There Is No Hidden Villain in This Novel Chapter 36

“O-of course!”

“I’ll cooperate, please let me!”

They reacted strangely, as if they had eaten something bad, but what could I do? It was a shame I couldn’t pull the first rule of meeting the in-laws, “I’ll give you money, so break up,” but I wasn’t mentally prepared either, so I had no choice but to let it slide. I just tilted my head and then started with what I had intended to say.

“Is there anyone here more skilled in media control and public deception than I am?”

“…”

“…”

When I tried a groundbreaking power play, these guys went blank just as I thought they would. It was a relief that I didn’t seem to need to spew any more nonsense.

“If not, I think it would be best to concoct the story we’re going to spread in the direction I suggest. We should get our stories straight so that no messy rumors leak out later…”

“What, what kind of trick are you trying to pull.”

“Why are you using honorifics? It’s not like you, Ihyang. The thought of you speaking formally to me is so terrifying I wonder what the Great Daehan Clan Council would say, so stop it.”

“You think it isn’t scary when you use honorifics with other people…?”

“I do that to be scary.”

“…”

“Did you, by any chance, want to scare me?”

Seeing him wave his hands and feet as if to say it was absurd, it seemed his spirit was certainly broken. But Haeyuna did not relax the intensity in her eyes.

“…So what kind of story are you going to make up? I have no intention of being played for a fool. If you’re going to wage a public opinion war with something like ‘The Republic of Korea has surrendered to you,’ I won’t just stand by, so be prepared!”

“Haha, what nonsense. If I had wanted to achieve something so trivial, I could have done so long ago. Easily, without any foolish games.”

Huh. I spouted some arrogant crap, and now the protagonists seem to be looking at me strangely, but I don’t know why. But let’s just move on.

I’m busy enough just explaining the setup. Do you have any idea how much I struggled to come up with this idea, you bastard Ryuseong?

“I’ll have to get a leave of absence slip for today. It’s time to become Cinderella, Ryuseong.”

“What?”

“Romeo and Juliet, and Cinderella. It’s quite simple, isn’t it?”

The reporters who had been camped out in the academy’s public access area, frantic to grab even a hem of Cassis de Millang’s or Ryuseong’s clothing, were now in a frenzy.

It was because Cassis de Millang and Ryuseong, who hadn’t shown their faces in the public access area even once as if to tease the reporters, were now openly walking toward them.

“Please look this way! Mr. Ryuseong!”

“Your Lordship de Millang!”

The crowd of reporters, madly clicking their camera shutters and shouting, was no different from a horde of zombies. It was understandable, as they were unable to write any sensational articles to generate clicks due to the de Millang’s oppression. Who could know the sorrow of not being able to write a single line about the fact that Ryuseong and Cassis had spent a night in the same room?

In the midst of that, the two had revealed their romantic relationship with a kiss, no less, so from their perspective, they could make a killing on clicks just by writing a single article. With a pinch of exaggeration, it seemed that to find a bigger hot topic, a named monster would have to bring down a country.

No, actually, it was more that they just kissed rather than announced their relationship, but the Korean reporters thought that there was no way they would kiss if they weren’t dating. They were unwittingly proving themselves to be people of a Confucian country.

However, the foreign reporters were a bit different. They had crossed mountains and seas on airplanes as soon as the news of the kiss broke, and they were considering a wider range of possibilities.

Like being partners, or blackmail, or even being offered up as a tribute.

As masterpieces who fulfilled the public’s voyeuristic desires, the reporters shouted out again today.

“Lord de Millang! What is your relationship with the fine son of Daehan!”

They were wearing clothes of black and white. Cassis de Millang was in a white coat, and Ryuseong was in a jet-black martial arts uniform, a visual that so perfectly and concisely expressed their situation on opposite sides that everyone ceaselessly pressed their shutters.

Pointing their lenses at the two people’s clasped hands, they asked and asked again as if shouting.

“Is the dating rumor true! Please answer, de Millang!”

The mouth of de Millang, who had been walking for a while without a response, opened just after they entered the public access area, which was divided by a barrier.

Cassis de Millang showed the hand he held with Ryuseong and smiled faintly.

“Would I permit this for just anyone?”

The reporters who witnessed the barehanded Cassis went into a frenzy and chattered about something, but it was too noisy to hear. Cassis slowly rolled his eyes, then raised his index finger and placed it on his lips. And only when the reporters fell silent did he finally beam.

“Well done.”

“…”

“I will take only three questions.”

It was like he was training well-behaved dogs. It couldn’t be helped. The one holding the piece of meat everyone wanted was Cassis, and only when he threw it could they feast. All the reporters, with their jaws clenched, raised their hands to get the right to speak, but a foreign correspondent, who had been given the question in advance through Haeyuna, was chosen.

It was a fixed game, but what did it matter?

“May I ask about your relationship? That is, I would like to ask what word you would use to define each other!”

Ryuseong, who was about a handspan taller than Cassis, had a stiffly frozen expression, but the hand holding Cassis’s was firm. The man, standing with the resolve not to let go of the other no matter what, spoke clearly.

“I am in love.”

A mixture of excited fervor and a slightly accusatory tone poured over them. The accusatory gazes were probably from the Koreans. But no direct accusations burst forth. Only because Cassis had not permitted them to speak.

Just when they were desperately awaiting the next answer, as expected, Cassis de Millang did not disappoint. He faintly smiled while gripping Ryuseong’s hand with his bare one.

“Well, it’s similar for me, you see.”

In a perfect pose for a photograph.

Click click click click…!

Instead of the noise bursting from their mouths, the sound of shutters threatened to burst their eardrums.

Everyone was full of things they wanted to ask. But the person chosen by the tip of Cassis de Millang’s finger to be the next questioner was, as before, part of the fixed game.

