“Why? Ah, no. Um, so, where should I be cleaning?”
Lev changed the subject so as not to show how flustered he was. Guien narrowed his eyes and looked at his lover, whose gaze was darting here and there.
It was obvious he was hiding something, but he did not seem inclined to say it. Guien, who had been thinking of pressing him further, soon let it go.
“Where else. Here.”
“Where?”
Lev’s gaze, which had been wandering here and there, returned to the Emperor. His face was blank with confusion, as if he did not understand what he had just heard.
Guien ostentatiously let his eyes sweep around himself. Following him, Lev too looked around the office.
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
Lev tilted his head, not quite able to understand.
“There are a lot of important documents here, and this is where Your Majesty handles state affairs. Is it really all right for me to touch things as I please?”
The office was, in every sense, the Emperor’s domain, so not just anyone could come and go as they pleased.
Even the attendants who cleaned this place, he knew, were carefully selected by the chief attendant, but Guien shook his head with a look that said there was no problem at all.
“It is fine. I will be keeping an eye on you anyway.”
“Keeping an eye on me?”
What kind of talk was that supposed to be. Who was going to do what?
“How could I just trust you and leave it to you. I will be watching, so start right away.”
Lev’s face twisted. Truly, there was no end to his spitefulness. In other words, he was saying he would stand there and supervise while Lev cleaned.
He had plenty he wanted to say, but what could he do. If the Emperor told him to do it, he had to.
“Understood.”
Forcing down all sorts of harsh, unkind words inside, Lev obediently bowed his head.
He did not realize that every bit of that expression was visible to the Emperor. Or that Guien had even smiled as if he found it cute.
Scratch, scratch.
The sound of a pen scraping over paper echoed in the quiet room. The swiftly moving nib would sometimes stop. That was when its owner, the Emperor, let his attention wander elsewhere.
Where Guien’s gaze had gone was to his consort, busy wiping the windowpanes. Lev, moving busily about, was bundled up in a shirt, a waistcoat, and even a justaucorps. It looked terribly uncomfortable.
Guien faintly knit his brows.
“Take some of that off.”
Unable to just watch anymore, Guien tossed out a remark. Lev, who had stretched his arm as far as it would go to wipe the top of the tall window, jerked his shoulders.
‘Wow, that scared me!’
Startled by the sudden voice while he was concentrating, Lev turned around.
The Emperor, seated at his desk, was looking this way, a frown between his brows as if something displeased him.
“Are you not stifled? Who goes to clean dressed that uncomfortably.”
Only then did Lev catch the meaning of his words and look over his own clothes. They certainly were not comfortable. The sleeves and collar of his shirt fluttered with lace, and his trousers were tight-fitting breeches. On top of that, he was wearing a justaucorps.
And since he had been moving the whole time, he did feel a bit hot. As the Emperor had said, he would probably be better off if he at least took off his outer layers.
“Please excuse me for a moment.”
Seeing Lev get down from the chair and head for the door, Guien tilted his head.
“Where are you going?”
“Sir? I was going to take off my clothes and come back.”
His own room was right next door. Lev, who had been thinking of going there to change into something truly comfortable, looked at the Emperor as if to ask what the problem was.
“Is there any need to go that far? Take them off here.”
That, precisely, was what he did not see the need for.
Caught by that steady gaze fixed on him, Lev hesitated a moment, then nodded.
“You can hang them there.”
Guien even kindly pointed out a place to hang them. It was a coat stand shaped like tree branches.
Lev walked over, hung up the justaucorps first, then took off his waistcoat. Guien quietly watched as he rolled up his shirt sleeves and fixed them below his elbows.
A memory from a few days ago floated up. The brown eyes that had looked down at him and the long arms that had slowly reached out. The slender white hand that had held the wineglass.
No, the small lips that had come toward his.
Guien’s hand, having set down the pen, rose to face Lev and slowly rubbed over Lev’s lips.
It had been too brief a contact to even savor, but the sensation still seemed to linger.
