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You know, there’s some rumors going around that the chapter after this one will be the last. Think any of that’s true?

… And the Beast (Yonji Vinsmoke x Reader) Chapter IX

Synopsis: You thought your little crush on Prince Yonji was a well-kept secret. Yonji is mean enough to exploit your eagerness to please in the face of his unrelenting cruelty; the thought of actually developing a soft spot for you never even crossed his mind.

Word Count: 6k

Tags/Warnings: No Reader Pronouns, Angst, Slow Burn, Naive!Servant!Reader, Side/Plot Device Original Character, Beating, Spitting, False Allegations, Name Calling, Physical Assault, Incomplete Suggestive Assault, Threat/Vaguely Mentioned SA

Notes: If you're fine with Ouran HSHC, you'll be fine with this chapter. If you have questions about the warnings before reading, don't hesitate to shoot me a message

Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI Part VII Part VIII Part IX

Yonji entertained Princess Ursula for the rest of the morning and was discreetly brought for examination sometime later. Whether it was by a private physician or a more senior collection of scientists, you didn’t know. All you knew was that Judge was inevitably involved, and staff members were to entertain the kingdom’s guests alone.

Ichiji was as severe as ever about the situation, and Ursula could only be described as less than enthused about her new plaything disappearing in the middle of the day. To make up for the confusion and skepticism he caused, Yonji arranged for a romantic day with Princess Ursula, which was set to start the following morning.

He thought it best to arrange for brunch in his favorite place in the kingdom: the library.

Like most of Princess Ursula’s visits, a notice of the royal’s accommodations to the servant staff came with short notice. You spent the better part of your night moving furniture and making rounds about the library to ensure that everything could hold up to scrutiny— or at least more than the Vinsmokes already doled out. You moved all of Yonji’s favorite books, allowing them to stick out on the shelves by just a millimeter so he could find them quickly. You assumed that he would want to do a bit of bragging, although you weren’t sure that Princess Ursula was one to be too interested in books.

On the ground floor below, your usual reading chair and side table were absent from their usual place by the grand window. This morning, a round, decorated table sat at the base of the window with two chairs on either side. The table was already set with elegant—albeit rather plain—tableware.

Several pieces of cutlery of various sizes surrounded the main plate, and your eyes darted over the several glasses that sat just adjacent to the neatly folded cloth. Cosette worked downstairs, having taken over the library kitchen for the morning in preparation for the special meal. The library kitchen was far smaller than the main one and housed far fewer appliances. You were certain she wasn’t happy about the change in scenery. You’re sure she’d tell you all about it later.

“Are you Yonji’s lover?” Ursula’s voice resounded within the tall ceilings.

You spun around at the sound of her voice, shock bolting through you as if you had just been caught doing something you shouldn’t. Ursula stood between the double doors with her hands on her hips. She was as decorated as ever, adorned with pearls and swooping accents. Ribbons seemed to engulf her. And yet, Ursula appeared as scathing as ever. Too lost in your thoughts, you hardly heard her enter the library.

Ursula crossed her arms over her heavily bodiced chest.

“I asked you a question, servant.”

“No, I’m not.” The words shot from your lips with a bit more certainty and bitterness than you intended. But despite how curt it was, Ursula appeared wholly satisfied with your response.

She hummed, sticking her nose up in victory as she strutted into the library.

“Well, that’s a relief,” she sighed snootily, eyeing the many shelves that lined the walls up to the ceiling. “At least he hasn’t lowered himself that far… But…” Ursula’s lips twitched downward into a steep frown. “This is the place Yonji wanted to show me? I thought he said he had a surprise.”

You knew better than to add any commentary. In fact, you would have already politely excused yourself if Ursula weren’t standing right in the middle of the entryway.

“I can guide you to Master Yonji if you wish,” you offered, “I believe he—”

“I’m sure you could,” Ursula sneered, before strutting off toward the left-hand staircase leading up to the balcony. She wore a pair of Mary Janes with a thick heel, and her puffed skirt brushed against where her lace socks ended. Ursula swiveled her head toward you. “Well, aren’t you going to show me around? Now?”

You glanced toward the hall.

“Master Yonji—”

“I said now!” Ursula’s sudden outburst immediately made your attention snap to her. She had since faced away from you, but the bunched fists at the sides of her skirt were apparent, as was the tail end of a little stomp on the floor.

You immediately complied, coming to her side with little haste, and only when you came up next to her did Ursula continue up the stairway.

