I Start with a Bad Hand!

Roxanne stared at my pin with confused eyes. As her silent gaze fixed on me, the eyes of everyone else in the student council room naturally gathered on me too. The room, previously filled with chatter, had suddenly gone quiet.

The situation was taking an odd turn.

‘Wow, it feels really strange to be accused of theft while just standing here.’

It was a situation I had never experienced before. Feeling the weight of all those eyes, I calmly opened my mouth, reminding myself that I could clear this up just by speaking calmly.

“The hairpin you said you lost, does it have a gem that is…”

Before I could finish, someone violently opened the door of the student council room. Feeling something cold sink inside my chest, I slowly turned my head towards the sound.

It was Cedric, with his silvery hair colder than a well-honed blade.

He was roughly dragging Yuri by the hand. ‘His habit of grabbing others abruptly hasn’t changed,’ I thought.

The noisy entrance had drawn everyone’s attention to him, and soon, I sensed that all eyes were on me. Cedric’s eyes, swirling with a tempest of fury, were fixed on me, more precisely…

Before I could gather my thoughts, Cedric released Yuri’s hand and strode towards me, grabbing me roughly as if to lift me by the collar. I lost my balance and fell backwards.

“Have you still not discarded that vulgar habit?”

Cedric, ignoring my fall, growled in a low voice right beside my ear and harshly removed the hairpin from my hair.

“Why do you have this?”

It made no sense to bring something you had just stolen to where the owner would be. However, from our few encounters, I knew Cedric was not a man of common sense.

Just as Cedric was about to roughly pull me up, the pain in my fallen legs and hip prevented me from speaking, but someone blocked his reaching hand.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

The second prince, whose arrival was unnoticed, now stood in his way.

Cedric paused for a moment at the unexpected appearance of the second prince, then barely managed to suppress his anger and greeted him. The second prince frowned, looking alternately at me and Cedric, confused about why he was here.

As I made a move to get up, the second prince extended his hand as if to help me, though I was able to stand on my own.

I quietly shook my head. Although I couldn’t see the expression of the Second Prince, I could feel his persistent gaze following me. I leaned on a nearby table to barely pull myself up. Unlike when it was broken, a sharp pain now crept up my ankle. I steadied my heart and looked at Cedric, opening my mouth to make the explanation I hadn’t managed earlier.

“I was just about to tell you, the gem on the hairpin Roxanne lost…”

Cedric interrupted me with a tone full of disbelief.

“Are you suggesting that a family of the Degoph Baron’s standing could afford to craft a hairpin using jewels from a grand ducal lady’s ornaments?”

I was about to ask again patiently about the name of the gem when he continued.

“You couldn’t even acquire a single sapphire for that hairpin by selling your father’s estate.”

…Just as I thought. It seemed clarification wouldn’t come easily. The problem was Cedric’s unrelenting mouth.

He appeared to assume that my silence was an implicit admission of theft, and with the Second Prince’s arrival, his anger seemed only slightly abated.

“People have seen you and that rat-like maid meeting secretly.”

Was he accusing me of conspiring with the maid to steal from the ducal family? Cedric said this while pointing at Yuri, barely containing his fury.

Yuri trembled even more and remained silent as Cedric’s gaze fell on her.

‘You just said a family that can’t even afford a simple jewel is now supposedly bribing a maid with money?’

Cedric seemed unaware of the contradictions in his words. He did not allow me a chance to speak, pouring out his anger incessantly. In the frozen atmosphere of the student council room, only Cedric was blazing with rage.

I decided to wait until Cedric had vented enough anger to listen to my side of the story, more precisely, until his mouth stopped.

‘Now that I think about it, they are quite alike…’

Cedric reminded me of the crazy old man… no, the grandfather I met while working part-time at a convenience store.

He always threw money as if it annoyed him. Treating the windfall as something to enjoy was fun for a day or two, but dealing with his constant complaints every day he visited the store was tough.

