Chapter 8: A Special Gift

Chapter 8: Chapter 8: A Special Gift

"She is lying," Caius thought as he watched her from the front of the classroom.

Not a single word she said was sincere.

Her slightly curved eyes, seemingly brimming with shattered gold, showed not the slightest trace of genuine emotion.

The girl standing in the sunlight looked beautiful and holy. Yet, she was like a flawless mannequin. Or perhaps a delicate doll displayed in a shop window.

This wasn’t what she wanted. Neither dealing with these boring classmates nor being forced to accept that useless gift.

However, not everyone realized this. The crowd gathered around Lilia was clearly moved by her gentleness. In a nearby corner, the boy named Carl even had red-rimmed eyes. He gazed at Lilia with a lowly, yearning look, as if he were beholding an Angel descending to the Mortal World.

What a bunch of idiots.

It was just a little trick, yet these fools were being played like fiddles. They were supposed to be Nobles, but they lacked any ability to discern truth from falsehood. Just like the servants in the Beaumont family who were so easily bought over by Lilia, they were laughably stupid.

A group like this... Such stupid and utterly useless people. What right did they have to receive her attention?

...

Outside the window, the sun gradually set in the west.

With the cheerful ring of the dismissal bell, the teacher gathered his textbooks and left the classroom.

The stagnant atmosphere was instantly stirred up. Students stood up in twos and threes, many of them heading straight for Lilia.

"Lilia!" The two girls who had invited her to lunch earlier bounded up to her again. "Do you want to walk home with us?"

Before Lilia could answer, several others crowded around.

"Let me take you home instead, Lilia. We’re going the exact same way."

"Lilia! My mother recently had a spacious carriage custom-built for me. It’s stocked with all sorts of snacks, tea, and games. You’re welcome to come over and ride in it anytime if you’re interested!"

...

Faced with everyone’s passionate invitations, Lilia looked up. "I’m sorry..."

"She’s with me."

An aloof and deep voice cut in. Even though no one was near him, the circle around Lilia automatically parted, opening a path to the outside.

"Lilia," Caius said, standing at the end of the path and looking at her. "Come here. It’s time to go home."

Lilia voiced an acknowledgment. Carrying her book-filled bag, she stepped lightly down the tiered rows and arrived in front of Caius. She looked just like a little deer wading across a stream, bounding toward its master.

Caius’s deeply furrowed brows finally relaxed a fraction. He turned and walked away, but Lilia looked back and waved at the crowd of students.

"Good evening, everyone. See you tomorrow."

...

Lilia was Caius’s maid, a student shoehorned into Class A through nepotism by Lady Beaumont simply because she was worried about her son. This fact was known to everyone.

Before today, the crowd had only treated her like an invisible nobody, or a pretty but rigid vase. Even if some harbored a good impression of her, rarely did anyone go out of their way to befriend her.

But now, things were different. Anyone could see how specially Caius treated her. Even if it wasn’t affection, at the very least, Caius didn’t despise her as they had previously imagined.

Nobles were accustomed to bending with the wind. In order to forge a connection with the Beaumont family, those noble heirs who couldn’t get close to Caius naturally shifted their sights to Lilia. They hoped that by currying favor with her, they might knock open the doors of the Beaumont Family.

From that day on, Lilia was constantly surrounded by people.

Before class, her desk would always be piled mountain-high with gifts. During breaks, boys and girls alike would swarm her, tirelessly showering her with flattery and attention. It seemed as though with just a nod from her, they would willingly be at her beck and call.

In Caius’s eyes, those boys and girls buzzing around Lilia were like a swarm of annoying flies. They were an endless source of irritation.

At the Earl Mansion.

After finishing his dinner, Caius strode upstairs and saw a maid carrying a box, walking over from the direction of Lilia’s room.

"Mr. Caius." Seeing him, the maid curtsied.

Caius looked at the box in her hands. "What is this?"

"These are the gifts Miss Lilia received. They’ve all been unboxed, and Miss Lilia said her room couldn’t fit them, so she asked me to move them to the storage room."

"Move them to the storage room?" Caius said. "How unnecessary. Wouldn’t it be easier to just throw them away?"

It made no difference to her anyway.

"You shouldn’t say that, Mr. Caius!" the maid subconsciously retorted, but she quickly remembered that the person standing before her was one of the three masters of the Earl Mansion. Her voice immediately weakened, though she still tried to defend Lilia. "These are gifts Miss Lilia received. How could they just be thrown away? Miss Lilia would definitely be sad."

Sad? Caius sneered inwardly. As if she would be.

Since she had stuffed them all into a box and told the maid to dump them into the storage room, it proved that in her eyes, these gifts—and the so-called classmates and friends they represented—were nothing more than absolute garbage.

She clearly considered them trash, yet she still pretended to like them. She accepted them with a face full of smiles in front of those people, only to discard them the moment she was out of their sight. Such conduct was hypocritical to the extreme.

Oh, wait. She didn’t discard them immediately.

After all, she had taken the time to unbox every single one of them. Perhaps, for her, that was already the greatest respect she could afford those people.

Too lazy to say anything more, Caius waved a hand and dismissed the maid.

He was just about to return to his room, but after only two steps, he pivoted and, driven by some inexplicable compulsion, arrived at Lilia’s door.

Because the maid had just left, the bedroom door wasn’t shut tight, leaving a gap about a palm’s width wide. Through it, Caius could faintly make out the scene inside.

The girl seemed to have just taken a bath. Wearing pink pajamas, she was sitting at her desk, fiddling with something.

In her hand, she held a lily. It was fresh and lush, looking as though it had just been plucked from the garden. A few drops of dew still clung to the snow-white petals, much like a young girl’s moist lips.

A card was tied to the stem, bearing only a single word—

Lily.

Caius watched as Lilia untied the card, set it aside, and then stood up to place the lily into the glass vase nearby.

Inside the vase, over a dozen lilies were in full, vibrant bloom.

Such a lively and exuberant scene deeply stung Caius’s eyes.

That night, Caius couldn’t sleep. The moment he closed his eyes, he seemed to see someone holding out a bouquet of perfectly blooming lilies to Lilia. And Lilia, with a smile on her face, chose to accept them.

The next day, sporting faint dark circles under his eyes, Caius arrived at the campus early.