“This one.” She pointed at a large-spined book within your reach just as you reached the top of the stairs. You didn’t have to speak royal to know that it should be in her hand before she grew less amused than she already was. You handed it to her, keeping your upward-facing palms ready to support the encyclopedia by its covers. You doubted Ursula wanted the true weight of the book on her delicate hands. She frowned as she flipped through the pages. “This is what he wanted to show me?”

“I don’t believe so—”

“Did I ask you to speak?” Ursula gripped the book with both hands and heaved it to the side, causing it to tumble down to the floor. She shoved a pointed finger in your face. “Just because Germa allows the help to be undisciplined doesn’t mean I am going to stand for it. I hope that you keep in mind that when I’m queen. I’m going to whip this place into shape real quick.”

You didn’t say anything. What was there to say? Staying silent and bowing your head graciously was likely the only thing you could do right as Ursula straightened out, a small, satisfied smile gracing her lips as she patted down the skirt of her dress.

“That is much better,” she lauded before trouncing off down the shelves.

And so it went; you followed Ursula around the library, handing her any book her heart desired. Although she didn’t appear to desire them for long before she threw them to the floor if not right off the balcony. You didn’t say a word. You wondered how long it would go on without making your subtle glances toward the clock too obvious.

If anything, her presence gave you a new appreciation for the Vinsmoke family. While Ursula’s visit to your library wasn’t all too dissimilar to Niji’s infrequent visits, the Vinsmoke boys had a vested interest in keeping their archive intact at the very least. And it was only as you watched Ursula did you finally notice how gentle Yonji always was when he came to read.

But even without actively occupying your attention, Ursula continued to demand it. You stared forward at the shaking ladder, hands in a vice grip on both sides as Ursula climbed. She had spied a book up near the top, but rather than snapping her fingers for you to retrieve it, she insisted on grabbing it herself. Ursula told you to hold the rolling ladder steady and to face forward or down; she didn’t want you peeking up her skirt. You couldn’t say you were interested in doing so in the first place, but the idea of Ursula so much as thinking you were being inappropriate with her was enough to keep your eyes glued downward.

“My father used to try to read these to me when I was a little girl,” she scowled, the book splayed across her hand. You moved out of her way as she hopped down from the last rung of the ladder. Her hair and puffy skirt bounced as she did.

When she descended, you realized which book she had her eye on.

Like every book she held before, she thumbed through it flippantly before she stopped on the cover page of a chapter. She regarded it with bitter scrutiny.

“I could recognize this book anywhere…”

A young woman with long hair knelt in the grass of a garden, her hand on the cloak of a handsome young man propped up on the ground beneath her stare. The seam of the cloak led up to the head of a beast, some mix between a boar and a goat, from which the man appeared to emerge. It was “Beauty and the Beast,” and you always thought that the Beast, as depicted by the cover art, always looked strikingly like Yonji.

Upon declaring that the library was his and discovering that you had hidden the book after Ichiji’s command, Yonji urged you to return it to the library. It typically had a home in your reading chair, but with the chair moved to accommodate Yonji and Ursula’s brunch spot, you thought to logically file the book away. With it tucked away all the way near the ceiling, you didn’t think that anyone would spot it up there.

Ursula’s brow furrowed almost as tightly as her clenched teeth.

“I don’t know what kind of idiot he took me for… even back then. He kept trying to read them over and over again like I was some stupid little girl.” Her nose scrunched up like a pig as her fingers clenched the top of the pages. “As if I needed to be coddled. As if I wasn’t born a queen.”

Riiiip.

And then the cover page was in her hands, attached loosely to the pages behind it by the edge where the papers were torn. Ursula let them go, letting the torn pieces flutter haphazardly to the ground. Her eyes had a blankness to them, like a child who had just torn the wings off an insect without understanding the weight of what she had just done. But then her gaze soured once more as she continued to rip out pages.

“That’s enough,” you found yourself blurting, making a lunge for the book. Ursula kept it from you, turning away from you as she continued tearing up the pages. You stumbled, trying to reach for the cover. “That belongs to the Germa Kingdom! It’s special to them!”

Ursula ducked around you, scurrying down the right-hand set of stairs with sadistic glee.

“This thing? A set of kids’ stories? Yeah, right.” She stopped in front of the neatly decorated brunch table, pieces of paper flying like feathers. “You didn’t care about any other book in this room, but this one gets you riled up? What are you? Some sort of child?”

