Looking for My Fiancé’s Lover

“Hello”

I felt like I had mustered up my entire life’s courage for that moment.
I greeted in a small, whispery voice.

She turned to me.
Dark violet-coloured eyes, soaked with confusion, filled my view.
As expected, she was drop-dead gorgeous.
As our eyes met, the tip of my nose felt ticklish.

“Can I ask who you might be?”

I smiled somewhat awkwardly after asking her.
She became even more baffled at my question.
Still, I continued.

“Who are you? I haven’t heard that any other kid would be here other than me.”

A faded-colour dress and simple accessories that she would be better off without.
Her clothes looked rather shabby compared to her angelic face.
I didn’t think that she’s a noble but rather, a young maid who worked in the castle.

The girl blinked nervously, then bowed deeply.
Her purple pupils were full of confusion and fear.

….
Fear? Why is she afraid of me?

“I’m sorry.
The door was open so I thought it was okay to come in.”

She seemed to have a higher ranking than that of a regular maid judging by the way she talked and acted.
It had been so long since I last talked to another girl, so I was even more nervous than when I stood in front of Breit.

“You are allowed to come in.
You don’t have to be sorry about it.”

It wasn’t even my own room in the first place.
I opened my mouth again, heart slightly quivered inside.

“I am Katrina Ezellot.
And you are?”

“Me? Can your ladyship even be bothered to know the name of someone like me..?”

Suddenly, the door of the parlor swung open.
A middle-aged woman full of wrinkles, looking disgruntled, entered.
She scanned the room, briefly making eye contact with me before turning to the girl who stood next to me.

“Miss!!”

It was such a sharp cry that my ears hurt.
The woman closed up the distance between us, loud thuds of her shoes against the ground could be heard. 

“Here you are.
I have been looking for you for a long time.
Didn’t I tell you not to wander around alone?”

“I-I’m sorry.
I wanted to see the knights’ training ground…”

“If the young master himself has invited you here, you should have sat there and waited for him.
The young lady’s being rude and misbehaved just now.”

The girl, whose words were disrupted, bowed once again.
Fear was vivid on her face, even more than when she first saw me.

“The Duchess hates a disobedient child the most.
If this is repeated, I can no longer put in good words for you.”

“I’m really sorry.
From now on, I’ll just sit quietly.
I promise.”

She is not a maid, but is actually from a ducal family?

I looked at the woman and the girl alternately, feeling like an extra bystander.
The atmosphere between the two was stuffy and suffocating as if they were trapped in a pipe full of stream.

“Haiz, I was really frustrated! That’s why the bloodline of unknown origins is….Enough, come here.”

The woman did not even bother to hide her discomfort when she looked at me.
She then roughly grabbed the girl’s arm and continued with her steps.

The bloodline of those with an unknown origin.

It was easy to grasp the situation just from that sentence.
The girl was probably the illegitimate child of a duke.
Her shabby appearance and humble behavior meant that she was not welcomed within the family, and it seemed that even this old maid did not treat her with care.

However, those things did not matter to me.
She had a beautiful face like a fairy, a slender neckline, and a voice like a singing bird.
It was the image of the exemplary lady that I was hoping for.

Perfect!

Since the girl might be a potential bride for Nezar, she could not be lacking in any aspects.
I was a little bit worried about her status, but was illegitimacy really important when it came to love?

I lifted my head and called after her.

“Hey, what’s your name?”

The maid did not stop, but the girl craned her neck back to look at me.
It was a look that could no longer show any shame even though she’s being dragged away like a cow to the slaughterhouse.
Before long, a trembling voice comes.

“It-it’s Caron Entera.
I’m really sorry to have entered the room without permission, lady Ezellot.
Next time we meet, I will make sure to formally apologise.
I am truly sorry!”

Did that mean there would be a good chance that I met her again? Before I could even ask, the girl’s shadow disappeared over the corridor.
If I did not hear it wrong, we would definitely meet again next time because she’s none other than Caron Entera!

“This means that I will meet her again, right?”

At first, it seemed like a one-time thing, but since we had seemingly, probably made a promise to meet again, it kind of felt like a promise between close friends.
Becoming friends with a girl who would be the beauty of the century… How could things work out this well? With that thought, I jumped around the drawing room in ecstasy.
At that moment, nothing else remained in my head, not even Sir Pancion.

I don’t exactly know why I was like that or what had gotten to me, but I think I was jumping and dancing around the parlor like a possessed maniac before leaving.
Unable to control my emotional outburst, I held tightly onto an empty flower vase, which I found on a table, in order to keep my insane behavior in check.