Chapter 09
Throughout the entire dinner Dolores ate the meal Anais had prepared, she was wrapped in a difficult-to-describe
sense of emotion.
Perhaps it was one of those moments when you suddenly realized that the younger sibling you had always thought of as a child had grown up.
Then again, at seventeen, Anais was certainly old enough to be considered a young lady. If they had been a proper
noble family, they would have already made their debut in high society by now.
If that had been the case, Anais would probably have been extremely popular.
If only she did not have such strange hobbies as making codes.
Anais, who had been flipping through the pages of the book, suddenly asked in a blunt tone,
“You’ve looked depressed these past few days because of Xavier, right?”
Dolores instinctively turned her head toward her sleeping father.
Fortunately, he did not look as though he would wake.
Her father hated Xavier to an almost unreasonable degree.
“Father already knew that Xavier had finished his studies abroad and returned. When he went into the city, apparently everyone was talking about it. He started cursing him the moment he got home.”
“Did you tell him about what happened today?”
“No. What would be the point? It would only ruin the atmosphere in the house.”
Only then did Dolores’s shoulders relax slightly.
It wasn’t entirely Xavier’s fault.
Well—
Yes, Xavier certainly had some blame.
But her father despised and loathed people belonging to the propertied classes.
His absolute distrust of people intoxicated by capital, those who spoke of revolution, or those who sought to cling parasitically to the established order was one of the driving forces of his life.
Because of this, Father had developed an excessive obsession with pursuing tradition in order to survive in this chaotic world.
His long-standing ambition was to join the Blue Raccoon faction of the Platypus Party.
“I don’t particularly like that guy, either, but that has nothing to do with it. It’s not even funny.”
“What isn’t?”
“Even if we do all that, it doesn’t mean they’ll actually treat us like proper Bellofians.”
“……Whether those people recognize us or not, we’re daughters of a count’s family. Ana. You’re being too harsh.”
“We can’t even afford to keep a cook permanently, and we have to eat the bread left over from breakfast again at dinner. What does being a count or whatever even mean? Look at Claudia. She writes expensive gold-leaf letters for something as insignificant as a letter.”
“Money isn’t everything in life. Everyone has their own life to live.”
Anais’s eyes seemed unusually deep and complicated today.
Dolores found that particular look in her sister’s eyes uncomfortable whenever it appeared.
“Is there something you want to say?”
“There is, but I’m not saying it now. And, Sister, that saying that money isn’t everything in life is like a slogan that only people who have money are allowed to use. It’s ridiculous when people like us say it.”
“Not in front of Father.”
“I’ll say it when I hate Father so much that I want to knock him unconscious.”
Anais answered indifferently before slowly turning her head to look out the window.
The world that had been bathed in a pink sunset had gradually deepened into violet and would soon be swallowed by the dark blue night.
Clatter.
Dolores pushed away her empty plate and stood.
“I’ll clean up the rest.”
“Then I’ll wash up first. I was standing in front of the oven, so I’m hot and sticky.”
Dolores finished cleaning the rest of the kitchen.
Afterward, she debated whether she should move her father to his room.
Waking him would be difficult enough, but he was far too large for her to move by force.
In the end, she compromised by simply covering him with a blanket.
That was the best she could do.
Then it happened.
A creaking sound came from the floor upstairs.
Pablo had already gone outside, and Dolores had just confirmed that Anais had gone into the bathroom rather than her room.
She raised her head and looked at the ceiling.
A faint sauce stain from the previous year was still visible there.
The walk upstairs was relatively steady.
But once she stood in front of her bedroom door, even her hand became cautious.
Creeeeak.
The door slowly opened, revealing the interior of her room.
Unlike when she had left earlier, the room was immersed in darkness because she had not lit the oil lamp.
Only vague outlines could be seen.
The only thing she could clearly sense was the cool breeze.
Creak. Squeak.
It was the room where she slept and woke every day, yet seeing it in the darkness made it feel strangely unfamiliar.