You grasped her wrist, forcefully turning her around without a thought. You gripped her hand, pulling her by her wrist.

“That book was their mother’s!” you pleaded. Ursula stared at you blankly, if not with the slightest scrunching of her nose. You wondered what you looked like at that moment with your frantically widened eyes. Your fingers gripped the side of the book firmly, trying to wrestle it from Ursula’s grasp. “Your mom passed recently, right? Can’t you understand why it’s so important to him—?”

SMACK.

Ursula’s hand flew swiftly across your face. You could hardly commit the seething vitriol to mind before your neck harshly recoiled. The book slipped from your grasp as your own force caused you to stumble back. For a little thing, she was strong.

“How dare you speak about my mother,” she growled, her face scrunched up with heated fury. “How dare you lay your filthy hands on me! How dare you talk to a princess like that—!”

Before you could even process the sting of the handprint on your face, Ursula’s foot struck your shin and you slammed back into the decorated table behind you.

The entire display was destabilized. Plates crushed to the ground and the tablecloth seemed to flow willingly down to the floor, taking cutlery and glasses alike down with it. The teapot that sat in the middle spilled its contents freely, splashing scalding liquid across an already chaotic mess. And through it all, Ursula didn’t yield.

“I’ll kill you, you rat! You—you little bitch, how dare you!” she screamed, coming down on you with the force of her body weight as she drove the sole of her shoe against your body. “No one has ever laid a hand on me— No one! You’re nothing, you servant rat— insect! I’ll crush you under my own goddam heel—!”

And still, you were left frozen. You always froze like this. Curled in on yourself. Protecting your head as best as you could until Ursula decided she was bored of you. It was always like this.

It wasn’t the first beating you’d gotten. It was hardly the worst. The soldiers who kept you captive all those years ago on your home island packed way worse of a punch than the petite woman above you. You didn’t even have to worry about her violating your dignity. If anything, a few kicks were nothing you couldn’t handle.

Ursula stomped on the weaved fingers that clutched the back of your neck. Her force was deliberate and steady. It hurt, and yet you knew you had the stamina to hold out until she grew bored.

“You know what?” You heard her sneer, her barrage not ceasing for a second. “I’m relieved to know you're nothing to Yonji. I wanted to get rid of you from the moment I saw you, and after this, it’s going to be even easier than I thought.” And seemingly satisfied in having the last word, Ursula finally stopped.

A wet glob hit the back of your hand, seeping between your fingers and splattering over the shell of your ear. As she began to storm away back toward the library doors you picked up your head, body aching as you shifted among the broken plates.

But your attention wasn’t drawn to Ursula or even the ruined dishware that surrounded you. You didn’t even seem to notice how the library was covered with haphazardly tossed books.

It was drawn to one book.

Your eyes found the torn bundle of pages in front of you, forgotten on the ground and splayed open around visible rips. Jagged pieces of paper poked out from the center crease, missing the rest of their contents. A scrap of the cover page sat among the mess of shreds that littered the library floor.

The prince’s face sat intact, but the page had been torn diagonally, ripping off the upper body of the depiction of Beauty. Her hands, who reached for the Beast, were all that remained, along with the prince’s longing stare.

You stood slowly, the broken pieces of the dining table shifting noisily around you.

You weren’t brave. That much was true. After a lifetime of being forced down to the ground, the idea of standing seemed like it was little more than a fantasy. It hadn’t been a concept you were certain you could even imagine.

It was why you were drawn to him in the first place.

He stood, and he stood tall.

He knew what he wanted.

He took it.

“I may not be his lover, but I am not nothing to him,” you asserted, causing Ursula to stop with a foot in the hallway.

You stood.

You stood. Bruised and swelling with your hand beginning to pool with blood from scraping against shattered ceramic, but you stood.

Ursula turned just slightly. Viewing her from behind, you could only see the tip of her nose poking out from the side of her face as she spoke over her shoulder.

“Not nothing, hm?” she repeated with barely restrained rage. She finally turned to fully face you, the back of her hand poised daintily over her mouth. “You think you can win over a prince? Don’t make me laugh!” The sides of her lips tugged upward to reveal her canine teeth.

“Of course not,” you admitted, and you didn't do so courageously. Nothing you spoke came from your mouth bravely but rather with a ravenous tumble and deranged overconfidence. “Even if you marry him. Even if you do become queen of your country, it’ll always eat at you that there’s one thing you don’t have. You’ll never have him. Not really. Not when you don’t know him nearly as well as one servant rat!”