“Um, I’m asking because I feel a slight difference in tone in your words. Are you perhaps at the stage of picturing a future, or is this a dalliance of youth…!”

It was an interesting question, and the answer was also interesting. They looked at each other and then replied thusly.

“We are testing each other. Though it wasn’t what I intended.”

“How mischievous. What does that make me? You should have embellished it a bit before answering. Good grief.”

“Th-that means…!”

Cassis smiled. Seductively.

“We are testing the waters to see if we should picture a future or end it as a dalliance. Because that’s what I want.”

“I don’t know if I’m the only one who thinks this, but isn’t this person a little cheap?”

“Which is to say, I am satisfied with the fact that such an adorable and audacious person is my lover.”

The words they exchanged were grim, but the way their eyes glanced at each other was familiar, like people who had been dating for years. While the reporters were going, “Uh, uh,” Cassis once again chose the designated reporter, and he shouted out boldly.

“I would like to ask how you two developed into a romantic relationship!”

And Cassis, once again, did not betray the reporters’ expectations.

“He was the first to dare defy me.”

Even after hearing this, they couldn’t keep their clamped mouths shut. A mad torrent of questions and camera flashes poured down, but Cassis, who truly seemed to have intended to answer only three questions, calmly boarded a limousine under the protection of his bodyguards.

Belatedly, the questioners were chided for asking such things when they should have pressed about the relationship between de Millang and the Hanra-pa or the difference of opinion between the family head and the young master, but in the end, everyone was the same, copying and pasting the content of the answers Cassis de Millang had guided them to and posting it as breaking news. And the reporters who had manipulated the questions to Cassis’s liking with the connections of Haeyuna, Ihyang, and Ryuseong only said they didn’t want to be killed by de Millang and said nothing else.

They just secretly felt proud of their fattened bank accounts.

The reason I helped satisfy their voyeuristic desires, at least in this performative way, is because this will make the public sentiment flow in the direction of ‘this is fun, so keep going.’ I twisted the tracks of public opinion so it wouldn’t openly flow toward ‘the relationship between the Hanra-pa and de Millang is in this state, what are you guys doing?’

‘As expected, the “you’re the first one to ever hit me” cliche works well.’

In this way, I let it be known that although Cassis had the emotional upper hand, the two were, in any case, sharing a love. The core is love, which isn’t a message that goes so far as to defy the family head. A damn entertaining piece of gossip in any age or country.

By leaning completely into gossip, I made sure neither side would get all the blame—that is, I gave off the nuance that Ryuseong is young, so this might just be a phase, so that Ryuseong or the Hanra-pa clan head would only be softly criticized, and also left a hint that he hadn’t surrendered to me.

I gave plenty of room for interpretation like that.

Of course, this isn’t the end. My goal was to pour even more stimulation onto the public’s tongues and make them feel like they were going out of their minds.

‘Maybe living as a bitchy ice-prince is my true calling after all.’

I couldn’t stand it, it was too much fun to be an asshole to the universe. I burst out laughing, leaning against the limousine. Not crassly, but as elegantly as possible.

“Haha, the reporters seemed quite worked up, didn’t they? It was fun watching them bark.”

Ryuseong looked at me strangely as if I were laughing at nothing, but I was holding back my laughter so much that tears were practically welling up in my eyes. To keep from rolling on the ground clutching my stomach in front of Ryuseong, I let go of his hand and wiped the corners of my eyes with my sleeve.

“Though not as much as the expression on the school nurse I saw earlier.”

Indeed, the school nurse made a rotten face when we went to see her saying we wanted to leave early.

To be honest, we did something that deserved it, so I have nothing to say, but usually, the person who issues leave of absence slips is the homeroom teacher, and the school nurse is our homeroom teacher. So, it’s much more logical and persuasive to ask the school nurse for a leave slip than to find another professor. That’s all.

‘I have a conscience too. I didn’t go to mess with her.’

The important thing is that the homeroom professor assigned to Class 1, Year 1, now that the practical training period has started, is the school nurse, but I’m actually not sure if she’s a professor or a teacher or an instructor because the terminology is so jumbled. I just follow the kids and call her School Nurse, but I think her official title is Medical Professor. But isn’t School Nurse easier to say than Medical Professor?

Seeing as there are teaching assistants and associate professors, it seems to follow a university system, but they call the students cadets, and it’s a hodgepodge world where there’s also a school nurse, so I figured it didn’t matter what I called her. Of course, during the homeroom introduction, I did hear that our homeroom teacher also teaches a subject. Something related to first aid.

Anyway, that’s not what’s important.

The school nurse’s reaction is what’s important.

‘That was the funniest part.’

The school nurse, faced again with the kids who were caught rolling around on the infirmary bed, first fell silent with a tired, haggard, and miserable expression.

And when I poked Ryuseong in the side with the hand that was linked through his arm, she frowned.

“We would like to get a leave of absence slip.”

A shameless couple asking to leave early together as soon as the practical training period with its class-based lessons had seriously begun. The stars of the sensational story that had turned the academy upside down looked, by all accounts, not sick in the slightest but rather like symbols of health itself.

When they said they wanted a leave of absence slip, one might have at least asked why, but the school nurse didn’t even nod once and neurotically pulled out a piece of paper, signed it, and held it out.

That was the entirety of the leave slip issuance.

‘It’s like she doesn’t even want to talk to us.’

I tried to make a sad face, but what a joke, the corners of my mouth split like the slit-mouthed woman. It was because I was happy that I could make good use of our homeroom teacher from now on.

<Monologue> Jeong Ian has obtained ‘Push-Button Leave Slip Vending Machine’!

<Monologue> Jeong Ian became happy