Chapter 12

Chapter 12

The next day, Dimitri, who had turned into a cat to take a break from work, went by the wall where he had met Rowaine the day again, as if he had been possessed.

The butler told him that Rowaine locked herself up inside the annex, and that she was being unusually quiet.

Even though rumors said that she likes crowded, noisy places and attends all kinds of parties, even going to three or four parties a night, enjoying being noticed by doing this and that to stand out.

It was a fact that Hyle found out about after diligently finding information about her before reporting it to him in detail.

‘If I only based on the rumors, she seems like a completely different person from the person I heard.’

The gap between the facts and rumors was so great that he got curious.

He wondered if she would cry again today…

Dimitri lightly leaped down to the ground and headed to yesterday’s place, but this time, Rowaine was nowhere to be seen.

‘Well, this isn’t even a place where you can stay all day long, so it’s weird that we run into each other at any time like that…’

He tried to turn her away, thinking it was nothing, though something caught his eyes.

‘What is it?’

A box just the right size for a cat was hidden in the grass. And, inside it was a bundle of wool with a rod, like a bait in a trap.

‘She left the trash behind…?’

Was it her?

It was confusing.

‘…Why?’

He tapped the tufts of wool on the rod.

Ring.

‘Why?’’

Cling clang.

‘Why…?’’

Cling clang.

‘…This is annoying.’

He angrily beat the bundle of wool, which was reminiscent of a small creature, and was instinctively stimulated by the sound of bells that rang in his ear. Dimitri hugged it tightly and rolled around in the grass as though he were hunting.

The bundle of wool smelled of Rowaine… That made him even more excited.

He grabbed the stick and climbed up the wall.

A tuft of wool, tied in a long string, hung down the wall.

Dimitri then swung his round paw, mercilessly smashing the tuft of wool.

‘Ya! Ha! Strangely, I feel good?’

Cling clang. Clang, cling clang

He was hitting it like crazy.

Clink, cling clang, cling clang.

Dimitri, who had been beating, biting, and tearing the wad of wool as if possessed, came to his senses.

‘…Why am I doing this?’

Quivering with shame, he sat down for a moment to calm his confused mind and picked up the fur.

‘It must have been that the woman had put a strange spell on that tuft of wool.’

He was staring at it with that thought when he heard a rustling sound from somewhere.

At that, Dimitri raised his head and stared to the side where the sound was coming from, and he froze like a stone statue.

Rowaine, whom he doesn’t know how long she’d been there, gazed at Dimitri with her cheeks flushed.

‘Is she laughing at me?’

Seeing Rowaine smiling like that, his fur stood up in indignation. But, he couldn’t reveal his identity, so all he could do was leave.

As he was grinding his teeth and turning around.

“So cute!”

“…?”

Hearing that, Dimitri looked back at Rowaine in embarrassment.

Upon closer inspection, he saw a different smile on her face. At first, it seemed like she was ridiculing him, but under her long eyelashes, the corners of her eyes curled up unpretentiously, and her smile now seemed to him like it was in full bloom.

To Dimitri, an innocent smile that did not feel so selfish or pretentious came to him with a shocking intensity. As far as he can remember, he had never seen anything like this.

‘What… What is she so happy about?’

It was a smile too dazzling to be interpreted maliciously. The warm sunlight was breaking over her head.

‘…What?’

Dimitri left the place in a strange haste, suddenly feeling like he couldn’t breathe properly.

Even when he returned to his office, he could still remember Rowaine’s smile for a very long time.

He doesn’t know what was her intention of leaving the despicable tuft there like that, and he didn’t understand why she smiled like that when she saw her foolish self.

‘What a strange woman.’

The hideous rumors about her that he had heard from Hyle and her innocent smile she had just seen a moment ago were chaotically jumbled up in his mind.

That night, as Dimitri slept, he had a dream.

Due to the vigilant nature of the race, he usually had a lot of dreams due to his habit of sleeping lightly.

In his dream today, there was a hand with a pleasant scent tickling the nape of the neck pleasantly.

‘My cute kitty.’

It was Rowaine’s hand.