Dolores’s cane quietly stopped as she stepped inside.
Tap.
The chiffon curtains hanging in front of the window fluttered like waves.
……Had she left the window open?
A tightening sensation ran down Dolores’s spine.
She decided she should light the lamp first.
She tapped the floor directly in front of her with her cane and began walking toward the desk.
That was when—
“You’ve become such a scaredy-cat.”
A chill ran over her entire body.
She nearly collapsed, but a firm male hand caught her.
The scent of musk and lime drifted toward her.
Dolores brushed her disheveled hair aside.
Standing directly in front of her was a familiar young man.
It was Xavier, dressed slightly differently from how he had been that morning.
Dolores immediately understood what had happened and shoved him away roughly.
“Are you insane? What are you doing?”
She could not raise her voice too much.
Her family was downstairs.
She tilted the candlestick and transferred the flame to the wick of the oil lamp.
Xavier was sitting on the edge of her desk, staring at her.
He was dressed in another sophisticated formal party outfit, different from the one he had worn earlier, though his sleeves were rolled up.
The scratches on his hands and wrists made it obvious that he had climbed in through the second-floor window.
“I came to see you.”
His green eyes were as mischievous as ever.
Dolores felt both relief and anger all over again.
“Do you have any idea where you are? How can you act so shamelessly?”
“Shameless? What an interesting choice of words.”
“Get out. Don’t stay here…!”
Xavier smiled as though he had not heard her reproach at all and took the oil lamp from her hand as if simply taking possession of it.
He shone the light toward the bookshelf and glass cabinet.
The framed photographs inside the cabinet glittered in the reflected light.
“The photographs have changed.”
“Xavier.”
“This isn’t even the first time I’ve secretly climbed into your room. Why are you making such a serious face?”
Xavier set down the lamp and turned to face her.
Just as Claudia had said, Xavier seemed to have grown another five centimeters or so in the year and a half they had been apart.
The difference was much more noticeable in person.
“That was then.”
“It was fun back then, too, when I used to knock on your bedroom window and sneak around without your father knowing. I thought about those days again when I came here today.”
When Dolores had often spent time with Xavier during her late teenage years, they had occasionally climbed through windows to avoid her strict father.
And it wasn’t just Xavier.
Her other friends had done it sometimes, too.
It was hardly something she could be proud of, but there had been a time when she had gone through some rather extraordinary acts of rebellion.
That probably contributed, at least somewhat, to the reason her father particularly despised the young men of Langet.
“We’ve really reached the point where you and I are talking about the old days. How long are you going to keep acting like a child? We’ve both grown up.”
“You’ve become quite the lady while I was gone.”
Xavier bent slightly forward as though suppressing a laugh and looked up at her through half-lidded eyes.
When he looked at her that way, his eyes resembled a murky summer night painted by a realist painter.
If she looked into that transparent light, even in the darkness, the boundary between reality and illusion seemed to blur.
There was something decadent about it.
“You need to grow up.”
“I will eventually.”
“Are you doing this because you genuinely think we can just go back to the way we were?”
“I told you earlier. I’d see you soon.”
Dolores stared at him in disbelief before pushing him away again.
“Go.”
“I’m going. With you.”
“What?”
Xavier casually walked toward her wardrobe.
Startled, Dolores quickly shoved Xavier aside and closed the wardrobe door.
“What kind of manners are those?”
“You’re the one making such a fuss. How embarrassing.”
Both Dolores and Xavier were slightly startled by how quickly she had moved.
She had almost run across the room, forgetting entirely that her leg hurt.
“Well, fine. Your leg seems to be all right, so now you just need to change your clothes and we can leave. Since it would be better to leave through the window, we might as well ask Pierre for some clothes for you. His younger sister is probably about your size.”
But then—
Perhaps because of the sound of the two of them bickering upstairs, Anais’s voice rose from below.
“Sister, what are you doing?”
Dolores hurriedly opened the door and poked her head out.
“Nothing!”
