Our short rendezvous that midnight might as well been a miracle as our days apart had continued for a while.

In the midst of that, Laurenz came to show his face after a long absence.

“Philia-chan, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Were you lonely?”

“Are you aware of the meaning of the word lonely? It was rather quite pleasant for me since there was no troublesome insect to pester me over the winter.”

I had already stopped forcing myself to smile in front of him a long time ago.

The steward has difficult dealing with him giving his position, so I am inevitably drawn out, but he also seems to be buried with work, so he usually withdraws after messing around for a bit.

Although, once in a while, he would come to the guest room with information I wanted. Unfortunately, today seems to be one of these days.

He too must be involved with the preparation of pesach night banquet giving his social position. He also hasn’t shown himself since Luke became too busy. Yet, now that he was showing himself after a long time, he seemed to be as lively and frivolous as ever.

Once we were seating in the guest room, the steward Dandro carried in tea himself. After making and serving tea for the two of us, he withdrew himself to the corner of the room.

Laurenz gave the steward a fleeting glance and then comfortably leaned himself on the back of the chair.

“Philia-chan, I want to talk with you alone today.”

“I believe it’s inappropriate for an unmarried woman to meet with a man other than her fiancé alone?”

“After all this…… Aren’t you curious about the woman I met in the botanical garden?”

Realizing he wanted to talk about Marika, I hesitated despite my reluctance. It was more so as I am still dreaming about the game. On the surface, Marika seemed to be doing just as well as before, but information from the perspective the of capture character Laurenz might offer something different.

Still, I didn’t have any choice but to turn a blind eye about her this time. After all, it was unclear what that man would ask in exchange for that information.

 “Why would I have any use for a woman who approaches both you and his highness at the same time?”

Laurenz chuckled when I sarcastically replied with a comment he gave me the other day.

“That may be so…… Then what about your precious Luke-kun?”

As he said it meaningfully, I couldn’t help but give him a calm look.

I was really vexed, even though I knew he was provoking me with his disgusting and obstinate gaze. Multiple things had already been set into motion when my precious fiancé was harassed by him.

“…… I understand”

“Philia-sama”

Dendro raised his voice in reproach, but I only glanced over my shoulder to him and signaled him to leave us alone.

When our eyes met, the eyebrows of the steward who looked around the age of her grandfather slumped down with a helplessness similar to that of an adult looking at a child.

“…… I will take my excuse here to bring a fresh brew of tea.”

“Please do so.”

Dendro politely bowed and exited the room, but he wouldn’t take long to return with a new pot.

In the meantime, Laurenz and I turned to face each other without saying anything while the door of the room was open as according to proper etiquette.

Dandro exchanged the slightly cold tea with a fresh cup of steamy tea and then left the room once again. This time the door was tightly closed behind him.

Laurenz looked at the firmly shut door with slight surprise but soon, he turned to look at me and smiled.

“Well, shall we do something fun together?”

“I don’t have the time to go along with your tasteless jokes. Please hurry and speak of what you want and go back.”

“About Luke-kun?…… He really is your weakness. You didn’t even hesitate to be alone with me merely from my mentioning his name.”

Laurenz slowly narrowed his eyes, not erasing the smile on his face. The teasing look vanished from his ashen purplish eyes and a lustrous glow swayed in them.

The color of his complex emotions was something he had been showing lately.

I felt suffocated by his sticky, entangling gaze. However, I could not retreat at that point and glared back at him.

“Cut it out, I’m already fed up from being around you. We are here only to talk about important matters.”

“Interesting…… Does the ever kind elder sister intend to hide the fragile and cute Luke-kun in the shadow of her skirt?”

This pervert, I couldn’t help but curse in my mind at his spiteful teasing tone.

I was disgusted by the thought of what that pervert had done to Luke. Simply from judging how much Luke was agitated, it must had been something too hard for him to say.

However, it was also in my favor to be alone with Laurenz. This time, I intended to properly put a lease on him to make sure he wouldn’t get closer to Luke again.

I puffed out my chest as much as I could and imitating my father’s stern tone.