Guien, rubbing his lower lip with his index finger, and Lev, just finishing adjusting his clothes and turning his eyes, met each other’s gaze.
“……”
“……”
When he rubbed his lips a little more, those brown eyes shook violently. The corners of Guien’s eyes curved in a gentle arc for an instant.
At the same time, the flustered Lev whirled around and hurried over to the window as if fleeing.
“Hmph.”
Guien snorted at how anticlimactically the standoff had ended, but he did not drop his gaze back to the documents.
Propping his chin in one hand out of boredom, he observed Lev’s back as he went on wiping the window.
His body was not particularly languid. Straight shoulders and a straight back. Beyond that, a somewhat slimmer waist, and because he had one foot up on the chair, his buttocks were rounded upward, and Guien’s gaze came to a stop there.
Unaware of that piercing stare, Lev, somewhat satisfied with his now more comfortable attire, stretched his arm up again.
As the close-fitting shirt, tailored to his upper body, rode up, the inside of his waist was exposed. Each time he moved his arms, his bare skin appeared and disappeared.
Guien’s gaze remained fixed there, unable to tear itself away.
As that strip of waist appeared and vanished, his eyes narrowed and eased, narrowed and eased again.
Suddenly, Lev’s arm, which had been diligently wiping the window, stopped.
Whip.
Lev turned back, and his eyes met the Emperor’s head on.
“…”
“What are you doing?”
This was clearly the same situation as a moment ago.
Then, too, Lev had felt that persistent gaze on him. But since he had not been able to find any concrete reason he could point to, he had let it pass without questioning it. Now, however, was different.
“What do you mean?”
“I am asking why you are looking at me like that.”
He was staring so intently that Lev’s back was starting to itch.
“Not particularly. Just get on with what you were doing.”
But Guien feigned ignorance as if nothing of the sort had happened. Lev gave the Emperor, who was soon looking down at his papers again, a dubious glance and turned back.
To clean a bit higher, he would probably have to step up onto the window ledge. The space was broad enough that it did not seem dangerous, but the flowerpot Michel had given him was sitting there.
Lev carefully placed his foot so as not to touch the pot. It was just as he pressed the rag to the glass.
“Why did you meet with Michel d’Albret?”
The Emperor, whom he had thought was working, suddenly asked. Startled, Lev whipped his head around.
“How did you know?”
“Just answer the question.”
The Emperor coldly pressed him for an answer.
Honestly, that temper of his.
Still, how on earth had he found out. Could he have seen them from the balcony? But when Lev had glanced toward the palace, he had seen no one there.
After pondering for a moment, Lev simply decided to accept it as one of those things and answered readily.
“We just ran into each other by chance.”
“By chance?”
“Yes, well.”
That was how he answered, but in truth it did not feel like a coincidence.
Michel d’Albret had appeared as if he had been waiting for Lev to arrive.
He had even thrust out a flowerpot, calling it a present.
Come to think of it, that was a bit strange too.
Why had Michel d’Albret come all the way to the imperial palace to wait for him?
Had he come to see the Emperor and then run into him by chance? No, if that were so, he would not have been holding a flowerpot.
In any case, he had the feeling that things were getting oddly more and more tangled.
“What did you talk about?”
“Just trivial things.”
“What kinds of things?”
Was he displeased that Lev had been with Michel d’Albret even for a brief moment? Or was he worried Lev might have done something wrong?
The Emperor was prying with unusual persistence. Lev blew on the glass as if to fog it and let out a sigh.
“So you must have talked about something you cannot tell me?”
Unable to bear the brief pause in Lev’s answer, the Emperor asked again.
“We just talked about flowers.”
“What flowers?”
“These. I did not know what they were, and Lord Michel told me.”
Lev indicated the pot sitting on the window ledge with his eyes. Guien’s gaze briefly turned that way as well.
“And then?”
“He must have kept it in mind, because he brought it to me…”
“He brought it to you?”
“Ah!”
Realizing his mistake too late, Lev turned around in a fluster. The Emperor was staring intently at the pot on the windowsill. Somehow, his eyes did not look friendly at all.
