I Thought I Was the Monster Duke's Fake Tranquilizer - Chapter 40
‘Startled me.’
She’d thought she was being strangled.
Collecting her wits, she realized he had her by the chin.
The armored fingers had brushed her throat, and she’d merely assumed he had seized her neck.
Lucy quietly looked up at Edward.
Unlike his usual self, exuding an air of ease, he was staring down at her with an expressionless face.
Seeing that face, she felt a little hurt.
‘Even after I helped, he’s still like this.’
But what could she say? She was the weak party, her life swinging back and forth at the whim of Edward’s caprice.
Lucy discreetly tucked away her frightened, wounded feelings.
And with her chin caught firmly in his grasp, she smiled harmlessly.
“Wh-Whatever is the matter.”
Edward tilted his head, staring intently at Lucy.
Without realizing that the hand holding her chin was slowly, stealthily shifting toward her cheek.
An indescribable feeling darted about the pit of Edward’s stomach.
A feeling that was neither bad nor good.
‘This tiny thing, how dare she.’
Meddling in his affairs as she pleased, inserting herself without permission.
And on top of that, though it had been for the sake of attacking the count, she had gone on lavishly praising Count Whatever, calling him admirable.
‘…Looking at another man like that, right in front of me.’
The words she had fawned over the count with, the innocent smile she had worn for himâall of it had grated on him exceptionally.
But…
The small, white back that had stood before him, shoulders squared so boldly, as if valiantly protecting himâthat, too, flickered before his eyes.
And besides, she had been patting and touching his armor, drenched as it was in demonic beast blood that others avoided.
‘Small as she is, she has no fear.’
Other humans were subtly afraid of and shunned Edward immediately after battle.
They praised and extolled him with words.
But in their eyes as they watched him drip with the blood of demonic beasts, or as his scales surfaced in the aftermath of combat, he could glimpse both awe and revulsion simultaneously.
Hadn’t the nobles standing there just now been the same?
With their lips they called him a great hero and whatnot, but their eyes harbored a tinge of inward revulsion.
And yet, why was it.
This woman had approached him and stood by his side as if such things were nothing out of the ordinary.
And even now, she showed not the slightest hint of fear at the blood of demonic beasts that clung to him.
He only sensed that she was watching his mood.
…As if the only thing she needed to concern herself with was Edward’s temper.
“…”
Edward unconsciously twitched the hand gripping her cheek.
The woman’s cheek was squished down, her lips jutting out like a duck’s beak.
Come to think of it, it had felt good when he’d touched those lips.
Edward’s gaze had unconsciously fixated there whenâ
“At’s the hing. Those sasses, no, meanies, they ook at Master so ightly…”
“Lightly?”
“No, not that you’re actually ight, I mean…”
Even with her pronunciation crushed by both her cheeks being squeezed, Lucy chattered away diligently.
In her own way, she was making excuses.
‘He must be about to scold me for sticking my nose into his business without permission.’
It wasn’t difficult to guess, knowing Edward’s temperament as well as she did.
Edward was someone who could be laughing playfully and acting leisurely one moment, then flip a hundred and eighty degrees and turn ice-cold.
Survival-mode fawning naturally flowed from her body.
“You jus’ saved them, an’ they… ike this. Ven touched your armor soaked in mon’er blood, too.”
As she deliberately put on pitiful eyes and gazed at his armor drenched in demonic beast blood…
‘No, but seriously.’
What had those people ever done, to talk like that to someone fighting in their place?
Unknowingly, sincerity began to mingle with her fawning.
She wondered if her sisters had suffered like this, hunting monsters.
“It’s un… unfair.”
Even as she said it, a bitter feeling washed over her.
‘You’re no different, Lucy.’
The dream she’d had the night before resurfaced.
The dream where her past self had trembled in the shelter, waiting for a hero, and Edward had appeared before her.
Of course, after that, he’d said he’d see just how useful she was and proceeded to do those things…
‘…Let’s leave that part out.’
In any case, she, too, had unconsciously placed expectations on Edward.
That he would become her hero.
Even though she knew, more or less, how heroes were actually treated.
‘When he himself might not even like being a hero all that much.’
And all he got was backhanded insults, or things not far from it.
Of course, looking up at Edward as she thought this, he seemed utterly unbothered.
If anything, he seemed more bothered by what Lucy was saying than by the resentment he’d received from the people outside moments before.
“Unfair, you say.”
“Yeth. So that’s why… Pwah!”
Belatedly, her squeezed face was freed.
