Odalisque - Chapter 64

Liv, who had been staring blankly at the Marquis, withdrew her hand from the book she had been fidgeting with. Slowly, she walked over to sit beside the Marquis, folding her hands neatly in her lap.

“There was a senior who thought I wouldn’t have been able to enroll if not for their family’s donation.”

The phrase “expensive boarding school” only applied to Liv’s perspective. The only reason she could even enroll was because the school’s main revenue came from a small number of large donors.

“Clemence was a boarding school, and I couldn’t avoid that senior entirely. Thanks to that, we clashed a little, but I also had a lot of good noble friends around me. Thanks to their goodwill, things never escalated into a huge problem. There were some rumors, but nothing serious enough to stop me from graduating.”

It was a story from her school days that she had never told anyone. After graduation, she thought it was all meaningless farce and never dwelled on it.

“Half-hearted goodwill can be worse than none at all.”

“But it’s still goodwill.”

Within the school, that goodwill held great power.

Outside the school, however, that goodwill was meaningless and powerless.

“But you’re right, Marquis. Yes, that goodwill only ensured momentary safety and did not provide lasting protection. Around the time I graduated, that senior’s parents deliberately found fault with my parents’ handcrafted goods. It severely impacted their orders.”

Liv only found out about it long after graduation. She had assumed the changing market trends were the cause, but it wasn’t.

Who would have thought that a bad connection from her school days would return in such a way?

“Still… my parents’ deaths were just an unfortunate accident.”

Immediately after her parents passed, she had hoped for help from the “friends from good families” she had made or from the “upper-class boys” who had liked her. However, outside the school, their world and her world were different.

Even if her parents worked tirelessly on commissions from nobles, they couldn’t escape being craftsmen who lived off orders.

“When I worked as a live-in tutor, it was just a common scuffle.”

The trouble at the first house she worked for, Viscount Karin’s family, was relatively simple. The eldest son kept flirting with her. The viscount and his wife blamed everything on the young tutor.

Then there was Count Lucette’s family… They blamed Liv for their child’s poor academic performance, claiming it was due to her incompetence.

These were surprisingly common occurrences. Not all parents were the same. Liv never thought her experiences were unique.

As Liv spoke calmly, the Marquis muttered to himself, “It seems you were more popular than I thought.”

“Coming from you, Marquis, it sounds like pure sarcasm.”

Popular? She never imagined she would hear such a thing from the famous Marquis Dimus Dietrion. Being praised for her popularity by someone like him, with his looks, felt more like being teased.

“If you were exceptionally dazzling, they wouldn’t have dared to touch you.”

Liv, who had been smiling faintly, looked up at his words. The Marquis’s long arm, which was resting on the back of the bench, easily reached Liv.

“But you are… just attractive enough to be approachable.”

The fingers in white gloves gently brushed against Liv’s cheek.

“In most cases, that means one finds oneself in a rather tough situation.”

It was a playful yet ticklish touch, like one petting an adorable animal.

Allowing that hand to caress her cheek, Liv responded calmly, “Do you know someone like that? Someone who was just attractive enough to be approachable?”

“Yes.”

The Marquis answered in a barely audible voice, “And that person died. In an unfortunate accident.”

Was it because of his unusually low voice? Or because of the silence surrounding them? It sounded almost like a confession.

“Thanks to that, I learned that one must be dazzling enough that no one dares to approach.”

Who could he be talking about?

Curiosity surged, but Liv dared not ask. She sensed that even if she asked, she wouldn’t receive an answer.

The Marquis gave a faint sneer at Liv’s silence. His arrogant face carried the certainty that his judgment was absolutely right.

Seeing that confidence, Liv suddenly spoke, “I don’t know if you’re someone no one would dare to touch.”

Liv turned her head slightly. The fingertips that had been playfully tapping her cheek paused in the air. Liv’s gaze fixed on that hand.

Thanks to the Marquis removing his gloves during their time together, Liv now knew what his bare hands looked like. The real appearance hidden under the gloves.

