CH 15

“I, Lord Byers. I have a question for you.”

Vileon greeted the third aide as she poked her head through the doorway of his office. Presumably she had come to ask if they had caught the culprit of the last incident.

Marienne hesitantly approached the desk. At Vileon’s invitation, she sat down in the chair.

“We’re still trying to track down the culprit. We’ve narrowed it down to three suspects, but it appears to be a separate incident, as is the case with most things that happen in the Imperial Palace.”

“They are…?”

“All three are imperial maids who have no contact with Aide Didi. One of them doesn’t even know what Aide Didi looks like. She set up the bucket based on the plaque outside the office. That’s assuming she’s the one who did it, of course.”

“Huh.”

“Well, whichever of the three of them did it, they must have been ordered to do it by someone higher up.”

Marienne gave him a confused look. Vileon interpreted it as worry.

How unsettling.

Being attacked by someone she didn’t know. In the palace, in her own workplace. Even the most stoic Marienne would be nervous.

“My goal is to get to the bottom of this, so it’s going to take some time, and I know you’re going to be very anxious in the meantime… Do you want me to give you a personal bodyguard? To keep around Aide Didi without being seen.”

“Excuse me, Lord Byers.”

“Speak.”

“What… were you talking about earlier?”

Marienne blinked her large eyes slowly. Three seconds passed as Vileon tried to process the situation.

“You know, the guy who put the bucket on the door to Aide Didi’s office the other day, and the moment you opened the door, it fell off and covered you in blood and guts.”

Marienne nodded.

“I told you I would catch the culprit.”

“Yes, you did, thankfully.”

“Do you remember that?”

“Yes.”

Marienne replied dryly. The more she spoke, the more Vileon realised his initial judgement had been wrong.

An aide who glared back at him. Every element of Marienne was screaming in unison.

But so what?

“When Aide Didi just said she had a question for me… I naturally assumed it was about the progress of the investigation, but apparently… I was mistaken.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry, actually, the person in charge of the investigation just reported in five minutes ago, and that was all I could think about until Aide opened the door.”

Vileon apologised again.

“It’s a bad habit of mine, second-guessing myself.”

He had followed his parents in and out of the palace since he was a child. The more time he spent in the palace, the more he became accustomed to gauging his opponents’ intentions and thinking a few moves ahead.

This tendency was exacerbated when Vileon took Odette to his heart.

He didn’t want to do anything she didn’t like, and there were many things in her nature that he found irritating.

Don’t be too nice to others.

Don’t help people when they’re sick or struggling.

No fancy or rare gifts that would attract attention.

There were many other rules to follow. Odette had never been a rule-breaker, but Vileon didn’t want to let her down.

Endless self-censorship and anticipation had become second nature.

Fortunately, the skills he’d honed to avoid disappointing Odette were useful in his day job.

The problem is that sometimes someone comes along who doesn’t have those skills.

Marienne Didi was such a person. For a moment, Vileon forgot how unpredictable his aide could be.

“What were you going to ask?”

And Marienne, the rubber-ball third aide who never knew where she was going to bounce, sounded surprised this time. She blurted out.

“Were you really doing an investigation?”

To Vileon’s ears, it sounded more like, “Have you been breathing since you were born? It’s not a question anyone who knows Vileon Byers would ask.

Strange.

You know my secrets that no one else does, but why don’t you know this part?

“I told you, I’m going to find the culprit.”

“Yeah, but… You did.”

Marienne wiped her mouth.

“You’re the Lord Chancellor of this country.”

What’s wrong with being Chancellor?

“So I’m saying…”

I could almost see where the aide was going with this.

“You’re a busy man, you’ve got a lot on your plate, and every single one of them is a major national incident… and my bucket-dropping incident is so insignificant by comparison.”

I don’t like to cut people off, but this was too much. I couldn’t wait for her to finish. Vileon interjected.

“Not at all. It was pig blood and intestines that spilled, so you only had to shower. But what if it was something more dangerous? If it was lye, you’d be burned to a crisp.”

“But it wasn’t lye, and besides… I’ve done a few things lately that would make me stand out.”

Marienne said with an air of helplessness.

“Maybe that’s what got on someone’s nerves.”

“You don’t hurt people just because you’re offended. It’s so obvious, but the Imperial Palace keeps making exceptions.”

“By the way,” Vileon said, changing the subject.

“Can I be forgiven for feeling a bit sorry for myself? If it weren’t for that hilarious incident just now, Aide Didi would have thought I’d been talking out of my ass the whole time.”

Since then, I’ve been convinced that looks can be deceiving. Vileon preferred that to the compliment of being handsome.

Even at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Chancellor’s presence is often requested when dealing with difficult envoys. The mere presence of Vileon in the same room would put them at ease.

