Meanwhile, on the open-air lawn outside the Royal Ballroom.
The night wind had completely shed the heat of the day, sweeping in from the maple forest at the end of the path, laden with a chilling dampness.
Rustle—
The bushes were roughly burst through, making a dull sound of crushing leaves.
Klaus was currently changing his clothes, cursing under his breath.
“For fuck's sake!”
The hem of the high-waisted, form-fitting dress, which was originally aqua-blue, was now stained with mud and grass juice. The long tear under his armpit fluttered miserably in the cold wind.
He panted heavily, the intense shame and the shuddering sensation from when the duke's daughter's fingertips brushed his cheek still seemingly lingering.
She... no, he shook violently.
“What on earth... did I just do...”
Klaus raised his face, which was so red it practically steamed, and angrily ripped off his wig.
He recalled Loris's noble, arrogant, dark-blue figure in the changing room corridor, radiating a rich aroma of wine.
He recalled how she had kicked his ankle hard with her leather-clad shoe to protect him, ordering him to pretend to be a proper lady.
And he recalled even more how, after the pursuers retreated, she had tiptoed slightly and used her slender fingers to gently tuck the loose hair of his wig behind his ear.
“Don't do such stupid things again, Student Klaus.”
The young lady's smile—no longer fake, but carrying a hint of helplessness and teasing—felt to Klaus's adolescent mind like the descent of the purest holy light from the Sacred Church.
“Loris... She really... She really has a crush on me. Fuck, does this mean I have to duel President Leonhart? No, there's absolutely no way I can do that...”
Klaus buried his face in his thick arms, letting out an incredibly embarrassed low groan from his throat.
“Wait... what's more important is that bastard Alden! I haven't seen him or the others all night!”
It had been a thrilling, heart-pounding night.
Yet, the pink bubbles of romance that fate had granted this twelve or thirteen-year-old boy tonight did not even last a full hour.
“My, Miss Horn, look over there. Isn't that our 'crossdressing unsung hero' who wreaked havoc backstage tonight, Young Master Cross?”
A sharp, biting, and highly manipulative laugh, thick with green-tea energy, drifted abruptly from the shadow of the cypress trees behind Klaus.
“!”
Klaus's body instantly stiffened. Like falling into an ice cellar, he sprang up from the bench.
He frantically tried to kick away the wig and dress to hide these ladies' items, then glared fiercely and resentfully toward the source of the voice.
Under the dappled moonlight, two girls in dark-blue uniforms walked leisurely down the lawn path, their faces filled with mockery.
Leading them was Margaret Horn.
Beside her, the petite Vera Klein was leisurely waving her feather fan, a cat-and-mouse-like playfulness glinting in her small, calculating eyes.
“Margaret... Vera...”
Klaus couldn't understand how they had found him. Could they have recognized him at first glance earlier? No, that should have been impossible...
Something was wrong here! Many things were wrong.
But...
Klaus growled in a rough voice, stubbornly refusing to back down as his fists cracked. “What do you mean by this? Are you accusing me of being a pervert?!”
He would rather die than admit it, nor did he think of himself as one. After all, he had a righteous reason for sneaking in in women's clothing tonight.
But the two wicked girls continued to mock his crossdressing appearance.
“Oh, what a temper. As expected of Young Master Klaus,” Vera Klein giggled, covering her mouth with her feather fan.
She took a step forward, looking down at Klaus who had slumped back onto the ground, and said in a breezy tone, “But Student Cross, you don't actually think you just performed some heroic deed inside to protect Miss Loris, do you?”
Klaus's brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“I don't know what you're talking about!”
“The wig isn't hidden very well, you know.”
Klaus: “...”
This was a setup!
He had no choice but to reveal a bit of his reason—his righteous reason.
“My friend Alden found core intelligence! Two wicked women wanted to ruin Miss Loris's dress! I was only protecting her, getting ahead of the plot and—”
“Hahaha... Core intelligence? The rose locker?!”