Your words rang out over the air.

And a pause came followed by silence.

You didn’t even realize you had been moving until you were upon her. She looked at you with wide eyes. Wide. Enraged. Confused. Insulted.

“Know him?” She hissed; the stillness in the air deafening. Ursula shook with barely restrained fury. “Why would I give a damn?”

She glanced to her left down the hallway.

Then her wide eyes welled with tears. Before you knew it, she ran with her face in her hands. But even as she left, she couldn’t grant you any relief.

“Yonji! Thank goodness you’re here! This savage servant just attacked me! You have to do something!”

Panic shot through you like a bullet at the mere mention of Yonji’s name. You immediately scrambled to follow her, almost slipping on the carpet as you went. You instinctively reached out to the wall for balance, leaving a smear of blood as you scurried out after Ursula.

Surely enough, Yonji was at the end of the hall and Ursula had his arm in her grasp as she cowered behind him.

And for once in a long while, you couldn’t read the expression on Yonji’s face. While he was as lacking as his siblings when it came to emotions, Yonji was always consistently expressive. Empathy wasn’t something he was familiar with, but shock, anger, and disdain never appeared to be traits that Judge apparently considered emotions when he programmed his supposed emotionless children.

Yet, you found yourself searching Yonji’s face for any semblance of relief. For evidence. For evidence that he didn’t believe her.

And after a beat, he didn’t say anything. His silence shook something in you, the sound of Ursula crying and screeching in the background falling utterly quiet as you met Yonji’s eyes.

You weren’t certain what urged you to do so, but you looked down. You looked down at your disheveled uniform. At your hand which now sported a large gash across the palm. A decent amount of blood pooled there, having dripped on your clothes and the floor. Looking downward, rogue strands of hair fell from their usual styling, making you appear even rougher than you already appeared.

You ran for it, and Yonji let you pass.

***

You couldn’t hide in the panty forever. You knew it, and so did Cosette. And yet, she sat with you, just the one dangling light hanging from the middle of the ceiling above you.

You curled with your knees to your chest, arms wrapped around you like a protective shield as you pondered the words she last spoke.

“I don’t want this to come off the wrong way, but… Maybe it’s time to leave. Like, the kingdom… Look, I don’t want you to go— I—I need someone to keep me sane in this place, heh, but— the fleet is going to sail together until they find you. Maybe it’s easier to quietly slip off to an island… Live a normal life.”

“I don’t want to see you put to death over this…”

There wasn’t much she could do or say to make the situation any better, and she knew it. You hugged her tightly, thanking her for your friendship before excusing yourself from the kitchen. If she was caught sheltering you, she’d be punished with the same harshness you were sure awaited you.

You wandered to a random ship when it grew dark, slithering past patrols in search of a place to lay low. Germa, being the militaristic kingdom it was, meant that there were more buildings dedicated to storage than in a typical city. Germa didn’t have traditional citizens, after all, and with the entire country essentially functioning like a hybrid between a castle and a battleship, any building that wasn’t a battle station was likely storage. The larger towers— which belonged to the respective Vinsmoke siblings— were typically teeming with unused space as the tower was sheerly meant to be large.

With the entire kingdom sailing together like this, it gave you better options. You made your way down the grid, quickly slipping from “4” territory down to “0.” You knew Reiju’s tower best second to Yonji’s, and while you couldn’t count on her to help you in any way, you considered her territory to be the safest to lay low.

You stealthily made your way up the staircase, padding over the dark, stone steps. Every so often, you’d pass a window. It appeared it was a new moon. Without the streetlight below, you likely couldn’t see much of anything outdoors. Your hand brushed along the stone wall as you groped your way up to the third floor.

Despite the great, arched windows that lined the hallway, you could see even less than you could in the stairwell. You kept your hands out in front of you, trailing along the wall and ensuring that you didn’t crash into any of the decorative statues or pillars that lined your path. A few doors down, you felt a familiar set of door knobs. Quietly, you slipped into the room, turning the knob so that it closed silently behind you.

The room was pitch black and cold. You stepped gingerly toward the center of the room, bumping into some stray pieces of furniture that you didn’t remember being placed there before. Your hands swept over all the surfaces you could touch, fingers nudging against items like paper, pens, and velvet that you couldn't recall.

