Chapter 242: Chapter 241: Those Who Bully Women are Sissies Chapter 242: Chapter 241: Those Who Bully Women are Sissies White Stone Tower Academy, first floor of the auditor’s dormitory building, midnight, silent and still.
Suddenly, footsteps echo.
“Tap, tap-tap, tap, tap-tap…”
A blond male student appears in the corridor, slender but not skinny, with muscles slightly bulging under the skin, not a muscle freak, but quite fit. His pair of blue eyes are like two gemstones, his face smooth as if carved from an ice cube with a nose that rises just right, without any blemishes on his entire face.
The individual from head to toe perfectly embodies the word “handsome.” He is the son of a duke and also one of Rose’s twelve unofficial fiancés, named Jack Trist.
The reason he became Rose’s unofficial fiancé almost mirrors Baki’s situation—his father, the duke, in order to fill the holes in the duchy’s finances, borrowed a large sum of money from Rose’s father, the king, and lacking anything else for collateral, except his then-young son.
So, with great “sorrow,”… Jack Trist’s father unhesitantly mortgaged his son, saying to his wife, “Forget this son. We can just have another… Hmm, he’s quite valuable.”
In this world, sons that disappoint their fathers are commonplace, but fathers who disappoint their sons are just as common.
So, Jack Trist became collateral, became Rose’s servant—in name, one of her unofficial fiancés. From childhood to adulthood, Jack Trist kept trying to shed this status, but he found that he simply could not—his “dear” father kept borrowing more and more money from Rose’s father, the king, to the point where the accumulated total seemed impossible for him to repay in ten lifetimes.
Thinking about this, Jack Trist’s mood became somewhat gloomy, really wanting to flay his father alive.
Moving forward, he approached a door and “bang, bang, bang” knocked on it.
“Squeak” goes the door as it opens, and the person inside steps out, nearly two meters tall, weighing over 250 pounds, muscles hanging on the body like an outer coat, exuding intimidation—another one of Rose’s unofficial fiancés—Baki.
Seeing Jack, Baki was noticeably cold, furrowing his brow and asking, “What do you want?”
“Rose asked me to check on you, how’s the thing she had you do?” Jack said.
Baki: “I’ll tell Rose myself.”
“Heh, but you haven’t gone to her all day,” Jack said. “Is it because you haven’t done it well?”
“What’s it to you?” Baki was not the least bit polite. “Pretty boy! This is between Rose and me, not your business! If you want to curry favor with Rose, try lingering around her more, instead of disturbing my sleep.”
“Hmph, if it weren’t for Rose’s orders, I wouldn’t bother with you. If you can’t complete a task, blame yourself, don’t take it out on others,” Jack said. “Besides, do you know why I’m visiting you at night? It’s to avoid letting others see any interaction between you and me. If it weren’t for Rose, I’d never meet with someone like you.”
“What do you mean?” Baki’s gaze turned frosty, inspecting Jack, muscles rising in sections across his body.
Jack was not intimidated, or at least he showed no fear on the surface, glancing at Baki and saying, “You know exactly what I mean. Your secret dealings are well-known to many. What do you think Rose would think if I told her?”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Baki roared, with a hint of blood red in his eyes.
“Heh,” Jack chuckled lightly, not pushing further but narrowing his eyes and saying, “Relax, I won’t talk carelessly. But you better be polite to me, just as I said before, I’m forced to deal with you because of Rose, not because I actually want to. As for you, if you haven’t handled things well, find your own way. Don’t take your anger out on me.”
Baki bowed his head, silent.
“All right, that’s all I have to say. Since you’ll tell Rose yourself, do it tomorrow morning. I’m going back to sleep.” With those words, Jack turned to leave, but as he did, his lips moved, uttering a word with a hint of disdain and very softly at that, “…”
Although the sound was very faint, Baki, with sharp ears, heard it and abruptly lifted his head, shouting at Jack, “Stop right there!”
“What for?” Jack turned, facing Baki.
Baki grabbed the clothes on his upper body and with a slight effort, “rip,” tore them, revealing huge pectoral muscles, like a fierce humanoid beast, fixing his gaze on Jack as if staring at a juicy piece of meat.
Jack swallowed audibly, unable to help himself, and with a slight tremor in his voice, asked, “What… what are you going to do?”
“Hey!” Baki laughed, an eerie smile spreading across his face, gesturing at Jack with a crooked finger and inviting, “Would you be interested in coming into my room?”
Jack’s eyes widened instantly, and he shook his head vigorously, “No!” The next moment, he turned to run.
But Baki was ready, taking a quick step forward and grabbing Jack’s arm, pulling him toward his room.
Jack’s eyes bulged, “You! You… you can’t do this! You can’t do that to me! You… let me go right now!”
