Chapter 02
One early morning, Yuria rubbed her sleepy eyes and caught her grandfather just as he was leaving through the front gate.
“Grandfather, if you’re going to the market, could you please buy me a textbook?”
Yuria’s kind grandfather, for the sake of his young granddaughter, spent a considerable amount of money and bought not just one textbook, but an entire set.
Sitting at a desk that was on the verge of falling apart, Yuria diligently practiced self-directed learning, focusing entirely on her textbooks.
Perhaps because she had a basic foundation, the young girl soon began to show exceptional aptitude in her studies.
At the rural school she attended once a week, her homeroom teacher was the first to recognize her talent.
“Yuria has a natural gift. In a word, she’s a genius. It would be a terrible shame to let her waste away in this backwater. I’ll look into some financial aid. How about sending at least the child to Mondinium to study?”
Although Yuria’s grandfather was poor, he was the typical self-sacrificing parent who would do anything for his only granddaughter.
“My lovely and proud Yuria, my heart is uneasy about sending you off alone.”
Having scraped together all his savings to send young Yuria alone to the capital, her grandfather turned away, unable to watch her leave, and burst into tears.
Even Yuria couldn’t hold back her tears that time.
By then, Yuria had come to truly love her grandfather.
“Grandfather, I’ll definitely succeed and come back to take care of you! Waaah…!”
Yuria, who had been dragging a bag as big as herself out the gate, ran back to her grandfather, hugged him tightly, and they shared a long, emotional farewell.
Arriving in Mondinium all alone with just one large leather bag, Yuria hopped off the train and looked around the spacious platform.
“Little one, are you here by yourself?”
Yuria turned her head toward the voice.
A station attendant in a blue hat was approaching her with a kind, friendly smile.
He seemed very nice, but there’s no such thing as kindness without reason in this world!
Young and clever Yuria didn’t hide her wary gaze from the attendant and hid her bag behind her back.
Startled by her look, as if she were a bad con artist trying to take advantage of a child, the station attendant stopped dead in his tracks.
Meanwhile, Yuria quickly backed away and dashed off to the opposite platform.
Hurrying along on her small feet and constantly looking back, Yuria noticed a white piece of paper fluttering on a red brick pillar on the platform platform.
[Duvert Family Scholarship Program – Providing stable educational opportunities to the educationally underprivileged!]
There was a picture of the benevolent-looking Duke Duvert with his arms open wide, embracing children running towards him.
Yuria stopped short and approached the brick pillar as if entranced.
The financial aid arranged by her homeroom teacher and her grandfather’s savings were far too little for a young girl to live on and attend school in the capital.
In other words, she needed new funding.
Yuria tore down the flyer fluttering on the train station platform pillar and tucked it deep inside her large leather bag.
On the day she turned 14, Yuria held her public school report card and the scholarship flyer in both hands and knocked on the Duvert mansion’s front gate.
The butler looked at the tiny girl who had come alone with a puzzled expression. Yuria thrust the flyer in front of him and called out in a clear, intelligent voice.
“Hello? My name is Yuria Heibel. I’ve come to apply for the Duvert scholarship.”
For the Duke and Duchess Duvert, there was no reason to refuse a suddenly appeared girl, especially a gifted girl from a desperately poor background.
“She’s for promoting the Duvert family scholarship program. It makes for a good story, a good story!”
Yuria was immediately enrolled, alongside Jerome Duvert, the Duke and Duchess’s only son, in the Royal Academy—a school that only the wealthy and powerful families of the Empire could attend.
She also scored a perfect score on the entrance exam, entering as the top student.
“Yuria, that’s truly amazing! If you keep up these grades, graduating at the top will be no problem!”
At the school that was supposed to make her a diamond in the rough, Yuria never once lost first place from the moment she enrolled.
Everything was going according to Yuria’s plan!
…That is, until he transferred in.
“I am Cassian Isheid.”
That day, Yuria was sitting in the seat right next to the sunlit window, looking at her alchemy textbook.
Turning stone into gold? That couldn’t possibly be true…
Yuria nervously flipped the pages, reading and rereading the practical problems she simply couldn’t understand.
Just then, Lili, sitting next to her, shook her slender arm.
“Yuria! It’s the Grand Duke!”
“The Grand Duke?”
Yuria kept her eyes fixed on her textbook and only lifted her head half-heartedly.
“Grand Duke Cassian Isheid! I heard he returned from studying abroad last month.”
At that moment, Yuria couldn’t believe her ears.
Cassian Isheid…?