“Come to seduce another prince of Germa? I’ll tell you now that it won’t work. Book Roach.”

A lamp illuminated in the corner to reveal Ichiji. He sat on a leather seat, some sort of file in his lap, and his ankle slung over his opposite knee. A white towel draped over the thick straps of his wife-beater to catch the small droplets that clung to his damp hair.

“You are a roach after all. The fact that you made it from morning to night without a single soldier apprehending you is a disgrace. And yet you came here, of all places.”

Your heart beat out of your chest, and any inkling you had to make a swift escape began and ended with Ichiji’s stark, icy blue eyes. He seemed to sense your petrifaction, closing his file and moving it to the side to stand.

Ichiji ran the towel roughly through his hair, messing the damp strands into a cascading mess that roughly resembled his usual hairstyle. He didn’t avert his gaze from yours for a second, but the intensity of his stare forced you to look away.

“I didn’t hurt her.” You dared to glance at Ichiji for only a second, passing over the large tattoo on his bicep before returning to the floor. “Princess Ursula, I mean. I didn’t attack her.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

Your head shot up. Ichiji had his back turned to you, having thrown his towel haphazardly on the bed. He appeared to have busied himself with his file again.

“You don’t?”

Ichiji didn’t acknowledge your question, organizing his papers neatly into his folder and brushing past you to place them back amongst a box of them which sat on the opposite wall. You pivoted your foot, turning to eye him as he appeared to ignore you.

He moved a few folders around the box before placing the lid on top and sliding the entire case to the lefthand side of the wood-carved desk. Ichiji then meandered to stand in front of the double doors to his room, seeming to stop to think for a brief moment. His hands sat deeply in the pockets of his baggy lounge pants.

“If you think Ursula is a little terror, you should have seen her mother.” Ichiji’s slender fingers slipped quietly and elegantly from his pocket, a shiny metal key between the pads of his fingers. Without a word, he locked the door before turning to you and wordlessly slipping the key back into his pocket. “Were you ever curious why Germa hadn’t pursued relations with such a clearly desperate kingdom before? One from the North Blue, no less?”

“High standards?” you croaked, despite an awareness of the rhetorical nature of the question. You were too occupied with ignoring the locked doors.

“Standards went out the window the moment we even considered pirate alliances,” Ichiji swiftly corrected with a roll of his pretty blue eyes. He took a step toward you and then another. “It’s because desperation is the worst stench a person or a thing can have. It wreaks, and if you’re desperate enough that others smell it on you, you’ll never get what you want. It’s something about desperation that incentivizes those who have to smell it to keep desirable things out of reach.”

He walked toward you with purpose, and you took several steps back to maintain distance.

“Ursula is desperate to be queen. Neptune is desperate to reclaim the power their family lost upon Salacia’s passing— but let’s be honest with ourselves— they were a half-baked monarchy to begin with. So again, why now, I’m sure you’re wondering. Although, I’m not even sure you’re smart enough to ask that question.”

The back of your knees hit the footboard, but Ichiji’s pace didn’t slow. You fell back onto the bed, and Ichiji had your wrist in his grasp in a second. He pinned your right hand to the sheets, planting his other hand next to your head as he towered above you. His knees made deep divots in the mattress on either side of your hips.

“You. Because you broke him. You… A book rat.” Ichiji’s hand left your wrist to grab your face. His palm engulfed nearly the entirety of your jaw, his fingers digging into your skin with force. The base of his index finger pushed up against your nostrils, cutting off your air supply as his palm covered your mouth. “Decades of science and work so genius that I’m sure it would short circuit that pea brain of yours if you tried even glancing at it… Ursula isn’t much better than you are, but at least she’s royalty. I knew she could whip him into shape and undo all the damage you’ve inflicted, and Father is always more than willing to listen to what I advise.”

Your lungs were starting to burn.

“I finally had to report it all to him. To Father. I could hardly stand to listen to my defective brother as he defended you to the family. It was disgusting… Disgraceful.” Ichiji let go of your face, drawing a deep wheeze out of you as you caught your breath. Ichiji paid no mind to the way you coughed under him, reaching into the to snap his fingers. With one loud snap, the room suddenly went dark. “It’s actually a good thing you’re here,” he said, and you could hear his voice growing closer. And when he spoke again, he did so with his lips pressed against your ear. “I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to discipline you properly. I want to see what has my little brother so wrapped around your finger.”

