She stared at the offered hand, blinking slowly as her mind tried to come up with possible meanings for his behavior.

"Of course you don't have to," he eventually said. It felt as if everything had fallen silent as he didn't know what to do about his idiotic posture.

She looked around at the square, which had not slowed down at all, and finally smiled, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

"But I won't be at fault if I step on your feet." She took his hand, which had already dropped as he waited, ready to withdraw.

There was a sense of nostalgia in the air as Alan moved toward the center, dragging his sister with him.

"There's always one who leads, you merely need to follow," he said sternly, "I'll show you the motions so you can get used to it."

"But that would only be with you," she mumbled, remembering something, "then I would have to go to the banquet with you, right?"

He looked at her a little confused. "With me?"

"Yes, since you are the one teaching me." It was flawed logic, she knew.

Though he chuckled, ignoring the glaring hole in her rationale. "Sure. I will accompany you."

It wasn't exactly the kind of music that was needed for this type of dance, but no one cared how they moved, and it was appropriate enough. Rowena was already happy to be able to be there without having to disguise herself, since there wouldn't be much to associate with her trademark hair and eye color here.

She looked down at her brother's legs, trying to predict his movements so she could follow more closely. A misstep occurred and her white shoe stepped on his shiny black boots.

She flinched, but he didn't even react, as if he hadn't noticed. Trying to read his muscle movement wasn't so easy when she could barely see it beyond his clothes.

Another misstep. Then another. She was frustrated and soon stopped her feet to rethink her tactics.

"Do you want to stop for the evening?" He couldn't blame her, he was sure she was embarrassed.

She might have been different when she was little, but as she grew into a teenager, she had shown a pattern of throwing fits whenever she fell behind others' expectations for her. He was proud of her for enduring the frustration she must have felt during their dance.

Unbeknownst to him, that wasn't her problem at all. 'I just need to get the movement down. It's not that hard, is it?' If only there was a way for her to safely memorize the rhythm and movement of her feet without crushing the toes of her family's next heir.

"Ah," a light bulb went off in her head as she inched closer, crawling into his space with gleaming eyes, "can I stand on your shoes?" There was a difference between standing on them and stepping on them.

He couldn't understand her words at first, but her sparkling eyes made him wonder if she really liked stepping on his toes. "What do you mean?"

"So I can learn more efficiently. Can I?"

Sighing, he reached out and grabbed her hands to pull her up. Her comparatively tiny form was easily lifted onto the front of his formerly clean shoes.

"Like this?" he asked, far too serious for such an occasion. "I never thought I would do this again."

She didn't know what he was talking about, but she smiled brightly anyway. A smile he hadn't seen on her face in years, which made it all worthwhile already.

In fact, it was a miracle that she talked to him at all. She usually ignored him, but at least she hadn't said she didn't have a brother for a few years now.

He didn't expect her to apologize for the things that had been said and done, because he also had things that he wished he had never said or done. Maybe they would have to talk about those things one day, but that day wasn't today.

Rowena felt a bit like she was flying, even though her feet still had some kind of grounding, he was leading her in circles like a child. She knew she was smiling, but there was this heavy feeling spreading from the back of her mind.

She cleared her throat to push it away. "Am I not too heavy?"

"You were the one who wanted to do this."

"I'm aware. I just..." There wasn't much she could say to refute that.

Seeing her struggle, he sighed again. "You barely weigh enough to be felt."

It stung. She had obviously been doing some muscle training, and muscle weighed heavier than fat.

Was he making fun of her? "Right, I couldn't block a door in a storm," she replied snappishly, but her mood didn't change.

'I think I kinda get it,' the noble lady thought with a sense of pride.

She looked up a bit, noticing for the first time how big their height difference truly was. When she saw his well-fitting uniform, she stiffened a bit.

There was a smell that hit her nose from practically all around her as she twirled around the square with the young Duke.

Until this moment, her so-called brothers, her father, this world - everything was so far away from her, so alien, yet familiar enough for her to move around and act as if everything was fine.

This man was nobody in her eyes. Just like her maids at first, he was a handsome NPC in a video game she had to interact with to live without worrying.

