“Princess, I don’t think that man is quite right in the mind.”
Tesira’s tone as she reported the rifle that had been sent to the museum was terse. She had perfect pronunciation, tone, and volume that was fit for a textbook example of what a secretary should sound like. Her resentment1 against Les Kishir radiated from her body.
“I think it’s exciting that he doesn’t let me have him too easily.” Leticia defended him softly.
“If you were to hear what he did with Ramiere’s finest watch—”
“Yes, I’ve heard and I know. I think you’ve told me about it nine times now.”
“Then why don’t we take this opportunity to round it to ten.”
Taking her attention off of Tesira as she furiously ranted about the watches once more, Leticia turned her gaze back to her reflection in the vanity mirror before her.
She had instructed her maids to make all other women look like sea creatures next to her.
It was a difficult and vague instruction, but her maids were Lanstein’s best and most exclusive artists. The difficult task of waking up at dawn and being fussed over by them for the whole morning had paid off and by noon Leticia was practically glowing from every pore of her body.
After checking herself out in the mirror and admiring their work, Leticia graciously rained bonuses on each and every one of her maids, then triumphantly instructed that she be driven to Lionel street.
It was a feeling that made her reminisce the first time she had put money into a slot machine. It was old and broken, on the verge of being thrown out, but she had begged to play with it for a while before they got rid of it.
The machine had swallowed her one-decat coin and spun with a loud mechanical beep before coming to a stop in the wrong position, as if it were purposely avoiding the desired numbers. Even as one decat became five, and five decats became fifty, the slot machine still didn’t pay out her desired prize. Though she prayed, made threats, and even kicked the machine in the end, it still didn’t respond in the way that she had wanted. Eventually, she had gathered all of her personal resources and hired nearly a hundred people to run the slot machine. Seeing the machine forced to spit out her desired number within one day, she felt an endless thrill. The lights of the slot machine flashed brilliantly and changed colors alongside its audible mechanical sounds. The superficial sense of excitement that would immediately fade the moment she experienced it; those were the things she loved.
The pale and thin man under the moonlight had made her feel as if she had gone back to when she was a child standing in front of that slot machine for the first time. She couldn’t wait to see him standing in front of her; mouth agape, unable to speak.
She would say, ‘I remember everything you know, that you didn’t accept a single one of my gifts, that you didn’t send a letter or even a note after that night, that you didn’t show any desire to contact me, making it seem as if I was the only one that enjoyed myself that night. I swear—’
At that moment, her heart dropped and all the color drained from her face. Her memory of that night was nothing aside from the sense of exhilarating pleasure she felt as she clung to him all night long. The reaction of the other participant, which had always been intense even if she just looked at them with her beautiful face as she took off her clothes, was something she had never considered until now.
“He did enjoy himself, right?”
“It couldn’t have been just me enjoying myself alone, right?!”
Politely disregarding the princess, who was struggling with the possibility that could not be easily denied, the driver drove through the narrow, rough alleys that didn’t seem suitable for the passengers of the vehicle at all.
As the car rolled to a stop, she wondered how much time had passed. It seemed they had reached their destination when the car door opened and Leticia climbed the creaking stairs of a red brick building.
12 Lionel Street, no. 5
As the result of much persuasion, a mix of bribery and blackmail, there were no reporters around. After one last check of the address Tesira had written down for her, Leticia took a deep breath and rang the doorbell.
The doorbell rang with a sound that grated in her ears, and when she had counted up from one to five in her head, the door opened.
“Hello!”
As she smiled brightly and waved, a man who did not show any hint of surprise at her appearance regarded her with his own smile. His golden eyes, with their long and curly lashes, narrowed as he smiled.
“You’re even more beautiful today, Princess.” He greeted her calmly, as if it was just part of their daily routine for her to suddenly arrive like this.
“I put in a little extra effort today, that’s all.”
“If you had put in a lot of extra effort, then you would have shone so brightly I wouldn’t have been able to look at you.”
“Yes, that is correct.”
Les Kishir smiled quietly as she lifted her chin confidently, and he angled his body to let her through the door.
