“Dresses are armor, tongues are swords, and dances are battles! If you enter the social world in such a lax state of mind, a pack of hyenas will tear you apart, and in an instant, not even your bones will remain!”
Kiek’s exaggerated words made Sahara chuckle.
“That sounds scary. To at least gather my bones, I should wear some armor and go.”
“Hey, are you falling for it?”
He seems like a con artist after all. Buzz was displeased, but Sahara found Kiek, who spoke like a rabbit, quite cute. The social world as a battlefield? He must have never seen a real war.
“Really? Really, really, you’ll wear my clothes?”
Kiek jumped up and down with emotion. As Buzz advised, she needed a dress to attend some parties and Lady Holt’s tea party. She was about to agree just to cut down on the trivial efforts.
“Oh my. I didn’t get a reply about the gift I sent, and here you are trying to wear just any dress from an unknown designer.”
A sudden voice interrupted. Turning around, Princess Chloe was walking toward them. Today, her attire was simpler than when they first met. It was an ivory dress with lace. The skirt folds seemed less cumbersome than at the party. After bowing in greeting, Chloe approached and scanned Kiek up and down with an uncomfortable expression. Wondering what brought her to the West annex this morning, she heard Chloe ask Sahara.
“Are you rejecting the gift I sent?”
“Gift…?”
Sahara recalled the gift Chloe had sent. It was a stack of catalogs with dress sketches and a single card.
“I gave you priority reservation rights to the latest dresses from Susan, the busiest designer in the domain. I specially transferred them to you, but Susan was troubled, asking when the Countess would come. —You did check them, right?”
“Yes, I checked.”
She just didn’t know what they were for.
“Are you really thinking of wearing this man’s dress? The female Countess’s fashion will be on everyone’s lips, you know.”
At the Princess’s dissatisfaction, Kiek smiled awkwardly. His lips trembled as if he wanted to say something, but since his opponent was the Princess, he kept his mouth shut. She wondered if it would really become gossip material, but even if it did, she didn’t particularly care.
“Since you need more than one dress, it should be fine.”
“Even one shabby dress, and people will grab the chance—a whole crowd of them.”
Under Chloe’s cold gaze, Kiek’s face flushed red.
“—Shabby? You haven’t even seen my dresses!”
Unable to hold back, he spoke up, and Chloe wrinkled her nose. Lowering her eyes, she said.
“Isn’t the fact that I’ve never seen your dresses proof that they’re shabby?”
“Well, there are more than a few who have high name value but make terrible dresses. They all look similar at a glance, so it’s hard to tell. Honestly, I don’t know if Your Highness is the type who can distinguish that sort of thing.”
At Chloe’s blatant sneer, Kiek looked at her dress with a smiling face.
“Are you saying my dress is terrible now?”
“Ah, are you asking me? If you have real taste, you wouldn’t need to ask, you’d already know.”
While simultaneously dissing Chloe’s taste and her dress, Kiek’s expression remained that of a gentle rabbit. To sell dresses in the capital, it seemed you needed that level of control over your expressions and a sharp tongue.
“First time meeting you, and your confidence is remarkable. Now I want to see this person’s dresses myself.”
Chloe’s forehead was slightly flushed. Her expression showed a clear determination to inspect every stitch and design of Kiek’s work.
“The dress I sent to the Countess should be here.”
Even though he clearly knew Chloe’s intent, Kiek said confidently, as if to say, look as much as you want.
“You can’t judge true skill from just one or two pieces you’re confident in. Let’s go to your shop.”
Chloe spoke with resolve, as if she’d made up her mind. At the mention of visiting the shop, Kiek’s expression stiffened slightly. Chloe smiled, pleased, and turned to Sahara, who was standing back like a shrimp on the verge of exploding.
“—Countess, busy today?”
“…No particular matters.”
“Good. Let’s go to this person’s shop together and take a look. Dresses are something you have to try on, right? —It’s fine with you? Since you’re out here like this, you probably don’t have many customers anyway.”
She asked Kiek as if seeking permission. It was obviously a command.
“It would be an honor if the two of you visited, but the shop is on 17th Street, so… I’m not sure if I can properly escort you there…”
Kiek hesitated a little. 17th Street was a district outside the castle walls. Compared to the inner areas, it was somewhat rundown, not exactly a place suited for the Princess to stroll around.
“If you give me a bit of time, I can bring the dresses here.”
“Oh, with the Countess here, what do you have to worry about? She’ll protect me, right?”
“Yes, of course.”
At Sahara’s answer, Chloe smiled smugly. Sahara hadn’t thought they resembled each other much, but seeing that smile, she seemed a bit like Cheshire after all. A carriage for her was quickly prepared.
“Oh, riding a horse?”