Margaret burst into hysterical laughter, as if she had just heard the funniest joke of her life. She laughed so hard she bent forward and backward, tears nearly springing from her eyes.
Pointing her finger at Klaus's large face, which was filled with bewilderment and anxiety, she pierced through his illusion with the bloody truth word by word: “Klaus, you utter, complete blockhead! Don't you know? That exclusive locker with the 【rose pattern】... was actually Loris's!”
“?” Klaus froze.
“Impossible! The Aldheim family crest isn't—!” He cut himself off.
A sudden possibility struck him.
The family crests had been swapped.
Now that he thought about it, the quality of that dress inside was indeed exceptionally fine.
Could it be...
“Hehehe.” Vera's laughter confirmed the truth.
Boom.
Like a sudden bolt from the blue, a thunderclap exploded in Klaus's mind without warning.
His pupils shrank to pinpricks in an instant, and his fingers gripping the platinum-blonde wig completely locked up.
“Y-You didn't swap them, did you?” Klaus's voice began to tremble uncontrollably.
“Why don't you guess?” Vera swayed her feather fan, the smile on her face dripping with manipulative sweetness.
Her voice sounded like a demon's whisper: “The duke's family locker was labeled with the rose crest, and then you were told it was the 'culprit's locker.' Once we swap them back, there won't be a single flaw. Only physical evidence will remain.”
“And what is that physical evidence? It's you, Klaus.”
“Tonight, like a mad dog, you rushed into the girls' changing room wearing a disgusting, tight dress, and with a whole bottle of permanent, specialized black ink and your own rough hands—”
“You ruined the noble Miss Loris's gown.”
Margaret's laughter rang out in the cold night wind: “And backstage tonight, she even used all her privileges and the Duke's family reputation to protect you—her 'platinum-blonde female friend'—right in front of us and the Swordsmanship Department.”
“She has no idea that you are the 'perverted creep' who snuck in, the culprit who dirtied her dress tonight!!”
The wicked girls' childish yet malicious, joyful mockery, accompanied by the rustling of their skirts brushing against the grass, gradually faded into the shadows of the path.
Having finished their mockery, they departed.
They could not wait to return to the main ballroom to witness the magnificent spectacle of the proud duke's daughter losing her composure due to having no gown to change into.
As for Klaus, who was left behind...
At this moment, he was entirely stripped of his voice and his ability to think.
Pant... pant...
The freezing night wind blew past, stripping away the last trace of youthful warmth from his body.
Klaus knelt motionlessly on the cold, muddy ground, his face instantly turning paler than a corpse's.
His hands unconsciously loosened, and the platinum-blonde wig from the Drama Club dropped silently onto the lawn, stained with dark soil.
He was freezing all over.
It was a bottomless chill seeping out from the deepest depths of his soul.
“Alden...”
He was furious.
He had actually been used by his best friend!
In the second after hearing the truth, this twelve or thirteen-year-old boy did not consider the broader consequences. In the pure world of a youth who had not yet formally stepped into the hunting grounds of high society, grand political stakes and family interests were still far too distant and illusory.
Right now, what filled his entire heart and dragged him completely into a living hell was an absolutely pure, extreme rage!
And—self-blame and guilt.
Suddenly, his gaze darkened.
“It was me... I did it...”
These very hands, just a few minutes ago, filled with pride and so-called “justice,” had poured an entire bottle of ink onto the dress of the girl who had protected him.
【Don't do such stupid things again, Student Klaus.】
The young lady's breath, carrying the aroma of red wine, and her gentle warning turned into a wind in his ears at this moment, cutting into his ears and piercing his heart with pain.
She hadn't looked down on his disgusting female disguise.
To protect him, an upstart young master with no solid foundation, she had not hesitated to lower herself before everyone in the Swordsmanship Department, even taking on the risk of “protecting a pervert.”