“I will not allow you to meddle with Luke a second time. If you do anything strange to Luke, next time, I will make sure to crush you with the complete force of La Robe Duke, so be prepared.”

I, as the heir of the Duke house, with the authority of this family behind my back, know very well how to overpower someone.

Even though I declared that I would crush him using the might of my family, the man in front of me made a disappointed expression, as if someone had been rude to him.

“Well, I don’t have any complaint if the opponent is Philia-chan”

“Therefore, I am saying I will become your opponent.”

“So that means Philia-chan will do anything as long as I don’t bully Luke-kun? I might even request lewd things, you know?”

“Deceiving me with this nonsense is useless…… I know your goal.”

I glared coldly at the man who’s joking around knew no bounds and slammed my fan shut.

“I have seen through your wicked feelings towards Luke, you lecherous demon. I understand your feeling of being charmed by him, of someone so utterly adorable, and I will refrain from renouncing the feelings between gentlemen of the same sex…… “

Rather, I had the confidence I’d watch over with interest had it been someone else’s matters, though I keep my true feelings to myself and instead vented out all of my feelings on that I would never hand him over to anyone.

“Luke is my cherished person. I will never give him to you.”

He was a pillar for me to rely on ever since I have been born in that world. I would do anything to protect Luke.

It wasn’t only Luke but before I knew it, my dependance on him was not small by any measure.

Laurenz, in contrast to my ceaseless obstinate glare, made a dumbfounded, idiotic expression he had never shown before.

Suddenly, his body jerked and he covered his face with his hand.

I didn’t know if he was being bashful at having had his feelings seen through by me or if he was shocked by my might.

I heard a muffled sound like, “bufu,” as I was examining his expression.

“Ku…… Ahahahahahahahaha.”

I was stunned when that man erupted into laughter. Laurenz collapsed on the couch, bent over and laughed hysterically.

It wasn’t an exaggeration, he was literally laughing his head off while holding stomach.

“Aha, ahaha…… I have a wicked feeling towards Luke-kun…… Ahahaha.”

This guy, I wondered if he was crazy. I was gradually becoming angry as he continued to laugh and squirm around.

However, no matter how cold of a look I gave him, Laurenz didn’t pay me any heed as he couldn’t stop laughing. Eventually, he was laughing so hard that he was choking.

“Haha…… I laughed too hard, my throat… “

*Cough* *cough*

I wouldn’t mind leaving a man who laughed so hard to the point he was violently coughing alone, but I rather hope he stops trying to pick up that teacup with his trembling hand. I don’t want him to spill tea on our handwoven carpet.

I stood up while having such thoughts, something uncharacteristic for a young lady of Duke house, and passed the cup of tea to Laurenz.

“Please hold it firmly and don’t spill it. If you stain the carpet, I will make you compensate it.

“U, kuku…… Don’t make me laugh anymore than this.”

I had said it seriously and not as a joke, but Laurenz burst with laughter once again.

Maybe because his throat was still parched from laughing too much, he gulped down the still hot tea all at once. He then exhaled a sigh and abruptly grabbed my wrist.

“This might be the first time I have ever laughed so much in my life. You really are too surprising.”

“No, I didn’t have any intention of making you laugh. Rather than that, please let go of my hand.”

My rudely grabbed hand was unexpectedly hurting.

Laurenz was a man proficient in handling women, he should have been aware over to control his strength properly. I felt impending danger upon sensing pain on my wrist.

Perhaps, I made him so angry he even forgot the place and situation? The nature of this man who gets angry while laughing is just too shoddy.

Just as I was about to resolutely shake off his hand, I was instead pulled towards him.

“Ah…… “

What happened? A moment later, I was on the floor with my hands held above my head as if they were being sewn together.

When I looked up, I could feel Laurenz’s body getting bigger and bigger.

“…… I really didn’t expect a woman would be ableto make me laugh to the point my throat was parched. You’re the first person to ever make me feel this way.”

“Ce, sari-sa…… This is not a joke.”

“Fufu…… I wouldn’t let you make a joke either.”

