Chapter 56

Chapter 56

After knocking on the Duke’s office door, I opened it straight away, and the Duke’s figure came into view through the gap. He was sitting with his usual upright posture, engrossed in his work.

“Your Grace. Um… are you busy?”

I carefully stepped into the office and spoke to him.

“He’s busy, but I’m not.”

But an all-too-familiar voice came from an unexpected direction. I turned my head to find the Young Marquis sitting on the sofa, waving his hand at me.

Oh? The Young Marquis is here again…?

Feeling flustered by his sudden appearance, I stared at him. He responded with a gentle smile.

“Got something to say? Laura?”

Just then, the Duke’s voice cut in.

“Uh… no.”

I deflected with a vague mumble. It was true I had something to say—but not now. Not with the man I’d rejected and the man I liked standing in the same room. Asking for a banquet partner under these circumstances? That would be excruciating.

“You’re here again, Young Marquis.”

Instead, I bowed my head toward the Young Marquis. He’d been dropping by Cuvershaiden a lot lately, it seemed. Like whenever he had a day off, he just rushed straight over.

“Yes. I’m here again. I’ve been having so much fun coming here lately.”

He answered, his tone genuinely cheerful, even layering on a waving hand gesture.

“Ben. Stop showing up without notice. If you keep this up, I’ll tell Handel not to open the door for you.”

The Duke replied to him with a hint of irritation.

“Turning me away at the door? That’s pretty cold, don’t you think, between us?”

“Nonsense.”

“Saying that makes me feel so pitiful.”

The Young Marquis immediately furrowed his brow and put on a sad expression. It was a deliberate act, but the Duke didn’t even spare him a glance. He merely picked up a stack of papers from in front of him, tapped them on the desk to even them out, and then slid them over to me.

“Laura. Organize these for me.”

“Yes.”

I quickly approached him and took the thick pile of documents.

‘Finally, actual work to do.’

The densely written pages felt heavy in both hands. It seemed like the time had finally come to put into practice what the butler had taught me. I cradled them carefully against my chest, walked to my seat, and sat down.

The Young Marquis’s eyes followed my footsteps slowly. He watched me scan the documents, watched me pick up my pen, and then quietly shifted his gaze back to the Duke.

“You’ve loosened up a bit, haven’t you.”

It was a short sentence, but I understood what he was getting at. He meant that the Duke, who used to handle everything himself, was now learning to delegate appropriately to others.

“Well. I suppose so.”

The Duke replied, as if it were nothing.

“Yeah. You were way too rigid before.”

“It was inefficient.”

“So you do know.”

“I needed to focus on what matters. And it bothered me if something hadn’t passed through my eyes.”

“Anyway, so you *can* change. I thought you were just a stubborn old general.”

The Young Marquis shrugged, draping his arm over the back of the sofa. His tone was clearly teasing, but the Duke showed no reaction. He just brought the nib of his pen over the stack of papers and tapped it twice. Then, he lifted his gaze to look at the Young Marquis.

“……Ben. Stop bothering me while I’m working and get out. Or go to your room and play by yourself.”

It seemed the Duke had grown tired of the young marquis’s constant chatter. But the young marquis didn’t back down—he turned to me with his usual expression.

“Oh, right, Laura. You said you really had something to say, didn’t you? What is it?”

He asked. It looked like he was trying to steer the conversation back to me now that the Duke was trying to send him away.

“Uh…… Well……”

“Is it something hard to say right now?”

“Not exactly……”

Not exactly—what was I saying? It *was* hard to say!

Damn. I’d let out a vague response. I didn’t want to seem like I was hiding something, so I’d just hedged with a clumsy denial, staring at them with nervous eyes.

“Well then?”

“Uh……”

I trailed off, sounding tepid. And in that pause, the Duke also cast his gaze at me, waiting for my answer.

“Um…… It’s like this, you see……”

Yeah. There was no turning back now, not after things had gone this far. With no other choice, I began laying it all out for them—the fact that the cat’s soul had vanished, and everything Shion had told me. I added that I’d need to enter the Imperial Castle through the Crown Prince’s birthday banquet.

It was a fairly outlandish story, but they listened with surprising seriousness all the same.

“Come to think of it, I haven’t seen the cat’s soul around lately.”

The Duke answered. Good heavens—even he hadn’t been seeing it. I’d been half-sure, half-unsure myself, but it seemed the cat ghost really had disappeared.

