Chapter 194: Red Light, Green Light, Yellow Light
Kian strolled along the gravel path, pausing occasionally to pluck a flower from the beds lining the way and taste the nectar at the stem.
As he drew closer to the house at the garden's centre, he began to hear piano music drifting from the upper floors.
Lady Nightingale played well. But Kian's attention wasn't on the piano — it was on the three young noblemen standing outside the front door in formal attire.
All three looked to be in their mid-twenties.
He'd assumed at first they were family. He started walking over to introduce himself.
When he got close enough to hear what they were saying, he revised that assumption immediately.
Suitors. All three of them. Lady Nightingale had apparently declined to let any of them inside, and they were now standing on the gravel commiserating.
"She's going to reject me again, isn't she? What am I doing wrong?"
"I swore an oath — I told her I'd never marry anyone else! Anyone!"
"Her playing has improved again. My heart has broken proportionally."
They were still muttering when they sensed someone approaching. All three turned in unison. The moment they saw Kian, their expressions shifted to unified hostility.
"Who goes there!"
"A rival?!"
"I will not allow you to claim Lady Nightingale! Abandon that hope entirely!"
Kian scratched his cheek, thought for a moment, then arranged his face into something between mysterious and insufferable.
"Oh~? Is that so. Then I suppose we're fated rivals~"
All three straightened with sudden gravity.
"Throne — the presence on this man!"
"Even so, I won't yield!"
"Fated rivals… now this is interesting."
Kian smiled in a way that conveyed nothing charitable.
"My fated rivals~ It seems the pure, beautiful, gracious Lady Nightingale has once again turned you away from her door~
Tell me — have you prepared any particular strategy? Any special approach? If not, you might consider stepping aside. A princess held captive in a tower requires a proper hero to rescue her, after all."
The three nobles responded with collective disdain. The one with yellow hair stepped forward first.
"As a matter of fact, I have! I spent ninety-nine days — ninety-nine days — consulting every available resource, fusing it all with the full depth of my devotion, and composed a courtship ode worthy of Lady Nightingale herself!"
He cleared his throat theatrically, faced the third-floor window — shuttered, but still leaking piano music — and declaimed:
"Ode to the Nightingale. By Bylar Noss.
From afar, the Nightingale is beautiful.From nearby, beautiful is the Nightingale.Indeed the Nightingale is beautiful.The Nightingale, indeed, is beautiful."
Silence settled over the garden.
A deeply uncomfortable silence.
"…So. My poem. What do you think?"
Bylar's confidence was visibly cracking. He'd spent ninety-nine days on that. It had come to him in a flash of inspiration so vivid it had felt like something higher than mortal intelligence had placed it directly into his mind. And now everyone was just… standing there.
The silence stretched. Bylar's toes were doing something regrettable inside his boots.
Kian, out of something approaching mercy, spoke up.
"Hmm~ Interesting. Reading this carefully, I detect the author's profound affection for the Lady in every line.
The interplay of distance and proximity is not mere description — it is a portrait of the author's own emotional state. Unable to draw close, unable to fully withdraw. The oscillation between far and near mirrors the endless, unresolved longing of a heart that cannot let go. A sincere piece."
Bylar's eyes filled immediately with tears. The look he gave Kian was the look of a man who had found his soulmate across ten thousand years.
"He understands me. He actually understands me!"
Kian coughed and turned to the red-haired noble.
"And you? What's your approach?"
The red-haired noble smiled with contempt, stepped forward, and bellowed at the shuttered window:
"LADY NIGHTINGALE — MARRY ME! AFTER THE WEDDING I WILL BE YOUR DOG!!"
Then he got down on all fours.
Kian watched in stunned silence as the man proceeded to bark.
"Woof woof woof! Lady Nightingale, let me be your faithful hound! Let me serve you!
After we wed, my estate, my title — all yours! If you want me neutered, I'll arrange it! Whatever you ask, I'll do it without question!
WOOF WOOF WOOF!!"
Kian said, voice slightly unsteady: "Brother. Compose yourself. It doesn't have to be like this."
He turned to the third one — green-dyed hair, styled in the way of a Mid-Hive ganger who'd been issued a formal coat against his will — and addressed him with the energy of a holoshow host.
"And our third contestant — what performance have you prepared to win the lady's favour? Will she light up for you?"
The green-haired noble ran a hand through his feathered hair and showed Kian a smile of distinct criminal intent.
"HEHAHA! My plan is to take what I want! Scale the wall to the third floor, go through the window, and—"
"Absolutely not," said yellow-hair and red-hair in perfect unison, and tackled him before he got both hands on the wall.
"How dare you treat Lady Nightingale that way — I won't allow it!"
"She would never want someone like you, you degenerate!"
All three went down in a heap on the grass. The refined sound of piano music floated down from above. The combination was genuinely surreal.
They fought for a while. When they finally separated — exhausted, out of breath, collectively sporting a remarkable variety of facial injuries — they sat in the grass and looked up at Kian.
"We've played our hands. What about you?"
Kian folded his arms and adopted an expression of deep philosophical mystery.
"My fated rivals~ You have each demonstrated your passion with great sincerity. And yet — I'm afraid we were never in the same contest to begin with."
He raised his right hand slowly, and extended his middle finger.
All three pairs of eyes locked onto the ring on that finger. Three minds processed what they were seeing. Three expressions underwent identical transformations.
"Impossible—"
"It can't be—"
"This is a joke—"
Kian walked to the front door, raised his middle finger, and ran the ring across the scanner plate.
A soft chime. A click. The lock disengaged.
He took the door handle, pushed it open, and stepped through — leaving them one last view of his back, and one parting statement delivered with the unhurried certainty of a man who has already won:
"You gave everything you had — and it only got you as far as my starting point. Perhaps that's simply the nature of an unfair world."
Click. The door closed. Two worlds, neatly separated.
On the gravel, three sets of eyes produced sincere tears.
"So I was already finished before I even began…"
"No matter how hard I try… heh. The defeated eat dust. The world is cold. The world doesn't care."
"If you love — love completely. If you don't — then leave. And if you've forgotten how to love — then please remember me.
…Let's go. This place was never ours."
The three of them rose, fell into line abreast, and walked away down the gravel path in silence — yellow, red, and green, slowly retreating into the distance.
Like a broken traffic light that nobody had come to fix.
[End of Chapter 194]
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