Within his ashen purplish eyes that should have been blurred with tears from laughing too much, a viscous and a dubious presence begin to sway.

Laurenz’s knight-like rugged fingertips caressed my cheeks. It was as if I was being tickled by a feather.

…… I understood from my womanly instincts.

The man in front of me was feeling lustful. Perhaps, most likely, I don’t want to think that but…… towards me.

“*Sigh*, to be honest, I wanted to do it after placing all sorts of preparation in order but now……”

What kind of preparations? And what were you planning to do?

“As a reward for making me laugh, I will teach you something nice. Unlike Philia-chan’s delightful delusions, I don’t have a shred of amorous feelings for Luke.”

“T-that’s…… If it’s true, I’m relieved…… “

“I wonder if you can be relieved? I don’t hold any desire to be physically intimate with someone of the same sex. I only feel lust towards women.”

Then the corner of his lips, which seemed to be always smiling, lifted in a wicked manner.

“I crave for you to the point of death”

“h, hn…… “

The fingers caressing my cheeks slid to the nape of my neck and tickle the soft area of my skin.

 Even though I was wearing a dress with little to no exposure, I felt frightened when he touched the slight bit of visible skin.

I couldn’t help but shuddered when his fingertips so precisely fanned the sensuality.

“You….. Do you even know where thiー, ah… “

“This is your home, where your father and brother are absent…… Even if you scream now, there’s no one present with the social standing who can stop me. Do you want to be ravaged in front of your servants, Philia-chan?”

“Scum…… “

“Yeah, I am often told that.”

Laurenz’s sweet, droopy eyes lowered further, and he gave a shady smile.

It wasn’t the sweet smile of admiring a woman but his true nature. I couldn’t do anything except biting my lips and glare at him, someone who became even more delighted the more I cursed at him.

“If I embrace you here and he act recklessly, La Robe will not get away with just a simple apology. The shield protecting you is unexpectedly fragile, Philia-chan”

“St….. “

When I averted my face as his face got closer to me, he nibbled on my defenseless ear. His thick tongue crawls around the outer edge and the wet sound became even louder.

My body jerked from the chills I was feeling, and the tongue teasing became relentless.

“S, top…… “

“hn…… You really are sensitive, aren’t you?…… You’re so cute, I can’t endure it anymore.”

I could feel Laurenz’s rough breathing in my ear and it made me want to cry.

Why am I being played by this pervert like this? I had felt the unreliability of a woman’s body when I was pushed by Luke but that at least wasn’t painful like this.

Laurenze wasn’t even faze when I twisted around or strongly kicked my legs, instead my dress became disorganized, raising the risk I faced even more.

Even so, I didn’t stop resisting. I’ve had died once, so maybe I should have resigned myself to the fact that I was going to be bitten by a dog at least once too, but I couldn’t.

If something were to happen to me, it would be Luke who would be left with a lifelong scar on me, so I definitely couldn’t allow it.

“Let, me go…… Stop!”

“Stop it already, Philia-chan…… I will engrave myself inside you so that you will never be able to forget me.”

Just as I was beginning to think it was unavoidable and my cowardice began to take hold, suddenly, the smile disappeared from Laurenz face.

At the same time, the force pressing me down loosen and I immediately squirmed my way free from under him. I turned to look at Laurenz with caution as my shoulders heaved up and down from my rough breathing to which Laurenz just shrugged.

“…… I was joking, did you think I was serious?”

“…… Haaa?”

As I asked back reflexively, Laurenz stood up with a perturbed expression.

“You really didn’t think that I would use force on a Duke’s daughter, did you?”

“Y-O-U…… Lecherous scumbag!”

I was lost for words due to my raging fury and cursed him, but then I suddenly noticed something.

“Your face…… looks pale.”

Laurenz’s usually lustrous and healthy complex which I really loathed was completely pale, passing the limit of white and profusely sweating.

It didn’t matter to me at all, but Laurenz gave me a strained laugh at my concern from my remembering to show the smallest bit of etiquette as a human.

