IDIBC Chapter 44

The Silver-Haired Woman

“I’ll go meet the Grand Priest for a moment, so wait for me in the Crown Prince’s garden. The weather is nice, so you could take a walk.”

Though he spoke gently, his tone somehow felt anxious. I nodded reflexively and grabbed Ricardo’s arm. I felt him flinch for a moment.

“Alright.”

“Don’t go far, and stay where Freddy can see you.”

“Yes, don’t worry and go ahead. I’ll stay there quietly.”

“……Alright.”

Ricardo looked at me for a moment before leaving my side, and Freddy personally escorted me to the Crown Prince’s palace as Ricardo had ordered.

The Crown Prince’s palace garden was larger in scale than the other gardens I had passed by.

Seeing trees tall enough to exceed the height of an average adult man standing so densely that sunlight couldn’t penetrate, I realized this was the maze within the garden that I had only heard about.

Thinking that if someone directionally challenged like me went in there, I wouldn’t be able to get out even after sunset, my steps naturally turned toward the opposite side of the maze.

Freddy stood in a location where he could see the entire garden at a glance. Even when I told him to sit and wait, he stubbornly insisted on standing. I left Freddy behind and walked for a while. Since summer was fast approaching, it was a bit hot for walking.

It was partly due to the weather, but the walk wasn’t easy because the face of the Emperor I had just met kept haunting me. He gave off an ambiguous feeling that made it impossible to distinguish whether he was evil or good. The Emperor’s golden hair formed a perfect contrast with Ricardo’s black hair.

If he was the sun in the sky, Ricardo felt like a god of darkness ruling the underworld.

‘Is it alright for me to stay in this imperial garden owned by someone who calls me a phoenix?’

A sigh escaped me naturally.

Since coming to the Empire, there hadn’t been a single peaceful day. How could the system of such a great nation be so vulgar and crude?

I missed even the dry, sandy winds of Resotia that felt so tiresome.

****

Since some time ago—precisely since the day after returning from Count Enehaz’s soiree—Walter had developed a habit of staring at his empty palm.

Inside the rattling carriage, he repeatedly clenched and opened his hand, mulling over the memories of that day. Then a chuckle escaped him. There was no way he had any memories to mull over.

When the carriage stopped precisely at the Crown Prince’s palace garden, Walter didn’t get out immediately but buried himself in the back seat. He thought that within a week at most, he would be able to find that woman.

However, among the women who disappeared around the same time as him that day, there was no woman matching the description the servant had given.

Of course, there wasn’t none at all. The problem was simply that the woman was Ricardo’s prospective fiancée.

Ricardo had presented that woman to people late that day, they said.

He even considered the possibility that she might be the woman who had come to his bedroom, but it made no sense at all. Even if she had accidentally touched his body and been swept up in his power, why would a woman who was to become part of the Rochester family be holding a yellow rose?

The longer his doubts continued, the more his unpleasant feelings accumulated.

“You must get out.”

Only after the chamberlain watching him with an anxious face from the front urged Walter did he rise from the carriage.

“After meeting His Highness the Crown Prince and the princes, you must have an audience with His Majesty the Emperor.”

Recently, the Emperor had been persistently sending Walter messages to come to the imperial palace. He had postponed using the excuse of personal reasons, but it was a situation he could no longer ignore.

The Chaplins had been a family that maintained neutrality from any political pressure for generations.

Until now, since the will of God and Schneider had been the same, there had been no reason for Chaplin to be caught up in unwanted currents.

However, the Crown Prince had fallen ill, and the Emperor wanted Chaplin to lend his power to the Second Prince.

For that reason, the Emperor kept pressuring him to choose one of his daughters for an engagement.

One of his daughters, he said.

Unless the Emperor had finally gone mad, he wouldn’t have thrown his daughters before him like choosing a cow for a bull.

From the princess who had just turned eight years old to the princess who had already married and left the palace, the Emperor placed no restrictions whatsoever on which daughters he could choose.

Even if one goes mad, one should do so gracefully.

Though he understood the Emperor’s urgency, such pressure didn’t work on Walter.

