“Understood.”

Shane saluted and left. Reynard turned his gaze back to Valentin’s face and spoke, gently rubbing the cheek he had been kissing with his index finger.

“There’s someone I must meet today.”

“Ah…”

It seemed he hadn’t come here solely because of the Emperor’s invitation.

“I’ll be back soon. Can you be without me?”

His expression showed he was still uneasy about leaving Valentin at the table. Well, until now, all troubles had occurred as if waiting for when he left his seat.

But Valentin had an invincible and lucky protection today. Namely, his friend Cecilia, boasting an unparalleled combination of confidence, insensitivity, and infinite positivity.

“Of course! I have a companion today.”

Valentin raised his cheekbones as if excited, thinking of Cecilia. His apple-like cheeks rose and fell roundly.

“Companion?”

“You greeted her earlier, right? My friend Cecilia… Oh?”

Come to think of it, where did she go? I definitely escorted her here, how could this be. Valentin flustered, feeling sorry for his friend and partner who came with him to this event today.

“Calm down. I’ll find her. So don’t panic and stay seated right here. Understood?”

“Yes…”

Reynard quickly stood up and found Cecilia with eagle-like eyes. Only after swiftly attaching her to Valentin’s side did he leave.

“I’m sorry, Cecil!”

Cecilia laughed heartily seeing Valentin apologize with clasped hands.

“It’s alright. I thought you’d be like that as soon as you saw your husband. Besides, I was planning to come alone originally.”

“Still… I should have looked after you.”

“Who’s looking after whom! I should be taking care of you, the pregnant one.”

That familiar look of seeing a misfit from childhood. Valentin was grateful for Cecilia who remained unchanged like this even though his position had changed. Suffering from the walls of status and rank was truly difficult.

“And thanks to that, I went around greeting people here and there and gathered a lot of information. Aren’t you curious about what I heard?”

Cecilia whispered secretly.

“I obtained quite a lot of information. And most of the collection was possible because I was alone.”

She muttered, rubbing her palms together sinisterly.

Well, if she had been with Valentin, she wouldn’t have been able to scurry around like that. Valentin nodded, feeling Cecilia’s sincerity.

Certainly, constantly conversing while receiving gazes from people would have been an ordeal for him now. Valentin secretly glanced at his swollen belly and leaned back on the chair, ignoring the nobles still lingering around wanting to speak to him. There was even less need to care since this wasn’t Dales where he had to lead social circles. Moreover, as Reynard said, hadn’t trouble occurred last time because he couldn’t ignore people trying to talk to him at the end?

“The time they took to produce the new drug was shorter than I thought.”

“Really?”

It was unbelievable. How could medicine be made so easily…?

“And it seems that foreign lady unexpectedly played a very big role. It looks like she was involved in everything from introducing and cultivating the flower that became the raw material, to the process of it becoming medicine.”

“Hmm…”

Valentin raised his eyes to look for her again but couldn’t see her.

Instead, marble columns stood throughout the reception hall in the Imperial Palace’s rose garden. People could be seen constantly passing between the draped cloths, communicating with each other.

The fact that it looked more lively than ever was probably due to the new drug announced today and Clifton’s new business.

“While I admit this is clearly a groundbreaking discovery and a good medicine that can contribute to the empire, I honestly don’t understand why people are so enthusiastic about it.”

Valentin spoke quietly, just loud enough for Cecilia to hear, while covering his lips with a teacup.

“I agree. I actually think new drugs always have a certain amount of risk.”

“What kind of risk?”

“How many things show side effects right away unless they’re poison? I think we should wait and see about that medicine too.”

“That’s a very reasonable point.”

Valentin, a reincarnator who roughly knew modern medicine, empathized even more. Most likely, a big accident will happen. Just as opium disappeared from humanity, being treated as a vicious drug.

“I completely agree with the thought that such an effective painkiller won’t be entirely safe.”

“So no matter how much it looks like a goose that lays golden eggs, it’s a material that could be fatal if it fails at any time, right? As long as it’s a ‘medicine’ like that, I have no intention of joining that side because of the possibility of ‘what if’…”

Cecilia nodded towards the nobles gathered around Clifton and Evener. They were enthusiastic like pilgrims who had met a messiah in the field.

‘Superstar…?’

Valentin snickered, recalling concert halls from his past life.

“Is it an exaggeration?”

“What?”

“The thought that the people gathered there look like passionate fans completely smitten with an opera singer.”

Cecilia nodded again, looking at them.

“No, you saw it perfectly. The way they can’t even speak when His Highness Clifton says something… it’s truly at the level of fanatics.”

“Right? That couple always had followers, but now even older gentlemen like that…”

“I know. You never know. There might have been some other information we don’t know about.”

“That’s true.”

Thinking that they seemed overly enthusiastic even with the tasty dish of a new drug, Valentin and Cecilia could only shrug at each other.

“Kyaa!”

Suddenly, there was a loud crash of something falling and breaking from a short distance away. Valentin and Cecilia’s gazes naturally turned towards the sound.

The marble columns surrounding the outdoor reception hall had fallen like dominoes in a row. The silk ribbons and cloths that had decorated and wrapped several columns were all tangled together in a mess.

“Oh my, what on earth!”

“Oh dear, be careful!”

Among the people still entangled with the cloth woven around the columns, screaming and shouting shrilly was…

“I-I’m sorry. I… I’m really sorry.”

It was a young man who seemed to be the culprit who knocked them down.

He kept apologizing profusely. Brown hair and a freckled nose. That man with a face that could be called pure if being kind, or stupid-looking if being harsh, was…?

“Meyer Lilford…”

“As expected…”

Cecilia and Valentin clicked their tongues with knowing looks as they watched the young man sweating profusely at the center of the commotion. Their expressions were half sympathetic.

“He hasn’t changed at all since he was young.”

“That’s just his temperament and personality. It doesn’t change.”

“I thought it was because he was intimidated by the situation at the time…”

Cecilia shook her head once more at Valentin’s words.

“It’s both. Both the situation and his personality.”

Children of noble families form their own social circles by gathering with peers from a young age.

Valentin met Cecilia like that from childhood too.

In boyhood or adolescence, small social circles naturally form through parents’ connections or under the lead of similar high-ranking nobles. Evener Luwin and his followers, rarely the 3rd Prince Clifton, and Meyer Lilford, the Count’s heir causing trouble and flustering over there, were acquaintances like that too.

Seeing him struggle to untangle the cloth wrapped around his body and knock down more columns in the process, memories from boyhood naturally came to mind. That is, the teenage years before Valentin left to study abroad in Sorente.

*

Something was breaking then too.

Crash!

12-year-old Meyer Lilford knocked down all the plates set up on one side of the tea party again. The 3-tier plate beautifully topped with colorful macarons, and glass bowls filled with lemonade and cherry punch rolled onto the floor with a loud noise. If there was any silver lining, it was that they didn’t shatter into pieces thanks to the carpet.

Meyer was in the process of cleaning up the rolling bowls himself, making a pitiful face with his pants completely soaked in red punch.

Valentin witnessed this noisy scene head-on along with two alpha friends and another omega friend who had gathered together. It was because they happened to be sitting near the accident site.

[Good heavens…]

[That friend is at it again.]

[‘That friend?’ You call Meyer Lilford that?]

One alpha from another count family asked, pointing at Meyer who was famous for being clumsy and accident-prone.