IDSTD 02

Chapter : 02

No, this couldn’t be right. This was absolutely ridiculous!

“Laura! Laura!”

“Yes! What is it?! A headache? Dizziness?”

At my shout, Laura burst through the door.

“You know… why. Last week, when I didn’t come home…”

I glanced at Laura and spoke cautiously.

I wanted to ask, “Did I ever spend the night somewhere else last week?” but I had no idea what kind of misunderstanding that might cause.

So I deliberately phrased it vaguely, trying to feel her out.

“Ahhh, that day.”

Damn it. So something really had happened.

“I was actually wondering whether I should ask you about what happened that day.”

“You absolutely should have! You mean you didn’t ask anything? Isn’t it strange that the head of the household didn’t come home without saying a word?”

“We thought you had a secret lover, my lady. You came back first thing the next morning, after all. And also…”

Ahem.

Also what?

Laura suddenly cleared her throat awkwardly, then added with a flushed face,

“The corset laces I tied for you the night before were different the next morning, so… Ahem.”

Oh, God.

My vision went dizzy.

For some reason, that apparently meant I had had a reason to undress while I was out.

Damn it.

“But, my lady. Why have you been asking about these things all morning? Did you really lose your memory? I’m worried about you.”

“Ah, no. It’s nothing. I just couldn’t remember the exact date.”

“Oh. I see…”

Laura nodded, but she continued to stare at me suspiciously.

Feeling like she might catch me out if I let her stay any longer, I quickly sent her away.

All right, then. Back to the main issue.

“Leon Obsidian, huh… Me and the Grand Duke of Bernstein… Haha.”

The more I thought about it, the more an incredulous laugh escaped me.

That was how absurd the whole thing was.

He was the commander of the Holy Knights, a man who had sworn his chastity to God.

He was someone no one could—or dared to—lay a hand on.

And yet, there were countless women who would gladly strip off their dresses and throw themselves at him at a single beckoning gesture.

But what connection could he possibly have with me?

The only thing we had in common was that we had attended the same academy.

And we had crossed paths a few times because we were both academic scholarship students.

In other words, we were practically strangers.

“Besides, the Grand Duke joined the Holy Knights around the time I graduated from the academy. I haven’t even seen him since then.”

The Grand Duke was famously devout.

When he finally chose to officially enter the Temple, the social circles were thrown into an uproar.

The countless young ladies who secretly pined after him were devastated by the newfound distance between them, while even the haughty noblewomen went through their own bouts of lovesickness and made quite a fuss.

But that didn’t last long.

Unexpectedly, even after he became a priest, the young ladies and noblewomen didn’t stop flirting with him.

Their attitude was basically, If we can’t have him anyway, we might as well take a shot.

And mixed in with that was the thrill of desiring something sacred that no one was allowed to touch.

Still, watching even married noblewomen trail after him and obsess over him was just…

As was the case in any era, adultery was an especially unforgivable offense in Orden society.

But in a society where arranged marriages were common, there were still quite a few people who enjoyed playing with fire.

And to them, Leon Obsidian was the perfect target.

A handsome face and a body honed through training.

The prestigious status of a Grand Duke, along with imperial blood in his lineage despite being an illegitimate son.

And on top of that, he was a priest favored by the Grand Temple.

But what good was golden blood and a handsome face if you couldn’t make use of the one thing you were supposed to?

In other words, taking all of this into consideration, Leon Obsidian was officially a man who could never become someone’s affair partner.

A so-called “safe” man.

Because of that, most noblemen simply turned a blind eye to their wives’ one-sided crushes, and the noblewomen became even bolder in their attempts to court him.

And yet, the Grand Duke had never once kept a woman by his side.

Even though he could have spent his days surrounded by women in beautiful dresses if he’d wanted to, he spent most of his time at a temple in southern Orden.

There, he lived an excessively pure and incorruptible life, spending his days in prayer and occasionally venturing out to subjugate monsters at the Grand Temple’s command.

There were even rumors circulating that perhaps there was something wrong with his reproductive abilities, but perhaps because of his handsome appearance, everyone seemed to prefer to keep quiet about it.

All they could do was lament the devotion that had led him to give his heart to God.

And yet, that man…

“He slept with me?”

I sat there in a daze before glancing over my body.

Then I suddenly wondered what the hell I was doing.

“No, no. Of course not. It’s already been several days. There’s no way there’d still be any traces.”

Even so, just in case, I put myself through all sorts of ridiculous contortions in front of the mirror.

But there wasn’t a single scratch or bruise anywhere on my body.

Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean nothing had happened that day.

The woman who had taken over my body had explicitly claimed that she slept with Leon Obsidian.

And according to Laura, I had even spent the night away from home, with evidence suggesting that I had undressed while I was out.

So denying that the incident itself had happened seemed difficult.

“Still, there’s absolutely no way it was Leon Obsidian.”

It wasn’t simply because I found it difficult to believe.

The timing, the circumstances—none of it added up.

Which left one possibility.

“Did this woman… get scammed?”

She must have been tricked by someone impersonating the Grand Duke.

Yes.

There was no other explanation that made sense.

“Someone from another world wouldn’t have known who the Grand Duke was in the first place. She probably just believed some con artist who told her he was the Grand Duke. That idiot woman! How dare she use my body like that!”

I had no memory of what happened, so I couldn’t feel any particular sense of wrongness or discomfort.

Even so, the thought of having shared my body with someone made my blood boil.

And I didn’t even know who the other person was!

“I thought it didn’t make sense from the beginning. There’s no way the Grand Duke would be in the capital. If he had come up here, there would’ve been an uproar long before—”

Knock, knock, knock!

“My lady!”

The door flew open almost at the same time as the knocking, and Laura rushed in, looking deathly pale.

“What is it? What happened?”

“B-Big trouble! Downstairs!”

Downstairs?

“Calm down and tell me slowly.”

Laura was still gasping for breath when she shouted,

“The Grand Duke of Bernstein is here!”

“What? Who’s here?”

The Grand Duke?

There was only one Grand Duke in the Empire, but I wondered if I had misheard her and asked again.

Laura nodded.

“His Grace Leon Obsidian! He says he wants to see you, my lady! He’s waiting downstairs right now, so… get ready! Quickly!”

The irrefutable confirmation made my vision go white.

No.

Why was the man who was supposed to be at a temple on the outskirts here?

And why was he at my house?

Why was he looking for me?

Of all times, why… Now?

Could it be? No. There’s no way. It absolutely can’t be. No, no, it better not be!

Countless questions and anxieties began to churn through my mind.

The things I had repeatedly dismissed as impossible were suddenly transforming into the terrifying possibility that every single one of them might actually be true.

I shot to my feet and asked anxiously,

“Laura. What did the Grand Duke look like?”

“Pardon? What do you mean?”

“I mean, did he look angry? Or perhaps upset? Something like that…”

“Oh!”

Laura seemed to think for a moment when I asked if there was anything particularly noticeable about him.

Then she suddenly spoke.

“He was holding a huge bouquet of flowers!”

Good heavens.

I swallowed a scream as I silently listened.

A bouquet of flowers.

For some reason, that makes me even more nervous.