Chloe’s eyes widened at Bel Noir, the horse Sahara had brought.
“For escorting, it’s better to follow outside the carriage. I’ll ride and keep up.”
At Sahara’s words, Chloe glared at the carriage for a moment before saying.
“…Then I’ll ride a horse too.”
Was she deliberately refusing to ride in the carriage together? But she lively hiked up her skirt and stepped forward to the horse.
“As you wish, anything at all.”
Sahara nodded. It would be easier to escort her if she rode in the carriage, but Sahara could just pay extra attention. Ignoring the escort knights’ discomfort, Chloe mounted the prepared horse. Then, she nodded toward Sahara and Kiek standing below.
They were definitely siblings with Cheshire.
Sahara mounted her horse, looking at Chloe’s sly, amused smile.
She had thought the rabbit-like Kiek would be in trouble against the carnivorous Chloe, but that was a tremendous miscalculation.
§ § § § §
The Emperor had been bedridden for several days now.
Ever since the Crown Prince announced he would sever ties with Countess Illoud and confirmed that she was residing in the West annex.
“…Isn’t there really no need for Your Majesty to be so ill?”
Chancellor Pope gazed at the Emperor, who lay in bed groaning faintly even in broad daylight, with eyes full of pity.
“How can the Emperor of the Empire be so overjoyed and downcast over his son’s mere romance?”
“Whom do I have to blame for this? If I hadn’t held any expectations from the start, there wouldn’t have been any disappointment, would there?”
He had come rushing in excitedly, chattering on about how Sahara and Cheshire would announce their engagement at once, hold a wedding, and present him with cute, pretty grandchildren. Thanks to that, the Emperor—who had been thrilled while preparing for the wedding—sat up in a huff, and Pope stacked the overflowing documents in front of him before speaking.
“You’re right. It was my error. In my eagerness to please Your Majesty, I hurried over with trivial information and blabbered away. Even though those two share no connection whatsoever.”
At Pope’s courteous apology, the Emperor knocked the documents flying with a clatter and flopped back down with an ‘goodness.’
“Don’t apologize so hastily! Figure out a way to fix this!”
“If even Your Majesty can’t manage it, how am I supposed to?”
Pope indifferently gathered the scattered papers. It was a valid point, which only deepened his gloom.
“Still no particular news? They haven’t been meeting in secret or anything?”
“None at all. What occasion would those two have to meet? Countess Illoud is diligently training and dashing about, while His Highness remains shut in his study, lashing out everywhere.”
“……”
The Emperor covered his face with both hands and emitted a pained groan. Even without straining to hear, it was evident this was a lament for someone. This time, Eric must feel as if he’s been struck by lightning.
“He’s not pursuing the romance he’s supposed to—why on earth is he like this?”
“Well, I truly have no clue.”
Pope spoke while staring fixedly at the Emperor. Under that sharp gaze, the Emperor abruptly sat up once more.
“What sort of look is that?”
“What do you mean?”
Pope tilted his head and eyed the Emperor, who continued to call out Pope’s unwavering stare.
“That look! Your eyes are utterly insolent! Are you accusing me now, claiming Cheshire takes after me?”
“I’ve never said anything like that. Do you have something to feel guilty about?”
“As if! What would make me feel guilty!”
“—Is that so? It might be fine if you felt a bit guilty.”
“!”
At Pope’s words, the Emperor’s face instantly turned crestfallen. Pope was correct. Cheshire’s personality mirrored the Emperor’s from his younger days exactly.
“No, really—why did he have to inherit that trait?”
Pope refrained from responding and simply set the documents down before him again.
As the legitimate imperial heir, he had been raised that way to a certain degree, but more than education, it seemed a matter of bloodline. The issue lay in his innate temperament. Fundamentally capricious and spiteful, especially in how he feigned affability only when in high spirits and delighted in manipulating others.
He was undoubtedly intelligent and talented, so he somehow balanced things with his subordinates, but whenever romance became entangled, everything fell into utter chaos.
“It took Your Majesty a full ten years to reconcile with Her late Majesty the Empress, who knows how many years it will take His Highness. They ought to reach some resolution before one of them perishes.”
The Emperor clutched his forehead and began groaning anew. As Pope had said, his decade-long feud with the deceased Empress had been framed as a lovers’ quarrel, but in truth, it was a bloody political battle spilling with gore and flesh.
“But will those two ever reconcile? Or will they simply part ways and call it done?”
The Emperor and Empress, being husband and wife, had no choice but to clasp hands and dance at formal occasions, no matter how fiercely they clashed—as long as divorce wasn’t on the table. Their bedchambers were adjacent, leading to constant encounters at inopportune moments, and they shared meals whenever foreign guests arrived. (It’s all the more astonishing that they sustained their conflict for ten years despite such frequent proximity.)
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