As Ian glanced around, seemingly assessing the situation, Daniel let out an exaggerated sigh and spoke.
“If this keeps up, someone’s really going to end up walking around naked.”
At first, it had been half a joke and half serious.
No one had stopped Fred when he eagerly stepped forward, determined to both needle the high-and-mighty prince and break his spirit from the outset. If anything, they had been grateful to him for taking the lead so openly. Their opponent might have been from an enemy nation, but he was still royalty—and on top of that, he had come under the Grand Duke’s orders, leaving all of them with a vague sense of unease.
The problem was that the prince had actually done exactly as he was told.
One day passed, then two. A week went by, and still Ian kept doing laundry like a machine. The knights, who had initially watched with interest to see how long he would last, gradually began to feel an unsettling chill.
Is there… more to him than we thought?
Otherwise, there was no explaining why he would behave like this.
As Fred himself had said, royalty rarely dirtied their own hands. And as time passed, the knights found themselves recalling what the men who had returned late from the procession had told them, which only deepened their unease.
But while the others began to tread carefully, Fred—who had arbitrarily put the honor of the Empire’s citizens on the line—refused to stop. By the time a few of them, who had never intended for things to go this far, cautiously tried to intervene, it was already too late.
Stop it, you lunatics!
Driven by Fred’s frenzy—his eyes practically rolling back in his head as he scoured the place for yet more laundry—people with nothing left to wear began appearing one after another.
They had only meant to make Ian do some laundry, and now they were on the verge of having to walk around naked.
“Fred, you apologize too. You have to admit you took it too far.”
Come to think of it, Ian had never asked to join them in the first place. He had simply accepted the inscrutable Grand Duke’s order because he had no other choice. From that prince’s point of view, this order of knights was probably the last place in the world he wanted to be.
Besides, today was the day Commander Schwartz was supposed to return.
Unlike Claude, who would stand by and let them kill one another so long as they still did their jobs, Schwartz despised people who caused trouble for no reason. He especially considered tormenting the weak dishonorable, so if word of this reached him, there was no chance it would end with a mere scolding.
Having quickly read the mood, Daniel nudged the silent Fred, hoping to smooth things over.
It had the opposite effect.
Fred, who had been barely containing his simmering fury, abruptly shot to his feet and jabbed an accusing finger at Ian.
“You! Are you insane? Why did you wash all of it?!”
He certainly had a lot to say for someone who would have raised hell if Ian hadn’t washed it.
Ian stared at the furious Fred, bewildered at being cursed for doing exactly as he had been told. Fred flared up even more, shouting as though he were the one who had been grievously wronged.
“You could’ve just played the victim! Why the hell are you defying me?!”
“Fred!”
“Am I wrong? This bastard keeps…!”
“Exactly. Why does our prince have to be so stiff about everything? Makes you want to just snap~ him in half!”
……?
At the sudden stream of nonsense, question marks practically appeared over the heads of not only Daniel, who had been trying to restrain Fred, but everyone else nearby.
The voice was far too familiar.
Which only made it more terrifying.
Kyle, who had appeared from God knew where, poked his head out from behind Fred’s shoulder.
“Heard you guys were bullying our prince while I was away?”
“Aaargh!”
Fred screamed and sprang forward, goosebumps racing across his skin as warm breath brushed his ear.
What the fuck!
He spun around and found a face he hadn’t seen in some time smiling back at him and shooting him a wink.
When the hell did that bastard get back?
“Surely you didn’t make him do laundry, and more laundry, and still more laundry in this freezing weather, even piling on all those blankets nobody ever uses, did you?”
“……”
He had.
Kyle’s words hit the nail on the head despite the fact that he had not set foot on the estate in weeks, leaving Fred momentarily speechless.
As if to say, I knew it, Kyle shook his head, strode over to Ian’s side, and theatrically furrowed his brow.
“Just look at these fine hands. Completely ruined.”
The last time Ian had seen him had been before the weather turned cold.
Kyle had vanished ever since, so Ian had more or less assumed he had taken a knife in the back somewhere.
Seeing him return alive and speaking in exactly the same infuriating manner as ever, Ian nearly let his exasperation show without meaning to. Kyle, however, could not have cared less.
His gaze was fixed on Ian’s red, swollen fingers.
Ian was still wondering what exactly he was doing when Kyle took advantage of his distraction, seized him by the wrist, and thrust his battered hand toward Fred for everyone to see.
Let go.
“Don’t you know that, to the people of Rox, their skin is their life? My god, what you’ve done is practically torture of royalty. Don’t you realize how terrifying that is? You’ve got all that nerve, so why can’t you get yourself a date?”
“Why are you suddenly bringing that up…!”
“Whoa, don’t get mad again. There’s something else I heard. Is it true?”
“What…”
“I heard you deliberately made him wash everyone’s clothes. So they wouldn’t have a single thing left to wear.”
The conversation was still going, technically, but it had long since gone completely off the rails.
Kyle’s expression abruptly turned solemn. He let out a deep sigh.
“Fred. If you wanted to see your comrades naked, you should’ve just said so from the beginning.”
In the span of a single sentence, Kyle had transformed Fred into a shameless pervert, and he did so with an expression of genuine regret.
Every word coming out of his mouth was complete and utter bullshit, yet somehow he possessed the inexplicable talent of making everyone listen.
Fred’s face flared bright red at the absurd accusation, and he opened his mouth.
Kyle cut him off before he could get a word out.
“Of course, what you wanted to see most was probably my perfect body. But Fred, I’m not so petty that I’d make our prince handle something like that.”
“Hah…”
“I ask the maids.”
Which, in the end, meant that he did not wash his own clothes either.
Whether Fred was rendered speechless by Kyle’s shamelessness—proudly announcing something that was hardly worth bragging about—or whether he was simply too furious to speak, by the time he finally stopped opening and closing his mouth and started spewing curses, Daniel and the other knights were already dragging him out of the training grounds.
“……”
What just happened?
Ian could only blink at the scene, which had begun and ended before he could even process it.
Slowly, he turned his head.
He stared blankly at Kyle, who was cheerfully waving after the others outside. As if sensing his gaze, Kyle immediately looked back at him.
His smiling face was as neat and composed as ever.
But when their eyes met, his tone shifted slightly, as though this was what he had been waiting for all along.
“Our prince, I heard you had a hard time while I was gone. If I’d known, I would’ve stayed glued to your side. Right? Hm?”
“……”
“Hmm. You’re very angry. Should I apologize?”
Ian had simply remained silent because Kyle was spouting more nonsense, but apparently Kyle had interpreted it differently.
Let go of my hand.
The hand that had been gripping his wrist all this time was starting to bother him, so Ian lightly shook his arm.
Kyle went, “Aww,” and reluctantly released him.
But was Ian imagining things?
The tattoo on Kyle’s left cheek seemed a little darker than before…
“Made any friends? Tried the ppaengppaengi yet?”
His voice abruptly dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, as though he were sharing some great secret.
Ian, who had been studying Kyle’s face, looked away.
He was doing it on purpose, knowing perfectly well that there had been no opportunity for anything of the sort.
Kyle himself had just pointed out that Ian had done nothing but laundry, let alone make friends.
Besides, Ian’s circumstances were nowhere near peaceful enough for him to waste time on something like that.
Ian shook his head, making it clear he no longer wanted to indulge him, and turned away.
Everything seemed to have fallen apart anyway, so he intended to return to his room for the day.
“Ah, ah!”