ORCA 107

“Orca, how long are you staying at the mansion? Let’s have another meal like this before you go.”

“…”

Orca focused his hearing on Niah, who had vanished from his field of vision. Pushing aside all the surrounding noise, he dedicated his full attention solely to the light footsteps lingering around him. The grass was trampled in slow, rustling steps. A murmuring voice drifted over. It infuriated him to his core that the voice didn’t belong to him. However, if asked whether he could immediately kick back his chair and give chase right now, he couldn’t easily answer. It was the absolute worst.

Hilda chuckled and lightly nudged the shoe of the silently unresponsive Orca. She was slightly displeased about why she had to keep stepping up to smooth over the atmosphere, but she had no choice. This was because Orca’s parents, smiling like wax dolls, were staring intently at him. They didn’t even blink once. She thought to herself that this household hadn’t changed much either since the old days.

Far from being offended by having their question ignored, his parents actually found it amusing, noting that it was their first time seeing Orca so out of it. This crazy fish head was a fellow who had been excessively disciplined even as a child, so it was understandable. She still remembered her parents’ conversation from back then, worrying that he didn’t look very well.

Hilda repeatedly nudged Orca, cursing foully under her breath. Only then did Orca snap out of his thoughts. His hazy focus instantly sharpened. Before either of his parents could break the ice, Hilda spoke up quickly.

“My mother asked when you’re leaving.”

“…My apologies, Duchess. I was lost in thought for a moment.”

“Forget that. When are you going?”

Orca pondered for a brief moment before giving a vague answer. It was a topic he didn’t want to discuss right now. Especially at this moment, he didn’t want to get confirmation of the fact that he had to leave Rosselia before long.

“I plan to return once the heat breaks.”

“That’s a long way off. Or is it? Maybe it’s not that far?”

“Summer passes in a flash. Spring is already entirely gone.”

“I’m already sad to see you go, Orca.”

“Yes. It is a pity.”

Orca agreed in a low tone. Hilda’s eyes narrowed instantly. It felt far too unfamiliar to be his usual polite lip service. Curiosity was slowly starting to brew within her. The way his eyes had been rolling around since earlier as if searching for something, and the uncharacteristically blank expression he wore, made him look somehow different from the ‘crazy fish’ she used to know.

Despising her and calling her a grizzly cub was a story from a very long time ago, but humans weren’t the type of creatures to change so easily. This meant that even if several years had passed since the period when he spoke like an actor on a stage, pretending to have zero interest in the affairs of the world, his personality was bound to remain the same.

It certainly should have been that way, but for some reason, a sense of incompatibility struck her. Forget having a proper conversation—the time their eyes met was extremely brief, but it was absolutely certain that something interesting was going on. Grizzlies were inherently quick-witted. They also loved interesting things. Hilda curled the corners of her lips significantly.

Orca’s parents didn’t intervene in the fairly harmonious conversation. Since it was the first time they themselves had heard of their son’s departure schedule, they merely listened in silence. If they added unnecessary words and got exposed, they wouldn’t be able to escape a humiliating situation.

Following lunch, a light welcoming reception with a musical performance was arranged instead of a dessert course. Sweet cocktails and champagne were brought to the tables, accompanied by several varieties of bite-sized finger foods arranged on platters, such as canapés topped with salami, black olives, and squarely cut Brie cheese.

Servants roamed around holding trays laden with cocktail and champagne glasses. Because the guests now had a wider radius of activity than during lunch, the servants had to seek them out in every nook and cranny, which required quite a bit of labor. Perhaps because the estate was so vast, the bustling scene quickly grew relaxed.

The nobles enjoyed the party and drank alcohol wherever they pleased. Some remained in the garden to chat, while others headed out to the greenhouse or the mansion’s lake for a stroll and an outing.

Among them, some were guided to the smoking room to puff on cigars, or gathered in the drawing room to play card games. While games like peek or round games were the main choices, the one with the most onlookers was, as expected, Pope Joan—a card game involving stakes.