And he... he, this self-righteous fool, had taken a bottle of filthy black ink and personally pushed the “saint” who had reached out to him in the dark into the abyss of ridicule by the entire nobility.
“I can't... face anyone anymore...”
He blamed himself in agony.
Then, utterly lost, he stood up, clenching his fists.
He had to... he had to make amends!
...
—Inside the ballroom. Changing area—
Ah, I can finally change out of these dirty clothes that smell slightly of wine.
My mood was actually quite light.
Although tonight's plot had been chaotic, everything had turned out fine without any real danger. I just needed to get through Liliana's side of things later.
But before that.
I walked gracefully toward the row of luxurious wooden lockers deep inside the room.
According to my instructions, Shirune should have already categorized and hung my dozen or so exquisite backup dresses in the main closet at the center of this exclusive changing room. There was more than just one wardrobe.
I pulled open the wardrobe door with great familiarity, even looking forward to it a little.
And then, as expected.
That backup dress looked as though it had just been dragged out of a cursed oil pit, horribly drenched in a thick, permanent black ink! The ink dripped down the expensive fabric. Not only that, but the laces on the back and the lace trim on the sides had been violently twisted and torn into rags by sheer brute force, leaving not even a hand-sized piece of fabric intact.
Whew~ I whistled in my mind.
Excellent. Margaret and Vera, you two wicked girls did a beautiful job.
Now I finally have some evidence. This is it.
Without letting Misha see the disaster, I calmly shut the door and opened another wardrobe. There were plenty of other luxurious dresses here. To me, this was completely harmless—merely the cheese used to bait the trap for the mice.
I simply clapped my hands.
Shirune, who was lurking in the shadows, appeared.
She had been here all along, though her expression was slightly awkward.
She came forward to help me change while we talked. I had left her here specifically to catch those two wicked girls red-handed.
Who would have thought—
“Did you see them?”
“I did see someone... however, the person who came was very strange. It wasn't either of them, but a male.”
Me: “?”
“Wait.” I frowned. “Could it be my classmate?”
“Yes, if I remember correctly, his name is Klaus,” Shirune replied calmly.
I was momentarily speechless.
Excuse me... bro?
Returning good with evil? Originally, this evidence could have caught Margaret and her cohort directly. But now, it's become evidence accusing Klaus. The trap failed completely.
How did this happen? There must be a catch.
Shirune explained calmly, “They swapped the family crest on your wardrobe... and Alden's name was mentioned.”
Alden? Klaus?
Swapping family crests?
Hold on.
Very well. In an instant, my mind conjured up a massive drama.
It was likely that Alden—that bastard who let his lower half do the thinking—had told Klaus something, leading him to target the owner of the wardrobe with the rose pattern.
Klaus probably had no idea that my clothes were inside.
Otherwise, when he saw me earlier, he wouldn't have said he did it for me and asked for help. He would have looked guilty and insincere, and he was definitely no good at lying.
After all, just a moment ago outside, the crossdressing Klaus had tearfully and solemnly taken credit, declaring that he had successfully snuck into the changing room and utterly destroyed the dress of that wicked Rose family woman who meant harm...
Dammit.
The truth was out.
I figured this was ninety-nine percent what happened.
Although there was no substantial harm to me, it was a bit frustrating that I couldn't catch Margaret and the other girl.
Ah, the dress is changed.
“My lady, you look beautiful,” Shirune said, releasing her hold.
“Miss Loris!” Misha also came over. She had originally wanted to keep cutting, but I had brought her over to the Duke's changing area.
Looking at myself in the mirror wearing the purple gown, I could only sigh softly. Whatever, this was just a side quest, and I shouldn't take it to heart. Ultimately, was I being a bit too petty by fussing over them?
It's just a childish game, after all.
At any rate, now that I was dressed, it was time to return to the main battlefield.
Liliana, wait for me!
...
Rate on N.U.
