TVBS 04

Episode 4

To be honest, I don’t remember what the relationship between Shevert, the eldest son of the Kereis family in the original story, and his youngest sibling was like.

I just assumed that since they were brothers, he probably cared for him to that extent.

But apparently, that wasn’t the case.

“Biiig brotheeeer!”

Krimu came running toward his older brother on his short little legs, scattering teardrops everywhere.

He seemed to have completely forgotten that he’d just gone, Ptoo, and spat at me.

This naughty little brat…!

Shevert, who had already come close enough to look down at Krimu, walked a few steps toward me.

As far as I remembered, Shevert hadn’t become an adult yet either.

He was probably around seventeen.

And yet his body seemed to have already finished growing, with a tall, well-built physique comparable to the Duke’s.

“Ah, h-hello.”

I awkwardly greeted him without thinking and wanted to crawl into a mouse hole.

Hello? At a time like this?

But I couldn’t help it.

The eldest, Shevert, was the mouth of doom and a savage, merciless beast.

Now that I was actually facing him, my legs trembled.

Thank goodness I was wearing a long dress.

Shevert’s expression wasn’t pleasant either, as though he’d bitten into something rotten.

As the distance between us gradually closed, my eyes widened.

They’re identical!

He looked remarkably similar to the Duke of Kereis.

The blue hair could be considered a characteristic of the family, but his dry, emotionless eyes and distinctive chilly atmosphere were practically identical.

Even the way he casually tossed out his words was similar.

“So you’re the one. The one who was kicked out of Delbe or Delba, whatever it’s called.”

Hey! I wasn’t kicked out! I was sold!

I was about to retort, but stopped myself.

Being sold somehow felt even more pitiful.

“My name is Maryann of House Count Delbe, I mean… I am.”

Should I speak casually? Or politely?

I was confused for a moment.

“Waaaaah. Sniff.”

At that moment, Krimu suddenly squeezed out the rest of his tears and sniffed hard.

This little pea-sized brat, seriously!

Anyone could tell those were obviously fake tears, but his older brother, who adored his little brother, would see them differently.

“Maryann, did you hit my brother?”

“What? Ah, no! I didn’t!”

“Then why was Krimu crying?”

“I was just taking a walk in the garden. Then Krimu came over and…!”

I raised my voice, feeling terribly wronged.

The hem of my dress, which had been wet with Krimu’s spit just moments ago, had already dried.

I couldn’t exactly present that as evidence.

Shevert reached out and roughly patted Krimu’s tiny head.

“Your nanny has been looking for you.”

“Biiig bro.”

“You should hurry, Krimu.”

“Whiiine…”

At Shevert’s stern expression, Krimu pouted as if he were somehow even more miserable than before.

Then he slowly turned around.

Seeing his blue-haired little back swaying as he walked away made me feel wronged.

I wasn’t the one who made him cry!

“And. You.”

In the quiet atmosphere of the garden, Shevert came even closer to me.

One step. Then another.

Before I knew it, he was close enough for me to reach out and touch him.

“W-why are you doing this?”

Because of my short stature, I had no choice but to tilt my head back to look at him.

Naturally, that put Shevert in the position of looking down at me.

It was humiliating.

As if the difference in our status wasn’t bad enough, I was even being overwhelmed by his height.

Why was Maryann’s growth so slow when she was already thirteen?

“I’ll warn you. It would be best if you never appeared before me again.”

“……!”

It was a chilling warning.

Shevert’s red eyes seemed to pierce straight through me like sharp swords.

Instinctively shrinking my small body, I could only stare blankly at his back as he slowly walked away.

“I’m thinking of making you my eldest son’s fiancée.”

Plop.

And then I felt something fall from my eyes.

It was a tear.

The fear of being in an unfamiliar place where no one was on my side.

That guy is supposed to be my future fiancé?

I wiped away my tears with the back of my hand and unconsciously looked around.

“Gasp!”

Several Kereis maids and servants who had been waiting nearby turned their gazes away as soon as our eyes met.

That made me even sadder, and I desperately held back the burning sensation in my eyes.

After that day, a rumor spread throughout the Kereis ducal household.

That Maryann, who had come from House Count Delbe, had bullied Krimu and gotten badly dealt with by the eldest son, Shevert.

I happened to overhear the rumor.

After skipping dinner because I had no appetite, I was taking a walk along the back path when I heard the servants working and talking about it.

I couldn’t refute them and say it wasn’t true, so I returned to my bedroom.

I simply pulled the blanket all the way over my head and stayed like that throughout the night.

Even if I explained myself, how many people would actually believe me?

This was the Kereis den.

I was a complete outsider.

---

The Duke of Kereis had a strange principle that everyone absolutely had to eat breakfast together.

So from the day after I first arrived here, I too had to drag myself to the dining room and participate.

Clink, clatter.

The sound of spoons and forks touching plates was the only thing filling the dining room.

There wasn’t a single other sound.

The Duke ate silently with perfect posture.

Just as I’d read in the original story, he was indifferent not only toward me but also toward his own children.

Even though he’d surely heard the rumor that I’d bullied Krimu, he didn’t give me so much as a warning.

Is he just watching me?

Shevert, the Duke’s miniature copy, also merely glanced at Krimu a few times and didn’t exchange a single word with his father.

The atmosphere was suffocating.

No, seriously, if it’s going to be like this, why on earth do we have to eat breakfast together?

