Chapter 5
“Why are you suddenly talking about marriage?”
“I heard from Dad what Her Grace the Grand Duchess said. She said she was determined to get you married this year, and that as soon as the weather warmed up, she'd send you to the capital to make your debut in high society. Hearing that made me a little worried too.”
“Ah, that.”
Derek, who'd been staring straight into my eyes, lifted the hand that had been massaging my shoulder and gently stroked my head.
“Don't worry. We won't be separated. I'll take you with me.”
Stroke, stroke. It didn't feel that bad to have my head petted.
I guess it was because my hair was so soft.
Still, in the name of masculine dignity, I frowned and put on an angry expression.
“Hey, that's not the point. Dad's been going on about whether or not to marry me off ever since. I don't want to get married.”
“Marriage…… Who are you being courted by?”
“Uh, well…… I, there is someone, you bastard. Anyway, I don't want to.”
I couldn't exactly say the person was you, you bastard.
Derek's expression stiffened a little.
Guess he was sulking because I didn't tell him.
I sighed and turned my gaze back to the lake.
The lake had frozen solid, but now it was cracked all over like a spiderweb.
It was all thanks to someone way beyond the norm, but all the same, that solid sheet of ice had been broken by a single pebble small enough to fit in one hand.
The lake seemed to reflect what was going on inside me.
I was protecting my precious masculinity, asleep beneath the surface, with a solid shield, but my identity had cracked all over and might shatter at any moment.
After four years of being taught and practicing a woman's behavior, values, and way of thinking, could I honestly still confidently say, like I did to Derek every day, ‘I'm a man’? Not really.
I'd already gotten used to Yuria's body, and feminine habits came out unconsciously.
The way I spoke and acted around Derek was, in a way, nothing but a sort of desperate struggle.
But even so, I still remembered being a man. Getting married to another man was a bit much.
“Hey, how many times have I told you? I'm a man. Would you want to get together with a man? I wouldn't. Even if the heavens fell, I wouldn't marry a man.”
“……Yeah, let's go with that.”
Derek's sigh landed on the crown of my head.
Sighing too much will make your luck run out.
Silence fell between us for a while.
Across the lake, a white rabbit popped out from a snow-covered bush.
I looked at the rabbit, whose ears twitched as it tilted its head at us.
Unfortunately, it wasn't a rabbit in a suit and watch shouting, ‘Busy, busy.’
If I followed a rabbit like that and fell into some Wonderland, maybe I could live alone.
A slight chill ran through me, and I shivered.
Derek, who'd been playing with my flowing hair all this time without me noticing, immediately spoke up.
“Cold? Shall we go inside?”
“Yeah, it's cold, but I'll stay a little longer.”
“Then, here.”
Derek took off his jacket and draped it over the exposed part of my thighs beneath my skirt.
“Tch. Anyone watching would think I'm not your maid, but you're my servant.”
“Mm, you've always been a handful. And you caused plenty of trouble even after you grew up.”
“……You bastard, are you calling me a klutz too?”
“I never called you a klutz. I know how much you hate that nickname.”
Apart from the knights in his personal order, with whom he'd shared hardships on dangerous monster hunts, Derek treated people coldly.
The only exceptions were me and his younger sister, Maria.
Well, Maria was one thing, but he was always so considerate and warm toward me.
I suppose it was different because we'd been friends since childhood.
He generally avoided bringing up the things I hated.
As I enjoyed the warmth of Derek's coat serving as a lap blanket, silence fell again.
How much time passed?
Derek suddenly spoke.
“Yuria.”
“Yeah, what?”
“If you absolutely had to get married, what would you do?”
“That's what's got me so frustrated. I have absolutely no intention of giving my heart to a man, but I might be forced into a match anyway. Maybe I should just find someone when you go to the capital for the social season. Someone who'd keep up the appearance of being married while not touching me at all and living like strangers.”
“……Mm.”
“If you know anyone like that, introduce me, would you?”
A marriage of convenience. With some truly vicious terms.
I had no idea what man would agree to that, but I had to try, even if it meant grasping at straws.
Maybe…… Derek would agree, figuring he was saving a friend.
The bond of our manly friendship was so deep; he was the kind of friend who'd make that sort of sacrifice.
But Derek was absolutely out of the question.
As the future heir to the Grand Duchy, he'd need an heir of his own to inherit the title, so he had to take a wife who could bear his child.
Me? Fuck, having a kid? Just imagining it gives me the creeps.
“……Don't worry. Someone who suits you will come along soon.”
“Thanks for the comforting words, even if they're just lip service, asshole.”
“If it really comes to it…… Never mind.”
“What? What is it? Hey, don't leave me hanging. You're a real bastard, you know.”
I leaned my head back and glared up at him, irritation written all over my face.
Derek looked down at me and smirked.
It was an utterly ordinary weekend afternoon.
****************
“Big sis—”
Maria, Derek's younger sister, came running over and wrapped her arms around my leg.
The person five-year-old Maria was most attached to in the whole world was none other than me.
“Yes, yes. Big brother's right here~ You're calling me big sister again today, aren't you? You shouldn't do that.”
