Your First Kiss
‘Oh. What? Are you finally going to do something right?’
Loriel, holding a tray of snacks, opened the door to her office and opened her eyes wide. Then, she raised the corners of her mouth and cheered inwardly.
It seemed that her hard work in stimulating Aide El had finally paid off.
She peeked inside excitedly, thinking it wouldn’t be long before she could get the two of them together and have Riella thrown out by the Emperor.
‘Wait. No, you’re just stepping back?’
Once again, the ‘decisive blow’ is lacking.
In the end, El let go of Riella and stepped back. He even apologized to Riella and left the office with his head down.
“Hey, Aide. Where are you going?”
Loriel, who encountered him at the door, tried to grab him and act innocent, but El just ran away with long strides.
‘You seem like a stuffy man.’
Loriel swallowed her regret and entered the office like a dog chasing a chicken.
Riella stood there with a slightly surprised expression on her face, where she had been pressed up against El just a moment ago.
“Miss Riella? Did something happen?”
“No. I think Sir El is not feeling well.”
“Oh, really?”
Although Loriel pouted, Riella didn’t have the presence of mind to even pay attention to the maid’s feelings.
The arm that El had grabbed was still tingled, but the agitation conveyed by his glaring eyes was engraved in Riella’s mind more strongly than the pain in her arm.
‘Is it because he pushed me too hard and he panicked?’
But Riella couldn’t just ignore it and pass by.
The incident where she met El in front of the Shadow Merchant a while ago had been bothering her the whole time. And then, he had even received a warning from the Emperor because of that incident, and today he had come in so badly injured.
Bruises on the wrists and cuts around the neck were particularly troubling.
‘Are you being threatened by anyone?’
That’s why Riella sent Loriel away and looked after El’s wounds.
‘Are you still involved with the Shadow Merchant? Or is there something more to it?’
At that moment, Riella, who was lowering her head in distress, looked at the shiny object that had fallen on the floor.
‘El’s necklace.’ A red crystal is attached to a silver chain.
It seemed like El had just dropped it as he hurriedly left the office.
As Riella quietly picked it up, Loriel asked, still focused on the outside of the door.
“Would you like to follow him?”
Riella just stared blankly in the direction where El had gone and didn’t say anything in response.
“Miss Riella, go and check on the aide yourself. I’ll pretend I didn’t see you.”
“I think it would be better to leave Sir El alone now.”
“Don’t do that. Miss Riella, go and—”
“That’s okay, it’s almost time for my appointment with the Emperor.”
“Ah. Yes….”
Loriel turned away in regret and secretly let out a sigh.
Riella thought as she stared at the necklace that Iel had dropped. The unpleasant thought was that maybe El had more secrets than she could guess.
* * *
“This is Asion’s message.”
Asion deliberately sent a message to Jess’ side to prevent any possible risk of theft.
[The fox was confirmed to be heading to the central temple.]
The first line of the report began like this.
Asion used the word ‘fox’ as a slang term for Princess Greta, so Herhan, who was reading the text, could not help but laugh.
[During the journey, we confirmed that the fox had made contact with a shadow merchant. Shortly after, we captured the shadow merchant and questioned him,….]
Asion’s report contained a completely different story than Herhan had expected.
[We found out that the fox bought a suppressant. The target of the suppressant is an adult male in his mid-twenties, and after checking several circumstances, it is presumed that Fabian is a descendant of Enril.]
Herhan was confused because Asion’s handwriting, which was already bad, became even worse.
So Herhan had no choice but to read what he had just read two or three times.
It was Jess who added an explanation to Herhan, who was dumbfounded by such an unexpected fact.
“I just finished looking over his medical records. Many of the symptoms he was showing were typical of a power user going berserk. Asion’s words seem to be correct.”
“Fabian was a descendant of Enril?”
“Yes.”
“That man. He was the same as me.”
“Yes.”
Herhan kept repeating the same thing and laughed in vain.
“What kind of power does he have? It must be a really useless power.”
Jess continued, deliberately making a sarcastic joke.
“Now it all makes sense. Why was Princess Greta hanging around the shadow merchant? Why was she so smug all this time, as if she was hiding something huge? And why did she drag him in to assassinate Your Majesty.”
‘And why she’s been harassing Riella about having Fabian…’
Herhan laughed again for another reason.
It was a different kind of laughter now, one that burst out because they were so ridiculous and pathetic.
It would have been forgivable if it had been some great love play.
‘What do you mean by a person with abilities? He’s just a poor cursed human.’
“By the way, as a descendant of Enril, I’m surprised you’ve come to the temple on your own. What is the princess thinking? It seems like the princess doesn’t know the true identity of Miss Riella.”
“She knows one, but not the other. The Liotta Kingdom has never had descendants, and they weren’t a party to the war, so they would have lacked information.”
“I guess he thought going to the temple would make him a hero. Poor guy. Thank goodness we don’t have to do anything to help them, they’re on their path to self-destruction.”
Now that all the puzzles seem to have been solved, Herhan’s anxiety has deepened.
After Jess, who had been so happy, had left, the only thing Herhan could think of in the quiet office was Fabian’s face.
‘It must have been thanks to Riella that the man was treated and recovered after he arrived at the palace.’
