“The Young Lord Meyer.”
The epithets for the men of the Meyer family were as follows:
Mikhail was Count Meyer, I was just Lord Meyer.
Rilke was called the Young Lord Meyer. The title ‘Lord’ was a traditional honorific that elevated the sons of the Meyer family, descendants of one of the few founding merit families that had been a ducal house just a few generations ago.
Rilke’s followers would often comment that his appearance and the title ‘Young Lord Meyer’ matched together lovingly well.
“It’s good to see you, it’s been so long.” Rilke’s followers surrounded him.
Nearly two weeks had already passed since the day I pushed Rilke.
I crossed through the people exchanging greetings and leaned against a square wall.
I could feel cold gazes occasionally reaching me. It was the season when the second spring flowers bloomed. Like the chill that subtly rose in the mornings, the aftermath of my birthday banquet seemed to remain. I just blinked and looked down at the floor.
“Why are you standing here like this?”
Joachim— Rilke called me in an affectionate voice and approached.
It was a salon where several noble scions exchanged ideas, nominally discussing art and philosophy.
I remembered being dragged along following Rilke in the past too, unable to resist Mikhail’s pressure. At any gathering, Rilke would always find me hiding in corners.
Unlike before, I didn’t refuse and followed him out. I had decided to be compliant, unlike in the past. Perhaps surprised, Rilke hesitated before starting to walk again.
Under a window where warm sunlight streamed in, familiar people were gathered.
“Everyone, greet Joachim. Saren, why are you being like that? You saw him not long ago.”
“It’s been a while.”
The words “not long ago” from Rilke became meaningless at the words “been a while.”
But it was a situation where I, not Rilke, should feel awkward. Everyone in this place knew that the insincere, perfunctory greeting was aimed at me.
“Right, it’s been a while.”
I answered the same way. Saren was one of the few alpha friends I’d been close with when young. I could see his round eyes standing on edge as if refusing. I accepted it.
When Saren and I exchanged formal greetings, the other people also slowly offered a word or two.
Having been isolated from social life since I was fourteen, I knew I was very lacking myself.
But no matter how accustomed I was to this situation, I couldn’t help the corner of my heart being startled and anxious each time I faced the reactions of people who seemed to dislike me.
“Rilke, I’ll be over there.”
“Why?”
“There’s a book I was interested in.”
“…You?”
He said it to the extent that I normally detested books. I roughly nodded and got up from my seat.
“Shouldn’t you at least thank Rilke?”
It was Saren.
“He keeps worrying about you even though you’re his hyung.”
As if agreeing with Saren’s words, stiff gazes came from around me.
“Thank you for thinking of me.”
It was this easy.
To think I suffered all that hardship for not being able to do this easy thing.
Rilke looked slightly surprised. I looked at Saren as if asking if that was enough, and looked around. When I smiled as if sincere, the atmosphere became more awkward.
When they were the ones who demanded it.
There was nothing against etiquette and I hadn’t been rude. I nodded and left my seat. A kind word is better than a rich pie. I repeated the maxim to myself.
‘What a person truly undeserving of respect!’
‘Rilke, it’s so regrettable that such an ingrate who doesn’t know gratitude is your hyung.’
In the past, even in such trivial situations, I was criticized like a puppy who had made a mess on the floor.
Still, direct reproach like just now was a gentlemanly situation.
‘So this is Lord Meyer’s pheromone.’
Sometimes they would approach disguised as goodwill.
‘May I smell it?’
I thought it was affection toward me that they spoke to me first and showed interest in my pheromones that everyone else avoided.
‘If you wish.’
‘My goodness. Just as I heard.’
The other person grabbed my wrist. A stranger’s nose tip brushed past the inside of my wrist.
‘Ugh, the smell.’
Terrible, he giggled and pretended to grab his nose. Only then did I realize something was wrong, but the other person had already passed my wrist to his companions. Urgh. They put me between them and pretended to dry heave, wrapping arms around my waist and pressing noses to my nape. By the time I barely escaped with all my strength, I had heard all kinds of curses and degrading remarks about being coy.
In fact, maybe my fault was greater for not knowing how to treat people. To think I thought that was goodwill. The past me who had no discernment was just stupid.
I returned to a corner seat and picked up a few books and poetry collections. It seemed better than dwelling on the past.
“Please don’t make things difficult for me.”
On the way back, Rilke, who had been organizing the armful of invitations and pamphlets he’d received, opened his mouth.
I turned my gaze from looking out the window to him.
“You didn’t accept my invitation earlier.”
