The Wolf and the Rose-Sealed Invitation

Jay stared straight at me, his face set in an expression that said he didn't like this one bit.

"I didn't think you'd take it this far. Do you hate me that much?"

"......"

I couldn't bring myself to say yes, I do. I'd already driven him all the way to the wall, and I simply didn't have the nerve to provoke him any further.

I rose without a word. Jay's gaze climbed with me.

"I'm going. You should head in too. Don't wander the night streets picking fights."

Because I'd feel sorry for whoever ended up on the other end of one.

"Is that worry, too?"

Jay asked again. Why was he so fixated on being worried over? It probably came from a hunger for affection he'd never properly been given as a child.

"Well. Something like that."

If anything, it was worry for the poor soul who'd have to fight him, not for Jay himself.

"And listen. Even if it isn't me, plenty of people worry about you. There'll be more of them from now on."

Because you're a male lead, and the heroine—with all that tremendous kindness and capacity to embrace—is going to shower you with exactly the kind of worry you want.

I couldn't hand him a prophecy, but I thought I could at least leave him a little room to hope. Watching him cling like that, just because someone had worried about him, made me feel a bit sorry for him.

At that, Jay—rigid all this time—let out a small laugh.

"You've changed, and you've grown kinder for it. Personally, I like this side of you better."

"......I'm going."

If I kept talking, I was certain I'd be swept right up in him, so I left in a hurry. This time Jay didn't try to hold me back.

Once I was out of the greenhouse I walked quickly, then slowed and let out a long sigh.

"......What kind of meddling is this."

I'd told myself it was only a pretext—to make him fall more surely for the heroine, to give myself grounds for refusing his offer—but the truth was, just as Jay had said, it was meddling too.

Even so, the sight of him clinging to affection while knowing nothing of the wretched future waiting for him had lodged in my eye like a thorn.

Even if he never won the heroine, he could at least keep his own father from dying.

"Haa. I should just sleep."

I trudged back to my room, set the bell I'd somehow recovered on the table, and looked Sion over.

"You must have been tired too."

He'd escaped a house he'd been locked in for nearly a year, then locked wills with some man.

As I muttered, the marks left along his nape caught my eye—the place where the collar had sat.

Scars from his early struggling still hadn't faded, and among them were wounds that hadn't even closed. They bothered me.

I stared at them blankly, then quietly took a first-aid kit from the drawer. There was no ointment, but there were herbs good for treating wounds.

I ground them in a mortar and carefully spread them over Sion's neck.

Rustle.

Sion shifted.

"This has to go on if it's going to get better."

I whispered, and his movement stopped at once. Had he heard me through a dream? Strange.

I finished applying the medicine and pressed a generous piece of gauze over it so the herbs wouldn't fall away.

"There."

I felt oddly proud of myself.

"......Sweet dreams, Sion."

I bid him a quiet good night and lay down on the bed. Sleep, which had refused to come until now, finally began to gather.

It could have made me drowsy sooner. Resenting the drowsiness that had only just arrived, I sank quickly under.

Long after Aine had fallen asleep, Sion's eyes slid open. He rubbed his nape, then closed them again. Only now did sleep finally come for him as well.

"Kyaa!"

I was sleeping soundly when a sudden scream yanked my eyes open. I sat up, still half in a dream, and froze where I was.

"M-my lady! Please save me!"

"......Sion?"

I couldn't believe the word as it left me. And no wonder—the creature crouched low, as if it might lunge at Rita at any moment, was an enormous wolf.

"What happened?"

"I-I saw gauze stuck to his neck and wondered if he was hurt, so I tried to touch it, and then all of a sudden......"

"I told you not to come up until I called for you."

"I-I'm sorry!"

Rita burst into sobs. The wolf baring its teeth right in front of her must have been terrifying. Fair enough—if a wolf that huge looked ready to spring at me, I'd have collapsed on the spot myself.

Did he return to his true form while he was asleep?

Then the wounds on Sion's neck that still hadn't healed made sense. That collar had been made to fit him as a human.

The moment he returned to his true body, the collar would naturally have choked him. There was no way the original Aine hadn't known that.

She really wasn't called a villainess for nothing.

Calming this situation came first.

I climbed carefully down from the bed and stood in front of Rita. Then, the way I'd seen it done on television, I held my palm out toward Sion and shouted.

"Sit!"

"......"