She had already understood that this was not a game, nor a dream, or a novel. But her position remained the same, as did the people she called "family", whom she didn't even know.

Nevertheless, something was scratching at the back of her mind. A smell she had smelled in the meeting room when she had read the contract from the Church. She hadn't even noticed it then.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

But it wasn't disgusting or irritating. Instead, it felt oddly comforting, as if it protected her. The closeness and that unique smell that made her want to cry and bury her face in the chest in front of her.

It couldn't have been her feelings, but why did they feel so personal? She felt so lonely, reminded of something she never had, yet it felt like it was hers and she missed it. That feeling, she couldn't quite handle.

Suddenly a tear rolled down her cheek, making Alan stop his movements and wanting to ask what was wrong, but before he could utter a word, she surprised him by freeing herself from his grip and stepping back a bit.

Unladylike, she wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand and sniffled. There had been times when he would have given in to the urge to hold her in his arms to calm her down. But not anymore.

He knew she didn't like to be touched too much. Despite what they had done today, she now made him feel the distance that had become so normal between them. He could only watch her with sadness, while his face remained devoid of any reaction.

For Rowena, this was more embarrassing than anything. And it hurt more than she could even fathom. Taking a deep breath, she tried to stifle her tears by holding back a sob. It took a bit of willpower to stop, but at least she managed.

The first thing she did was to look around, only to see that hardly anyone had noticed the weeping girl. A little relieved, she almost didn't have the courage to turn her head back to her brother, as he hadn't said a word since she started crying out of nowhere.

"I apologize for showing you such an embarrassing scene."

He didn't comment, just kept looking at her until she could feel the awkward silence weighing on her. She had no idea what else to say to get them back to where they had been before her outburst. Rowena hadn't hated the time she'd spent with this guy she knew practically nothing about.

Perplexed, her lavender head whipped around as a crashing sound echoed through the square, halting the music in an instant. "What do you mean, stolen?" could be heard a heartbeat later.

The crowd split up, some hurrying to get away from the area while others moved to locate whatever it was that had happened. Rowena wanted to see what was going on, so she cocked her head and took a few steps in the direction of the noise.

"You nosy bitch, are you crazy?" a man complained loudly.

The small noble pushed through the mass of people to get closer, until she reached a point where two opposing parties were facing each other.

On one side were a few middle-aged men, not quite gentlemen, but not dirty either, looking like southern merchants. Merchants, because all kinds of goods were piled around the men, who were dressed in southern fashion and had a dark complexion.

On the other side, a beautiful woman stood tall, able to look down on them from an even greater height as she wore high heels on her elegant feet.

What caught Rowena's eye the most, though, was her endlessly long red hair, which looked like a river of blood flowing from her head down to the middle of her thighs, almost to her knees.

'Wow, even the Female Lead doesn't have hair that long.' And it was true that the Saintess had beautiful long hair, but it ended at her lower back.

It seemed like such an unimportant point, but it wasn't. They had a lot of things they were working on right now, but much was still in its infancy. Like mental health, which they were just beginning to really understand, but hadn't quite figured out at that point, which meant the therapists weren't as competent as they would have been in Celia's world.

The same was true for many other things, in this case hair care. Such long hair, while not utilizing Mana, had to be maintained somehow, which meant that a lot of commoners had shorter hair. For example, a servant of a high-ranking noble would earn enough to buy products for mid-length or even longer hair.

And in cases like Norina's, the frizzy texture made it look like the hair was fine, even when it really wasn't. But this hair was straight, shiny, and overall healthy looking at this extreme length.

'A Mana user? Or just a rich bitch?' Either way, she didn't quite fit in with this cozy plaza scene. This was definitely a middle-class area, but she wasn't middle-class. 'A noble who turned a wrong corner, maybe?'

Anyway, she seemed to have knocked over one of the merchant's shelves, lined with simple-looking teapots and teacups that reminded her of traditional Asian-style teaware, though she wasn't very familiar with it.

"Why would anyone steal this garbage? It's not worth the fee to even sell it here," the woman said, sounding arrogant but not even angry.

