“Why would you be anxious? You already stole my first kiss.”
“It was my first time, too, you know?”
Would Leslie Anais suddenly repent just because we shared our first kiss?
Not a chance. That was completely absurd. Byleon remembered the look in the priest’s eyes when he had watched Marien at the ice cream shop.
Fun, cute, and she even smells delicious. It would be a waste to swallow her in one gulp, so I should tease her here and there, then maybe take a bite and savor the taste.
He wasn’t like Cain, who had gone off to war. Priest Anais was a man who claimed to serve God, yet had privately “disposed of” hundreds of people.
And Marien had just spent time alone with that dangerous man.
How many times did the priest smile while they were together? What stories did he use to lower Marien’s guard? He didn’t reach out and brush her soft hair under the guise of a blessing, did he?
He couldn’t stop these thoughts from swirling as he sat at his desk. There was no way Byleon Viers’s heart wouldn’t burn to a crisp.
“Was it really your first time?”
Marien lowered her hands, which had barely been covering her face. Her previously bright, sunny expression had suddenly shifted into one of suspicion.
“What do you mean by that? You know, Marien. If it’s not you, who else would I have my first kiss with?”
“Hmm, well, I wouldn’t know.”
Marien pouted her lips adorably.
“You might have done it out of curiosity with a childhood friend you played with when you were five or six.”
“I’ve never done that.”
“Or perhaps when young Sir Biers was dozing off, that childhood friend might have snuck a kiss and run away.”
“I don’t doze off in public.”
“Oh, come on.”
“It’s true.”
Marien tried to argue that it was impossible. She seemed firmly convinced that if one was born a human, there was inevitably a moment when one would doze off.
“If you’re sleepy, you just tell the other person and go to sleep. If you’re in class, you wash your face, or something like that. Why would you doze off?”
“……Wow.”
Marien stared blankly at Byleon, as if she were at a loss for words.
“Are you serious right now? No, what a useless question. Wow……”
Even if she were speechless, was there any need to shake her head like that?
“You really are from another world.”
“Anyway, I never dozed off in public when I was young, and the friends I could call childhood friends were all boys.”
“Then what about after you started school?”
It seemed Marien had no intention of backing down easily today. Right after she had entered the office, she had clearly been the one on the defensive. When had the tables turned so subtly?
“Getting confessed to by female students must have been a daily occurrence, right? Who knows, maybe one of them was brave enough to cover their senior’s lips, or plant a kiss on a handsome junior’s lips.”
“There wasn’t anyone……”
He couldn’t finish the sentence. Byleon’s thick brown eyelashes trembled. Marien held up a finger, as if she had finally caught him in the act.
“I can’t say there wasn’t anyone who tried.”
Byleon drew the line gently.
“But not a single one succeeded.”
“No way.”
“‘No way’? Do I look that easy to you, Marien? In terms of maintaining a proper demeanor, I was the best at the Imperial Academy.”
Marien, who had been full of spirit just a moment ago, frowned. Byleon was a bit confused. He didn’t understand why she was displeased by the fact that he had never kissed anyone else.
Isn’t it usually the opposite? Why, Marien?
“It’s just that you were too good for it to be your first time.”
Byleon’s train of thought screeched to a halt at the words his lover had muttered with a sulky expression.
“Where did you learn to tilt your head at the perfect timing like that? And the way you sighed when our lips parted was so seductive. I was so out of breath I couldn’t even exhale as prettily and sensually as you did, Sir Biers.”
“……”
“I was the only one panting.”
“……”
“Oh, right. And why did you laugh in the middle of a kiss? Was I that bad? Regardless of the reason, laughing during kisses is forbidden from now on. That was the most dangerous smile I’ve ever seen from you, Sir Biers.”
“In what way was it dangerous?”
“Huh? Well…… it was dangerous in many ways. Anyway, it’s not allowed.”
Did Marien even know what she was saying? Byleon’s lips twitched.
Hold back the laughter. I’m in the middle of being told not to laugh, for heaven’s sake.
Byleon pressed down hard on the muscles around his mouth that were trying to move on their own.
Don’t enjoy this, Byleon Viers.
Marien grumbled in a voice full of dissatisfaction.
“The more I think about it, the more annoyed I get. It’s frustrating. How were you so good at it, like someone who practiced every day?”
“What if I really did practice every day?”
“What are you talking about? Talk sense.”
“I practiced in my head in my spare time.”
“Hmph, I don’t believe you.”
Marien glared at Byleon with eyes that said he was lying.
“There’s no way Sir Biers would do that.”
“I do it often. Didn’t you know? I think about kissing you every chance I get.”
“Liar……”
“I even did it this morning while reporting state affairs to His Majesty.”
Marien looked unsure of how much she should believe. Byleon eventually couldn’t hold back the smile slowly spreading across his lips.
“You really do view your lover as infinitely noble, don’t you? What a shame to disappoint my lady's expectations. Even though I look like this, I……”
Byleon whispered softly into Marien’s ear.
“I have a lot of impure thoughts.”
He felt Marien swallow hard.
“You could say I’m quite diligent when it comes to those kinds of thoughts, too.”
“Umm.”
“Perhaps that’s the secret to why I’ve never dozed off.”
Marien let out an awkward, “Ahaha,” sound. Meanwhile, her pretty sky-blue eyes were wandering busily. It was obvious she was trying to figure out a suitable response.
“That is certainly an unexpected secret. I should try it myself next time I’m sleepy.”
“Do so. It will certainly be helpful.”