I patted Maria's head, then crouched slightly to meet her at eye level.
The number-one rule for handling children, something I'd learned through my various past experiences.
Talk to them while looking them in the eye at the same level……
“Big brother, I can see your panties. The teachers said girls have to be careful not to show what's under their skirts. And only girls wear skirts. So you're not big brother, you're big sister.”
“……”
Yuria von Lloyd, sunk for the 27th time this season…….
Where I came from, kids these days were making a whole fuss about learning to code. Did they study logic instead of coding here?
What on earth were the tutors teaching a five-year-old?
First, I quickly turned my head to look for Derek.
“……Did you see?”
Derek only shrugged, a grin playing around his lips.
“If you didn't, then we're good.”
I knelt down again to make sure no one could see under my skirt.
No matter whether I'm a man or not, you shouldn't go showing that sort of thing around carelessly.
“It's not ‘careful’; it's ‘carefully.’ Maria speaks so well today, doesn't she? But I've told you this lots of times. This big brother has special circumstances, so even though he's a man, he wears a skirt. So when it's just us, you should call me big brother, okay?”
“But your hair is really long, and your face is really pretty…… and your boobs are huge! Maria isn't stupid. Big sister isn't a boy; she's a girl. So you're big sister!”
Maria, the youngest ever to hit back-to-back home runs……
Right, they say the most painful kind of violence is a blunt truth—and getting hit with one by a kid is the worst.
Fuck, that stings…….
Meanwhile, Derek was laughing so hard at Maria's words that he was nearly out of breath.
“Khh-hahaha, Yuria. That's what Maria says.”
“Shut up. You and I are having a talk later. I'm not letting you off.”
Maybe Derek was getting more and more twisted as time went by, but he seemed to love watching me get flustered when other people treated me as a woman through and through.
My one and only friend, and he couldn't even help me out when I was suffering. Sheesh.
These days, our usual way to spend the break after dinner was the three of us: me, Derek, and Maria.
I'd play with Maria while Derek watched us.
I didn't know why he found it so funny to watch me take care of a kid, but anyway, he hadn't even been doing his evening training lately, choosing to stay by my side instead.
“So the witch said, ‘Mirror, mirror, who's the fairest in the land?’ And the mirror said, ‘The fairest person in the land is…….’”
“Sister Yuria!”
“Snow Whi—huh?”
“You're the prettiest in the world, big sister!”
“Ah, haha…… y-yeah. Big sister's the prettiest, of course.”
Don't let this get to you, Lee Siwoo.
It's true that Yuria was pretty, but it still felt a little strange.
Of course Maria hadn't meant anything by it, but it stung to have my masculinity chipped away, even as it made me feel strangely good.
Meanwhile, Derek was still smiling fondly.
“Why do you keep smiling?”
“Yuria, at this point, why not just stop being a man? The way you talk is so……”
“……Wanna die? Hey, if Maria weren't here, I'd be swearing you out right now, you know that?”
“No, but I've told you this before. You're so good at looking after a child, yet you keep talking like you're not feminine at all. It just doesn't ring true.”
Men can take care of kids too, you uncivilized medieval caveman.
That's what I learned to do and made a living at originally.
No matter how awful the experiences I'd had were, my skill and pride in childcare weren't going anywhere.
The problem was that it was awkward to explain where I'd learned professional childcare.
This wasn't a place where gender roles were as flexible as they were in the modern world, so looking after children was generally seen as women's work. And so, to other people's eyes, someone like me who was good with kids……
Mom had even landed a critical blow right in my gut, saying I was more prepared to be a mother than she had been at my age, I think.
Even though Maria had a nanny, the fact that the Grand Duchy household deliberately left her with me for about an hour a day showed how they saw me.
“Big sis, let's do origami today. I want to fold paper!”
“Sure, sure. What shall we fold that's new today?”
Maria toddled over, struggled to open a drawer, and pulled out a stack of paper.
Watching her, Derek asked in puzzlement.
“Origami? What's that?”
“You fold paper, just like it sounds. If you fold it this way and that, it takes shape. Want me to show you?”
Ah, behold. This is origami -
Come to think of it, maybe I could've made it big as a professional early-childhood education instructor instead of being a maid.
Then, um…… I probably wouldn't have gotten this close to the idiot sticking his face in beside me.
That would be kind of a shame.
I carefully folded and refolded a sheet of pink paper, Maria's favorite color, and finally finished the result.
“Ta-da. What do you think? Pretty good, right?”
“Wow—Big sis, you're amazing!”
Since Maria was only five, it had to be simple enough for her to follow, so the range of shapes I could make was limited.
Among those, I chose one I hadn't shown her before and folded it for her.
Since the paper was pink, I made a matching heart.
“As a keepsake, you can have this.”
“Huh? Oh…… this?”
“Don't you like it? Want me to fold you something else?”
“No, no, give me that one. I want that one.”
Looking at him, that hulking man wasn't exactly someone a pink heart suited.
Pink is a color that suits a manly man like me.
“All right, Maria, shall we fold one together now?”
“Yeah!”
Well, of course.