Chapter 15
“Um, Lord Beors. I have something I’d like to ask.”
Vaileon welcomed his third aide, who poked her head through the office door. Most likely, she was here to ask if they’d caught the culprit from the last incident.
Marienne hesitantly approached his desk. At his invitation, she sat down.
“We’re still tracking the culprit. I’ve narrowed it down to three suspects, but it looks like the perpetrator and the mastermind are separate people. As is often the case with incidents in the imperial palace.”
“…Pardon?”
“All three are palace maids who had no connection to you. One of them didn’t even know what you looked like. She simply read the nameplate outside your office and set up the bucket there. Of course, that’s assuming she was the one who actually carried it out.”
“Oh.”
“Whoever it was, they must have been acting on someone else’s orders.”
Marienne looked confused, and Vaileon interpreted it as worry.
Well, of course she’d be uneasy.
She was being attacked by an unknown enemy—inside the palace, her very workplace. Even someone as plucky as Marienne would naturally be unsettled.
“My goal is to identify the mastermind, so it’ll take a little more time. In the meantime, you must feel unsafe… Shall I assign you a personal guard? Someone who can protect you discreetly?”
“Um, Lord Beors.”
“Yes, go ahead.”
“What exactly… are you talking about?”
Marienne blinked her wide eyes slowly. Vaileon spent a good three seconds trying to process the situation.
“The culprit who put a bucket over your office door last time. The one that fell the moment you opened it, dumping blood and entrails all over you.”
Marienne nodded.
“I said I’d catch the culprit.”
“Yes, you did. And I was grateful.”
“You remember that?”
“Yes.”
Her clear reply only made Vaileon realize more and more that his initial assumption had been wrong.
The aide looked straight at him as she answered—every aspect of her manner was telling him the same thing.
But so what?
“When you said you had something to ask, I assumed you meant about the progress of the investigation. But judging by your reaction… it seems I was mistaken.”
“Oh.”
“My apologies. The investigator actually reported to me five minutes ago. Until you opened the door, my mind was still caught up in it.”
Vaileon apologized again.
“It’s a bad habit of mine—jumping to conclusions.”
From childhood, he had followed his parents into the palace. The more time he spent there, the more it became second nature to read people’s intentions and think several moves ahead.
This tendency of his only deepened once he fell for Odette.
He didn’t want to do anything she disliked, but unfortunately, many of his natural habits were exactly what irritated her.
No being overly kind to others.
No helping when she was stubbornly enduring pain or hardship.
No flashy or rare gifts that drew attention.
And many more unspoken rules besides. Odette had never forced him to obey them, but Vaileon didn’t want to disappoint her.
Endless self-censorship and foresight had become a second nature.
Thankfully, the skills he honed to live up to Odette’s expectations were also useful in his official duties.
The problem arose when those skills didn’t work on someone.
Marienne Didi was precisely such a person. For a moment, Vaileon had forgotten his aide was unpredictable.
“What was it you wanted to ask?”
And Marienne—the rubber ball of a third aide who could bounce in any direction—once again said something startling. She looked at him blankly and asked:
“You mean you were really conducting an investigation?”
To Vaileon’s ears, it sounded as absurd as, ‘Have you really been breathing since you were born?’
It was the sort of question no one who knew Vaileon Beors would ever ask.
Strange.
You know some of my deepest secrets that no one else does, yet how can you not know this?
“I told you myself—I’d definitely catch the culprit.”
“Well… yes, you did.”
Marienne pursed her lips.
“But you’re the Chancellor of this country, my lord.”
So what if he was Chancellor?
“What I mean is…”
He was starting to understand what she was getting at.
“You’re busy. You have countless important affairs of state… Compared to those, my bucket incident is just too trivial.”
Normally he wouldn’t interrupt, but this was too much. He couldn’t let her finish.
“It’s not trivial at all. That time, it was only pig’s blood and entrails—so a shower was enough. But what if it had been something more dangerous? If it had been lye, you would have suffered serious burns.”
“But it wasn’t lye. And besides… I did do some things recently to draw attention.”
Marienne spoke with a resigned air.
“Maybe I annoyed someone.”
“Even if you annoyed them, that doesn’t justify harming you. That should be obvious, yet exceptions keep happening in this palace.”
“Anyway…” Vaileon shifted the subject.
“Can I be a little hurt? If not for this little misunderstanding, you would’ve thought I’d been making empty promises this whole time.”