Ichiji’s hand returned to your wrist, gripping it harshly as he trailed his thumb up the side of your palm. His other arm collapsed into the sheets as he held himself above you. One of his thighs slotted itself between yours. You could feel Ichiji's warm breath against the side of your neck.

Ichiji was keenly listening, waiting for your heartbeat to quicken.

And yet…

“This isn’t like you.” When you spoke, you did so flatly, spitting the four words out like a statement of fact. Not a drop of fear laced your voice. It almost caught him off guard, causing him to pause for the slightest of seconds. If Ichiji hadn’t known better, he would have said it was a challenge.

“What?” You wished you could have seen his face as his hands quietly retreated from your skin. You sensed him sit back, and in turn, you sat up, propped on your elbows. A stagnant tension sat in the air. “You think you know me? I can’t tell if you’re stupid or arrogant—”

“I can’t image you’d get anything out of it. Being with a book roach, I mean…” You couldn’t see a thing, but you could sense Ichiji’s face not too far from yours. He was watching you, stalking you like a predator of the night.

In the blackness, you thought you might have been able to make out Ichiji's stark blue eyes. You had never seen them before, you realized. And if the Vinsmoke brothers were truly beasts like they all seemed to claim, you wondered if Ichiji's beautiful, icy irises were means to paralyze his prey before devouring them whole.

You stared directly into the abyss, unblinking and petrified as you stammered on, “You have a lot of pride, a— and it’s obvious by the way you hold yourself and talk. And maybe, and maybe I’m wrong, but I just wouldn’t know what you’d get out of it. You’d consider it lowering yourself… or at least that's what I think." Your gaze flickered away, and your muscles unconsciously relaxed. "Lowering yourself for no real gain…”

Ichiji paused, and after a moment, you felt his absence as the mattress slowly rose.

“Lowering myself, huh?”

Ichiji's presence didn't carry much heat, but when his body left yours, you could feel the lack of him. His voice had already traveled somewhere else in the room.

Your mouth spat out the first question on your mind, “How can you even see?”

A pause. You didn't need to see Ichiji to imagine the scathing scowl that graced his lips.

“How can you forget your manners when addressing your prince?”

“How can you even see, Master Ichiji?” you corrected as if that were the issue.

“I’m not a human, unlike you, remember?” Another crisp snap cut through the room and the lights illuminated Ichiji’s bedroom once more. He was across the room, rooting around another box before he plucked out a wide envelope.

“Yonji said something to me like that not too long ago,” you hummed, sitting up fully. Ichiji couldn’t help but flicker his eyes toward you at the mention of his brother’s name spoken so informally. Perhaps there would have been a time just a few short moments ago when he would have lambasted you for it, but he remained silent. He flickered on a small lamp that sat next to a plush chair that faced the bedroom doors.

Ichiji didn’t linger for long and came back toward the bed, removing the contents of the envelope carefully. You sat up, legs hanging off the side of Ichiji’s large mattress. And to your surprise, Ichiji offered you the contents of the envelope.

He held them out to you, gripping the pages carefully so they wouldn’t fall out of order. You opened your palms, eyeing the papers with slightly widened eyes and bated breath as Ichiji carefully lowered them into your hands.

“I don’t know, Master Ichiji,” you started breathlessly, eyes darting from the torn pages to the oldest Vinsmoke prince. “This seems pretty human to me.”

Ichiji frowned.

“That’s the most insulting thing you’ve ever said to me,” he huffed, throwing the empty envelope on the bed next to his damp towel. He stuffed his hands back into his pockets. “It’s just what the servants cleaned up, that’s all. It belongs to you. You are the librarian, aren’t you?”

Ichiji sat down at the foot of the bed, although he kept some distance between you. Without his glasses, you could make out the shape of his face more clearly. Ichiji had a sharp, defined nose and a strong jaw. His cheekbones were equally chiseled, and you decided that the main theme of the eldest Vinsmoke son was sharp.

He was a decently stark contrast to Yonji who screamed bulk. Yonji’s nose was far rounder at the tip, and while he had nearly an equally defined jawline, you always considered his cheeks rather full and boyish. Yonji was taller, his muscle bulkier, but overall somewhat round. Now that you looked at them, you were certain that the curl in Yonji’s brows was more circular than Ichiji’s. And yet, there was something indescribable about them that screamed “Vinsmoke brothers.”