One day, my blank expression must have really displeased him. Like a census worker coming to conduct a household survey, he started asking whether my parents were still alive or had passed away. He also worried about me working part-time at night, incessantly suggesting that a decent family wouldn’t let their daughter work such night shifts.

While Grandfather spoke, I counted the strands of black hair not yet turned white in his roughly trimmed beard. About fifty strands in, he let out a rough breath. Seizing the moment, I said that the total came to 6,300 won, and Grandfather, as if shooting a money gun, scattered the cash in my face and disappeared gracefully.

Remembering that incident, I let Cedric’s insults go in one ear and out the other, stoically enduring the stares pouring in from all around. It seemed he noticed I was lost in thought.

‘Crazy man, if you noticed, give me a chance to speak too.’

I was adjusting my expression to hide my weariness. Cedric, seeing this, smirked and scoffed. Was he changing his strategy of insult? Uncertain of his intentions, I watched him.

“Did you resolve the academy’s embezzlement case?”

It seemed he had heard the recent developments from Roxanne. With a cold expression, he continued,

“Coveting others’ possessions is your forte, isn’t it? Born with a knack for recognizing your own kind, I suppose?”

“Instead of running around clueless, why not take a look at yourself?” Saying this, he approached me. Startled by his sudden move, I instinctively stepped back, but he placed his hand on my shoulder, pressing down to keep me from moving.

“Is this vile dependency something you were born with? Always taking things too far, aren’t you?”

Cedric whispered this, then let go of my shoulder with a shove. Unlike before, I felt a chill settle in my chest. The temperature in the student council room seemed to plummet further, far colder than my own heart.

Only their eyes were excited, as if watching an enthralling show. As I was picking my words to respond to Cedric, a thought suddenly struck me,

‘How long must this go on?’

Must I be torn apart like this every time a slight suspicion arises, constantly scrambling to prove my innocence and rectitude? With that thought, I loosened the tie around my neck a bit.

To be honest, the difficult situations I’ve encountered since becoming Dietrich were disconcerting but not unbearably painful. The emotions I felt facing such events weren’t grand like rage or misery; they were more like the annoyance one feels each time an unending swarm of fruit flies appears.

Though today was indeed humiliating, I could dismiss it as encountering a troublesome customer at a part-time job. I could also quit the student council now under the pretense of causing a scandal. I never really had friends there, and the people at the academy weren’t particularly friendly to begin with. So, I could either internalize all this insult and discomfort, cursing inwardly as usual, or imagine Cedric’s head as a target and spend the day shooting arrows to get over it.

However, I felt that such incidents would not end until Dietrich graduated from the academy and no longer had to encounter them, or perhaps, not until she disappeared from this world. The thought of it being a perpetual struggle made today’s occurrences, Cedric’s anger, the tense atmosphere, and those sharp words increasingly suffocating.

Today, Cedric had reduced all of my achievements thus far to mere scraps of paper with just a few words. And I was certain that he would treat all of Dietrich’s future accomplishments in the same way. Each time Dietrich tried to build a life of her own, Cedric would come crashing in like a wave, sweeping away all her efforts until she was engulfed in a sense of helplessness and perished. More than any violent act or word, it was Cedric’s attitude that was difficult to simply tolerate and move past.

“Answer me, why did you have my mother’s keepsake? What were you and that maid plotting?”

Cedric’s gaze was now fixed on Yuri, who was trembling and pale. Before his anger could shift fully towards Yuri, I had to speak. I braced myself, making sure my voice didn’t tremble, and looked directly at Cedric.

“Are you really asking because you don’t know?”

“…What?”

Cedric looked ready to pounce at me.

“Why would I know the ducal house’s maid, Yuri, or possess a hairpin made with a gem that would belong to a young lady of the ducal house?”

Yet, it was a confrontation that was inevitable at some point. With that thought, I continued speaking, undeterred by Cedric’s increasingly distorted expression of rage.

“I was asking if you truly did not know.”