Of all things, why did I have to say that!
With his head all tangled up, Lev realized he had said something that should have been left unsaid, and his expression turned one of dismay.
Guien put down his pen and rose from his seat.
Watching him slowly approach past the desk, Lev could not just stay where he was and quickly stepped down from the ledge.
Standing in front of the window, Guien turned his gaze to the flowers, showing off their dainty form in the full sunlight.
What is this? Why is he acting like that?
Needlessly tense, Lev gripped the rag and searched the Emperor’s face. His eyes and expression were calm, yet there was something somehow ominous in the air.
The Emperor took his eyes off the pot and turned them to the window Lev had been wiping.
He had scrubbed it so diligently that not a speck of dust could be seen.
At a glance, you might not even notice there was glass fitted there.
“You certainly have a knack for this.”
Lev was relieved that the Emperor seemed to have lost interest in the pot.
“Thank you.”
“Hmm.”
He thought that would be the end of it, but the Emperor even stepped up onto the chair and began to inspect the glass minutely.
Lev folded his arms and watched, wondering how far he was going to go, when it happened.
As the Emperor shifted a little to the side, he failed to see the pot on the ledge and brushed it with his body.
“Gasp!”
The flowerpot, shoved by the Emperor, plunged straight down.
Crash!
The pot hit the floor with a loud noise and shattered to pieces.
The fine porcelain broke completely apart, all the soil inside spilled out, and even the flowers that had been nestled inside were thrown out to roll on the floor.
Startled, Lev quickly dropped his folded arms, ran to the broken pot, and crouched down in front of it.
“Your Majesty!”
“What is the matter!”
At the same time, the door burst open and the chief attendant and knights came pouring in.
They looked with deep suspicion at Lev crouching on the floor and the Emperor standing on the chair.
“It is nothing.”
The Emperor stepped down from the chair and spoke calmly.
But everyone’s gaze went to the shattered pot lying in pieces.
Those looks moved straight on to Lev, full of the question of why he had broken it.
Lev felt wronged, but he could not bring himself to say that the Emperor was the culprit.
Instead, he reached out to clean up the broken pot.
“Leave it.”
Guien cut him off sharply.
Seeing this, the chief attendant quickly turned his head. Marco, who had been anxiously watching from the entrance, hurried into the room and ran over to where Lev was. At some point he had even grabbed a broom and dustpan.
“Lord Lev! I will clean it up!”
Lev looked at Marco, who seemed almost happy as he cleaned up the broken pot and flowers, with complicated eyes. Then he turned his head and spotted the Emperor, who, for some reason, was laughing in satisfaction.
It really did not seem as if the pot’s breaking had been an accident.
From the very start, even stepping up onto the chair might have been deliberate.
He could have just told him to get rid of it. Had there really been any need to break it?
Most likely, the Emperor had not liked the fact that Michel d’Albret had given Lev the pot.
Of course. The Emperor had feelings for him.
He felt a sharp ache spread around his chest.
Sigh… I really should not have accepted that.
He should have refused it right there on the spot.
Thinking that this was what came of forcing himself to accept something he had not wanted, Lev straightened up from his crouch.
“Give it here, Marco.”
“Yes?”
When Lev held out his hand, Marco faltered, asking with his eyes what he was doing.
“If you throw it all away together like that, you will have to throw away the flowers too. We should at least replant those separately.”
The flowers, tangled up with the broken pot and dirt and looking so pitiful, somehow felt like his own heart, and he could not leave them as they were.
“Just throw them away.”
But the Emperor spoke coldly, as if he could not tolerate even that much.
Marco, wearing an apologetic expression, grabbed the dustpan and hurried out of the office before Lev could stop him. Lev watched the broken pot being carried away with a feeling of emptiness and a touch of bitterness.
“Why are you making that face?”
Guien, who had been watching, asked in the same chilly voice.
Even his expression had changed as if he found the look on Lev’s face displeasing, but Lev, looking elsewhere, did not notice.
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