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Chapter 2
“Milady, I brought a dress for the Foundation Festival. You said Lord Rayden would wear a black outfit, so how about this one? I tried to match the colors to some extent without making it look too dark.”
The biggest event of the Britelbin Empire was the Foundation Festival. It was held over three days and was the only festival that everyone, regardless of class, could enjoy.
“Because the shoulder line is low, it might feel a little too revealing, can you add a little bit of thin lace over it?”
Elysia and Conrad were affianced, so it was customary to custom-make clothes to match, but Conrad said he did not want to be bound by tradition, so Elysia had no choice but to prepare hers separately. Even so, the quality won’t be as good as matching it with the same fabric from the same boutique.
“Yes. I will prepare it like that.”
The mansion visitors left, and Elysia made her preparations and set out on the road. No matter how well she knew the streets of the capital, it was right to avoid dangerous places. At that time, the road would be crowded, so she had looked around in advance. Knowing Conrad’s personality, he would be obviously excited and would want to look everywhere, so she had no choice but to be careful.
“Get out the way! Look out!”
It was just at that moment when a young merchant overburdened with his luggage leaned over and was about to fall in front of her. Her escorts had no time to react in such a situation, so Elysia closed her eyes tightly to prepare for the incoming pain.
“Oh…?”
She opened her eyes slightly, not feeling the pain that she anticipated.
“You didn’t get hurt, did you?”
In a split second, a man took Elysia in his arms and asked while looking at her. A strong neck and jawline were exposed under the robe’s hood.
“Thank- you.”
Elysia blinked her eyes at the scene that happened before she could even notice it, and barely said thanks. Food was crumbled and smashed at her feet. If this guy hadn’t helped, she would have been covered in debris.
“Ah, I think I should say it properly again. I was in a bad position. Thank you so much for your help.”
As Elysia hurriedly stood up straight and thanked him politely, the corner of the man’s mouth curled up under the hood. Somehow, it was a familiar mouth.
“Still the same. You haven’t changed at all.”
A face flashed in her mind momentarily, but Elysia erased it. She looked at the firm forearms still supporting her arm and gave him a puzzled expression.
“Excuse me, but do you know me? Because I don’t recall.”
Only then did he take off the hood covering his face and chuckle.
“Don’t you remember me, model student?”
The sun shone brightly behind his smile. A broad smile that looked almost mischievous. The raised corners of his mouth contrasted with black hair and sun-tanned face, which were rare in the Empire, and even the folded, slightly droopy eyes. The way he talked, his voice. All that…
“It’s me. Your first love.”
It was him.
While attending the academy as a student, Elysia was a person who could not be touched lightly. The fact that she was the fianceé of a strong family was one of the reasons, but her sharp, decisive personality played a big part.
“Young Lady Hellen, it may be sudden, but I have watched you for a long time and dared to long for you. I know you have a fiancé, but…”
Elysia’s answer was always the same as she picked up the flowers that were held in front of her eyes.
“Put it away.” Or “Throw it out.”
Contrary to the lovely name of Elysia, her attitude was no different from that of an iron wall. Male students who approached her just because of appearance started to avoid her when rumors around said “To talk to Elysia, you have to be at least the Duke’s heir.” There were various reasons why she rejected them, but they narrowly judged that Elysia only wanted to associate with people who fit her family and status.
“How did you arrive at the answer to question 3?”
He was the only man she spoke to first in the academy. The so-called lunatic Prince, the abandoned Prince Havern Norton. With his black hair and amber eyes, rare in the Empire, he also radiated a strangely dangerous atmosphere, so he had a lot of hidden followers in the academy. However, some frowned at his unruly behavior, never following the rules. Although he was the child of a concubine, no one could stop him because he was the Emperor’s son.
The only reason Elysia was curious about such a lunatic was because he solved a problem that she couldn’t get right, more accurately, a problem no student could solve.
“If I explain, will you understand?”
His first words to Elysia’s question were another question.
“Yes, at least… Aren’t you going to tell me?”
“Even if I explain it, if you were someone who would understand, you would have answered correctly on the test. Don’t you think so, model student?”
His arrogant attitude hurt her pride. Elysia had thought that she would never fall behind in terms of her head and that she wouldn’t lose anywhere in terms of studies, but being treated like this by such a lunatic? She was annoyed.
“Yes, I got it.”
