[Bad Ending: Confinement Route] Full Walkthrough - Chapter 46 - IV.

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IV.

And so, at present, I was sitting at the dinner banquet celebrating my engagement to Raven.

Countless dishes were placed on the large dining table. Every one of them stimulated a person’s appetite. It was a grand and splendid dinner, enough to make one’s mouth water from the smell alone. However, Raven did not even glance at the food.

His gaze was fixed only on me as I lowered my eyes and cut meat with a knife.

“……”

The gaze boring into me was sharp enough to sting. If things went well, it felt as though it might even pierce a hole through my face. But since I knew why he was staring at me so intently, I silently endured that gaze.

It was all because I had invited Raven here and said that I wished to skip the engagement ceremony and serve him a modest meal instead. Yet, from the moment he accepted and came to the mansion, I had not met his eyes even once.

It was only natural that he would be frustrated at being unable to see the face of his beloved fiancée.

I, too, was excited by the fact that I could see his real appearance, not the form of a crow. However, in the eyes of the world, this dinner party was not a particularly happy occasion for Giselle. As far as I was concerned, I needed to act accordingly.

Above all, since I had succeeded in becoming engaged to Raven as I had proposed to Father, according to the plan, the only thing left for me to do from now on was to dislike him.

“Now, now. Where else could there be a day as joyful as today? I hope you will eat comfortably without feeling burdened.”

“……”

“As it happens, there is wine prepared especially for today. Would you care for some?”

Even while despising and fearing Raven, Father clumsily tried to lift the sunken atmosphere.

Beside him, Mother also let out an awkward laugh and kept pace with Father’s forced efforts.

“That’s right, we prepared it especially for an auspicious occasion like today. I do hope it suits your taste… I’ll have the attendants bring it out at once.”

Thanks to the two of them, the dining table grew noisy in an instant. Though the precarious tension flowing quietly beneath it, as if it might burst at any moment, could not be hidden.

It was at one moment when I felt as though I might suffocate from that choking tension. Raven suddenly spoke to me.

“Those earrings you’re wearing suit you very well. Do you wear them often?”

“…Pardon?”

I had been cutting only the meat into tiny pieces until it might turn into powder, trying to show off the boredom of this dinner as much as possible, when the question was suddenly thrown at me. At the same time, my head lifted without me realizing it. It was a slight lapse of caution.

And the price of that mistake came back as eye contact with Raven.

“……”

He was a man far more to my taste than I had imagined.

The first things that entered my eyes were his clean and straight forehead, revealed by his pitch-black hair being swept back, and the long line of his nose.

The black eyes contained in his almond-shaped eyes were so intense that if one looked at them quietly, it felt as though one might be pulled somewhere into them. Perhaps because of the gloomy and cool atmosphere surrounding his face, or perhaps because of his long, thick lashes, hard to believe they belonged to a man, a subtle melancholy could be felt.

Moreover, his body dressed in formal attire was incomparably firm and so large that the chair he was sitting on looked small. Even so, he did not particularly look bulky or heavy.

Rather, he was someone who called to mind a sleek wild beast. His tightly built muscles, upright posture, and the sharp light in his eyes as he looked at another person were no different from those of a black panther.

‘To think that person is the crow I found so cute.’

Apart from my personal likes and dislikes, it seemed that something about the setting was wrong. While I was thinking that, Raven asked the question again, as though waking me from my thoughts.

“…May I ask whether you wear those earrings often?”

Only then did I remember that Raven was waiting for my answer. At the same time, I also belatedly recalled that I had decided to act coldly in order to earn his antipathy.