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Translator: penny
Chapter: 8
Chapter Title: If You're Taking Me, At Least Hold My Hand
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Laura Clarins found Leonardo Dominica to be a rather intriguing person.
While uncovering information about him had become an essential necessity from the moment she arrived at the ducal household with her own objectives in mind—
Laura took genuine pleasure in observing him beyond mere necessity.
And after spending a not-insignificant amount of time watching him, Laura formed this opinion.
'What a strange person.'
This man was truly odd.
Laura Clarins had spent much of her life confined to a room, yet she had encountered a great many people.
Those who examined her, trying to excise the "abnormality" she possessed.
While they peered into her to understand her, she had peered right back at them, experiencing the hidden hearts of countless individuals in the process.
Thus, she knew.
Though human hearts appeared complex at first glance, at their core, they were filled with the most primal things.
Money, honor, curiosity, a thirst for rationality.
Humans were generally driven by such desires.
This was a universal truth, applicable without exception to anyone, regardless of high or low status.
Yet Leonardo Dominica had revealed none of these desires in his encounters with her.
He thought she was beautiful upon seeing her, but he did not lust after her.
He had gained the power to meddle in the Clarins Family through their engagement, but he made no use of it.
Even when he knew she was hiding information about herself, he showed no curiosity about it.
Laura was quite flustered by this fact, while also heightening her vigilance.
After all, she needed to understand him thoroughly.
So Laura observed him with meticulous care—
And faintly discerned what it was he wanted.
'...He just wants to get along well with me?'
To build a friendly relationship with her.
That was the entirety of Leonardo's desire as she could read it.
She wanted to uncover more, but they had only just held their engagement ceremony; she couldn't probe any deeper yet.
He chatted idly with her, drank tea, and went on walks.
In conversations, he led the way first and deftly avoided topics she shied away from.
That was all.
Leonardo revealed nothing more about himself.
He made no demands.
His demeanor filled Laura with unease.
'No, that can't be right.'
He wasn't some saintly priest renowned for his integrity.
Quite the opposite.
He was a Dominica.
A Dominica, at the pinnacle of the nobility who treated greed as a virtue.
It was impossible for the head of the ghouls not to be a ghoul himself.
Could his heart be so profoundly deep that she couldn't read it?
Laura was skeptical of that possibility as well.
'It doesn't feel like he's deliberately hiding his thoughts.'
Leonardo was unaware that his thoughts were being read.
He revealed his inner self with such transparency that reading it was simplicity itself.
Yet despite all these circumstances, she couldn't detect any deeper desires from him.
This was blatantly abnormal.
'How can this be?'
To be frank, she had confidence.
Confidence that no one could hide their true self from her.
This wasn't solely due to the power of her eyes.
She possessed another formidable weapon.
Beauty itself.
Though she had been shut away in her room before she could fully bloom and wield this beauty—
That didn't mean she was ignorant of its power.
Everyone who saw her was awestruck, yearning for that beauty.
Without her doing a thing, others would voluntarily prostrate themselves before her, desperate to claim it.
That was her other weapon.
The might of her beauty.
But her fiancé withstood that might without faltering or giving her an opening.
"How can that be... I wanted us to study together..."
"...You don't have to be in the same department to take the same classes."
[Damn it, my fiancée is too beautiful, causing problems like this...!]
Leonardo, who had already fallen for her inwardly yet firmly voiced his refusal.
In the end, Laura couldn't close the distance with him until her enrollment at the academy.
She felt both joy and anxiety about that fact.
Joy from knowing he was someone who didn't judge her solely on her appearance.
Anxiety from the fact that he didn't cling to her.
It wasn't entirely negative, but as always, she fixated on the negative side.
'What if we never get any closer like this?'
She didn't want that.
It couldn't happen.
She had to rise to a position where no one could ignore her.
She would stand above those who feared her and refused to understand her.
But if things stayed like this...
That was something she couldn't even bear to imagine.
She didn't yet know what view would unfold when she reached her goal—
But Laura thought it would be nice if Leonardo was there.
He was the first to praise her eyes.
He was the first person she ever wanted to know more about.
As these thoughts crossed her mind, Laura suddenly found herself wanting to see him.
And she was startled by her own feeling.
'I want to see him?'
Wanting to see someone.
When was the last time she'd felt this way...?