Silence fell. Rita looked at me as if to say, My lady, I don't think that's it, but I was perfectly serious. Even in the shape of a beast, he ought to understand words.

I spoke again, more solemnly.

"Sion, sit!"

Sion's great blue eyes rolled. A moment later his haunches met the floor. He seemed to be watching my mood.

"Good. Now, down."

"Kii......"

Sion made an unhappy sound and flattened himself against the floor. In the meantime I sent Rita outside.

I shut the door and heaved a sigh. Sion was still a wolf, tail drooping, stealing glances at me.

He seemed to think I was angry.

"......It's all right now, Sion. You were really scared, weren't you?"

I stroked his huge head in the gentlest voice I could manage. If he opened that mouth wide here, I'd be bitten on the spot.

I was tense, but I tried to trust him anyway.

At my touch Sion closed his eyes and rubbed his cheek against my palm.

His ears. So cute...... I'd said I wanted to keep a dog, but Sion really did look like an enormous large-breed dog.

Once I'd calmed him, I looked around the room to see whether anything had been wrecked. On the table I found a letter. Rita had probably come to collect it and walked straight into disaster.

I went to the table and picked it up. A crest of roses in brilliant colors was pressed into the paper—splendor that was anything but ordinary at a glance.

"What is this......?"

I examined the envelope, but there was nothing written about a sender.

I tore the seal and checked what was inside.

The Young Ladies' Social Club? What on earth was that? Thinking this world must have something like junk mail too, I was about to put the letter away when I stopped cold.

I remembered now.

The Young Ladies' Social Club.

A social club only the empire's top one percent of young ladies could attend—and Aine was a member. She had gone only a handful of times since joining.

That wasn't the important part. The important part was......

This is where the heroine attends and gets completely snubbed.

It was the place where the heroine, now an imperial princess, attended for the first time and was utterly ignored for no reason other than her commoner birth.

I went back over the original story.

After becoming a princess, the heroine was working hard to grow used to life in the Imperial Palace when she received an invitation. It was none other than the royal social club said to admit only the empire's top one percent of women: the Young Ladies' Social Club.

Knowing not a single young lady, being of common birth, she went with a fluttering heart and received every kind of contempt.

Veiled mockery, of course—and deliberate slights dressed up as accidents, right down to someone dumping a drink over the dress she'd just had made.

In the end she came home with nothing but wounds, shed tears before her father the emperor, and His Majesty—utterly incensed—abolished the social club on the spot and put pressure on the young ladies' families.

That incident only deepened the emperor's tenderness toward her, along with his regret that he hadn't found her sooner.

Aine hadn't been there. She found it dull when young ladies gathered to laugh and trade gossip.

Hearing of the heroine afterward, Aine's thought was perfectly clear.

Pathetic.

That was Aine's first impression of the heroine.

Reading that scene, I'd been a little frustrated myself. No matter how those young ladies strutted, she was a princess! If she'd pushed back hard even once, they would have gone quiet as mice!

But I understood the heroine's position too. Live your whole life as a commoner admiring noble lords, then suddenly be told to wage a battle of wills with noble daughters—who could manage that right away?

"What should I do."

I thought it over. The original Aine wouldn't have gone, but unfortunately, I wasn't Aine. For one thing, I wanted to see the heroine, a character I had loved.

For now... maybe I should go.

It occurred to me that making her acquaintance while I was there wouldn't be a bad thing.

More than anything, I was curious what a social club for upper-class women was actually like.

"Master......"

Just then a voice called me from behind. Sion, back in human form and wrapped in a blanket, was looking at me with a sullen face.

When I approached, he shrank even further. And when I lifted my hand, he drew his head back.

I paused, then stroked his snow-white hair.

"It's all right."

"You're... not angry?"

"It was Rita's fault for trying to touch you without permission. But you can't do that anymore. I'm fine, but other people get scared."

"Isn't it good if they're scared? Then they can't torment me."

"Well......"

I gave him a faint smile.

"Humans tend to try to break fear with even greater force. They may be afraid for now, but soon they'll look for a way to beat you."

Of course I would stop them if I could, but this was tied to Sion's future as well.

In the early days, humans feared the beastmen. And no wonder—they possessed strength and senses several times a human's, and sometimes they hunted people.

But as the centuries passed, the situation reversed. Humans made weapons, used their wits, and began driving the beastmen out. They founded nations, gathered beneath kings, put their heads together, and steadily multiplied their numbers.