I.

For a moment, Mina’s face went pale, and then it instantly flared up a vivid red.

‘How am I supposed to show you that? I can’t.’

And to be fair, Mina’s Name… had manifested in a somewhat inappropriate(?) place. Her right b****t. Specifically, right beneath the n****e.

When Mina turned deathly pale and couldn’t say a word, Leopold continued, visibly pleased with himself.

“As you say, Ducal Lady, if I’m your Name pair, and it’s a one-sided manifestation at that, then I’d know what needs to be done.”

One-sided manifestation? Was the Crown Prince saying that he doesn’t have a Name right now?

“So it’s only natural that I have the right to see your Name. There’s an order to how things are done. Trying to strip the empire’s heir to the throne, hah. That insolent attempt is nothing but outrageous. But if there are circumstances you can’t avoid, then it’s not as if I can’t grant my former fiancée’s request.”

‘Damn it! He’s insane!’

Mina went speechless in an instant. She couldn’t figure out what to say. There was nothing in Leopold’s words she could pick apart.

‘Kim Mina, you idiot!’

If he checks the Name and it really is there? Why did you go and do this without thinking of that? Seized by the fear of dying young, Mina hadn’t had the room to think after finding her Name pair, and she fell into despair.

She’d only wanted to confirm whether she had a Name at all…

‘If Leopold really is my Name pair, do I actually have to sleep with this man?’

There were too many problems, way too many. For one, Mina had never had s*x with a man. She’d been too busy staying on survival mode to date even once, so s*x, as if…! She’d only encountered it in writing, and it had nothing to do with real-life romance.

And the most important point here was that Leopold was now her younger sister’s man.

‘Even if you suddenly told me I had to have s*x because he’s my fiancé, my mind would go blank…!’

The kind of thoughts she’d briefly forgotten after becoming terminal began to take over her reason again.

Mina bit down on her helpless lips, grinding them. Her mind creaked as if it had stopped working in the face of the sudden situation.

“Why, did you suddenly lose your nerve? Just when you tried to take my clothes off, and now you can’t show me the Name, the evidence?”

“No, it’s not that… It’s, it’s just that the place where the Name appeared is really inappropriate…”

When the flustered Mina stammered, Leopold narrowed his eyes sharply, as if to say, see?

“Didn’t you say it’s a matter of your life? And you’re still leisurely quibbling over something so pointless. I guess it’s not truly serious after all.”

“B-But it really is a place that’s hard to show you so readily…”

“So it was a lie after all?”

Leopold sneered as if he’d known it, and gripped both of Mina’s hands even harder. His blue eyes gleamed viciously.

“What, having second thoughts now? Now that I’ve become your younger sister’s man, do you suddenly think it’s a waste not to have me for yourself?”

“What? What are you talking about…?”

Mina was aghast at the out-of-nowhere nonsense. With a foreboding feeling, she stared at those blue eyes blazing hot.

With his other hand, Leopold roughly yanked her waist toward him. As he leaned his upper body in past her tightly held hands, their faces drew close in an instant.

“If that’s what this is, you don’t need to make up that kind of sloppy excuse. Be honest and say you’ve finally taken an interest in me. Then we can solve this in plenty of other ways, too.”

“What?”

Before Mina could even think about what he meant, Leopold lowered his head toward her lips.

“Aah!”

Thanks to how quickly she turned her head, Leopold’s lips landed on the nape of her neck, missing by a hair. But the clammy sensation, like a snake crawling over her, sent goosebumps erupting across her body. Terrified, Mina thrashed wildly. But the force crushing down on her didn’t budge an inch.

‘This crazy bastard!’

Cursing him every way she could in her head, Mina didn’t hesitate. She lifted her right foot high, then brought her heel down with all her strength onto Leopold’s left foot.

Crack!

The hard heel mercilessly crushed the toes inside his shoe. The clean impact shot up past the heel, along the calf, and into the thigh.

“Aargh!”

Leopold, who had been mindlessly sucking at her neck, let out a mangled groan. The moment his face, twisted in pain, fell away, Mina shoved his body back with all her strength, hard!

Thud! A loud sound rang out, but Mina didn’t even look back and bolted.

“Goddamn it! Wilhelmina Wittgen!”

Leopold’s pain-filled curse clung to the back of her head, but Mina sprinted like mad. The urgent clack of her heels rang noisily through the high-ceilinged corridor.