‘One day in the future, we may share the power of the saint…’
Herhan’s blood boiled at the thought that the situation that made his teeth grind just by imagining it had already happened without him even knowing.
‘I can’t stand it, it’s so annoying.’
Herhan always cherished Riella. But that man enjoyed such a precious thing his whole life without any awareness, took it for granted, threw it away because he was tired of it, and then came back and ate it again without permission.
‘18 years. 18 years he had Riella, that’s how long.’
Herhan clenched his fist.
His guard rushed toward Herhan as he left the office. He asked where Herhan was going as he had a meeting coming up soon, but Herhan didn’t answer and just hurried his steps.
* * *
“Because of those circumstances, I guess the only person I can ask to do something about is Sir Eric.”
“Yes, I understand. Since it’s an extension of the work I was doing anyway, there won’t be any major difficulties.”
“Thank you. I will make sure to give you the overtime pay.”
“Yes. I will take it like a knife.”
After finishing her request to Eric, Riella turned around with a smile.
Knight Eric was the Emperor’s watchman for El. He was also the one who had given El a warning a few days ago when he had met Riella in front of the main palace, preventing him from having a proper conversation with her.
Riella secretly resented Eric, so she never thought the day would come when she would have to ask him for such a personal favor.
‘So I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how things go with Sir El.’
It seemed like El had left work without permission, just like he left the office in the morning.
When staffers asked about her aide’s whereabouts, Riella told them that he had left work early due to illness.
“Okay, let’s proceed with the meeting. I can do it by myself without an aide.”
“Wow, Ambassador, you’re so smart, we all know that!”
So, they were having a brief meeting in preparation for their first trade with the Kingdom of Liota, when suddenly someone barged into the meeting room where all the employees were gathered.
He was the emperor.
“Your Majesty?”
Riella stood up from her seat, her eyes looking both happy and bewildered.
“Your Majesty, what is it? I am just in a meeting—!”
Riella’s words were cut off midway.
The emperor, who had walked straight in without giving Riella a moment to rest, kissed her.
“Huh!”
The staff who had all stood up at the appearance of the emperor immediately turned towards the wall.
For a while after that, the only thing that filled the silence in the meeting room was the two lovers’ deep breathing and tossing and turning.
“Hah…”
When Riella opened her mouth in the brief gap that arose, Herhan immediately turned his head and took Riella’s breath more deeply than before.
The gentle yet passionate intertwining movements shook Riella’s spirit to its core.
The saliva that wet his mouth was sweet, and his forehead that touched Herhan’s was getting hotter and hotter.
“hah…”
The meeting room was empty after all the employees who had shut their eyes tightly left, leaving only the two of them behind.
Riella’s cheeks were red as she gasped for breath through her separated lips.
Herhan looked down at Riella with eyes boiling with passion, but Riella pushed him away slightly as he tried to kiss her again.
“You did that on purpose, didn’t you? To kick everyone out.”
“Ah. Who else was here besides you?”
Riella burst into absurd laughter at the question that seemed so shameless.
“I told you there was a meeting in the evening and you said you had something to do too.”
“Yeah. That’s right. That’s right.”
Herhan finally came to his senses and let out a sigh.
“I had something I really wanted to ask. I thought I’d go crazy if I didn’t ask right away.”
“What is it?”
‘Is this urgent enough to make him like this?’
Herhan lifted Riella’s waist slightly as she raised her head out of curiosity and sat her down at the end of the conference room table.
His lips, which had been hesitating and unable to speak, finally opened after a long time.
“I mean Fabian.”
It was only this morning that the Emperor declared that he would never again bring up Fabian.
“Your first kiss was with him, right?”
Riella slowly closed her eyes and opened them.
The two people’s gazes were fixed on each other along the same line.
Riella looked calm, and Herhan looked quite desperate.
“You have grown up together since you were young. Your first time was always with him, right?”
“Would you like to hear?”
“……”
“Shall I answer you?”
“……”
As expected, Herhan was taken aback by the challenging response.
He was the one who asked first, and now he backed away and shook his head.
“No. Don’t say it. Never. Never answer.”
Of course, it didn’t end there.
Thinking about it, Herhan thought it would be more comfortable to just listen to her openly, so he rushed in, but then backed off again, saying that it didn’t seem right.
There’s no end to this. Riella grabbed Herhan’s clothes and pulled.
When Riella pulled, Herhan was pulled without resistance. Riella wrapped her slender arms around his neck and whispered.
“Your Majesty, this is the first time I have kissed you in this position. Of course, if you kiss me now,…”
There was no way Herhan could resist that temptation.
Herhan drank Riella’s red, luscious flesh as if he was drinking sweet rain.
In this moment, the only ‘now’ for both of them, whether it was the first or not, the two shared each other’s breath for a long time.
Sitting on the table, the puffy hem of her skirt rustled against Herhan’s body.
When the clothes were all wrinkled and the papers on the table were in disarray, Herhan let go of Riella.
“Am I going crazy, Riella?”
“No.”
Then she would be going crazy too. Riella liked Herhan’s warm body. She liked his reddened earlobes and the breath he exhaled to shake off the heat.
So, while holding onto his strong back and hugging him, Herhan opened his mouth again.
Again, the name Fabian was involved, but this time it wasn’t just a cute jealous word like before.
“I have something to tell you about Fabian. It might surprise you.”
* * *