“I’m worried that we don’t have any teas suitable enough for you, Princess.”
He seemed to naturally assume that she would come inside. At that moment, she realized that the thousands of scenarios that she had mentally prepared for in case he refused to let her in were all in vain.
Really though, why was he reacting so casually? Did someone leak the information that she would be arriving today? She even wondered if maybe she was a friend of his who had known Les for years but she had suffered from amnesia and completely forgotten all about it. But when she walked in and saw his roommate, who had pretty much turned to stone in shock, she figured that was probably not the case.
“Greetings Your Highness,” he bowed as low as his back allowed him, “My name is Cesar Mehin, Lieutenant of the Navy Logistics Command, ma’am!”
That was exactly the kind of reaction she’d been wanting to see.
She gave him a wide smile and waved her hand at him in order to relax his hardened face, but he still stood with his back ramrod straight like a criminal in front of the jury. So, she gave up and looked around the living room, which felt constricting with three people standing there.
With his attention following her gaze, Cesar Mehin quickly moved his stiff legs and pulled the sheet off of the sofa. With a rumbling sound, a cloud of dust rose into the air. Cesar guided Leticia, who had barely held in her sneeze by turning her head slightly away and holding her breath, to the sofa which was now mostly revealed.
“Please be seated, ma’am.”
“Thanks. I’m sorry to arrive so suddenly without any warning.”
“No problem at all. I understand you probably have business with Sir Kishir, so I will leave the two of you alone.”
Without even giving her a chance to say ‘no, that’s alright’, Cesar Mehin saluted her rigidly. The angle of his salute was so sharp that it could have cut someone. Letting out a laugh at his stiff posture, she nodded her head. Immediately, the large man somehow disappeared within an instant.
As the door closed roughly with a thud, silence settled across the apartment. Les Kishir, who had been watching his friend’s retreating figure, exclaimed in his growly voice.
“I’ve never seen Cesar move so fast. Don’t you think you scared him a bit too much?”
“I didn’t do anything. People usually get nervous when they meet me for the first time.”
“That’s pretty unfair to you.”
“Right? It’s not like I bite or anything.”
She had agreed with him that it was unfair, but the truth was that Leticia had never given much thought to that fact. She had grown up all her life looking down at the back of the heads of those kneeling at her feet. So much so that she almost felt rather awkward making eye contact with someone as they spoke.
She watched Les Kishir’s back as he made tea in the kitchen attached to the living room, and Leticia tried to recall her memories of that night. Had she seen the back of Les Kishir’s head at the time? Even at their first meeting, Les had never given her any awe-inspired looks of respect. He hadn’t been nervous, he hadn’t desired her, and he hadn’t regarded her as anything particularly special. He treated her as if she was just the same as any other girl on the street.
As her thoughts reached this point, Leticia frowned slightly.
She was a princess, the richest person in this country, and the most beautiful woman in the land. On top of that, she had been sending him a long line of very expensive gifts for the past six days, complete with reporters. Even without all that, she had spent a night with him.
“You’re strange.” She blurted out.
“I am?”
“Why aren’t you nervous when you’re with me?”
“Well, you’ve already taken a bite of me, haven’t you?” He smirked.
Leticia stunned momentarily at his bold answer, stared blankly at his profile as he removed the loudly whistling kettle from the stove. Closing her mouth which had been hanging open, she took a step towards him.
“So you remember it, at least.”
As soon as she spoke these words, she felt the pointlessness of everything she’d worried over until now. Feeling like she was going crazy and at the same time reliving her memories of that night that had suddenly been revived within her, she shot a look at the man who had dropped that conversational bomb so casually.
“What?”
“I thought you might have forgotten.”
“You’re underestimating yourself.” Les struggled to hide his smile.
“Well, I can’t really overestimate, can I? Considering that you never even wrote me a letter.”
“I’m certain that I was not your first, nor will I be your last.”
