My Happy Marriage (LN) - Volume 4 - Chapter Pr

  PROLOGUE  

She arrived in the imperial capital as the curtain fell on autumn and rose on winter.

When she disembarked from the carriage and stood on the station platform, her big leather bag in hand, she almost collided with the dense throng hastily coming and going all around her.

The capital’s always so crowded.

A few years prior, she had lived and worked in the city, but after being gone for so long, the hustle and bustle dampened her spirits.

Sighing, she adjusted her white-gloved grip on the bag and began to make her way through the mass of people.

A frigid wind buffeted her when she slipped out of the station. Shivering against the cold, she adjusted the collar of her knee-length coat.

“Brrr…”

Spontaneously voicing her reaction to the weather, she began to head over to the bus stop—

“Miss.”

—when she thought she heard a delicate voice call out to her.

The whispered address was so faint, it was nearly drowned out by the bustling crowd, yet it had undoubtedly reached her ears.

Still, she was in the middle of a crowd.

People were raising their voices here and there, so whoever said that could have been talking to someone else.

I wasn’t told anyone would be coming to pick me up, either.

As she hesitated for a moment, thinking she might’ve been mistaken, she heard the voice again.

“Excuse me, miss.”

Hearing the address much closer to her than expected, she whirled around in surprise.

Greeting her was a bespectacled man in his forties wearing a gentle smile. His strange eyes left an especially striking impression on her, for they completely contrasted with his amicable expression.

And those eyes of his, with their uncanny sparkle, were undoubtedly trained on her.

“What do you want with me?”

At her question, the man widened his grin, wrinkles creasing at the edges of his eyes.

“My apologizes for hailing you so rudely, Miss Kaoruko Jinnouchi.”

“Huh?”

How did he know her name?

Right as she—Kaoruko—widened her eyes, the man continued to speak.

“My name is Naoshi Usui. I have something that I need your assistance with.”