"What do you call garbage, woman?" the man still barked at her, but suddenly he seemed a bit nervous.

"I am also a trader. I travel a lot and I can tell," she clarified, "these aren't originals. It's cheap, fake trash. This boy would never fall for that, even if he wanted to steal something."

"How dare you..."

A loud sigh surprised Rowena as a hand landed on her shoulder, urging her to stay where she was.

"What seems to be the problem?" Alan interrupted, drawing their attention to him in one fell swoop.

"This kid tried to steal one of my prized teacups!" the man said with wide eyes, as he saw the man approaching them, "And then this volatile bitch showed up and destroyed a whole pallet of my merchandise!"

"Please refrain from such vulgar words," he said, thinking it might further influence his sister if she heard such language, "I'm sure we can find a solution."

Snorting, the woman tossed a few strands of hair that had fallen forward over her shoulder. "And that solution would be for me to take my boy and leave. I already made him pay for tricking people into buying overpriced junk and blaming an innocent child to find himself a slave."

"What?" the accused replied furiously, "Slavery is prohibited in the Lodden Empire. How dare you suggest such a thing?"

"I only hear excuses," she said, "it is a fact that tea ware is forged. It's a common method. A kid like him on this continent is probably an orphan, already on the street, or working for cheap somewhere where he won't be missed. Make him think he owes you a lot so you can control him, because children are easy to scare. I have seen it hundreds of times."

'Sure sounds disgusting… but believable anyway.' It's not like there weren't people like that in Celia's world.

Another sigh. "I will inform the Imperial Guard of this matter." He turned away from the confused and desperate man and turned to the woman with the pretty hair. "Do you know of any evidence to your claims?"

"Sure, handsome stranger," she said with an illustrious smile on her painted red lips, before lowering herself slightly to pick up one of the shards, "this clay is supposed to be from Xizhou, a town in the western province of the Yuan Kingdom. But it's not."

He received a piece of one of the pots and studied it carefully. Too bad, he wasn't very familiar with the craft either.

She had to laugh at his effort. "The color is very even, isn't it? It's not supposed to be. This kind of clay is supposed to have tiny white spots, some tiny black spots, little holes and bumps on the surface... all of that, but this is perfectly clear. It's not genuine. And this boy," she said, pointing to a dark-skinned child with unkempt black hair and a lifeless expression on his face, "is a boy I brought over from the Southern Continent to find him a place to learn. I saw potential in him. He has no reason to steal."

While her reasoning was spotty at best, the evidence of the clay was worthwhile, so he secured the shard in his pocket and nodded. "I hope you find peace with this, I will go and report the incident later. Please return to your lodgings for the night." It was already sunset.

You might say that they had no reason to actually do what he said, but the young lord not only exuded a certain dignity and nobility in the eyes of a commoner, but he also wore a uniform with an official coat of arms and talked about the Imperial Guard as if it were the easiest thing in the world. A noble who got involved had already every right to interfere, but this one seemed unpredictable to the southern men.

As they packed up to disappear into the night and the music slowly began to play again, the woman seemed quite intrigued as she extended her hand in a polite yet informal greeting. "My name is Anya Epstein, leader of the Raven and Rose Merchant Group. And you are?"

He accepted the handshake and nodded tiredly. "My name is Alan Beyer van Varnhagen, son of the Grand Duke of Varnhagen."

Now it was Anya who blinked at him, still holding his hand. "I knew it," she said as she turned her head to look at his sister, "that hair and eye color of yours is quite unique. When you were dancing earlier, I thought maybe you were a child at first, but your chest area didn't fit that description. Now it makes sense."

Turning red in the face, she instantly covered her chest, which was indeed not immature. "What do you mean?" Rowena said, "With my hair, I mean."

"You see, Raven and Rose mostly buys and sells flowers and seeds. Though we also sell all kinds of oils and cosmetics made from our goods, if you are interested," she winked at her, as if it was fun to tease her, "but that means I know all about Isidora roses and their history."

'Well, so much for 'I don't need to disguise myself here,' huh?'