He’d always taken pride not in being called handsome, but in having a face that inspired trust at first sight.
Even the Foreign Ministry often asked him to attend tricky meetings with foreign envoys. Simply sitting in the room calmed the atmosphere.
The Emperor himself, upon first seeing young Vaileon, had remarked: “That boy looks steady. His looks alone will carry him far.”
He was rambling now—sounding like he was trying to convince her. As if his forehead had the words ‘Man of his word’ written across it.
And his remark about being hurt wasn’t just for show.
They had only worked together for a few months, but he had expected Marienne to trust him.
Even during that misunderstanding about pregnancy—hadn’t she been impressed by his common sense then?
How do you even see me, in those eyes of yours?
He felt oddly stung.
“Of course I wasn’t doubting you, my lord! Lord Beors would never lie to me. But still…”
There it was again—but still.
Vaileon finished the sentence for her.
“You thought it must’ve been pushed to the bottom of my priorities, with everything else I have to do?”
He ended lightly, but Marienne gave silent agreement.
At least now she seemed aware enough to look bashful—head bowed, eyes glancing up at him like a guilty rabbit.
Making him feel hurt one moment, stifling laughter the next. She did it all by herself.
“…Why go that far?”
Marienne murmured softly.
“If you worry about little things like my bucket incident, you’ll run yourself ragged.”
“Because you’re my person, Aide Didi.”
The answer slipped out naturally.
“I have a bit of an obsession about keeping my people safe.”
“….”
“Why? Do I not look like the type?”
Her expression said she had a lot she wanted to say. But all that actually came out was:
“Your… person?”
As though she knew no other words, she kept repeating it under her breath: “My person? My person. My person?”
She’d reacted the same way when she was doused by the bucket. Was ‘my person’ really such a strange phrase?
If he let her be, she’d repeat it like a parrot until sundown. Vaileon steered her back.
“So, what was your original question?”
“Oh, right. The question was… It might sound odd.”
Odd? Practically everything out of the third aide’s mouth was odd.
“It’s about hair.”
In fact, for them, that wasn’t odd at all.
“How can you apply something to someone’s hair if you can’t touch them directly?”
“Who’s the someone, and what’s the something?”
“Ah, that I can’t say.”
Marienne waved her hand with a smile. Clearly, she was here for advice, but she wouldn’t share even the basics?
Normally he’d let it slide. But she had just given him a sting of disappointment.
“At least tell me the form. Is it more like a liquid, or a powder? That’ll decide the method.”
Her pretty sky-blue eyes shifted downward. The flickering focus betrayed her extreme fluster—clearly weighing how much to reveal.
“…A thin cream.”
“Once it’s applied, is that the end of it? Does it matter if you’re caught?”
“I’d prefer not to be caught, of course… but more importantly, it needs time to work. The key is that it isn’t washed out too soon.”
“How long?”
“Uh… three or four minutes?”
She glanced up at him.
“Five, maybe?”
So five minutes, then. Vaileon smiled, lacing his fingers atop the desk. The “three or four” had just been a smokescreen.
“If you can knock someone unconscious or restrain them briefly, five minutes isn’t long.”
“That’s impossible.”
Marienne declared with the most certainty she’d shown since stepping into his office.
“Absolutely impossible.”
“What about while they’re asleep?”
“No.”
“Because of bodyguards?”
“They don’t sleep.”
“…What?”
There were people who didn’t sleep? Vaileon asked again, incredulous. Marienne scrunched her little nose.
“Just think of them as a human who doesn’t sleep.”
He couldn’t help but ask:
“They are human, right?”
“Yes. Horribly, yes…”
Her face as she answered was pure gloom. Vaileon watched his gentle, rabbit-like aide quietly.
Funny. She actually answers everything.
Did she not realize she could just refuse to answer? Or beg him to help first, and explain later?
Yet Marienne responded to each question dutifully. Vaileon thought uneasily that he hoped she’d never find herself under interrogation someday.
“Could it be… that someone is Duke Blackwood?”
At that, Marienne jumped so high she practically leapt a handspan off her chair—like a startled rabbit indeed.
“No. Of course not. Definitely not. Absolutely not! You’re wrong!”
She poured out denials, then bowed her head in defeat. Clearly, she was vexed at having been caught.
“Aide Didi.”
Vaileon waited patiently. Across the desk, she shifted nervously, then looked up at him.
“What on earth are you trying to put in the Duke’s hair?”