“I-Is that so? Ah, maybe it’s because of my lack of sleep from being so busy lately…… “

“If that’s so, why don’t you just stop fooling around here and go back immediately?”

“You’re right, yeah…… I’m going back.”

He is the type of man to sit down when you asked him to go home, but astonishingly, he easily left the room. I noticed his unsteady gait and was seriously a bit worried.

“…… What’s with that person?”

“Impossible.”

Laurenz was shivering so violently that it would not be wrong to stay. That was the first time in his twenty years of life that he was so shaken.

“Impossible, impossible…… “

He passed through the entrance hall, ignoring the servants of Duke’s house who saw him off with cold expressions, and as soon as he left the Duke’s mansion, he cover up his mouth with his hand.

“……Why didn’t it rise……?”

Just when he muttered out in a faint voice, a blue horse came galloping down the carriage road in the front yard of the Duke’s mansion with a blazing fast speed.

The horse which came charging in raised his front legs upright and stopped in front of Laurenz. A beautiful blue haired horse with a magnificent physique, and befitting of that horse, a beautiful young man was sitting on its back and coldly looking down at him. The young man seemed to have emaciated recently, but that didn’t mar his appearance a bit. In fact, it made him look even more fierce.

Maybe because he was in a rush, both his hair and disheveled clothes were covered with dust, but that made his emerald green eyes, which were filled with intense fury, sharp.

“Yo, Luke-kun. What happened for you to be in such a hurry?”

Laurenz reflexively put on his usual demenor in front of his love rival, but Luke wasn’t fooled by this.

“This look…… You don’t seem to have come to terms with it yet.”

Laurenz’s cheeks twitched when Luke pointed out the obvious without saying anything clearly.

“W-What are talking about…… “

“I have the antidote for a certain drug, one with a detoxifying effect. I instructed my steward to mix it in tea whenever a man with insolent feelings for my fiancée comes to the house.”

“…… You, do you know how dangerous this sort of act is?”

“Whatever. It’s not like I mixed the poison or what, are you going to scream out that you became impotence because of me?”

No longer mincing his words, Luke had no blind spots. He took out a vial from his chest pocket and faintly smiled.

“If you swear to never lay your hands on Phii, I can give this vial to you…… “

It merely took a few seconds for that man’s pride and will power to give in against his instinct of crisis.

It was right after I barely managed to arrange my dress that Luke rushed in the room without even fixing his disheveled hair.

“Elder sister…… “

He knelt down in front of me who was sitting on a chair like he was going to collapse, and clasped my hand so gently as if he was dealing with something fragile.

“Are you alright? Nothing has been done to you, right?”

“Dandro seems to have informed you. I’m sorry to have worried you, but it’s all right now.”

The servants had long been told that if they are unable to stop a situation where I will be alone with someone they can’t deal with, then they have to inform my father or Luke.

Personally, I had judged that I was going to be safe from Laurenz in that sense, but I would have to thank the butler for his concern.

I was pushed down and looked down by him with his nasty joke but ultimately, I was safe. My favorability of Laurenz has dropped from zero to minus, but that’s no problem at all.

“…… Elder sister, you were alone with that guy, weren’t you?”

Luke’s voice, who muttered that while staring at my hand, seemed somewhat hurt.

That hurt more than being angry, so I hurriedly grabbed his hand back.

“I didn’t mean to ignore your concern. Ultimately, it proved unwise and I was a bit scared but the cause was my misunderstanding to begin with…… “

“Misunderstanding?”

“Yeah, well, i’s really embarrassing to say but…… I thought that Cesari-sama was fond of Luke.”

When I said this, Luke looked up at me and blinked his eyes in amazement.

Maybe it’s because I was looking at him from above, but his expression overlapped with his childhood countenance, and my heart fluttered.

It was adorable but it felt infuriating for some reason.

“Geez, it’s because Luke is too cute. It’s because you’re so pretty and lovely that I thought it was only natural for even men to be charmed by you.”