With a clink, a steaming teacup was placed in front of her. The tea, served in a chipped plain teacup, was an instant tea mixture sold in local markets. Leticia drank down the hot tea to counter her boiling insides and looked up at the man with a mindset of at least hearing out what the hell he was about to say. Sitting down across from her with a face that seemed unreasonably calm, Les Kishir finally spoke.
“If I were to cling to you desperately, I’m sure it would just annoy you.”
“Oh, sorry for not telling you; I like clingy men, actually. I love men who cling desperately to me and won’t let go. But you know who my favorite kind of man is?”
“Who?”
“A man who knows how to accept my gifts.”
The man only smiled softly in the face of her open contempt. “Well, thanks to my refusal, I was able to see your face again like this. Isn’t that right, Princess?”
She was speechless. She couldn’t believe it.
A player.
He is a player.
She had gotten caught up in a player’s game.
The tea was so hot she wasn’t sure if she was actually drinking any tea or just torturing her tongue, but she stubbornly kept sipping at it so that she could glare at him over her teacup.
She clearly remembered how Les Kishir had looked at her at first. He really hadn’t cared for her at all, even a little bit. And it wasn’t only that, every time he stole a glance at her face, his eyes seemed to sink, as if he was upset with her for something. To be fair, she had taken the initiative to apologize to him first, but could one’s feelings switch so quickly from indifference to attraction?
“It feels like you’re hiding something from me. You didn’t like me very much at first, right?”
“I wonder how many people could not like you, princess.”
“But then your attitude suddenly changed, and maybe you pretended to like me, but then…you spent the night with me, like it was so easy.”
He had said it wasn’t the case, but Leticia somehow had a feeling that if it hadn’t been for her, he would have drowned into the sea that night. There had been some sort of change in his thoughts in the short amount of time that it took for her to stop him, apologize, and continue a conversation with him.
Maybe Les Kishir had realized that there was something for him to gain from her, and his attitude shift was part of the plan. That was the conclusion she had reached by wringing her brain over everything through the last six days.
“There must be something that you want from me. That must be why you’re putting on this act, to get my attention, and that’s why I was trying to wait until you would give out and start clinging and crying for attention,” the princess boldly said.
His gaze was calm, and he didn’t confirm nor deny anything she was saying. Holding his gaze, Leticia inwardly swore at the clubhouse members who had triggered her meeting with him, swore at herself for participating in that stupid bet, and swore at her brother who had always been powerless except for this one time.
“…I liked it.” He said quietly, while rubbing the back of his neck. His cheeks reddening at the confession he just made.
“Sorry?” She was surprised by him for the second time.
“I… enjoyed that night. It was so good that all this time we’ve been spending in this meaningless tug of war, feels like a waste of time!”
The annoying thing was, she knew she was behaving exactly as Les Kishir wanted her to. Leticia Levanstein hadn’t been able to look at another man for a whole week because of this man who didn’t want to give up what she wanted so badly, like the pesky slot machine that had bothered her so long ago.
And the most annoying thing was that she found herself thinking that his behavior was not that bad. This man, who kept betraying her expectations every time, annoyed her but also intrigued her; so much that she felt that it didn’t matter if she was being played.
If that was the case, then what would be so bad about enjoying this man? Leticia smiled at the man, who looked surprised for once.
“You can use me, if you want.”
At the age of ten, she had been able to hire a hundred people to get what she wanted. At twenty-two, she could hire the whole country if she wanted.
Les Kishir wouldn’t be able to last long. She would soon be able to make him kneel. Until then, the tug of war with this man would be pretty fun.
“Just make me happy.”
It wasn’t like she had anything else she wanted, anyways.
“If there’s anything I can do to please you, princess, I’ll never turn it down.”
His golden soft eyes gently closed halfway as he smiled. It was still a pale and skinny face, but it had gained a bit more flesh than last time, so that he didn’t look as bad as he did a week ago. Gently lifting Leticia’s hand from the teacup that it was holding, Les Kishir kissed her fingertips gently, then spoke.
“Tell me, what can I do for you?”
Leticia grasped his hand and pulled it upwards as she stood. Looking at the man whose eyes had gone wide in confusion, she tilted her head towards the door.
“Let’s get out of here.”