As soon as the Emperor saw the young Vileon, he said, “He’s a solid-looking fellow. We’ll have to rely on his good looks.”

Your self-praise is getting longer and longer. It’s like he’s crying. ‘A person who does not say empty words’ is written on my forehead.

And when I said I was sorry for Marienne, I wasn’t just saying it.

Even though we’ve only been together for a few months, I thought she’d trust me.

She did the same thing with the pregnancy misunderstanding. Marienne had admired him for something that was so common sense to Vileon it wasn’t even worth mentioning.

‘What kind of person am I in your eyes?’

It was strangely wistful.

“Of course I didn’t suspect you! Lord Byers would never have lied to me, but…”

Again, another but.

Vileon finished the sentence for her.

“I suppose you had a lot of work to do and it got pushed to the back of the queue?”

Marienne nodded in unspoken agreement.

At least now she’s making a show of paying attention. The way she kept her head down and looked up with only her eyes, reminded me of a dead rabbit.

One minute she’s making you feel sorry for her, the next she’s making you laugh. She does it all by herself.

“…Why do you do that?”

Marienne muttered in a small voice.

“I don’t think I have a dozen bodies left if you’re going to bother with things like bucket drops.”

“Because Aide Didi is my person.”

The answer came naturally.

“I’m a little overly obsessive about keeping my people safe.”

“…”

“Why? Doesn’t that sound like me?”

Marienne looked like she had a lot to say. Though the only word that came out of her mouth was my person.

The aide kept repeating, “My person? My person. My person?” for a while, as if it were the only word she knew.

I think she had a similar reaction when she was covered in the contents of the bucket. Is the word my person so strange?

If I left it alone, she would repeat “my person” like a parrot until dinner time. Vileon called her attention back to the question she was going to ask.

“Uh, actually, the original question was… I’m sorry, it may sound a little weird.”

Honestly?

It’s harder to think of anything the third aide has ever said that wasn’t a joke.

“It’s about hair.”

It’s a familiar topic between us, and it’s not even close.

“How do you put something on someone’s hair that they can’t touch?”

“Who’s the someone and what’s the something?”

“Oh, I can’t even tell you that.”

Marienne threw up her hands and laughed. You’re supposed to be here to borrow my wisdom, and you won’t even share the basics?

Normally, I would have let it slide. But Marienne had just racked up a point of coldness in Vileon.

“At the very least, I need to know what formulation it’s in, whether it’s more of a liquid or a powder, because that determines the method.”

Marienne’s pretty light blue gaze slowly shifted downward. I could see extreme panic in her wavering focus. I could see her gauging how much to reveal.

“It’s a watery… kind of cream.”

“You’ll just put it on and it’s over? You don’t care if they find out who put it on?”

“It would be nice if they didn’t find out… More importantly, it has to sit for a while after they apply it, and the key is not to wash it off.”

“How long?”

“One… three or four minutes?”

Marienne glanced at her boss.

“Five minutes?”

Five minutes, apparently. Vileon drummed his fingers on the desk and smiled. The aforementioned three or four minutes was a straw man to avoid being identified as five minutes.

“Five minutes isn’t a long time if you can knock him unconscious for a while or subdue him.”

“That’s not possible.”

Marienne insisted. It was the most certain she’d sounded since she’d set foot in the Chancellor’s office earlier.

“Absolutely not.”

“What if we hit them while they’re asleep?”

“No.”

“Because of the bodyguards?”

“They don’t sleep.”

“This…?”

Some people in this world don’t sleep. Marienne wrinkled her cute nose as Vileon asked, a little incredulous.

“Just think of it as a human who doesn’t sleep.”

Vileon couldn’t help but ask.

“They are human, aren’t they?”

“Yes, horribly…”

Marienne’s face was a mask of bitterness as she answered. Vileon stared silently at his bunny-like aide.

‘But you’re so full of answers.’

Unbeknownst to Marienne, there is also the option of not answering at all. She could also plead for help now, more on that later.

Nevertheless, Marienne answered dutifully. She hoped she wouldn’t have to be interrogated for the rest of her life. Vileon was worrying her unnecessarily.

“Is that someone the Duke of Blackwood?”

For a moment, Marienne bounced up and down in her seat, horrified. He’d said she looked like a rabbit, and now she was a rabbit.

“No, no. No way. That’s not right. That’s not right. Wrong?”

After spouting off a string of denials, Marienne hung her head, obviously upset that she’d been found out.

“Aide Didi.”

Vileon waited patiently. Marienne looked up at her superior with a stern face, her eyes fixed on me across the desk.

“What the hell are you trying to put in the Duke’s hair?