Dig a hole and die. It was difficult to solve because it was a problem that all the professors, creating it to prevent students from getting it right in the first place, created by putting their heads together. But in Elysia’s head, only the words of that lunatic prince, who mocked her, lingered.
“I solved it. Even if you didn’t tell me, I figured it out myself, so.”
Elysia stayed up all night for two nights and finally determined the answer. When she brought the solution with a triumphant attitude, the prince pulled out his answer sheet from under his desk and smiled.
“Are you this passionate about everything? I just got this right but it won’t change that you are number one.”
“As long as someone knows what I don’t know, I’m not really the number one.”
Seeing Elysia matching his answer sheet with the solution she brought, Havern smiled thinly. Her reply aroused his interest. She was a human being of a kind he had never seen before in his life, so he felt curious almost instinctively.
“Admirable, very.”
It was the first compliment she liked completely. Elysia didn’t want to show it, but she couldn’t control the corners of her mouth rising involuntarily.
“I solved it well. I learned it thanks to you, Your Highness the Prince.”
As she was about to turn around, Havern pulled out another piece of paper and asked, as if seducing her.
“Have you ever wondered how I solved it in the first place? I’ve got some things tabulated.”
The papers gently placed on the desk danced provocatively. Elysia bit her lip as she looked at them.
“If you don’t need it, I should throw them away.”
Elysia hurriedly approached him and grabbed his hand, which he had moved as if to tear the papers apart.
“You want them?”
She was embarrassed because her body moved before she knew it, but Elysia immediately regained her composure and asked.
“You seem to have worked very hard on it, are you okay with that? Just discarding it…”
Reading the nervousness contained in that question, Havern just smiled and began to tear off the back pages of his note one by one.
“Give to me. Please.”
Even with a fast glance, she could tell it was better organized than any other thesis. She just couldn’t believe its owner and creator was this jerk.
“Okay.”
Elysia looked at him quietly as he unexpectedly handed it over smoothly. ‘What’s up with this notebook that has all the important parts marked? He was someone who never attended class properly and was always sleeping in class in the first place.’ She looked at him in disbelief.
“What’s your real game here? Are you trying to make fun of me?”
At Elysia’s question, he only tilted his head slightly. There was a mischievous light in his eyes, and a smile full of interest hung from the corners of his mouth.
“Is it like that? ‘I don’t study, but I’m usually good at it.’ Are you going to say something like that?”
“That’s right. It’s a secret. I live so hard.”
He absurdly left her with a question unanswered, so Elysia had no choice but to care for that lunatic.
However, he only appeared for exams to avoid flunking after that, and then he disappeared from daily life without even giving her time to pay attention to him.
By the time Elysia graduated, all she had heard of him were rumors about how the third prince was sent to the border area.
“Prince Havern?”
When Elysia recalled old memories and called his name, he shrugged and righted her.
“You really haven’t changed at all. Has it been four years or five years? But that’s good. You’ll always be like that.”
She had heard that after graduation, he wandered around the battlefield, but he had become so big that she barely recognized him. Indeed, now that he’s twenty-seven, he is a completely mature man. In the past, he couldn’t completely erase his teen appearance, but now he was exuding a strong male aura.
“Exactly five years. The last time I saw you was before graduation.”
Although she graduated in the same year as Havern, there was a considerable age gap between them. It was an open secret that he was sent to the battlefield before entering the academy because he was an eyesore, so he enrolled late. He might have been tired of the battlefield, but it was an unexpected choice to voluntarily return there after graduating.
“By the way, you do know that your pronouncement needs to be corrected as well. Because I have never held in my heart His Highness, Prince Havern.”
Contrary to his first words about being her ‘first love,’ Elysia had to correct him since there had never existed any feelings between them.
“I know you were shaken.”
“Me? No way. When?”
When Havern made a strange expression without saying a word, Elysia frowned as she recalled ‘that day.’
“Tell me not to go.”
“What?”
On a day not long before graduation, he approached Elysia with a face that looked as if he were about to cry and said that. However, she wasn’t the type to speak carelessly.
“Choose me, and tell me not to go.”
Although she was stunned by such a distressed appearance as she was seeing for the first time, even in that moment, Elysia remained possessed of reason.
“If you’re asking me to break my engagement, I can’t do that. There’s no benefit for me to choose His Highness. And especially His Highness now.”
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