Unbeknownst to Me, I am Secretly Dating the Emperor - Chapter 27

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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 27
* * *
Tomorrow would be the day I’d agreed to go to the third exhibition with Everett.
I was out shopping for clothes with Coni.
I couldn’t begin to describe how frustrated I’d been last night, trying to pick something to wear in advance.
I wasn’t the type to wear nice clothes to shabby places like work, so my wardrobe was pitiful.
‘But I can’t wear the same thing again.’
The moment dawn broke, I’d called Coni out and we’d made the rounds through the Clothing District.
I’d bought armfuls of clothes, deliberately blurring over the price tags.
‘There are only two exhibitions left, so why did I buy ten outfits?’
After leaving the clothing store, I’d regretted it for a brief moment, but it was too late—I’d already bought them.
To keep my promise with Coni, who’d come shopping with me, I headed to a nearby restaurant to treat her to dinner.
“Should we get the couple’s set?”
Coni wrinkled her nose with barely suppressed mischief, pointing at the couple’s set on the menu.
Couple’s sets like that ought to be banished from the Capital City.
“Order something else.”
I reclaimed the menu from Coni and ordered the “Chef’s Special” listed at the top.
“Ugh, I don’t like fish dishes.”
Coni grumbled for a moment, but once the food arrived, she ate it just fine.
“You said you hated fish.”
“I do, but this place makes it well.”
Coni gathered the scattered cod flesh with her fork and brought it to her mouth, praising the kitchen staff.
“Wipe the sauce off your mouth.”
After I’d eaten my fill, the concern that had been weighing on my mind lately swelled again.
I poked at the garnish with my fork a few times before finally voicing the worry aloud.
“So, this is about a friend of mine—”
Coni wiped her mouth and asked innocently.
“You have a friend I don’t know about?”
‘No.’
“Actually, it’s about me.”
At my brazen shift in narrative, Coni let out a snort.
“Right, so it’s about you—what about it?”
Even so, she seemed willing to listen; she set down her fork and knife and straightened her posture.
Once I actually opened my mouth, speaking became difficult.
I began almost in a whisper.
“It’s just that… Everett seems interested in me too, you know?”
I explained to Coni what had happened at the second exhibition.
* * *
The day I went to the second exhibition.
Perhaps stung by my lateness last time, Everett had arrived well before the appointed hour and was waiting for me.
His face, which had been showing clear signs of annoyance and boredom amid the crowding masses, lit up the moment our eyes met.
Everett approached with long strides, closing the distance between us, and offered me his hand.
Naturally, I placed my hand in his.
He froze for a moment in the posture of asking for an escort, his cheeks flushing.
Those golden eyes found me uncertainly, then looked away.
As if seeking silent permission, he looked at me, then interlaced his fingers with mine.
For the first time in my life, I felt the sensation points between my fingers come vividly alive.
As an awkward tension made me avert my gaze, Everett bit his lip, then tried to withdraw his hand.
‘That’s not me saying don’t hold my hand.’
I firmly grasped his hand, which had been slowly loosening its hold.
Everett’s expression brightened noticeably.
To hide my burning face, I deliberately looked elsewhere.
We walked through the Exhibition Hall like that, hand in hand.
The distance had been closer when he’d offered his arm to escort me, but the sensation of our bodies touching now—merely our intertwined hands—felt far more intimate.
Our joined hands grew warm with perspiration.
‘Ugh, I can’t focus on anything.’
At some point, I was merely pretending to find interest in the exhibits as I walked.
And this was the second exhibition I’d been looking forward to most.
I did nothing but stand mechanically before each display for a while, then move on.
Yet even so, the time I spent that way gave me a chance to grow accustomed to my heart pounding faster than usual.
I finally gathered the courage to sneak a glance at Everett.
I was curious whether this moment, where even the air felt dense, belonged only to me.
It turned out Everett was looking at me too; our eyes met directly.
That eye contact felt like an incantation turning us both into statues of ice.
Unable to breathe properly, we were locked in each other’s gaze for an instant.
Heat crept back into my ears, which had only just begun to cool.
I quickly looked away.
But it did little good.
We were both reflected in the glass partition protecting the exhibits.
Everett’s golden eyes reached me through that glass barrier.
Though the reflection was hazy, our gazes were all the clearer.