Somehow, Shion’s words were growing more believable by the minute. Still, a tiny grain of unease lingered, like sand caught in my shoe. I needed clearer proof to shake it loose.

“Yes. Honestly, I’m not sure how credible what that child said really is. But that’s exactly why I think we ought to go to the Imperial Castle—to be certain.”

“Then we’ll need to prepare quickly. The banquet isn’t far off.”

“Ah… oh. You’re right. I’m sorry. I said I wouldn’t go, and then I suddenly changed my mind…”

This was something I hadn’t considered at all. Come to think of it, even when I went to Krentis’s banquet, there had been so many things to prepare. It seemed unlikely that a banquet in our own kingdom would be any different. And on top of that, there was hardly any time left.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s just a matter of using enough people. Either way, we’ll attend the banquet together.”

“Yes. Yes!” I nodded quickly, answering eagerly.

The duke’s voice sounded as calm as ever. Still, a pang of guilt twisted in my chest. I remembered when he had asked me to be his partner for the banquet — and I had turned him down outright. There hadn’t really been any reason to refuse, really. Now, I found myself thinking I should have just accepted from the start, since we were going to end up here anyway.

“It looks like you’ll need my help.”

And that was when the young marquis cut into our conversation without warning.

“You, Young Marquis?”

I turned to face him at once, the question already on my lips. He rose from the sofa and strode toward me.

“You said you wanted to know whether that kid is really the Imperial Princess or not, right? Well, that might mean digging into the Imperial Family’s personal history—and there’s only so much you can find in the library.”

“……Then you, Young Marquis, can access even the inner workings of the Imperial House?”

“Well. Not in exhaustive detail, but enough.”

What was he saying?

He wasn’t a blood member of the Imperial Family, so his words didn’t quite make sense. I looked at him with a puzzled expression, clearly expecting an explanation.

“……Benat used to be the Second Imperial Prince’s swordsmanship tutor. He’s still on good terms with him.”

And the answer came from another direction entirely.

“That’s right! The Second Imperial Prince is very fond of me.”

He nodded in reply. Then he turned to face the Duke.

“Correct.”

The young marquis pointed at the Duke with both hands, all fingers spread wide. It was a gesture that practically screamed, ‘Congratulations on guessing the right answer.’

The Duke looked utterly dumbfounded at the sight of him. Usually a man of minimal expression, he was now visibly and thoroughly exasperated. If I had to put that look into words, it would be something like, ‘Correct, hell—I wish you’d just disappear already.’

The young marquis must have read the Duke’s expression. But even so, he acted with almost blithe indifference. Instead, he leaned back against my desk and opened his mouth toward the Duke again.

“So let’s work together.”

It made sense. With the Second Prince’s help, getting to the bottom of the Imperial House’s internal affairs would be easy. Still, the Duke’s expressionless face carried a faint trace of displeasure. And the young marquis drove the nail right into it.

“Wow. How fun that we’ll all be together. Right?”

* * *

Lucia was enrolled at the Academy as a transfer student. Since it wasn’t the start of a term, the path where I brought her onto campus was nearly deserted. It was a shame she couldn’t have a proper entrance ceremony, but I wanted to push her through graduation as quickly as possible and then get Ren, the next one, into the Academy. There was no other way.

“Wow. The Academy is huge and beautiful.”

The state-run Central Academy was truly on a scale all its own. I stared up at the magnificent white building, letting out a stream of earnest, almost rustic exclamations of wonder.

“Unnie.”

Lucia suddenly tapped my arm.

“Hm? What?”

“Unnie… thank you.”

The child looked up at me with round eyes. She was my sister, sure, but in that moment she looked almost cute.

“What?”

“I’ll really do better from now on.”

Lucia slipped into my arms and wrapped hers around my waist. Then, still pressed against me, she turned her head just enough to look at Ren.

“I’m sorry too, Oppa.”

“Just graduate and come back. If you don’t hit the minimum grades here, they fail you on the spot.”

Ren patted Lucia’s head, his hand tapping like he was leveling dirt rather than actually stroking.

“Let’s head inside now.”

I let out a small laugh and set both hands on Lucia’s shoulders. She stepped back from my embrace, one pace.

“Okay.”

We looked over the dormitory where Lucia would be staying, and collected the textbooks she’d use for her classes from the professor. Somewhere in all that, visiting hours at the dormitory were nearly over. It was a little disappointing, but it was already time to part.