as the Duchess, stammered as if finding this situation awkward.

He rolled his eyes here and there as if trying to organize his thoughts, and then, like someone who had made up his mind, he tightly closed his eyes.

“A-actually, the Duke doesn’t know that I’m a man either.”

“…The Duke doesn’t know? That you’re a man?”

“…Yes. So please, just don’t tell the Duke…!”

‘What? What’s this situation?’

The wig he had worn was apparently just to hide the length, as the man’s hair was still red even after removing the wig.

That means the man is indeed of Hertz family bloodline.

It was incomprehensible why he had become the Duke’s blood bag while cross-dressing. Above all.

“How can the Duke not know you’re a man? Doesn’t he know everything when he drinks your blood… Oops!”

Oh no.

Dalia covered her mouth with both hands, seemingly surprised at her own words.

And the man was just as surprised as her. He looked at Dalia with eyes even wider than before.

“…You knew? About the Duke’s secret?”

“Ah, well, that’s…”

‘I just blurted out that I know the male lead needs to drink blood!’

How should she smooth this over? It’s not like she could say she read it in a book.

While Dalia was racking her brain for a plausible excuse, the man spoke.

“Ah. I see the Duke must have told his wife about the Sayer family secret. Well, of course. You’re now the lady of the Sayer household, so it’s only natural that you know.”

Contrary to her worries, he seemed to accept it without much suspicion.

But if she agreed with those words, this person might accidentally let it slip to the Duke later.

Dalia started to make up an appropriate excuse to prevent him from telling the Duke.

“The Duke didn’t tell me directly. I just happened to… see something… similar. Anyway, the Duke doesn’t know that I know this secret. So…”

“I understand.”

He nodded as if he understood what Dalia was trying to say.

“I’ll keep it a secret from the Duke. In return, please keep what you saw today a secret as well, Duchess.”

The man politely requested, slightly bowing his waist to Dalia.

‘What kind of circumstances could there be?’

Man. Or rather, boy might be a more fitting word for this person.

“Alright. I’ll keep it a secret from the Duke. But why are you cross-dressing? Could it be…”

Do you like the Duke?

…The words got stuck in her throat, but she managed to swallow them.

However, the man, who had noticed the unspoken meaning of Dalia’s words, waved his hands.

“Not at all! It’s nothing like that. This is just… because of my sister.”

“Sister…? I haven’t heard that the Hertz family has two children…”

“Yes. It’s one of our family’s secrets.”

As if there was nothing left to hide, he began to reveal stories that weren’t even asked.

He said they were born as fraternal twins, and they’re hiding the fact that they’re twins from the world.

“Roze is my twin sister’s name. My real name is Lloyd Hertz.”

He said that Lloyd took on the role of the Duke’s blood bag in place of Roze, who had a weak constitution.

If his sister had fulfilled her role, she wouldn’t have lived long, he said.

“Then why didn’t you just tell the Duke and come out as Lloyd? Why go to such dangerous lengths…”

Lloyd shook his head at her words, as if it wasn’t such a simple matter.

“We promised to offer only the blood of a ‘woman’ who inherited the Hertz family bloodline to the Sayer Duke family. It’s a promise that’s been kept for a very long time.”

An old oath, made at a time unknown, perhaps dating back to when the curse on the Sayer family began.

He didn’t know exactly what it was, but he said it was the beginning of the long-standing relationship between the Hertz and Sayer families.

‘It was a more complicated issue than I thought.’

She had thought it was just a business-like contract relationship between families.

‘Why wasn’t this in the original work…’

She had remembered the ending quite well, so she found it strange that such a major secret wasn’t mentioned in the original work, but she soon shook her head to dismiss the thought.

“But why were you changing clothes here? What if the Duke caught you…”

At her question, Lloyd scratched his head, seeming to realize it was an embarrassing situation for him too.

“Ah, that. Blood splattered on the dress. Roze always feels sorry that I go to the Duke in her place, and if she saw the blood on the dress, she’d probably cry all night. So when there’s blood on it, I change clothes here.”

“I see…”

Seeing Lloyd answer with an awkward smile, Dalia couldn’t help but feel sympathy.

Because of this, Dalia grasped Lloyd’s drooping hands and said,

“If you have any difficulties in the future, confide in me. I’ll help you with whatever I can.”

“My lady…”

And so began the friendship between the two.