Our bodies faced the artifacts on display, yet our eyes faced each other.
From my fingertips to my core, I felt electrified as if struck by a weak current.
In the end, it was I who couldn’t bear it and looked away first.
I turned to him with exaggerated enthusiasm, as if I’d been genuinely studying the artifact all along, forcing my voice to sound cheerful.
“Everett, this is believed to be a Bellows used by a Dwarf.”
I released our intertwined hands—sticky with whose sweat, I couldn’t say—and stepped close to the artifact.
Only then did the oxygen that had felt thin as mountain air fill my lungs completely.
As I admired the Bellows, now looking like nothing more than a lump of scrap metal, I secretly wiped my palms on the carefully chosen outfit I’d dressed in.
Everett, who’d escaped from the spell that turned him to ice a moment later than I had, smiled faintly.
The kind of smile that suggests something trivial and insignificant.
“Yes, quite remarkable indeed.”
Speaking of it being remarkable in the tone of someone reading from a textbook, Everett cleared his throat awkwardly.
Then, gazing into empty space, he began to speak.
“The Dwarves, a mysterious race that no longer appears in this age, are all born blacksmiths with natural talent, and the Bellows they used could heat molten metal to temperatures humans could never reach.”
His tone struck me as odd—until I realized he was reciting directly from the Exhibition Catalog.
‘Did he seriously memorize the entire catalog?’
It seemed my own unbridled enthusiasm at the first exhibition had gotten under his skin.
‘That’s… kind of nice.’
I suppressed a small laugh and probed with a question.
“They were the only blacksmiths capable of working with Mithril, the legendary mineral, weren’t they?”
That was the very next sentence in the catalog he’d memorized.
“So they say. Had the Ancient Empire’s policy of racial discrimination not driven them into hiding, humanity’s civilization would have achieved far greater heights.”
‘He really did memorize it.’
His earnest effort filled my chest with warmth, tickling it like feathers, and I struggled to stifle my laughter.
Delighted, I began eagerly dragging Everett through the Exhibition Hall.
Each time I looked at an artifact, the words from the catalog would pour out of him without hesitation.
It truly seemed as though he’d committed the entire thing to memory.
‘He sounds like a docent with an incredibly nice voice.’
I laughed quietly where Everett couldn’t see.
Once we’d completed a full circuit of the Exhibition Hall, Everett, having now used up everything he’d memorized, let out a satisfied sigh of relief.
‘Why is he so cute?’
I found myself quietly charmed by a man eight years my senior.
That day too, as Everett drove me home and I bade him farewell, I spoke to him in hushed tones, as if sharing a secret.
“You know, you don’t have to memorize the catalog for the next exhibition.”
“That’s not…”
Embarrassed, he started to deny it, but meeting my eyes, he sighed and admitted it honestly.
“You’re right. I did memorize it.”
The flush that sometimes colored only his earlobes this time crept all the way down to his nape.
To hide his reddened face, Everett lowered his head and lightly tapped the ground with the toe of his shoe, murmuring.
“I wanted to impress you, since you seem to enjoy that sort of thing.”
Everett, at thirty years old, was a genuinely endearing man.
* * *
When I finished recounting the second exhibition, Coni rapped her fork against her plate in delight.
“See, see? He’s clearly very interested.”
‘I’m aware of that now.’
Just as Coni was about to tease me like she’d caught me red-handed, she flinched at the gloomy expression on my face.
“He’s got serious interest, so what’s the problem?”
Coni asked, puzzled.
“We only have two exhibitions left.”
Which meant only two more meetings with Everett.
“So just make another arrangement and see him again.”
Coni spoke as if she didn’t understand why I was even worried.
“You can’t just meet someone without a reason unless you’re in some kind of relationship.”
I heaved a deep sigh.
In other words, I understood we were in a kind of courtship, but I had no idea how to move past these two remaining meetings.
‘These last two times feel like a countdown timer.’
“Hmm.”
Coni ran her hand through her crimson hair.
She seemed unable to come up with a good answer.
My romantic experience was negative; hers was zero.
With Coni weak in such delicate situations, she’d thoroughly messed up her already frizzy hair.
Then, as if wringing it from herself, she offered an answer.
“Maybe you should be the one to take the initiative?”
“Me?”
It sounded like a plausible solution somehow.

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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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