Her heart pounded, and cold sweat gathered in her palms.
Her instincts were screaming at her.
Something about the situation was deeply wrong.
Mona was just about to ask Benny for more specific information when Jake spoke first.
“For such a noble hero to be causing this much trouble over one woman. That is unusual.”
“Exactly. Richard Cronel is famous for never having had so much as a single scandal involving women.”
“Then why is he looking for her? If the war hero called, there’d be a line of women willing to run straight onto a battlefield for him. Did she run off owing him money or something?”
“Come on, Senior! You think a hero of his stature would make a petty fuss over money? It’d ruin his image.”
“Then what is the reason?”
“I don’t know the exact reason, but apparently the woman was wearing a mask and hiding her identity.”
“A mask?”
“Yes. They say he met her in the Luna District, and the only clues are a mask and white hair.”
“Hic!”
Mona, who had been listening intently to Benny, was so startled that she even hiccupped.
White hair.
A white mask.
They matched exactly what she had looked like that night.
She was doomed.
“Mona, what is wrong with you all of a sudden?”
Benny looked at the hiccupping Mona in confusion.
Trying to stop the hiccups, Mona clapped a hand over her mouth and shook her head frantically.
“Mona, don’t tell me you…….”
Jake narrowed his eyes.
“?!”
“You’re a huge Richard Cronel fan too, aren’t you?”
“……What?”
“That reaction just gave you away. You’re shocked because you heard he’s chasing after some woman.”
“…….”
“Get real, Mona. You really think someone that incredible would spare you so much as a glance? Beautiful women must throw themselves at him one after another.”
Jake clicked his tongue and continued nagging.
“Ugh. You’re so distracted by fangirling that even your research is falling behind. Go splash cold water on your face and write up the research logs you missed. Got it?”
Still trying to suppress her hiccups, Mona nodded and staggered back toward the laboratory.
***
She had no idea how she managed to finish her work and return to the dormitory that day.
‘……He’s definitely going to kill me.’
She had witnessed a member of the Imperial Family and a war hero turning into a monster.
There was no way he would leave her alone.
The image of her head being cleanly severed by his sharp blade kept flashing through her mind.
“Ghk……! H-heh…… Lord Richard, please…… please…….”
At the same time, she remembered the desperate scream she had heard in the dark alley.
It truly had been something she should never have seen or heard.
“Ugh…….”
Mona pulled the blanket over her head as her teeth chattered.
Seeing something she absolutely should not have seen was bad enough, but there was another problem.
The unfinished perfume she had made had unintentionally produced an aphrodisiac effect.
She had accidentally drugged a member of the Imperial Family with an aphrodisiac.
She had not meant to do it, and she herself had been affected by it as well, but there was no chance an excuse like that would work.
What if she was arrested for illegally possessing a prohibited fragrance and spent the rest of her life rotting in prison?
After hearing that Richard Cronel was searching for her, Mona spiraled through one horrific possibility after another and ultimately failed to sleep at all that night.
***
“Your Excellency, among the employees of the inns in the Luna District, we found a young woman whose appearance resembles the description you gave.”
“……Bring her in.”
A short while later, a nervous-looking woman entered the office.
The moment Richard saw the woman his subordinate had brought, his mouth hardened.
He vividly remembered the woman’s hair, white as snow.
She had even left a single white strand on the bed like evidence.
But this woman’s hair was clearly silver.
‘And the woman in my arms was smaller.’
Richard shook his head immediately.
“Captain, not this one either?!”
As soon as the woman left, Dominic, a member of the Black Knight Order who had been waiting in the back, asked in an exhausted voice.
Dominic was a handsome young man with fresh green hair and neat features, but after days of intensive searching, he now looked like wilted spinach.
“One glance is enough to know she’s not the one.”
“Are you sure you didn’t see a hallucination? No matter how thoroughly we searched the Luna District, no one said they had ever seen a woman with hair as white as snow like you described.”
They had torn the district apart looking for the woman, only to catch one illegal-tobacco dealer and drug user after another.
Rumors had even begun circulating that Richard’s true purpose was to cut off the financial lifelines of the powers behind the Luna District, and that the woman was merely an excuse.
“You think I can’t tell a hallucination from reality?”
“It could be…… a side effect of Chaos.”
Dominic lowered his voice to a whisper.
Including Dominic, four of the Black Knight Order’s finest members knew that Richard was suffering from side effects after being swallowed by that enormous, unidentified chaos.
There was no way they could not know.
Dominic himself had not even been swallowed into the massive chaos.
He had only brushed against its boundary for a brief moment.
Even so, he still suffered aftereffects.
That said everything about Richard, who had gone inside and come back out.
“……There’s no way it was a side effect.”
Richard spoke coldly as he remembered the warm, sweet presence that had put the monster inside him to sleep.
He swallowed the impatience beginning to churn in his gut.