The strange thing was that even four-year-old Krimu acted quite a lot like the other Kereis men during this time.

Oh, really?

I shot Krimu a fierce glare.

Maybe he noticed it too, because he puffed out his marshmallow-like cheeks as if he were angry, then stuck out his tongue.

Just then, I felt a gaze on me.

I glanced sideways and met the Duke’s dry, emotionless eyes.

“……The soup is very delicious.”

“That’s soup?”

Shevert’s sarcastic voice flew at me.

Come to think of it, I’d said the soup was delicious while putting meat into my mouth.

“Ha ha… ha!”

I gave an awkward laugh to the Kereis men staring strangely at me.

Ah, this is so awkward.

The Duke stood up first without saying that he had somewhere to be.

Shevert also wiped his mouth and left the dining room with Krimu.

……They’re all gone?

I let out a quiet sigh as I looked at the food still covering half the space in front of me.

How pathetic.

All the food spread across this enormous table, the servants waiting to clear the dishes while watching for the moment I would get up.

And me, sitting there all alone in the middle of it all.

I felt truly pathetic.

Chomp, chomp.

I shoved a piece of cold meat into my mouth.

There was no way I could taste anything in a situation like this, but I simply chewed and chewed before swallowing.

Thinking that this was the best I could do for now.

---

After that day, whenever Krimu encountered me, he continued to do the same things.

He would go ptoo and spit bubbles of saliva at me, or swing his clenched fists through the air.

The Kereis family had been overflowing with men for generations.

And since he’d grown up in such a gloomy atmosphere, perhaps even to a four-year-old child, my presence seemed strange and unfamiliar.

I tried to understand him with as much generosity as I could……!

But even so, did he really have to hate me that much?!

Krimu even came into my room and secretly took my precious little branch.

According to the butler,

“Master Krimu is simply very curious by nature.”

That’s what he said, but I was furious.

Do you have any idea how I managed to bring that here?

I tried to get it back, but they told me my branch had already floated away downstream.

Phew. He’s still just a baby, so I’ll let it slide this once. Just this once!

I gazed at the sunset outside the window before looking down at the garden on the first floor of the mansion.

There were fewer guards than usual.

I’d heard the Duke had taken the knights with him into the nearby forest, so I guess he’d taken almost all of them.

“The Duke, the eldest, and the third are already out.”

At present, both the eldest and the youngest were keeping their distance from me.

I wanted to resolve things with them immediately, but rushing things might only make the situation worse, so I decided to put my relationship with them on hold for the time being.

Instead, the one I was targeting was the second son.

“Ron Kereis.”

The original story’s second male lead was the eldest, Shevert.

Ron, the second son, was a supporting character who backed Shevert up, but when it came to being vicious, he was even worse than his elder brother.

But these brothers wouldn’t meet until they were adults.

Because Ron had disappeared when he was young.

“But I can’t remember.”

It was an episode that appeared early in the original story.

I think there had been only two or three sentences describing Shevert remembering his lost younger brother.

“The Duchess collapsed and eventually died.”

In the original story, no matter how much they searched the entire empire, including the forest where he had disappeared, they couldn’t find any trace of the second son, Ron.

A great deal of time had already passed, and the family had more or less given up.

“I don’t know anything.”

I couldn’t even remember a single letter of the name of the region where he’d been found.

If I knew in advance, I could save the second son, gain the Duke of Kereis’s trust, and have the men of this household wrapped around my finger.

Perhaps I could even reform the vicious second son and prevent the disaster that would come in the future.

Because the second son, Ron, went mad and caused countless people to die.

This was difficult.

So difficult.

In the original story, Ron hadn’t even looked Maryann in the eye.

Well, he was Shevert’s fiancée, after all. There was no reason for the two of them to become close.

Where could he be……?

“Waaaaah.”

Just then, I heard a faint crying sound from outside the door.

……Is that Krimu?

I’d heard the little brat crying before, so this time I wondered if I was imagining things.

I’m developing a neurosis. This damn Krimu neurosis.

But the whimpering that followed made my ears perk up.

“……What is it?”

It was a faint groan, barely escaping from someone’s lips.

I went to the door and pressed my ear against it to listen more carefully.

Then I heard an even more tearful sound than before.

I quietly opened the door.

The number of guard knights who usually stood watch every evening had been reduced to just one today.

It seemed to be because the Duke and the other knights hadn’t returned yet.

I gave the knight a subtle glance and shrugged as if nothing was wrong.

The guard knight gave me a blank nod, then headed down the opposite corridor.

“Phew….”

I breathed a sigh of relief and headed toward the room where I’d heard the crying.

It was Krimu’s room.

I remembered that when I’d first met him, he’d come bursting out of this room while crying.

But at that moment—

Click.

The door suddenly opened.

The person who emerged from the room was the nanny.

The moment she saw me, her face filled with panic.

“Ah, Lady Maryann.”

Her trembling eyes darted around without knowing where to look.

Though she tried to appear calm, the trembling corners of her mouth gave her away.

Still, the nanny forced a smile and said,

“Didn’t you go to dinner?”

“Ah, I just came out to go now, but I got lost.”

“Oh my. I suppose you’re still having trouble finding your way around. I’ll show you.”

“Okay. But what about Krimu?”

At my question, the nanny froze.

Then she pushed the slightly open door firmly shut once more.