A Painting of the Villainess as a Young Lady

‘Let’s see who exactly’s going to follow through with their words,’ Violet said inwardly.

Cairn would definitely get tired of his schtick soon enough. Besides, he’d have to go back to the academy by the new semester.

Complacently thinking like so, Violet left her seat with her chin raised—a wordless taunt for Cairn to do as he would please.

All the while, she had no clue that Cairn had already taken a leave of absence.

* * *

Perhaps overly eager, Cairn offered to be Violet’s escort knight as part of his apology. Perhaps overly tired of it by now, Violet repeatedly rebuffed him.

Though his actions were referred to as an ‘escort mission’, it was actually closer to ‘stalking’, and thus Violet kept having to see that detestable face every minute of the day. It had come to a point that Violet just resigned herself to her bedroom, not going out.

“I told you to keep things moderate.”

It wasn’t until Roen stepped up and mediated the situation that Cairn finally let Violet reclaim her personal space.

From Cairn’s point of view though, it was only natural to give his all on this escort mission.

Because of her notoriety, there would definitely be quite a lot of people who mocked and tried to pick a fight with the ducal lady.

If any of that happened on his watch, Cairn would punish those people right away.

It was a relationship formed under a simple understanding, but with all this talk about reputation and stigma, Violet was hearing all about this for the first time.

She never paid it any mind before. Who exactly was out there who’d pick a fight with her or try to sully her reputation?

The juvenile knight, who had yet to step away from adolescence and into adulthood, was just trying to get things to go back to the way it had been, before any of this happened.

Thinking in simple terms about everything, this was the best conclusion that he arrived at.

However, Werchen was not the Everett estate, and Violet was in the kind of position where—even if Cairn was not by her side—nobody would try to pick a fight with her.

Violet was the ducal lady especially cherished by Young Duke Roen, who was going to be the next household head of the duchy. 

No matter the extent of her notoriety, it was inevitably going to be a problem if anyone would mess with her.

As a result, Cairn’s actions were nothing but useless. Roen could only acknowledge his younger brother’s strong will.

“I recommend that you do a rotation for the escort mission from now on, and in your free time, go ahead and train. Ah, and since you’re here at the townhouse, I’ve called in a tutor who you’ll have culture classes with. I know you must have learned your fair share of liberal arts at the academy, but honestly, you need to retake those classes. It was really hard to get a hold of a tutor.”

“…What?”

It was because of this that Violet finally had time off from looking at Cairn’s face.

Thank goodness for that.

In any case, now that Violet was rid of that source of stress, she quickly got out of bed.

Life afterwards was straightforward. Amongst the many letters and invitations that Violet received, she had to sift through only a small fraction. Most had already been filtered out by the servants, then the rest were further filtered by Roen himself.

Thus, her days were occupied by sleeping, eating and exercising. She drew and painted once in a while, and she went people watching, too. She had a couple conversations here and there as well.

She often went on outings and was friendly to the people on the streets. As Cairn followed Violet one step away, he couldn’t help but be surprised by how much his older sister had truly changed.

Normally, when one person would like to approach someone else, they should know how to keep a proper, safe distance first. 

Cairn did not know this, so he drew Violet’s anger more times than one.

The boy had never been conscious of other people’s feelings in his whole life, but now, he was finally beginning to learn how to.

Violet’s anger was silent—like the ashes of an already extinguished flame. Even so, this anger still proved to be detrimental as scorching embers still remained. 

One wrong move, and you’d be left with severe burns on your hands.

That aside, Cairn realized anew that it was possible to be hurt by just one glance.

It had only been a few days, but this was enough time for people to get to know one another.

Violet knew Cairn well enough, but Cairn did not know much about Violet. Before this, he thought that his older sister only knew how to be angry and how to punish people with corporeal means. 

Now, however, he found out that, rather than being surrounded by noise, she preferred quietude.

And, she did not get angry easily unless someone was rude to her first.

Wasn’t it that she nearly drowned to death in a lake? Cairn thought.

Cairn had no idea that Violet started changing since the day she died and lived again. While staring at the back of his older sister, he scratched his head, perplexed.

‘Have I been misunderstanding her until now?’

As the days went on and the boy’s self-reflection deepened, Violet suddenly prepared to go out.