You couldn’t help but let out a light laugh, and Ichiji’s head immediately shot toward you.

“What are you laughing about?” He demanded. You shook your head.

“You and Yonji are a lot alike, you know?” You smiled, and Ichiji couldn’t help but note that you had once again spoken an assertion like a fact.

He stood with a shake of his head, pointing toward the doors.

“Get out,” he growled, and yet again, you didn’t seem to have an ounce of fear in you.

“If you say so,” you said without urgency, rising from the edge of his bed. "Mistress Reiju didn't like when I said something like that either—"

“And one more thing,” Ichiji frowned. You turned to regard him, holding the pages neatly in your hands as he crossed his arms. “You should leave this kingdom as soon as you can. You’re a liability now. I should kill you.”

“Leave?” You blinked as if that was the part of the sentence that should have alarmed you.

Ichiji adjusted his posture, standing tall and sturdy even as he rolled his eyes.

“Don’t let the stench of desperation be what costs you your life— although I’m surprised that your naivety hasn’t already done that,” he said with a bounce of his curled brows. You supposed that was another Vinsmoke trait. Ichiji’s cold irises met yours. “Don’t forget that my brother is a prince, and now he’s arranged to marry a princess— someone of his own stature. Their marriage will fulfill a long-time goal of the kingdom and he will have the happiest life he could have. Trying to pursue this and tempting him will only drag him down.”

You breathed in a steady breath. Logically, you knew exactly that.

“I, uh…” Your eyes found the floor for what seemed like the umpteenth time. “I know that.” Your gaze darted back to Ichiji. “He told me that even if he marries her, nothing will change! He wants me by his side; I told Ursula as much!”

The words came out louder than you wanted, but the volume hardly fazed Ichiji. He was still, looking at you blankly. He let the beats of silence deflate your posture. Ichiji didn’t have to tell you a thing; you already knew.

“My brother is a fool,” Ichiji said, dead and even.

Ichiji didn’t have to say anything at all to rock you where you stood. It felt as though he summoned an earthquake to test your foundation, and for all the courage you summoned to stand, you quickly folded back to the ground.

“So you’ll go?” It was a question, but much like how you’d been unwittingly speaking for the entirety of the night, he spoke it like a certain statement. “I can make it easy for you.”

Ichiji tilted his nose upward, regarding you with lidded eyes.

”If you don’t, I’ll kill you both,” he said. “Germa doesn’t need a human prince.”

And you knew how he meant it, but as you looked down, you couldn’t help but slowly focus on the ripped-up pages.

“The two of you talk about being human as if it was a bad thing,” you whispered, less to Ichiji and more to yourself.

“Excuse me?” Ichiji grunted, having heard you perfectly clear.

“You said the servants picked these up?” You held up the bunch of papers toward the light, inspecting them carefully. “They put them in order? And put them back together? They don’t even have page numbers.” You lowered the bunch of papers to reveal Ichiji’s stoic face.

Ichiji didn’t speak a word. Instead, he conceded one slow nod.

“I see,” you said, continuing to study the pages.

“I’m letting you leave this room. You should take those and go back to whatever hole you slink back to at night.” Ichiji turned, throwing the towel from before somewhere off into a corner before climbing into bed. “I don’t care about children’s stories anymore. Take those and go.”

Ichiji snapped his fingers and the bright lamp in the corner of the room, the one just to the side of Ichiji’s leather chair, extinguished. But unlike before, the room didn’t fall into pitch blackness.

A warm light glowed from next to the plush reading chair. It wasn’t bright, but just enough for reading. You glanced toward Ichiji’s resting form. His tall, muscular frame had contorted into a mound of red blankets and a nest of equally vibrant hair.

You sat down in the chair, facing away from Ichiji and toward the door. The ripped-out pages of the book of fairy tales were nestled in your lap, and it dawned on you that perhaps this was all planned. For what he said about letting you leave and not caring for children’s stories, Ichiji retired to bed with the key to the locked bedroom doors still in his pocket.

You began to read.

Thank you to all who liked, reblogged, followed, and supported. Your support means so much and is greatly appreciated.

Notes: I found this image as I was trying to look for a cover page to base my description off. I do think the Beast in this version looks the slightest bit Yonji-esque.

#Wingdings

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wing-ed-thing · 2 months ago

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I realized that I haven't updated the link chain on these chapters since, like, chapter 4??? Whelp this will be a great surprise to the folks who didn't think this series had an update since then