Chapter 132: Birds of a Feather
Seeing that Ryan was not speaking, Allen did not grow awkward. He simply kept talking.
He turned sideways and jerked his chin toward the dance floor, lowering his voice.
“Brother, do you know why I ca looking for you?”
Ryan lifted a brow.
Allen crooked a finger at him, motioning for him to lean closer. Ryan did not move, and Allen did not mind. Instead, he leaned in himself and spoke in the tone of soone sharing a secret.
“Look around.”
Ryan followed his gaze.
On the dance floor, skirts whirled, and high heels tapped out fine, crisp rhythms against the floorboards. A girl in a champagne-gold gown was being held by the waist by a young man in a deep blue formal suit. The two moved together smoothly, and when the hem of her skirt flared, it looked like a flower in full bloom.
Several other pairs danced well too. So were turning in circles, so were laughing together, and so occasionally stepped on their partner’s foot, only to flush and hastily apologize.
At the edge of the dance floor, small groups of noble young n and won gathered together. So held wine glasses and spoke quietly, though their eyes swept over the hall in search of sothing. So leaned against the pillars with faint smiles, lazily turning their glasses in their hands.
There were even a few standing with their backs to the crowd, shoulder pressed to shoulder, saying sothing private to one another and letting out low bursts of laughter now and then.
“See that?” Allen said. “The ones huddled together all grew up knowing each other. Dukes’ houses, Marquises’ houses, all that. They’ve already got their own circles. People like us—”
He pointed at himself, then at Ryan.
“—small fry from little families, we can’t squeeze our way in.”
Ryan said nothing.
Allen sighed. It was a very light sigh, not especially disappointed, more like soone finally speaking aloud a fact he had held inside for a very long ti.
“I only got to co this ti because I got lucky.” He scratched the back of his head. “The strongest young person under our Marquis—that would be my cousin, you get ?—just happened to turn twenty. He aged out. So the slot got pushed down, layer by layer, and in the end it landed on .”
He spread his hands and shrugged, lifting his shoulders high, as if trying to shake off so invisible burden.
“Even now, it still feels like a dream. You know? Back where I’m from, I’m considered decent enough. But if you throw in here—”
He looked around, his eyes passing one by one over the gorgeously dressed young people in the hall, then lowered his voice.
“—I reckon I couldn’t even beat so of these people’s bodyguards.”
Ryan watched him.
Allen’s eyes really were that clean. Even when he said these things, he still had a smile on his face, and his tone stayed light, as though he were talking about sothing that had very little to do with him.
“So,” Allen said, slapping his thigh, “I’ve been watching you for ages.”
Ryan’s brow twitched faintly.
“You’re alone too,” Allen said, gesturing in the air as he spoke. “You’ve been sitting here eating for nearly half an hour, and nobody’s co over to talk to you either. Aren’t we basically a perfect match?”
Ryan: “…”
“Don’t get the wrong idea, don’t get the wrong idea!” Allen hurriedly waved both hands, flapping them in the air like a panicked moth. “What I an is, we’re both that sort of person—the kind that can’t fit into their circles. You’re sitting here alone, I’m sitting here alone, so instead of being lonely separately, why not be lonely together? At least then there’d be soone to talk to, right?”
He grinned, showing a row of white teeth. The smile was so sincere it was almost excessive, the sort that made it hard to reject him.
“Don’t worry, I don’t have any bad intentions. I just wanted soone to chat with. Otherwise this banquet’s too boring. Look over there—”
He jerked his chin toward the dance floor.
“I can’t dance, I’m no good with wine, and when those noble young ladies gather together chatting, I wouldn’t even know what to say if I walked up to them. So all I can do is sit here and watch you eat.”
He pointed at the plate in front of Ryan, which was nearly empty now, and swallowed audibly. The movent was obvious. His throat bobbed once with a soft gulp.
Ryan glanced at him, then at the crab leg still untouched on his own plate. He reached out, picked up the crab leg, and held it toward him.
“Try this.”
Allen froze.
He looked at the crab leg, then looked up at Ryan, his eyes round as though he were a dog receiving an unexpected kindness.
“You’re letting eat that?”
Ryan pushed it a little closer.
Allen swallowed. This ti the sound was even louder.
He reached out and took it. The motion was strangely careful, as if what he had accepted were not a crab leg, but sothing fragile and precious.
“How did you know I wanted this?”
“You looked over here eight tis just now,” Ryan said. “And every ti, you swallowed.”
Allen’s face turned red all at once.
The redness spread from his cheeks all the way to his ears, and even the side of his neck reddened with it. He opened his mouth as though he ant to protest, but nothing ca out. In the end, he simply lowered his head and bit savagely into the crab leg.
“Mm—!”
His eyes lit up instantly, bright as though soone had struck fire inside them.
“This is good! What kind of crab is this? The legs are huge! We don’t have anything like this where I’m from!”
He chewed until his cheeks bulged, bits of crab at clinging to the corner of his mouth. He looked as graceless as possible, and as genuine as possible.
“No idea.” Ryan picked up another piece of crisp roast pig skin and handed it over. “This one’s good too.”
Allen took it and shoved the whole thing into his mouth.
The skin crackled loudly between his teeth. As he chewed, his eyes widened more and more. At last he swallowed with a heavy gulp and let out a long breath.
“Mm, mm, mm—! This one’s even better!”
He imdiately reached for the remaining crab leg on the plate.
Ryan did not stop him.
He rely leaned back in his chair and watched the blue-haired young man devour the food like a storm through dry leaves.
Allen swept through everything in his hands, then licked his fingers. He did it very thoroughly, one finger after another, not even sparing the spaces between them. When he finished, he smacked his lips with lingering regret.
Then he suddenly stopped and looked at Ryan.
“…Brother, you’re really a good person.”
Ryan did not answer.
He picked up another strawberry for himself.
Allen scratched the back of his head, as if sothing had suddenly occurred to him.
“Oh right, what did you say your na was again? Ryan? Ryan Velt?”
“Mm.”
“Velt… Velt…” Allen muttered the na a few tis, his brow bunching into a knot as he stared up at the ceiling, clearly forcing himself to rember sothing. “Northern Border, House Velt… I feel like I’ve heard of that before.”
Ryan’s movent paused. The strawberry he had been about to put into his mouth stopped halfway there.
“I think my cousin-uncle ntioned it once,” Allen said, scratching his head harder as his brow tightened further. “Said there was so Viscount’s house up in the Northern Border that had gotten pretty lively lately… Sothing like… the Emperor granted them more land?”
He looked at Ryan, eyes full of simple curiosity.
Ryan said nothing.
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