In truth, he had assumed he would find the woman quickly.
The number of women who frequented the Luna District was limited, and her hair was far too distinctive.
Yet even after raiding every salon, entertainment bar, and even gambling den, they had found no one who knew a white-haired woman.
No one had even seen her.
‘……Now I’m starting to take this personally.’
Richard ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek, his eyes turning cold.
Then—
“Lord Richard!”
BANG—!
The door flew open, and Hugo, vice-captain of the Black Knight Order, rushed into the office.
One of Richard’s straight brows lifted slightly.
“What is it?”
“A monster is rampaging along the western border.”
“A monster has gone berserk again?”
“Yes.”
It had barely been any time since they had subdued the Black Dragon driven mad by Chaos, and now another monster was rampaging in the border region.
Richard’s expression turned cold.
***
For about three days, Mona lived in constant terror.
Whenever someone knocked on the door, her heart dropped first.
Even footsteps passing through the corridor made her hold her breath.
But as nearly two weeks passed without anything happening, the fear dulled, and she gradually regained her composure.
‘If he hasn’t found me by now, he probably never will…….’
When she thought about it, Richard must not have been in his right mind either because of the perfume’s side effects.
There was no way he could clearly remember her appearance when she had even been wearing a mask.
Besides, the salon Professor Thomas frequented was in an entertainment district Mona had never set foot in before that night.
No matter how thoroughly they searched the area, they would never find a clue leading to her.
Calmly reminding herself of all the reasons he should be unable to find her, Mona headed to a hair-dye shop.
‘It was lucky all the dye came out that night.’
She always dyed her hair gray, while everyone now believed the woman he was searching for had white hair.
When she thought about it, the reason the dye had fallen out was simple.
The man had distorted the mana around her in reverse, and the cheap dye made through low-grade alchemy had been unable to cling to her hair, crumbling away like dust.
‘I should switch to something expensive.’
Something that did not shed powder this time.
It was a waste of money, but not more precious than her life……
Mona was standing in front of the premium hair-dye display with her emergency savings in hand and a grave expression when the shopkeeper quietly approached her.
“Miss, are you here to buy white too?”
“……What?”
“Too bad. White, silver, platinum, even pale sky blue—everything is sold out. If you came looking for something to make your hair pale, you wasted the trip.”
“Why are people buying that……?”
“Why else? White hair is all the rage these days. The war hero apparently has a thing for white-haired women…….”
“…….”
Mona was speechless for a moment.
Ridiculously, everyone seemed to have mistaken a crime story for a romance.
‘Probably because that man looks too unreal to imagine anything else.’
He did not exactly look like someone who would search for a woman just to eliminate evidence.
Mona smacked her lips, bought a gray dye that was still fully stocked, and left the store.
Now that she looked closely, she began noticing young ladies with white hair here and there along the street.
‘Even if someone finds out my hair is white, they’ll probably just mock me for dyeing it with the trendy stuff.’
Absurd as the situation was, it was not entirely bad for her.
Scratching her head, Mona headed toward the institute.
***
But once her fear of Richard eased, the reality directly in front of her became a horror story all its own.
“……There won’t even be a temporary professor for the time being?”
“Yes. Professor Thomas was not dismissed, only suspended. There is no qualified person willing to take over for such a short period.”
The staff member from the Monster Studies Department answered without much interest.
“Then when exactly will Professor Thomas return……?”
“Hard to say. Three months at the earliest.”
“Three months?!”
“It could take longer.”
She needed to get her first thesis approved this year if she wanted to attempt early graduation next year.
And now there was no professor who could approve it.
‘What am I supposed to do?’
Mona sat there in a daze, writing in a research log she could barely even focus on.
Then, around the afternoon, a staff member from the research office suddenly called for her.
“Miss Mona.”
“……Yes?”
“The Director of Academic Affairs is looking for you.”
“For me?”
“Yes.”
The Director of Academic Affairs held considerable authority within the Academy.
Confused, Mona headed toward the gleaming, ornate main building where the director’s office was located.
And there, she received an unexpected proposal.
“You want me to join a project team?”
“Yes. It is a top-secret project known only to a select few within the Academy.”
The Director of Academic Affairs continued in a grave voice.
“The team needs a researcher with extensive knowledge of monsters. Professor Emil, who held the post before Professor Thomas, strongly recommended you.”
“I appreciate that he thinks so highly of me, but I need to work on my graduation thesis. I don’t have time to participate in outside work.”
It already sounded troublesome, so she immediately refused.
Then the director dangled bait in front of her.
Bait she could not possibly resist.
“Ah, if that is your concern, then you need not worry.”
“……?”
“If you produce meaningful results with that team, you will not need to write a separate thesis for your degree. Naturally, early graduation will also be possible.”
“!”
Early graduation.
The moment Mona heard those words, she answered as though entranced.
Without realizing she was digging her own grave.
“I will do it.”