A Madman's Interpretation of Love

"......"

Leoneld said nothing for a long while.

In the suffocating silence, he quietly studied Cesare, as if trying to read what lay beneath his words.

And the conclusion he finally arrived at—

"...I see."

Was it true that people who were too flustered lost the ability to think logically?

Leoneld was the very picture of it.

With a face frozen in a way that was rare for him, he turned away.

"I shall keep the Duke's... rather unique tastes sealed behind my lips."

And that was that.

The taut killing intent vanished without a trace, and Leoneld, looking as though he'd been thoroughly put off, hurried away from the scene.

The moment the date ended and he returned to his estate, Cesare flung dignity and decorum to the wind and hurled himself onto the bed.

I did it!

With his face buried in the plush mattress, he sounded his victory fanfare. It felt as though the massive boulder that had been crushing his chest had finally been carted away.

No more worrying about getting nailed!

A counterintuitive strategy that stripped all the flavor out of revenge.

When the other party was more than willing to enjoy it, what lunatic would bother holding back his strength just to drive it in?

Cesare rolled around on the bed, humming a tune. In a single moment he had gone from the Empire's promising duke to a pervert, but a reputation like that meant nothing to him.

Right, does honor put food on the table? As long as my ass survives, that's all that matters.

And so, it seemed, a peaceful and comfortable future had been perfectly secured.

He truly believed that—right up until then.

Never once dreaming of the future that was about to crash down on him.

From that day on, Cesare worked hard to maintain his newly adopted 'concept'.

In other words, every time he crossed paths with Leoneld, he threw himself at the man with dogged desperation.

"Your Highness, the Thirteenth Prince, might you spare me a moment of your time?"

"By 'time', you mean..."

"I'm referring to 'that thing' I mentioned last time."

Even when they ran into each other in a corridor packed with knights after an official meeting.

"I'll treat you very well. So, won't you grace my bedchamber with a visit, just once?"

And it was no different when they met in a banquet hall crowded with the gazes of countless nobles.

Cesare clung to him with relentless persistence, driven by a single obsession: to make Leoneld swear off him for good.

One day passed, then two... and by the time a full month had slipped by,

Cesare's efforts had begun to bear fruit.

Unsavory rumors had started to circulate through the capital, the very heart of the Empire.

"Did you hear? That Duke Valois, of all people..."

"Don't even get me started. They say the moment he lays eyes on the Thirteenth Prince, he's desperate to get the man's trousers off."

The rumors snowballed, each one breeding another.

And at last,

that grotesque rumor shaking the capital to its foundations reached the ears of 'him'.

"...These are, more or less, the rumors circulating through the capital, Your Highness, the Fourth Prince."

"Hmm..."

The man tilted his head with languid ease.

The Fourth Prince, Lysian le Aurelian.

Through the softly scattering strands of golden hair, unfathomable crimson eyes gleamed with a striking, unsettling light.

"How strange."

He murmured in a low voice.

"Duke Valois is hardly the sort of man who would become the subject of such a petty rumor."

The Cesare von Valois that Lysian knew was a man like a serpent.

An unprecedented mastermind who had installed the Crown Prince as his puppet and schemed to swallow the Empire whole.

And the greatest obstacle standing in the way of that vast ambition was none other than the Thirteenth Prince, Leoneld.

It would not have been strange at all for him to attempt assassination by any means necessary.

And yet here he was, suddenly clinging to the man as if he'd fallen in love, burying his own honor in the gutter.

"That's exactly what I'm saying."

His adjutant furrowed his brow and clenched his fist.

"There is clearly some other scheme at work. 'That' Duke Valois could never genuinely love the Thirteenth Prince. There must be some stratagem behind it, without a doubt."

Despite his adjutant's reasonable suspicion, Lysian simply remained lost in quiet thought.

Tap, tap, tap—

His fingertips, which had been drumming the table in a steady rhythm for some time, suddenly stopped.

His lips curved upward, twisting into a smooth, flawless arc.

A stratagem, is it...

And yet, that too failed to add up.

That meticulous Cesare von Valois would never volunteer for something that gnawed away at his own honor.

No matter how grand a plan might lie beneath it all.

It makes no sense rationally.

There was nothing in it for Cesare to gain, and he was not a man great enough to willingly walk into a losing deal.

However.

But if you think of it the other way around, it's simple.

Because in this world, there exists exactly one exception that reason cannot explain.

"I don't think so, Nathan."

Lysian murmured in a low voice.

"It looks suspicious beyond measure and utterly irrational, I know. But I believe it is exactly what it appears to be."

