Unbeknownst to Me, I am Secretly Dating the Emperor - Chapter 168

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 168
The murmurs of the crowd had grown louder, colored now less by the probing curiosity of arrival than by genuine surprise and intrigue.
I had to force myself to keep my shoulders from hunching inward.
Ed, by contrast, seemed utterly at ease.
More than that—he looked genuinely delighted.
Having always wanted to make our relationship public, Ed was acting like a dog off its leash.
“Shall I bring you something to drink?”
The smile he wore was impossible to hide; his voice soft and warm.
His gaze never left me, tender and unwavering.
He was doing exactly what he did when we were alone together—without a shred of self-consciousness, in front of all these people.
“I’m fine, thank you.”
Among the barrage of shocked stares—including those of my aunt, Raymond, and Regia—the weight of attention felt unbearable.
All my resolve to face this moment with courage crumbled. Such intense scrutiny was harder to bear than I’d bargained for.
‘I think I’m going to suffocate.’
Seeing the color drain from my face, Ed made a subtle gesture toward the orchestra.
Once the musicians received his signal and began to play, the ambient noise mercifully dulled.
Satisfied that my complexion had improved, Ed took my arm and guided me toward the Crown Princess and Rohas.
Ed’s eyes found mine for a moment before turning toward the Crown Princess.
“Allow me to congratulate you on your State Marriage, Crown Princess.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.”
With every eye fixed on Ed’s every move, attention was divided somewhat between him and the Crown Princess and Rohas.
The Crown Princess was not one to let an opportunity slip.
Noticing how the nobles’ gazes had converged upon them, she seized the moment to speak to me.
“Thank you for coming, Miss Diaz.”
She was making a show of our existing friendship—establishing that she had connections to the Emperor’s hidden beloved.
It was shrewd politics, making Bellot and the Empire’s relations appear far more cordial than expected.
From one perspective, she was using me, but I couldn’t bring myself to resent someone playing politics with such deft intelligence. Besides, Ed and I had already caused her and Rohas considerable inconvenience.
“It has been some time since we last met at the Separate Palace, hasn’t it?”
I smiled back at her readily, willing to be used.
After exchanging greetings with Rohas, his former adjutant, Ed asked them to open the ball with the first dance.
Rohas, visibly tense, and the Crown Princess, composed as ever, took the floor for their opening waltz.
Ed extended his hand to me.
“Will you dance with me?”
“I’d be delighted.”
We stepped onto the Dance Floor in their wake.
Mindful of the Crown Princess’s foreign background and Rohas’s origins as a serf, the orchestra began playing one of the most widely known ballroom pieces.
I was grateful for the choice—I was hardly skilled at formal dancing.
In a voice quiet enough for Ed alone to hear, I sought his understanding.
“I’m not very good at this. You’ll have to forgive me if I step on your feet.”
“I’m a good dancer.”
Ed wrapped his arm firmly around my waist and smiled with absolute confidence.
If one could become a Swordmaster, I supposed talent extended to everything involving the body’s movement.
Ed led me with fluid, natural grace.
Following his lead, I—who had only danced in brief snatches as a child and again at Ibeta’s debutante ball—managed to look rather passable on the floor.
By the midpoint of the piece, having successfully avoided stepping on his feet even once, my confidence grew.
I lifted my gaze from the floor and met Ed’s eyes, smiling.
He smiled back and leaned in, brushing my lips with his own in a brief kiss.
Caught off guard by the sudden public affection, I stumbled, losing the beat for a moment.
A blend of clumsiness and spite—I stepped squarely on his foot, and Ed let out a laugh.
Then he leaned close to my ear and whispered,
“One kiss costs me one stepped-on foot?”
Ed’s golden eyes glimmered with mischief.
From that point on, Ed began deliberately trying to get me to step on his foot.
I, conversely, was determined to finish the dance without treading on him once.
The moment Ed began to play instead of lead with his usual skill, the dance became wonderfully clumsy—but also much more fun.
Every time I dodged his foot, laughter bubbled up.
Fortunately, the Crown Princess and Rohas, dancing some distance away, seemed to have chosen romance over perfection as well.