“Calm down Phii, that doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“… What I mean to say is I thought he was holding wicked feeling for you, bothering me because of jealousy and that I was safe since he didn’t see me as a woman. And so, I had to protect you but…… “

Luke stopped for a while to comprehend the meaning of what I just said, and then suddenly collapsed down on my lap.

“…… Impossible”

“N-Now that I think about it, it was a bit strange but that was all I could think at that time.”

In the end, Laurenz was nothing more than a pervert who likes to be persistently bothered and abused.

There’s no way I could have known that.

“How could you think in such a crooked way?”

I was told my thinking is crooked by Luke. However, that’s something I don’t want to hear only from him.

Luke laid his face on my lap for a while as if exhausted for a while but,

“But…”

Saying that, he looked up.

“You were trying to protect me, right?”

I was embarrassed by the coquettish smile full of delight he gave me. Although I was full of, “I must protect him,” but because it was a misunderstanding in the end, I couldn’t say that.

“In the end, I just ended up making you worry.”

“But, I’m really glad you feel that way…… Beside, I also got to know that you think I’m pretty.”

I was surprised by Luke’s bashful remark.

“Have I not said this before?”

“I have been told I’m cute, but this is the first time you said pretty. Although I have never liked my appearance as it causes me a lot of trouble, if you say this, I feel like I don’t mind one bit now.”

Looking at Luke’s shy smile, I realized I didn’t pay much attention to my words. Although Luke often showered me with praise, sometimes over the top, it seems like I have never praised this beautiful man as pretty.

“…… Luke is pretty, pretty and beautiful.”

I smiled softly while caressing his disheveled silver hair.

“I also very much like your platinum hair and emerald green eyes. Even if you can’t come to like them yourself, I like those parts very much.”

“Elder sister.”

A blush spread across Luke’s face, making him too enchanting. The hands embracing me were fidgeting.

As I felt sorry for him during the ban, I clasped his cheeks between my hands and brought my face closer to his. Our lips overlapped with a cute chuu~ sound. His slightly thin lips were surprisingly soft, and I liked kissing him.

It wasn’t only his kisses, I like all sorts of things about him.

“I like you, Luke…… “

“…… I also like you elder sister. I love you”

Afterwards Luke averted his eyes with a somewhat bitter face.

“…… I wonder if I should take that drug.”

I didn’t understand what he meant, but I left him alone as something seemed to be seriously bothering him.

The next day.

“…… Luke… Kun?”

Luke stopped and turned around to look when someone called out to him with an exceedingly gloomy voice.

“What’s the matter, Cesari?”

“I want to talk…… about the antidote.”

Laurenz leaned closer and whispered in a low voice as if he was afraid of others hearing him.

Luke, perceiving something from seeing his complexion which had grown even worse compared to before, tilted his head innocently.

“Don’t tell me you swallow that antidote as it was? To not even check the ingredients of the antidote received from me…… You must have been quite impatient, weren’t you?”

Laurenz felt a sense of déjà vu when he looked into Luke’s vividly shining green eyes. That look was similar to the time when Alphonso spread false rumors about Philia.

“You mean that antidote was…… “

“Yes, it wasn’t an antidote but a more concentrate version of the drug you took.”

“hhh…… You’re a devil.”

At Laurenz’s too precise criticism, Luke vibrantly smiled.

“You took the antidote without any guarantee and at just my verbal promise. You have become a nice person, it seems.”

In regards to that, Laurenz could do nothing as his mouth twitched.

Whether it was because of his bad complexion or not being able to sleep well, there were dark circles under his eyes. The vestiges a carefree and womanizing frivolous guy was nowhere in sight.

“If you can get a proper guarantor and write a pledge…… I don’t mind giving you a proper remedy.”

“Can I take your words seriously……?”

“Then please, you can do your best on your own. The medicine that can detoxify La Robe’s special medicine, “The hammer of Goddess”, I think you can find it somewhere in this world at least, right?”

Afterwards, the womanizer Laurenz • Da • Cesari was seen avoiding the women for some reason, and became the topic in high society.

As for when he would return to his former self…… Only the secretly smiling devil knew.

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