“Yes, yes, of course. Absolutely. It’s a tip from none other than Sir Biers.”
Marien began to ramble on about nothing in particular. It was probably because she was pressed so closely against Byleon.
When you stay in a position where you can feel your lover’s breath tickling your ear and smell their heart-fluttering scent, a person inevitably ends up like that. Byleon knew this because that was exactly his current state.
“Marien, but there’s a side effect to my secret.”
Byleon’s eyes fell upon her snow-white neck. The warm skin where the fine hairs shimmered like a heat haze. He felt like he would smell the sunshine if he buried his nose there.
“If you think about those impure thoughts too hard…… at some point, it becomes difficult to stop at just imagination. For example, like this.”
Byleon playfully bit at Marien’s neck, which was fully exposed because she had tied her hair up high.
Marien couldn’t even make a sound, shrinking her shoulders. Her lover’s white skin tasted soft.
“It makes me want to just sink my teeth in. Chomp.”
“Why.”
Marien brought her hand to the spot where she had been bitten.
“Why do you imagine biting people?”
“I don’t bite just anyone. There’s only one person I want to bite.”
“Then why me.”
“I should have licked it instead of biting……”
A startled Marien covered Byleon’s mouth. She looked around frantically, her already large eyes wide open.
She looked exactly like a rabbit in a defensive stance, on edge about whether anyone had heard what Byleon had just said.
“Mmph…… st-stop……”
Byleon gave up on trying to speak with his lips pressed shut. It would be better to wait until the rabbit lady lowered her guard on her own.
“Sir Biers, what if someone hears us!”
Sure enough, after waiting a moment, Marien stomped her feet and removed the hand that had been covering her lover’s mouth. Byleon laughed.
“It’s just the two of us in the closed Chancellor’s office, so who would hear us?”
“Even so. You never know.”
“Since when did our brave Aide Didi become so cautious?”
“Since the moment I realized there were informants spread out everywhere?”
Byleon’s laughter subsided. He gently wrapped his arms around Marien’s back and pulled her toward him.
“Marien is right. There are eyes and ears spread out inside and outside the Imperial Palace. As more time passes, you’ll learn how to use them against them.”
“Use them against them, you mean……”
“Like, ‘Marien Didi, who came out of the Fourth Princess’s palace, went straight to the Chancellor’s office, so I followed her thinking they might be sharing some important secret.’”
The perfect setup.
“‘But they just closed the door and did nothing but kiss.’”
“What? That’s…… ugh.”
It wasn’t even time to leave work yet, but was he being too hard on Marien today? Byleon’s conscience tentatively tried to rear its head.
Well, it is a bit of a spiteful move. It’s not like Marien wanted to go to the Temple.
But just the thought of her being in the same space as Priest Anais made his stomach sting.
Still, as long as he was holding her in his arms and breathing in her scent like this, he felt his bitter heart being soothed.
Byleon squeezed his eyes shut and showered his lover with an even deeper kiss.
◇ ◆ ◇
“My goodness, to think I’d see the light yellow box of Lumière de Chacha Salon coming through my front door.”
Chloe gasped for air.
“This isn’t a dream, is it?”
“Is this your first time?”
Externally, it was known as a gift from the Fourth Princess, Odette, to Marien. She had to be mindful of her expression. Marien asked with a forced smile.
“No, it’s not the first time, it’s about the seventh.”
Chloe continued, fanning herself vigorously.
“I ordered seven of them last year to wear myself. But Aide, this is the first one this year!”
“……Seven of them just last year. Yes, I see.”
She wondered if it wasn’t a bit too frequent to be this surprised, to the point of not being able to breathe properly.
But whether Marien thought that or not, Chloe’s fanning grew more and more frantic. Along with the fanning, her speed of speech also accelerated.
“You know that even for dresses from the same salon, the price varies wildly depending on the material and design, right? Even if you added up the cost of my seven dresses, it wouldn’t equal the one you received!”
Chloe instructed the servants to set the box down in the living room for a moment. The young lady of the Viers family was in a state of disarray due to her excessive excitement. She was shaking the hand not holding the fan like an addict experiencing withdrawal symptoms.
Of course, Marien was the only one worried about her.
The servants were waiting for the next instruction with indifferent faces, as if this were a daily occurrence.
“Young Lady, are you feeling dizzy? Please let me know if you need a paper bag.”
“A paper bag? Why would I need a paper bag?”
“In case you hyperventilate.”
Chloe was now trembling from head to toe.
“Am I dizzy? I suppose I do feel a bit lightheaded. But it’s fine. I react this way every time I face a pale yellow box from the Lumière de Chacha Salon. You could call it a sort of reflex.”
Chloe squeezed her eyes shut.
“Oh, heavens. This isn't like the seven dresses from last year. It looks like all the dresses I own from the salon combined wouldn't even compare to this single piece. What do I do? It’s exhilarating.”
Marien glanced at the box, its lid still firmly closed.
“My lady, you haven’t even seen the dress yet, so to be so certain…”
“I can feel it.”
Chloe said something incomprehensible before snapping her eyes wide open. The servants slowly lifted the lid. Supported by Marien, Chloe approached the box.
“Ah…”
Wait.
Lost in a trance, Chloe folded her lace fan. Then, she leaned in and began to sniff the dress.
One sniff, then she shifted her position and sniffed again. The more she inhaled, the stranger the look in Chloe’s eyes became.
It was the same look she often saw in her mother, Countess Viers, and her youngest sister, Daisy.
“What is the matter, my lady?”
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