19 — Chapter 19

“Good grief… Don’t go becoming a ‘normal girl’ only at a time like this.”

Lucas grumbled as he gently laid the small maid onto the bed.

Early afternoon at the maids’ dormitory.

Specifically, Elma’s private room.

After losing consciousness, she had fortunately regained her senses quickly. Assisted by a young knight accustomed to such situations, she had repeatedly drunk massive amounts of water and vomited it back up.

Once it seemed her symptoms had finally stabilized, she had fallen into a deep slumber, likely due to sheer exhaustion.

It would be ideal to have a Medical Mentor examine her, but unless internal organs are damaged, “drunkenness” is generally not something subject to healing magic.

That left only the care of a “normal doctor,” but since first aid had already been administered and most of the alcohol expelled, there was little left to do but let her sleep it off.

In the end, it was decided she should rest in her own room. However, since it was impossible to ask her fellow maids to carry the sleeping Elma all the way up to the fourth floor, Lucas himself had volunteered for transport duty.

Technically, he had stepped into the maids’ dormitory before clearing it with the Head Maid, Gerda—but given the circumstances, and the fact that it was Elma, he doubted anyone would accuse them of “impropriety.”

Lucas watched the limp girl with a weary sigh.

Elma.

A girl born and raised in a prison.

At first, he had thought she was merely a pitiful, weak thing.

But once the lid was lifted, she was reading micro-expressions, catching tuna, and performing surgery.

Lucas found himself wanting to conduct a formal investigation into that prison just to see what kind of education could produce such a finished product.

However, the fact that “there is someone in the prison capable of providing an extremely high level of education” could lead to a string of inconvenient truths—such as the existence of a conspiracy.

For someone like him, who had maintained his status and safety by playing the role of the hedonistic Second Prince, there was a slight hesitation to throw that all away to uncover a plot.

Furthermore, there was the practical issue that they had thoroughly erased her background as a prison convict, meaning he couldn’t officially dig into it.

Still, Lucas had certainly caught the scent of something fishy regarding that prison.

It was jarring and distorted.

Whether the one warping the true image was someone on this side—or someone on the prison’s side—remained to be seen.

Lucas had a premonition that, in the not-too-distant future, he would be forced to intervene in those affairs.

‘…In any case.’

He shook his head slightly, switching his train of thought.

The reality before his eyes was simply a young, small girl lying on a bed.

Her background might be suspicious, but through their interactions, he understood that she herself was a person without malice.

Everything she did was outrageous, and he had even begun to think of her as an “unknown lifeform,” but in reality, she was still just a fifteen-year-old girl.

“…My bad.”

He offered a small apology.

The girl, with her unexpectedly delicate frame, simply continued to sleep.

Lucas glanced at her loosened collar without a hint of desire—after all, he had no intention of making a move on a plain-looking, landmine-like girl with zero cuteness—when he suddenly noticed something.

‘…From the collarbone down, the skin color is different…?’

Her chest, usually hidden by the standing collar of her maid uniform.

The skin there appeared to be a startling, brilliant white.

‘No… wait. Come to think of it, her hands too…’

Even during the surgery, he had thought her arms were unusually pale.

At the time, there had been too many other things to worry about, so he hadn’t pursued the thought.

“…”

Lucas furrowed his brows in silence.

The arm currently exposed had a beautiful, translucent color where the blue veins showed through; it didn’t look like a fake at all.

If so, this was her “natural” skin.

‘Which means…’

On an impulse, Lucas tipped a water bottle from the bedside onto his sleeve and rubbed her cheek firmly with the wet cloth.

In an instant, skin as beautiful as a pearl was revealed.

He couldn’t help but widen his eyes.

Elma.

A girl who was supposed to be “plain,” with dull skin and a gloomy expression.

But yes—he remembered thinking once before that the shape of her lips was beautiful.

Lucas slowly reached out for her glasses. Those two pieces of glass occupied the vast majority of her impression, looking as if they were integrated with her face itself.

What exactly does the face beneath these look like—?

‘What do you mean, “what does it look like”? You can see it through the lenses anyway.’

He gave a wry smile at the corner of his mind for feeling a sudden stir in his chest as he gently removed the glasses.

Then, he gasped.

“…!”

There lay a face so overwhelmingly beautiful that he would have believed it was an elf or an apostle.

Beneath glossy black bangs were eyebrows that traced a soft, natural curve. There were long eyelashes casting smooth arcs and a high bridge to her nose. Her skin, now stripped of the “dullness” that was actually makeup, was a translucent white like alabaster.

He realized then that the glasses had been calculated—as if designed with absolute precision—to distort her features into their most miserable possible form.

“Father…?”

At that moment, her eyelids slid open, and Lucas snapped back to his senses.

For the first time, he saw her eyes: the color of dawn. A deep, soulful hue that was neither quite blue, nor navy, nor purple—a color that made one want to stare forever.

Elma let her gaze wander blankly until it brushed against Lucas’s black hair. Then, she murmured softly.

“Father.”

And then, she gave a faint smile, like a bud finally blooming.

“…!”

Apparently, in her half-asleep state, she had mistaken him for her father. That expression of complete, unguarded trust had a destructive power that silenced even a man as experienced with women as Lucas.

“…Hey—”

“I’ll… do my best.”

Elma cut off whatever he was about to say. Still wearing a light, dreamy expression, she continued.

“To understand… what a ‘normal girl’ is… quickly…”

Her eyelids began to droop again.

“Quickly… I want to go… home…”

And with that, she fell back into sleep.

A profound silence filled the room. In the quiet space, only the sound of her youthful, rhythmic breathing remained.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

A monologue escaped his lips. Lucas unconsciously covered the lower half of his face with his right hand.

A plain, outrageous, uncute girl. An existence bordering on the non-human, someone who threw people into a vortex of confusion.

And yet, despite himself—

“She’s actually cute.”

He found himself thinking of her fondly.

Just then, the sound of footsteps racing up the stairs from below reached him. Lucas jerked his head up. Feeling an inexplicable sense of panic, he hurried out of the room.

Charging toward him was Irene, her hair in total disarray.

“Elma! I heard you collapsed! What on earth—eh? Prince Lucas!?”

Irene, thinking the opening door meant Elma herself, started to scream before choking on her words. Before she could interrogate him, Lucas spoke curtly.

“She collapsed, so I carried her. She’s just sleeping now. I’m leaving; give my regards to Gerda.”

With that, he walked away at a brisk pace. Irene stood in front of the door looking bewildered for a moment, but soon, the sound of the door being re-opened echoed through the hall—

“…THERE IS AN ANGEL ON THIS EARTHHHHHHHHHHHH?!

Just as Lucas reached the bottom floor, a scream that seemed to shake the entire dormitory rang out.