“Still, thanks to you, I learned something interesting today.”
Achim tilted his head as if he’d already forgotten, and Linus draped an arm over his shoulder.
“Michael Bernhardt, I mean. Who would’ve thought his true self was so different. I was completely fooled.”
“Same here.”
“This is seriously front-page material, babe. It’s a shame I can’t expose him because of the 500,000 euros. Truly a feast for the eyes I can never touch.”
Linus let out a low groan as they exited the bar, as if he genuinely couldn’t hide his disappointment.
“……”
Achim, who had initially questioned Linus’s warning not to get any more attached, now found himself thinking that maybe Linus had a point.
He hadn’t given it much thought until now. The fact that his actions hadn’t been calculated was precisely why he’d never stopped to reflect on them — and that was the problem.
Just as Linus said, he had no idea when the mission would be over and he’d be leaving the estate. Getting close for no reason wouldn’t do anyone any good. Though, more than himself — it was Dora he was thinking of.
Achim resolved to exercise more restraint from now on, and stopped at a public restroom before hailing a taxi. When a woman emerged from the stall Achim had been using, a man who had been washing his hands at the sink startled and craned his neck in the mirror to peer inside the stall she’d come out of.
Once outside, Achim straightened his clothes and lightly patted his flat chest.
Since he was already in the doghouse, he’d decided not to bother binding his chest beneath his undergarments. If Michael’s gaze had been fixed on his chest from the very beginning, then a chest that had been flat suddenly sprouting overnight would only make things look even more ridiculous.
Is it because I’m just not his type after all?
He was waiting for a taxi when the thought struck him. Out of nowhere, something Linus had said back at the bar came to mind.
“That Martina with the terrible personality — she was at least pretty, wasn’t she, babe?”
He wasn’t exactly eager to agree, given that she’d slapped him across the face, but Martina was undeniably a striking beauty. If only her personality had been different, Achim might have taken an interest in her himself.
Achim had hesitated, then grudgingly nodded, and Linus bobbed his head as though something had clicked.
“I get it now.”
“Get what?”
“That man.”
Linus said it with an unexpectedly serious expression.
“He’s absolutely obsessed with looks, isn’t he?”
“……”
So it wasn’t the chest — it was the face. For a moment, Achim looked as though he’d just been smacked in the back of the head.
“The practical interview, Achim — what were the weightings for each category again?”
Interview wit and responsiveness, attitude, and physical fitness had accounted for 30%, 30%, and 40% respectively.
When Achim dredged up the memory and answered, Linus tacked on one more question.
“And what did you score on attitude?”
“……Sixty points, I think.”
The memory had grown hazy, but the moment the words left his mouth, it came back to him clearly — that time he had barely scraped past the elimination cutoff.
The instant Achim said it, Linus doubled over laughing, his whole body shaking. Achim’s pride stung, and he shot him a sharp look.
“My scores in everything else were high, though. I got a perfect score in physical fitness.”
“Well, of course you did — you’re a man, Achim.”
Achim let out a pained sound. As the only male among the candidates, clearing a standard calibrated for women was laughably easy for Achim, a former Mercenary.
In any case, that was how he’d managed a perfect score in the highest-weighted physical fitness category, and with thorough preparation, he’d also come close to a perfect score in interview wit and responsiveness.
The problem had been the attitude category.
It was fortunate that his scores in physical fitness and wit had been so far above the others’ — without that, the attitude score that was nearly cut in half would have been enough to get him eliminated at the final stage.
Achim clicked his tongue at the memory, and Linus called his name.
“You know… I think that might actually be a looks score.”
“……What?”
Linus barely managed to hold back a laugh as he said it, and Achim’s face shifted into an expression like he’d just been cleaved through the crown of his head with an axe.
He hadn’t done anything in particular the way he had for the other two categories, so he’d always wondered what on earth they were even scoring him on…
“Ha……. Shit.”
Achim pressed a hand to his forehead and swore, and Linus threw his head back and laughed freely.
Attitude was just a fancy word for it — in the end, it had simply been looks, ranked and scored.
Linus laughed until tears ran down his face, then wiped at the corners of his eyes and said,
“Don’t let it get to you too much, babe. It means you’re ‘handsome’ — no reason to be deflated about that.”
Linus looked at Achim glowering back at him and burst out laughing again before continuing.
“The other Maids — excluding yourself. Aren’t they all strikingly good-looking, aside from Martina?”
“……”
“Achim, no matter how handsome you are, if you’re placed among beautiful women, you’re naturally going to fall behind. That’s all it means.”
Come to think of it, every single Maid at the estate had been exceptionally good-looking. Thinking of it that way, Michael’s attitude made a certain amount of sense. His mood was foul about it, but Achim finally felt the weight lift from his chest, like something that had been stuck had finally gone down.
“Son of a bitch.”
Achim muttered the curse as he climbed into the taxi that had just pulled to a stop, and the driver flinched and glanced at him in the rearview mirror.
Right. Only then did it occur to him that the potion had worn off, and Achim rummaged through his worn crossbody bag.
A moment later, he uncapped a brown glass bottle and drank the liquid inside. Then, with his voice instantly changed, he spoke to the driver.
“Please take me to Michael Bernhardt’s estate.”
The taxi came to a stop near the entrance, far from the estate’s main building.
The security was tight enough that anyone whose identity hadn’t been verified wasn’t even permitted through the gate.
Achim stepped out of the taxi and approached one of the guards standing watch.
The guard, dressed in a suit with an earpiece in one ear and standing at ease, checked Achim’s identification against his face and promptly cleared the way.
With a heavy clank, the enormous arched iron gate — towering well over twice the height of a full-grown man — split open like a seam. Achim stepped through.
From the front gate all the way to the servants’ quarters near the main building, the number of guards was considerable — by rough estimate, easily in the dozens.
Not even the Bellevue Palace has security like this.
Struck anew by the measure of Michael Bernhardt’s worth, Achim walked briskly toward the fountain.
Throughout the darkened garden, small round bulbs were strung at every few steps. Thanks to that, with no risk of stumbling, Achim reached the area near the fountain and looked up at the main building directly ahead.
One, two, three…… His eyes counted upward, then stopped. On the third floor, there was one room with its light on — the only one.
That must be Michael’s bedroom or study.
Achim was narrowing his eyes, fixing his gaze on the window where the light seeped out, when a shadow fell across the curtain — and then a large hand shot out and yanked it aside.
Naturally, the shadow belonged to Michael. He didn’t glance around at all; he locked eyes with Achim in an instant. As though he had known all along that Achim would be standing there.
Achim was startled enough to nearly cry out, but he composed himself, feigning calm, and gave a composed dip of his head. According to the intelligence reports, the Royal Alpha had eyesight of no less than 3.0 — and was also said to have a remarkable ability to discern objects in the dark.
Dark as it was, Michael could likely read the expression on his face with perfect clarity — so Achim had to keep playing the role of Yvonne until the very moment he turned away.
He lifted his head, and Michael was still looking down at him. Leaning casually against the window frame with his arms crossed, as though he intended to observe him in earnest from here on.
“You know… I think that might actually be a looks score.”
Damn it. He was almost certainly appraising his looks again.
Achim was grinding his teeth inwardly, but he smiled and bowed once more.
He bent at the waist with courteous precision, straightened, then turned and walked left. Whether Michael drew the curtain again after that — he neither knew nor cared.