He instinctively tried to avoid her touch, but he hesitated at the fragrant scent coming from her hand.

It was a scent that made him want to stick to it over and over again. If only he smelled that scent, all the tension in his head would disappear. He pondered whether to go a little closer or to stay still for a bit.

Dimitri leaned into her hand as if possessed. Though he thought he had to come to his senses, he couldn’t refuse. It was like he was drunk, and Dimitri felt so good that he suddenly wished that he could forget all the complicated things and just stay like this.

However, at that moment.

‘You’re making such an ugly appearance. What an unseemly sight, Dimitri!’

The ominous and unpleasant voice of the former duchess broke the peace. The dream, as usual, turned into a familiar nightmare and swallowed him up.

The ridicule from the former Duchess…

‘Hahaha, you turned into a cat!’

‘Ha, how ugly!’

‘Look at that tail! How can you pretend to be a human like that! Haha!’

What followed was the voice of the brothers from the previous duchess in his childhood.

At that time, Dimitri had become a kitten and was locked in a cage. His brothers kept mocking him, who turned into a cat, as they were watching him behind a cage.

Even though they were already dead, the shame he had suffered as a child came back again, and Dimitri covered his ears and shrugged his body.

‘It’s this dream again. This is just a nightmare. You have to wake up.’

Dimitri struggled with the nightmare he had been accustomed to dreaming of several times.

Then, Rowaine’s scream was heard.

‘Save me, Duke!’

The shadow of the former duchess was strangling Rowaine’s neck. The hand wasn’t really meant to hurt Rowaine…

It was just a gesture to break Dimitri’s hopes.

She was a glimmer of hope that appeared to him, who was struggling in the agony of the curse. He might be able to finally be freed from this pain that he has endured.

The former duchess, as always, was trying to push him into despair.

Stop it. Leave her alone.

Leave me alone…!

Rowaine is the only clue to breaking the curse. He couldn’t lose her in vain at the hands of the former duchess.

She always took away his precious things… He couldn’t let her take away his hope again.

But, his body didn’t listen as if it were being weighed down by something. Dimitri struggled desperately.

Stop…

“Don’t touch me!”

Dimitri woke up with that cry.

The sun was already high. It looked like he had overslept.

He put on a robe over his sweaty body and immediately called the butler.

“Where is the Duchess now?”

Naturally, he expected that the butler’s mouth would say that Rowaine was in the annex.

However…

“Madam Elbas called her in the morning and crossed over there.”

Madam Elbas was the name of the former duchess.

Dimitri’s face hardened.

Early in the morning, when I received an invitation to a luncheon from Madam Elbas, the former Duchess of Blois, I was a little worried.

‘She is the main culprit in making the Duke of Blois the villain in the novel.’

Madam Elbas hated Dimitri, who was the former the Duke of Blois’ child with a concubine.

She poisoned Dimitri’s biological mother when he was young, and has since abused Dimitri, In addition, even throwing him away by the age of ten.

It was around that time that he was subjected to the magical poison. Dimitri was suspicious of Madam Elbas, though he was unable to investigate her because he had no physical evidence.

In any case, Dimitri, who somehow survived and returned to the family, went to the battlefield at the age of sixteen to avoid the Madam.

‘But at one battlefield, he met the two twin sons of Madam Elbas, who he fought together with but were both killed. Only Dimitri survived…’

Madame Elbas poured her sorrow and her resentment at the loss of her child into Dimitri in anger. She believed that Dimitri had killed them with evil intentions.

‘Is she planning a scheme with the elders to overthrow Dimitri, who has since become Duke?’

I gathered up her memory and put together a track record of Madam Elbas.

‘I don’t think she’ll be very friendly to me.’

If you know thy enemy and know thyself, you will win a hundred battles.

And so, I made up my mind and decided to meet her once.

I thought it would be better to do this early, and since there will be many occasions in the future that I would run into her. It would be better to find out if she was an opponent I could handle.

Anyway, all I’d done in Blois these days was look for the gray cat, so I was trying to see if there’s something else I could do.

“Are you going to wear that to go see the madam?”

One of the two maids the butler had put on me before stared at my outfit, looking at me up and down.