Moreover, the Emperor’s daughters were uniformly splendid and haughty, reminding him of the Emperor every time he saw them. Being close to them was far more difficult than enduring the company of other women.

“To marry one of those women—I’d rather go somewhere and hang myself.”

He muttered politely even to himself, leaving the chamberlain who tried to follow him in the carriage and walking alone through the Crown Prince’s palace garden.

And there he saw a woman.

In a garden resembling a forest where trees much taller than elsewhere repeatedly emphasized the imperial family’s long history.

Somewhat tall, thin body, her face couldn’t be confirmed, but she was a silver-haired woman with a distinct color. It was a mysterious color he had never seen in this imperial family.

The imperial family had traditionally been golden-haired or red-haired.

Walter approached her without realizing it. As he got closer, he could hear the woman muttering to herself.

“Even so, calling someone a phoenix right to their face is a bit too much, isn’t it?”

The moment he thought her voice was clear and somewhat low, not grating on his ears, the woman suddenly turned around. She kicked the ground with her foot, raised her head, and immediately locked eyes with him.

“Huh?”

Since he was close, her surprised voice pierced his ears. For a moment, Walter felt embarrassed that he had approached the woman too closely.

Women were always beings that only brought him displeasure. She would probably recognize him and charge at him like an angry bull, snorting.

“Oh!”

But somehow, the woman before his eyes stepped back hesitantly. Walter’s eyes narrowed.

‘What?’

The moment he thought that, Walter realized. Those were definitely the eyes of someone who knew him.

Silver hair and blue eyes. Movements as if running away despite knowing him. Moreover, she recognized him, but he didn’t remember her at all.

Naturally, when eyes meet, nobles always show courtesy to each other. But she averted her gaze as if she hadn’t seen him. Such a series of actions planted suspicion in him.

He showed the gentlest smile he could muster to put her at ease.

“Good day, I am Walter Shaw Chaplin. And you are, my lady…?”

He introduced himself first to learn her name and trailed off, but no answer came from her.

“Perhaps… you don’t recognize me?”

Huk, a groan escaped that didn’t match the woman’s refined appearance. At that, he was certain. This woman was the protagonist of the strange incident that occurred that night.

“We’ve definitely met before… Have you lost your memory?”

The woman was trying to maintain composure. Struggling visibly enough to see. Walter felt a sense of crisis that giving her time would work against him.

“You came to my bedroom, didn’t you?”

So he made a rude remark he would never normally make. The woman straightened her posture, trying not to show her agitation. But she didn’t seem capable of hiding the wavering look in her eyes when their gazes met.

“I-I have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re being rude.”

Walter didn’t back down. Rather, he took another step forward and showed a grin. It was a smile so much like him that Julian would have fallen over in shock if he’d seen it.

“And you were holding a yellow rose.”

The woman covered her mouth and this time, without a doubt, clearly stepped back.

‘Ha, this woman is definitely the one.’

A proper smile appeared on Walter’s face.

When the woman’s evident bewilderment was transmitted to him, Walter was certain he had won this game. It was definitely a game no one had ever initiated, but isn’t victory always a pleasant thing?

He approached the woman, enduring the unpleasant feeling like immersing his body in a container full of worms.

The more Walter approached, the more the woman retreated. Every moment was fresh. The words she muttered quietly under her breath definitely sounded like profanity, but he dismissed it as having heard wrong.

There was no way such vulgar curses that would only come out when men played pallium could come from the mouth of such an innocent-looking woman.

But suddenly, a realization struck him out of nowhere.

It’s not unpleasant.

This moment of approaching this woman. The scent coming from this woman.

Far from being unpleasant, he actually felt a faint irritation at the woman’s movements as she kept trying to avoid him.

“When you barged into my bedroom, and now you’re running away like this?”

Even as he spoke, Walter found it hard to believe these words were truly coming from his own mouth.

However, something strange happened. An unbelievable reaction came from the woman who had looked like she would keep running away.

The bewilderment that had been on the woman’s face until now vanished in an instant. Rather, it was Walter who was flustered by that gap. She firmly stopped her hesitant steps and threw a challenging look at him.