The nobles would nonchalantly slap down several one-pound sovereign gold coins, and if they won money, they would down their drink in one go, drop a one-shilling coin into the empty glass, and hand it to a servant. Considering that the lower-ranking servants of the mansion received a yearly salary of eighteen pounds, paid out four times a year at four and a half pounds each time, one shilling was a fairly substantial amount of money. It was worth enough to buy a loaf of bread the size of three fists put together, two bottles of milk, a row of eggs, and two cups of beer.

Consequently, the servants tactfully took turns drifting in and out of the drawing room. Although the Wair family provided higher wages than other households, there was no reason to refuse a handsome tip if one was lucky enough to get it.

In the midst of this, Niah continued his duties as a cleaner, roaming here and there across the garden. No matter what happened in the drawing room, it was beyond his interest unless Orca was there.

To begin with, to Niah, who had never spent a single cent of his wages during the past year and a half he worked for the Wair family, the phrase ‘greed for money’ was a foreign concept. Even when he accidentally discovered that he received thirteen pounds a year while fellow lower-ranking servants received eighteen pounds, he simply let it be. As long as he wasn’t thrown out, everything was fine.

Niah stole glances at Orca, who was surrounded by people in the distance. He would take a secret peek after wiping a table, another after arranging a chair, and another after gathering empty plates into his basket, all while pretending otherwise. He acted as though he was skilled at hiding himself, but unfortunately, it was entirely obvious. It was only natural, given that he kept circling the exact same spot. It was a stroke of luck that no one nearby paid attention to such bizarre behavior.

Well, except for Hilda, who had been eyeing him closely for a long time.

Even while exchanging various remarks with the people around her, Hilda, who had spent the entire time passionately observing Orca, suddenly pressed a hand to her forehead. Knitting her brows slightly and letting out a sigh, she delivered a soulful performance.

“I think I should go sit on the terrace over there and get some rest. I must have drunk the champagne too quickly.”

“Why don’t you call an attendant?”

“Or shall I escort you to your room, Miss Grey?”

“No. It’s fine. Please stay and keep Orca company a bit longer. Lord Orca is quite shy, you see.”

Light laughter burst out from the side. Whether the look Orca shot her turned freezing cold or not, Hilda firmly anchored him in place and left the gathering. A mischievous smile hung on Hilda’s face as she turned away.

It wasn’t difficult for her to notice that the main character Orca had been searching for so diligently was that orange-haired servant. And no wonder, since neither of them possessed any talent whatsoever for hiding it. Once she sought to notice it, it stood out all the more. It was fortunate that it was the first day of the party, so the nobles’ interests didn’t readily shift over to a servant; if both of them had been nobles, it surely would have been exposed in no time.

For a noble and a servant to commit adultery or get into that kind of relationship was, in fact, a common topic for crude jokes. Even at balls or parties, nobles committed adultery among themselves, so it was much easier for a noble and a servant with a class divide to commit such acts. Since the servant had no choice and the nobles only had to lift a single finger, it was the simplest and most stimulating illicit act in the world. There was no way that servants, who had a hard enough time making a living, would report this to the authorities. Even if they did report it, the ones who would ultimately get thrown out were the servants, and it was the servants whose food, clothing, and shelter would immediately be put in jeopardy.

Because of this, bizarre stories would frequently drift around, like how a master living alone in a townhouse in the capital made a servant go about completely naked. The more bizarre the tale, the more the idle provincial nobles—who loved to gossip—would chuckle while sharing such low-class talk. Only the attendants who had to listen to it thoroughly right beside them felt their stomachs turn.

As a fellow provincial noble, Hilda was a born merchant who got more thrilled by exotic new commodities than by these kinds of groundless rumors, but the situation was different if the center of the story was Orca Wair. When a fellow who looked down on her—the only daughter of the ducal house ruling the Grizzly territory—as if she were an inferior creature was fooling around with a servant from his own house, it would be a lie to say she wasn’t curious.