The Cassian Isheid from The Stars Embroidered on Tritan? The son of the Tritan Emperor’s only younger sister? The male lead who lost both parents at a young age and ascended to the position of Grand Duke?
‘T-That person is… Cassian Isheid?’
Thud.
Yuria didn’t even notice her textbook, which she valued more than her own life, fall to the classroom floor. Her mouth fell open.
From that day on, Yuria decided to openly avoid Cassian.
‘I never finished reading the novel, so I don’t know how the story unfolds.’
Instead of unnecessarily catching the protagonist’s eye and getting caught up in the novel’s events, it was better for her to just live her own life well and then leave.
After all, Yuria and Cassian had very little to do with each other from the start.
However, there was one thing the calculating girl had overlooked.
“Huh? Yuria, it looks like Cassian got first place this time?”
“What?”
It was the fact that Cassian was quite good at studying.
Meaning, from the time he transferred in, they became inseparable rivals.
Leaving the academy gates with Jerome, Yuria looked at him and smiled brightly.
“Jerome! Congratulations on your graduation. I saw your grades earlier; they improved a lot, didn’t they?”
“It’s… th… thanks… to Yur… Yuria…*” Jerome answered, trying his best to pronounce each syllable carefully.
Yuria looked at him with a mixture of pride and pity.
Jerome had a congenital speech impediment. Since childhood, his tongue had been stiff, causing a stutter that prevented him from speaking properly.
The Duke Duvert, known to be one of the wealthiest men in the Tritan Empire apart from the Imperial Family, had searched high and low for a medicine to cure his son, but no remedy could loosen Jerome’s stiff tongue.
“Oh, I didn’t do anything. It’s because Jerome worked harder than everyone else!”
At Yuria’s praise, Jerome’s eyes crinkled as he smiled brightly.
At Jerome’s bright smile, the ladies leaving Mrs. Keith’s Salon on the street stopped their gazes on his face as if bewitched.
“Oh my…”
“Who is he?”
Seeing the beautiful ladies’ surprised looks, Yuria felt strangely prouder herself.
When he kept his mouth shut, he truly had an angelic appearance, as if descended from heaven. Skin as fair as Yuria’s own, platinum blonde hair that sparkled even more in the sunlight, and transparent, sky-blue eyes.
It wasn’t the first or second time Yuria thought that if an angel from an old fairy tale book were to appear on earth, they would likely resemble Jerome’s features.
“Th… thank… you… too…*” he managed.
But as soon as Jerome opened his mouth, the ladies who had been staring at him with flushed cheeks widened their eyes and backed away.
“Oh?”
“Cough, cough, cough!”
Among them, a woman wearing a flamboyant hat let out an exaggerated cough.
They quickly covered their faces with fans and began whispering in low voices. From the snippets heard—comments about his speech being unclear, that he didn’t live up to his face—it was clear they were talking about Jerome.
“Jerome…”
Feeling their stares, Jerome clamped his mouth shut and lowered his head.
Although Yuria was more than accustomed to the stark difference in people’s attitudes before and after Jerome opened his mouth, she couldn’t help the bitterness that lingered in a corner of her heart.
Unable to stand it any longer, Yuria stepped in front of Jerome and glared at the ladies.
“Excuse me.”
“Y-Yes?”
“I can hear you perfectly well. Why don’t you stop whispering right in front of the person you’re talking about?”
“Hehehe? Whatever do you mean…? What were we even saying?”
One of them fanned herself, widening her eyes as if she had no idea what was going on.
“Y-Yu… ria… enough…*”
Jerome reached out and stopped her.
He gave an awkward smile, as if telling her not to worry about it.
Thinking that Jerome would end up being the one hurt if this continued, Yuria reluctantly closed her mouth.
Yuria gave the still-whispering ladies the fiercest look she could muster, then grabbed Jerome’s hand and hurried on.
Bad people…
“Jerome, I’ll head back to the dormitory now.”
In front of the main gate, boldly engraved with the crest of the Duvert Duchy, Yuria turned to leave after saying goodbye.
“Yu… ria… It’s… st… still… ear… ly…*”
“Huh? You mean Lady Catherine said she had something to tell me?”
Yuria asked with a puzzled expression, and Jerome nodded.
Yuria followed Jerome, who took her hand and pulled her along, through the duchy’s gate and into the mansion.
Ushered by the butler into the spacious reception room, Catherine, who had been sitting on a plush velvet chair, approached with a bright smile.
“Jerome! Yuria!”
Catherine’s voluminous red dress swayed elegantly with each step she took.