Rilke’s blond hair, catching the fading sunset light, sparkled like gold coins about to be minted.
People called Rilke a fairy.
His hair, curling long like early summer grapevines, was honey-colored, and his shimmering eyes were a vivid blue-green. His slender arms organizing the invitations were delicate like iris stems.
Having only been stuck in the annex, I hadn’t thought that my younger sibling, praised by all for being kind to everyone, disliked me. But even with my poor head, there was something I didn’t understand.
“When you act that way, my lord, it makes me feel uncomfortable. There was an unfortunate incident too, so I think we should show a more friendly brotherly appearance.”
‘Joachim, why are you being like this.’
‘Come here.’
‘I hope you’ll treat Joachim like you do me.’
When other people were around, he would speak informally and familiarly, but when we were alone, he always spoke formally.
‘Rilke. You can speak comfortably.’
‘I’m still uncomfortable. When my heart opens, I’ll do it naturally.’
Rilke answered with a smiling face, but no matter how many more times I said it, even after years passed, he didn’t change. As if showing that his heart never opened in the end.
I thought it was terribly childish and embarrassing, but I had also demanded, ‘I wish you would speak comfortably even when we’re alone now.’
‘Actually… Lord Joachim doesn’t like me speaking informally. Because I used to be his servant—’
And then I had experienced something like that too.
“I’ll be careful.”
“Thank you for understanding.”
Rilke smiled brightly. And he began to read the theater pamphlet carefully again. Instead of asking ‘Anything interesting?’ like I would have five years ago, I turned my gaze back out the window too.
The sunset had already faded. Inside the window glass with its back to the darkening fields, my face was faintly reflected. Faded blond hair and dull eyes. If you removed the brilliance and vividness from Rilke, it would become the colors that made up me.
Looking at my pale and lifeless face, I drew the curtain. I wanted to arrive quickly and just hole up in my room.
The moment I opened the door, I had a premonition that peaceful rest had gone out the window.
“Have you lost your mind!”
Mikhail was waiting. He pointed at the mountain of paperwork piled up and flew into a rage.
“The ship list was so late that I came to check, and you know the auction is tomorrow, yet you let the work get to this state!”
I answered while moving toward the sofa.
“I told you from the start I couldn’t do it—”
“How is not a single thing processed!”
I ended up standing in that spot.
Mikhail’s voice poured down like a storm. Like reeds swaying this way and that, swaying with the wind when it blew, stopping when it stopped, I just stood and listened like that.
Mikhail dumping the family’s affairs big and small on me wasn’t something from yesterday or today.
The work dumped on me was mostly the kind of work done by hiring faithful retainers or attendants for a family heir who had reached a certain age.
Mikhail had recently become obsessed with preempting ships from illegal explorers coming from ancient islands, and in the past I had stayed up several nights to meet Mikhail’s expectations.
At that time, I couldn’t control my pheromones, and because I stubbornly wouldn’t apologize, I was still under confinement for pushing Rilke.
‘I’ll work hard.’
I wanted to be helpful to Mikhail and change the heart of my hyung who was cold to me. As a result, no matter how much I strained my eyes looking at bidding materials and legal documents, nothing changed.
‘This is work you must learn before becoming the mistress of another family!’
Mikhail would say that, but he didn’t give work to Rilke. In fact, ordinary mistresses didn’t do the kind of work I was processing.
True to Mikhail with his sharp business sense, he might have been trying to make use of the successor education I’d received in the past—I had continued some of it in case I might manifest as an alpha trait again. But it was clearly an excessive amount compared to other noble families.
Moreover, there was a new serious problem.
“Even when I heard you were lying down so much I worried you’d get bedsores on your back, I understood generously.”
I’d looked through it a bit, but perhaps because I’d left it for years, my mind didn’t work as well as before.
“Hasn’t your pheromone stabilized! When good things happen, shouldn’t a person know gratitude and be humble and live diligently!”
There was nothing I couldn’t do if I tried, but hearing those words, what little motivation I had hit rock bottom.
In the past, I had also been angry. I clearly said I couldn’t do it, several times, and I looked at Mikhail who was still ignoring my words.
“If you won’t fulfill your duties, get out!”
Mikhail, who had been pouring it all out, came to a conclusion. It was the words the past me had feared most.
I alternately looked at Mikhail’s fingertips stretched toward the door and his eyes that seemed to have no room for compromise, then walked to the bed. Soon Mikhail followed with an absurd expression.
“—What are you doing?”
“I’m going to leave as you said.”
The opportunity came faster than I thought.