Laura hesitated at the unfamiliar sensation, then unwittingly made a strange expression.
It couldn't be pinned down precisely, but it resembled a smile.
'What a strange person, after all.'
As she murmured to herself, the negative emotions within her quietly subsided.
In their place, a sense of anticipation sprouted.
What would it feel like to spend days studying alongside him?
Imagining strolling the academy grounds with him, sharing pleasant conversation, she waited for her fiancé.
At that moment, someone shattered her reverie.
"Oh, beautiful lady. Might you grant me the joy of hearing your name?"
A voice from nearby.
As she snapped back to reality and looked around, a man was smiling warmly at her.
Laura shrank back as if doused with cold water at that smile.
The sticky desire emanating from him had jolted her back to reality.
She inwardly chewed over her blunder.
'I messed up. This shouldn't have happened.'
The place Laura was now—the academy.
Not her inviolable room or Dominica Castle, but a place teeming with people coming and going.
These were ordinary folk who acted on their desires just like anyone else, and Laura's beauty made her an easy target for them.
She shouldn't have let her expression show so openly—
But the situation had already spiraled out of control.
Laura stepped back to dispel the misunderstanding,
But the nobleman before her closed the distance as she retreated.
He mistook it for shyness.
Seeing what he took as an opening, he brazenly revealed his lust.
Laura felt suffocated by the sight.
A man who persisted relentlessly, as if he'd already decided her answer regardless of her refusals.
Then, someone wedged himself between them.
"That's enough."
The man who called himself Rodwell Paella of the Paella Viscountcy.
He tried to shield her, but the atmosphere grew increasingly hostile.
A situation where either could fling down a glove at any moment!
And witnessing it all, Laura trembled in fear at the rough waves of emotion crashing around her.
'I hate this...'
The negative emotions encircling her.
Her own powerlessness to do anything.
They forcibly dragged her back to her childhood.
To those horrific, horrific memories of that day—
'...I can't endure it anymore...'
And just as the intense stress was about to make Laura explode—
The crowd surrounding them suddenly parted to either side.
And from there, one person walked toward them.
The refreshing rose scent unique to Dominica.
Behind it, gray hair she had grown quite familiar with and a cold expression came into view.
It was her fiancé, Leonardo Dominica.
Seeing him, Laura felt an inexplicable sense of relief.
'Ah.'
It's over now.
The oppressive hostility pressing on her, the negative memories piercing through it.
They melted away coldly with his arrival.
And with a single phrase, he pulled her from this nightmare.
"I'm taking my fiancée."
The two men backed off without protest.
Leonardo glanced at her as if it were the most natural thing in the world, then turned and left the scene.
Watching him, Laura dazedly had a thought.
'If you're going to take me, at least hold my hand.'
They're engaged, so that much should be fine, right...?
But gratitude outweighed any complaints for now, so she quietly followed behind him.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Rodwell Paella watched the back of one man amid the crowd whispering about what had just transpired.
Leonardo Dominica.
He was the man who drew the most rumors in noble society.
Of course, much of it stemmed from his family's notoriety—
But rumors about Leonardo himself were equally rampant.
It was inevitable.
He was the third son who had surpassed his elder brothers to earn the title of "Little Iron-Blooded."
Some whispered that he was already marked as the Iron-Blooded Duke's successor, and even that the Dominica family's knight order, the Steel Roses, backed him.
But what lingered in Rodwell's memory wasn't such gossip.
A memory from nearly a decade ago.
The image of him from that single encounter at a childhood swordsmanship exchange had burned itself into his mind like a brand.
Rodwell clenched his trembling hand tightly.
'Still the same as ever.'
A physique and aura as chilling as a blade forged by a master smith.
And those inhumanly cold eyes inevitably recalled the words of his teacher and uncle, Robert.
[They're raising a monster in Dominica. Train hard if you don't want to get eaten, Rodwell.]
Dominica's monster. An unstoppable force.
For Rodwell, always hailed as a prodigy with the sword and without peer among his peers, it was an overwhelming shock.
He stared hard at Leonardo's retreating figure, vowing to himself.
'It won't end as pathetically as back then.'
Monsters may be stronger than humans, but one day, they fall to them.
He glared at the back that had vanished from sight for a long while longer before turning away.
It was earlier than usual, but he needed to go train.