Chapter 106
“I, I apologize!”
But at that moment, the shepherd girl, who had been sitting and coughing, suddenly stood up.
“Please forgive me…!”
And just before she hastily bowed, Izar caught a glimpse of her face.
Despite knowing of her existence for a long time, this was the first time he saw the shepherdess up close.
Her small face was worn down by life’s hardships, and upon closer inspection, there were numerous small cuts on her cheeks and wrists.
‘They called her the madwoman’s daughter.’
He could guess what kind of treatment she received when she returned home.
But even in that brief moment, he saw the shepherd’s eyes.
“…You. Shepherdess.”
Those eyes were so large that he wondered what they held inside when he was younger.
And her clothes were soaked as she desperately clutched the troublesome lamb. He could see her small, thin shoulders clinging to the fabric.
“Take this.”
“…Yes?”
Izar abruptly handed her the coat he had thrown off.
He urgently wanted to leave the scene and also ensure she didn’t walk around in that state.
“Do what you want with it.”
“What? But!”
The shepherd, awkwardly draped in the coat, cried out in surprise, but he quickly turned away.
And once the shepherd was far off, he hastily left the place.
“Haah.”
His neck flushed red, and his heart felt as if it had been thrown into a bonfire.
“Why…”
Izar roughly rubbed his cheek with the back of his hand. He couldn’t understand why his face felt so hot, as if it had been burned, just from being wet.
‘Why am I embarrassed?’
Why did seeing that shabby girl’s shoulders slightly wet make him feel this way?
Even though he had personally saved her, getting wet in the process?
Yet he felt as if he had committed the most shameful act in the world.
It was an inexplicable sense of guilt.
But what was truly shameful was the lingering attachment to that coat.
‘Do what you want with it,’ he had said.
It was just an ordinary coat he didn’t particularly cherish, but after throwing it to the shepherdess, he wanted it back.
And he wanted it back in the way that the one he helped would personally return it.
‘I told her to dispose of it as she pleased… but surely no one would actually do that with her master’s clothes, right?’
If the shepherdess had even the slightest bit of common sense and manners, she would come to find him.
Such clothes couldn’t carelessly be handed over to another servant with a request to ‘deliver it on my behalf’, so she would undoubtedly approach him.
‘If she requests it, I won’t stop her.’
Izar thought rather indifferently.
Why would he refuse someone coming to return his belongings? However, the thought of the shepherdess actually coming to see him bothered him for some reason.
“…First, I need to know what a woman likes.”
Electra and Merope, the chief handmaid, were noisy and demanding. While Izar acknowledged their hard work, he kept a psychological distance from them.
The same went for the noble ladies and young women he occasionally met in the capital.
‘Anyway, I can’t give the shepherdess what I would give to those people. Food is probably the safest bet.’
Sugar cookies, which commoners couldn’t easily eat, wouldn’t be a bad choice. Candied violets or roses were delicacies they might never taste in their lifetime…
When he handed such treats to her, how wide would the shepherdess’s light green eyes open?
“…”
A gentle breeze stirred in his chest.
It was a feeling he had never experienced before, but it wasn’t unpleasant.
“Yes, if she just comes…”
He would have to scold her for falling into the lake while holding her master’s property, but first, he would sit her across from him. And he would proudly watch her as she nervously ate the cookies.
‘By then, I should be able to shed the embarrassment I felt by the lake.’
But Izar’s plan remained only a thought.
The team investigating the last remnants of the rebels returned at that time.
“…He really exists?”
It was the day he learned that his half-brother actually existed.
Discussion
0 CommentsReactions
No comments yet.