Before I knew it, the piece had ended in a blur of play and dance.
I stepped off the Dance Floor with my cheeks flushed from laughing.
I caught sight of the nobles, their faces registering the shock of witnessing something unbelievable.
Yet somehow, unlike before, their stares didn’t trouble me as much.
Ed, still wearing a trace of his smile, signaled the orchestra once more.
This time, a fast-paced melody began to flow.
The nobles, left standing in bewilderment with no time to rest, hesitantly began to pair up and drift toward the Dance Floor.
While the hall grew lively with activity, Ed leaned toward me and asked,
“Shall we go to the Rest Room?”
It was a proposal delivered with playful, suggestive overtones.
Yet in that moment, it was far too tempting to refuse.
“Why not?”
Ed, who had been extending his arm as if already anticipating that I’d comply with his not-so-innocent suggestion, broke into a radiant smile at this unexpected success.
“Good.”
* * *
Though I had misgivings about it, the timing of our relationship being revealed proved extraordinarily fortunate.
The very next day, the Pro-Nobility Faction newspapers ran a story: “Mysterious Illness Spreading Among Those Close to Ibeta.”
It appeared timed precisely to coincide with the Crown Princess’s State Marriage—exploiting the absence of Harper and Rosina.
The article’s tone ostensibly dealt with caution regarding this unknown disease and sympathies for its victims.
But read between the lines, the real message was criticism of Ibeta for failing to heal the afflicted.
With neither the cause, cure, nor even a name for the illness identified—only its progression being barely halted—the article was a powerful tool to damage the authority of Ibeta, the Saint.
Fortunately, however, the public proved far more captivated by the rumors of Ed’s and my passionate affair.
The first newspaper in the social circles to cover our love affair sold at a premium.
A day after the Pro-Nobility Faction published their article on the mysterious illness, papers favorable to the Imperial Household released our neatly packaged romantic history to the world.
Though it read almost like an official Imperial press release, the public erupted in excitement the moment the Emperor’s relationship was formalized.
Since the Weekly Social Calendar’s closure, other yellow journalists had begun churning out sensational gossip.
Evidently wary of repeating the Weekly Social Calendar’s fate, the tone of their coverage remained mercifully favorable toward me.
Thanks to the articles successfully capturing public attention, the story about the illness occurring only among those near Ibeta was effectively buried.
An unexpected boon.
* * *
Invitations poured into the Separate Palace in torrents.
More came to me, it seemed, than to Ibeta herself, despite her status as a Saint.
Yet I sent polite refusals to every single one.
Part of it was that I had no intention of actively engaging in social life, but the primary reason was that the patients’ conditions were deteriorating.
The number of afflicted continued to grow in the district where Ibeta’s welfare foundation operated.
Those already ill worsened noticeably.
Coni, the first to fall ill, was in the most critical condition.
Her face now bore a distinctly sickly appearance.
Beyond the initial stage of extreme fatigue, she was occasionally coughing up blood.
The pain when awake was so severe that we had resorted to giving her sedatives just to keep her asleep.
The Separate Palace, which had managed to maintain a relatively calm atmosphere, visibly grew somber.
Yet we hadn’t lost hope.
Everyone was doing their utmost to find a way to cure the patients.
Ibeta used Healing on the patients daily, attempting to slow the disease’s progression.
The Blue Hawk was scouring the late Crown Prince’s medical records and ancient texts, searching for any method we hadn’t yet attempted or any similar case recorded in history.
I myself threw myself into the Imperial Palace Library, desperate to contribute anything I could.
One night, after hours of combing through medical texts, something shifted.
I had exhausted the library’s medical collection without finding a single clue.
In desperation—grasping at straws—I began pulling down any book mentioning “illness” and reading indiscriminately.
Adventure tales of families journeying to seek medicinal herbs to cure a beloved’s sickness; autobiographies of priests who had devoted their lives to treating and caring for the poor.
And then, at last, I found a hint in a tattered old storybook that looked centuries old.
My eyes were dry from reading hundreds of books in such a short span, yet my heart soared—I had found a possible way to save Coni and the others.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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