Roxana
Chapter 56
Chapter 56
How to Protect the Female Lead’s Older Brother
Chapter 56
* * *
“The Yellow Bertium, as expected.”
A moment later, a muffled noise, like sound bleeding through water, drifted in from outside.
I gently drew back the curtain and looked out the window.
Figures stepping down from carriages came into view.
The second to arrive after us were the people of the Yellow Bertium family.
I caught sight of Lant Agriche approaching to exchange greetings with them.
From observing Lant Agriche over the past three years through my poison butterflies, it seemed the family he strove hardest to forge close ties with was the Yellow Bertium.
While interaction between families was hardly unusual, his exchanges with Bertium were far more frequent.
That was why I had been keeping a close eye on them.
True to form, however, Lant never left any obvious tracks.
Still, it wasn’t as if I had no idea what he was after.
Recalling the contents of 『The Flower of Hell』, Lant was interested in the Yellow Bertium’s puppetry.
Bertium’s dolls were in a completely different league from the ones Maria toyed with.
Maria merely treated people she took a liking to like living dolls, but Bertium used puppetry to craft dolls so intricate they seemed genuinely alive and breathing.
That was precisely why Lant was interested in Bertium’s dolls.
He likely wanted a formidable army that felt neither pain nor fear of death…
Fitting thoughts for a greedy villain, wasn’t it?
Yet Noel, the head of Bertium and one of the novel’s male leads, bled Lant dry of every benefit before betraying him in the end.
After all, he joined hands with the blackened Sylvia to bring about Agriche’s downfall.
Furthermore, as depicted in the novel, Noel was thoroughly lethargic, having no interest in nonsense like doll armies that Lant coveted.
So at this rate, Bertium was unlikely to interfere with my future plans.
Even so, I intended to maintain surveillance just in case.
I watched a little longer, but no one resembling Bertium’s head stepped out of the carriage.
Perhaps he planned to skip the gathering this year, just like the last.
Even in the novel, he was a recluse who secluded himself within his own private kingdom in Bertium.
I looked down at Lant Agriche for a moment longer before drawing the curtain closed again.
* * *
From that evening onward, a grand banquet was held in the castle of Yggdrasil.
No matter the place, liquor and festivities were inevitable fixtures of such large-scale gatherings.
Yet I did not attend.
When I told Lant I needed to focus on handling my poison butterflies, he readily gave his consent.
In truth, that was not the real reason I avoided the party.
Then again, it wasn’t as if I had any profound excuse either.
It was simply that banquets bored me.
“Noona, are you really not going down to the banquet hall?”
“I’m only attending on the final day.”
I could sense lingering movements outside the door, but I chose to ignore them.
Last year as well, after I made an appearance at the banquet on the first day, there were people hovering around me like this until the gathering ended.
To think the same thing would happen even though I had holed myself up in my room from the very start.
They were likely attendees from last year, or those who had heard about me from them.
They couldn’t even dare approach when I actually appeared before their eyes, yet they always proved subtly annoying like this.
“Jeremy, go downstairs and mingle with the others.”
Setting down my teacup, I urged him.
Jeremy was glued to the sofa beside me, having just devoured all the refreshments that came with the tea table.
Looking bored, he flopped onto his side.
“If Noona isn’t there, it’s no fun for me either.”
Tearing into shreds the napkin I had given him to wipe his hands, he looked less like an eighteen-year-old and more like an eight-year-old child.
“Besides, I slipped down earlier and saw those bastards, but none of them amounted to anything.”
Perhaps his opinion might change if he met the novel’s male leads, but…
Since they didn’t seem to have arrived yet, it made sense that Jeremy found it dull.
I, too, agreed with his assessment that the people downstairs were unremarkable.
At present, members of the other families—save for the Blue Pedelian—had been arriving one by one below.
Yet none among them were key figures from 『The Flower of Hell』.
There were three male leads in the novel in total.
Orca of the White Hyperion family, Ruzark of the Red Gastor family, and Noel of the Yellow Bertium family were those very men.
Well, of course, Jeremy of the Black Agriche family played an important role in his own right within the novel.
However, since he was a villain who met a miserable end, let us exclude him from the male leads for now.
In any case, true to their status as male leads, each possessed a distinct and striking personality.
And like the central figures of a story whose presence commanded a high price, it was difficult for a minor villainess like me to catch even a glimpse of their faces.
Among them, the only one I had seen when attending the Harmony Conference last year was Ruzark of the Red Gastor.
The others had blatantly skipped last year’s gathering, and whether they would attend this year remained uncertain.
Then again, Sylvia had only become entangled with the male leads in the novel because she personally sought them out in search of her brother’s whereabouts.
At any rate, Ruzark Gastor was the sole person whose face I had confirmed with my own eyes.
If I were to describe my impression of him, he was undeniably worthy of being a male lead in the novel.
With red hair and purple eyes, Ruzark was a bronze-skinned handsome man radiating an untamed, feral aura.
He had sharp, defined features and left quite an intense impression, having been the only person among the attendees at last year’s Harmony Conference to maintain his composure in the presence of my beauty.
Of course, he had reflexively stopped in his tracks and widened his eyes upon spotting me, but at the very least, he hadn’t worn a foolish expression like the fools around him.
Recovering his senses faster than anyone in the crowd, he scowled fiercely and strode past me with rough, heavy footsteps.
Having read the novel, I knew Ruzark suffered from gynophobia.
Thus, I could roughly deduce where the immense revulsion he displayed that day stemmed from.
Ruzark departed Yggdrasil that very night.
It was a swift departure indeed, almost as if I were the sole cause of it.
Given his unbending, upright nature, I surmised he simply could not accept that he had been shaken by a woman.
“I was curious about Bertium’s head since they said he’s around our age. Didn’t they say he’d come this time after skipping last year?”
“That was what the rumors said, at least.”
The aforementioned Noel, head of Bertium, was the youngest among the current generation of leaders.
In addition, he was the only one among the novel’s three male leads who was no longer merely an heir.
He attended the Harmony Conference roughly once every two or three years.
According to my sources, we should have been able to see his face this time…
Judging by the fact that none of the people stepping out of the carriage matched the novel’s description of a cute-looking man with orange hair and green eyes, he might simply be skipping this year as well.
On the other hand, Orca of the White Hyperion family was said to have never once shown his face at the Harmony Conference.
True to his moniker as the ‘White Beast Tamer,’ he harbored a deep fascination with magical beasts.
I had heard the Harmony Conference was always an afterthought to him, as he spent every winter pursuing the habitats of rare magical beasts that grew active during the season.
“Jeremy, if you’re hungry, shall I have a meal brought up here?”
“Sure! I’ll go tell them.”
He could have simply pulled the cord to summon a servant, yet Jeremy sprang up from his seat and headed for the door anyway.
Evidently, the presence of people pacing outside the room had been grating on his nerves.
Opening the door just a crack so that I wouldn’t be exposed to the outside, Jeremy slipped through.
Shortly after, a brief commotion arose outside.
Before long, however, Jeremy returned to the room with a noticeably lighter expression.
“Ah, I forgot to tell them to bring the food.”
“Let’s just call someone inside.”
Clearly, Jeremy’s purpose in stepping out had never been the meal.
Seeing this, it seemed he had only grown older in years; in every other respect, he had hardly changed at all.
Deciding to overlook it, I pulled the cord to summon a servant.