“Hey!” Baki, unperturbed, scoffed, “Go on, shout, scream—let everyone hear. You think you’re better than me, right? You said that many people know about me, so let them see this scene, see what you really are!”
“You!” Jack, upon hearing this, stopped screaming but struggled with all his might, his feet firmly planted on the ground, his body arching backwards desperately. His eyes filled with terror as he looked at Baki’s room behind him, as if it were a demon’s lair, a place of no return once entered.
Baki, meanwhile, looked relaxed and amused, his muscles working effectively, and without using even half his strength, he dragged Jack into the room under his horrified gaze.
With a “bang,” the wooden door closed, and from inside came the sounds of clothes tearing, desperate resistance, submission in despair.
For a long, long time…
With a creak, the wooden door opened again, and Jack walked out looking disheveled and ashen-faced. Baki followed behind him, looking somewhat amused, with a Frankincense Wood toothpick in his mouth.
Jack trudged ahead like a zombie when Baki suddenly slapped him on the shoulder.
Jack whirled around as if electrocuted, looking fiercely at Baki, “What… what else do you want to do?”
“Hey, don’t be like that,” Baki said, “It’s no big deal. Sometimes life is just like that, if you can’t struggle, you have to accept. Besides, I haven’t really done anything to you yet. If I really did something to you, it wouldn’t be as simple as tearing your clothes and giving you a few slaps.”
“What else do you want to do?”
“Delusional!” Jack said and hurried away.
Baki watched Jack’s retreating back, shook his head involuntarily, and was about to return to his room when something caught the corner of his eye, making his body stiffen abruptly. He slowly turned his neck to look at the staircase—the Duke was standing there watching.
The two men looked at each other in silence, everything left unsaid.
“Cough…” After a long while, Baki tried to break the silence, “So… you saw that?”
“If necessary, I can pretend I didn’t see anything.”
“Um, that…” Baki walked closer to Richard, slightly flustered, “You’re a smart man. You should understand that I like smart people, not in that way, but, you know, the other way. I need to make it clear about what happened today: first, I didn’t really do anything to him; at most, I just scared him a bit. Second, this kind of thing is actually quite common among the nobility. So, you can understand, right?”
“Perhaps,” Richard said, thinking: Maybe such a thing is common among nobles, but it’s certainly less common between two fiancés of a princess.
“Actually, as a person, it’s best to try different things to know what you like…” Baki suddenly turned philosopher.
“Um…” Richard responded blandly, thinking to himself: Is he saying that everyone must take some ‘detours’? But that’s not necessarily the case.
“Moreover, I think, as a man, one should have some spirit and dare to take on challenges. What kind of skill is it to bully women? If I did that, what difference would there be between me and those effeminate men? A real man should… um…” Baki stopped in time, not going any further.
“Um…” Richard continued, thinking to himself: A real man should… sleep with men? Has philosophy really progressed to this stage, starting to provide theoretical guidance…
Seeing that Richard didn’t react much, Baki felt a bit anxious.
“Uh… gulp…” Baki swallowed, his voice softening, “You must promise me, you absolutely cannot tell Rose about this. Otherwise, if Rose tells her father, and he tells my father, I won’t be spared.”
“I’ll keep the secret,” Richard said.
“Really?” Baki was elated.
“Really,” Richard said.
“That’s good.” Baki sighed with relief, patting his chest, “If you ever have any trouble, come to me, I’ll be sure to help. I might not have much ability, but I have a whole bunch of brothers, uh, don’t misunderstand, real brothers!”
“Um.” Richard responded and turned to walk up the stairs, stopping suddenly and looking back at Baki, “By the way, I’m curious, why do you have a toothpick in your mouth?”
“Uh, that’s…” Baki spat out the Frankincense Wood toothpick from his mouth, shrugged, and said, “I don’t know why, but sometimes after teaching someone a lesson, I get the urge to put something in my mouth.”
So… Is a cigarette after the deed an ancient human instinct? But in this world, the entire East Coast doesn’t have cigarettes, nor pipes, hookahs, and not even tobacco—god knows where shisha might be lying forgotten, so is a toothpick a poor substitution?
But then again, it wasn’t like anything actually happened, it was just a moment of spiritual pollution.
Richard thought to himself.
Baki spoke up: “If you dislike it, I can stop doing it in the future.”
“It’s fine, keep doing it if you like,” Richard waved off, “I don’t mind.”
“Um, you’re a good person!”
Under Baki’s gaze, Richard walked up to the second floor with a tap, tap, tap.
Reaching the second floor, Richard glanced at Rose’s room in the distance and couldn’t help shaking his head.
It must be said, Rose might just be a typical bratty princess, but her group of fiancés were truly extraordinary. Having only met two so far, there were already such big surprises, or rather, shock. Who knows what the other fiancés would be like.