“Beautiful roses have thorns, but there is always someone willing to reach out and risk getting pricked.”

The Marquis narrowed his eyes at Liv’s response.

“Then I would commend them for their courage.”

His relaxed tone urged Liv forward.

“Would you try it, Teacher?”

“Would it be alright?”

“Why wouldn’t it be? After all, it won’t be me who bleeds from the thorns, but you.”

His arrogant assurance made Liv chuckle involuntarily.

“Even roses feel pain when their branches are broken.”

Being armed with thorns means one is more fearful than most.

Perhaps the Marquis was the same.

“A broken rose branch eventually withers, Marquis.”

The leisurely expression on the Marquis’s face gradually disappeared. Finally, his usual cold, expressionless face emerged.

“So are you just going to watch?”

He seemed ready to rise from his seat. At that moment, Liv reached out and grabbed his hand, which was moving away.

Compared to the indifferent way he had touched her cheek, Liv’s contact was cautious. The Marquis’s lips curled as if to mock her, but Liv tugged at the end of his white glove.

Slip.

The glove came off smoothly.

Seeing his bare hand with a clear mind felt different from seeing it clouded by pleasure. Since the Marquis didn’t pull his hand away, Liv had the opportunity to closely observe and touch his hand.

His fingers were thick and knobby, the veins on the back of his hand protruding as they ran up his forearm. His palm was rough, with calluses that made it far from smooth.

It was the hand that had rubbed her inner thighs, reaching deep inside her to scramble her thoughts. She knew how powerfully this hand could grasp her flesh.

Liv, touching the veins on the back of his hand in fascination, pressed her thumb between his fingers. There was a scar between them that one wouldn’t notice unless looking closely.

“Were you curious about that?”

The Marquis, quietly allowing Liv to hold his hand, twisted his lips slightly.

“I remember nearly losing my finger when I caught a blade barehanded.”

Liv, who had been touching the scar between his fingers, looked up and met the Marquis’s eyes.

“Did you win?”

The Marquis raised his eyebrows as if surprised by the question. After a brief pause, he answered in a slightly lowered voice, “Yes.”

Upon hearing his answer, Liv smiled brightly. “Then this scar is a medal of victory.”

The hand that bore an unerasable victory mark instantly grabbed Liv by the back of her neck, pulling her into his embrace. Losing her balance, Liv fell forward into his arms.

His breathing, suddenly urgent, invaded her tender lips. It was a more forceful, aggressive kiss than usual, poured onto her without restraint.

In the once-quiet glass greenhouse, the faint sounds of their heavy breathing echoed softly.

***

The first scar on Dimus’s body came from his time at the military academy.

Academies were generally closed-off institutions, but military academies, in particular, operated under their own rules.

What might be overlooked elsewhere held no flexibility there—a world of its own.

In groups of boys, strength typically established hierarchy, and at the military academy, power coexisted with status.

Students who had both naturally became predators, those with one aligned with the powerful, and those with neither were prey, supporting the hierarchy from the lowest place.

When Dimus first enrolled, he was among the prey.

He had talent, but compared to noble children who had been groomed since childhood, he was like a raw gem still covered in mud. He faced considerable hardships to wash off that mud and reveal the brilliance of a polished gem.

Officially, live blade duels were forbidden by the academy rules, but naturally, predators were not bound by such trivialities.

Young boys full of energy sought out stimulating events, often wielding real swords for excitement. And at the end of those swords stood the prey—boys like Dimus.

Facing an opponent armed with a live blade, Dimus had no weapons.

That day, when he caught the blade with his bare hand, he nearly lost his finger. The school nurse recognized the wound on Dimus’s hand and reported him to the disciplinary committee for evidence of a rule violation. Naturally, the one who had wielded the sword escaped unscathed.

Luckily, he avoided expulsion. He received punishment for violating school regulations, but that was all.

‘It was an incident like that.’