Chapter 50
The woman, whose head was held firmly by Oscar, assumed their lips would overlap at any moment. She expected to be consumed entirely by this startlingly sensual and dangerous man.
“…….”
However, the man who looked as though he would plunge into her lips at any second stopped just short, their noses nearly brushing.
A captivating, feral scent filled her senses. For some reason, she felt a restless longing at the faint warmth and tried to lean closer to him, but he pulled away.
Oscar tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he let out a long, slow breath, followed by a laugh that sounded as if he found the situation absurd.
It was the woman who was left yearning.
“Your Excellency?”
When she called to him in a thin voice, Oscar lowered his gaze from the ceiling. Staring at her with icy blue eyes, he untangled his hand from her plain brown hair. He gripped her chin with one hand, then pressed his thumb against her lips as if rubbing them. Weren’t all lips essentially the same? Just a thin, red strip of skin on the border of a mucous membrane.
The woman blinked up at Oscar. Though she was disappointed that a kiss hadn’t immediately followed, the mere fact that this terrifyingly seductive man’s gaze was fixed on her lips made her feel lightheaded.
She closed her eyes and covered his fingertip with her upper lip, biting down softly. Rubbing her soft lips against his fingertip, she let out a suggestive, wet sound.
She wanted to make him crave her lips, to make him want to replace his finger with something else.
The sound echoed through the enclosed room.
Oscar watched coldly as she tried to swallow his finger with her lips. A tawdry pleasure—licking, biting, entangling—was fumbling at his fingertip. And he was simply allowing that tawdry pleasure to linger there.
Why?
What was he hoping to see?
But as the woman’s actions grew more intense, the corners of his mouth, which had held a hollow smile, flattened into a cold line. He felt the faint intoxication he’d managed to achieve after several bottles evaporate instantly.
Around that time, the woman, who had been trying to take his entire finger into her mouth, opened her eyes as he suddenly yanked it away. She assumed he was about to lay her down.
A rush of exhilaration surged to her head, but the man simply brushed past her. She turned around blankly to follow him, but his next move was nothing like what she had expected.
Oscar passed the woman, picked up a water bottle from the table, and poured water over the hand she had been fumbling with. After drying it with a towel provided on the side of the table, he placed a cigarette between his lips.
His clothes were still disheveled as he ran a hand through his hair, and his posture as he smoked was just as indolent as his attire. However, his hooded eyes were so frigid that the woman asked without thinking.
“Your Excellency, did I make a mistake…?”
The tip of his cigarette glowed red as he took a deep drag. As the smoke drifting from his lips began to blur her vision, those blue eyes turned toward her.
The moment she saw that chilling gaze, she realized he hadn’t been aroused by her for even a single second.
Averting his eyes, Oscar tossed the towel onto the table and walked casually toward the door.
“I have a weak stomach.”
“…….”
“Take the money.”
With those words, he opened the door and walked out.
The Wolves waiting outside became busy at their master’s sudden appearance. Simon, who had arrived after being contacted, immediately fell in line behind Oscar. The man who had brought the women also came running, but by then, Oscar had already left the hotel lobby.
“Your Excellency, the crowds are immense. I have prepared a detour for you.”
Being a festival day, Vies was crowded everywhere. Because St. Roel Cathedral was nearby, the area in front of the hotel was a sea of people. The sidewalks were packed, and the streets were filled with carriages.
Quietly smoking while alternating his gaze between the crowds and the carriages, Oscar spoke as he put on the jacket Simon handed him.
“It’s not far. I’ll just walk.”
Then he set off. Despite his casual tone and actions, Oscar, cloaked in the evening shadows, was as silent and eerie as a grim reaper coming to pronounce a death sentence.
Simon ordered the waiting Wolves to follow their master, and they cleared a path for him. No one dared to ask his intentions, let alone speak to him.
With a cigarette in his mouth and one hand shoved in his pocket, Oscar walked boldly away from the hotel and onto the congested road.
“How much longer must we stay here?”
“Madam, please wait just a little longer. As you can see, nothing is moving!”
“Mother, I’m bored!”
Pointless whining and irritation, the snorting of horses, the gruff voices of annoyed coachmen, the flickering of lamps hanging from carriage roofs.
None of it caught Oscar’s attention.
He would simply pass it by, and if it got in his way, he would clear it out.
Oscar took a drag of his cigarette. Even among the carriages, the nauseating stench of perfume and powder was thick in the air.
If even a rumor spread that the Marchioness von Reinhardt had used something, the dresses and perfumes would sell out instantly, and it would sometimes even be discussed in the news. Half the population of East Norfolk consumed similar perfumes, dresses, and cosmetics. He had started smoking because the smoke at least helped mask that smell.
Reaching the opposite sidewalk where the crowds were slightly thinner, Oscar stopped to catch his breath, standing still like stagnant water.
A thorn.
For some reason, he felt an unpleasant sensation, as if a thread-like thorn were stuck in his throat. A thorn so thin it was barely visible was lodged somewhere unknown, bothering him whenever he was about to forget it.
Where was it stuck? When did it get there? Why? Or was it even there at all?
Perhaps that day, the drug the brothel madam used had seeped into him. Oscar laughed at the absurd thought that suddenly crossed his mind. Letting out a smoky laugh, he continued walking.
The bustling crowd often brushed against him as they passed, but nothing left an impression. It was like the wind slipping through his fingers. Countless things were flowing around and filling the space near him, but paradoxically, Oscar was walking through a void.
As he walked and walked, he suddenly reached a step where the thorn was no longer felt.
People flowed around Oscar, who had stopped like an island standing alone in the middle of a river.
“Not here, the view is better over there!”
“It’s starting soon. Hurry, hurry!”
Oscar watched the people brushing past him. Perhaps it was because no one expected the Marquis von Reinhardt to be traveling on foot, or perhaps because a bigger event was currently more important.
The people were uninterested in who the exceptionally tall man was. They were simply moving like water toward a single destination.
Oscar’s gaze followed the flow of the crowd.
The cathedral, rising hideously high. The glamorous department store that was filling his pockets even at this very moment.
The square between the cathedral and the department store looked like a painting rendered with thick, messy strokes of oil paint. A cheap landscape where the features of the people couldn’t be seen, existing only as dots, and where one couldn’t tell what the artist was trying to say.
But in that scene, like a cheap landscape painting, he saw it.
Amidst this sickeningly large crowd of humans, that one person caught his eye.
“…….”
He stopped in his tracks and took a breath.
The wind broke into small pieces and seeped into his soot-filled chest. The suffocating feeling of not being able to breathe properly remained, but he no longer felt the thorn scratching his throat.
A clumsy woman who couldn’t even lift her head like an idiot because she was so scared, despite being surrounded by people who didn’t even care about the Marquis von Reinhardt.
Oscar watched Seo-ah swaying in the crowd.
In the sense that they were both standing against the flow, he and she were no different. But unlike Oscar, who stood unmoving like an island in the river, Seo-ah was being bumped, shaken, and knocked off balance.
The tip of his cigarette burned.
Oscar smoked calmly, observing the situation with cold detachment.
But then, the woman who had been swaying here and there suddenly vanished into the wave of people.
It was then that the stationary island moved.
The dense sea of humans, the wretched smell of powder and perfume, and the thorn all vanished from his mind.
“Damn it….”
Cursing at no one in particular, Oscar threw down his cigarette. He stepped into the street and…
Before he knew it, he was running.