"...Pardon? Then does 'that' Duke truly... toward the Thirteenth Prince...?"

Leaving behind his adjutant, who wore an expression of utter incomprehension, Lysian rose slowly from his seat.

And he walked toward the window, where the midday sun poured down in full flood.

"...Yes."

Love.

The one and only domain that human reason cannot explain.

"Duke Valois, too, must have finally fallen in love."

The corners of Lysian's eyes folded into a delicate curve as he gazed out at the garden below.

A faint flush crept across his fair, porcelain cheeks.

"Love crushes reason underfoot, and shakes everything up in ways no one can predict."

He reached his hand out toward the window.

A small white bird, which had been circling near the railing, alighted naturally on the tip of his finger.

Like a toy trained to absolute perfection.

"It seems even 'that' Duke is no match for it, after all."

Lysian whispered softly as he carefully stroked down the little bird's feathers.

"Love is what makes a person crumble from within—"

His hand closed around the bird, slow and deliberate, leaving no gap to escape.

And then, gradually, crushing pressure bore down upon its fragile neck.

"and makes them throw away... everything they are."

Crack—!

In an instant, a horrific sound of something bursting split the bedchamber.

Before long.

Thud. Rumble, rumble...

The lifeless carcass tumbled wretchedly across the floor.

"Yes, that's what love is, in the end."

Lysian gazed quietly down at the bloodstained lump on the floor, lazily picking up the sentence he had left unfinished.

It makes a person destroy themselves, and throw everything away.

Even if that everything is the only life they have.

How pitiful, really.

"......"

At the cruel spectacle unfolding before his eyes, the adjutant's pupils trembled violently.

But Lysian, as if nothing at all had happened, merely brushed the feathers and blood from his hand with unhurried ease.

"In any case."

Lysian turned away from the window without a trace of regret. Walking with languid grace, a faint fishy scent of blood trailing after him, he perched on the edge of the bed and crossed his legs with practiced ease.

Between strands of disheveled golden hair, his crimson eyes curved into a graceful arc.

"You've brought me quite the entertaining piece of news, for once."

Lysian tapped the spot beside him, atop the pristine white bedsheet, with his fingertip. Tap, tap.

A smile so tender it was chilling bloomed across his lips—so gentle it was hard to believe this was the same man who had killed a bird mere moments ago.

"Come here. I'll give you your reward."

The low, sunken voice bored persistently into the adjutant's ear.

"...Damn it."

Thud—!

Cesare, his head slammed down onto the desk in his office, let out a long, anguished groan.

"No more worrying, my ass..."

He had thought he'd ground up his own honor and dignity and bought himself a comfortable future with them.

Right up until the moment Leoneld had looked at him as though he were something revolting and fled, it had felt like the whole world was his.

But human imagination was far vaster than Cesare had accounted for.

All he had done was toss out a few lines—'come to my bedchamber', 'I'll treat you well'—to shake Leoneld off his back, and already the rumors sweeping the capital had warped into claims that he was desperate to tear the Thirteenth Prince's trousers off.

Thanks to that, the stares followed him everywhere he went, without end.

Still...

Cesare lifted his head, gloomy.

Even so, being mistaken for a pervert is a hundred times better than being at that bastard Leoneld's mercy.

He was in the middle of savoring this moral victory, doing his best to soothe the sourness in his gut, when the office door opened carefully and the butler walked in. His face was plainly etched with tension.

"Your Grace, a letter has arrived from the Imperial Palace."

"...The Imperial Palace? Is it from His Highness, the Crown Prince?"

Cesare frowned.

The Crown Prince was, for all intents and purposes, the puppet that he—or rather, the original Cesare—had wielded at will. There was no reason for the man to send a formal letter like this.

"That is... it is not. It was sent from the Fourth Prince's palace."

In an instant, a cold chill shot down the length of Cesare's spine.

The Fourth Prince, of all people...

The Fourth Prince, Lysian le Aurelian.

The man whose reputation as a raving psychopath echoed throughout the original novel.

A time bomb wearing the face of a beautiful angel, who would snap a person's neck with a smile still playing on his lips.

Even in the original story, whenever a scene called for tension, he was guaranteed to make an appearance.

Why is that bastard contacting me?

Cesare swallowed dryly and accepted the luxurious envelope the butler held out.

When he carefully broke the seal and drew out the thick paper inside, a passage adorned with lavish gold leaf met his eyes.

"......"

As he read down the invitation, Cesare's eyes began to tremble violently, as though an earthquake had struck.