NOVEL WEB Chapter 21 – A naughty, devilish rogue
Chapter 21 – A naughty, devilish rogue
🙞❤︎🙜
I watched in disbelief as Prince Baiyu took off his robe and put it in his soul space, leaving him naked from the waist up. Today, his hair was up in a high ponytail, so I had a good view of his elegant neck, wide shoulders, muscled arms, powerful pecs, and sexy abs.
He smirked at my reaction and said, “I don’t want to soil my robe.”
That made sense because his robe was extremely expensive-looking. I thought that this world was a lot more conservative than Earth, but I must’ve been wrong since he nonchalantly started working as though it was perfectly normal.
I went back to the plants and started weeding while watching Prince Baiyu.
“Even his back is sexy,” I muttered to myself as I watched the interplay of muscles on his upper body.
He was definitely aware that I was watching him because he frequently looked over his shoulder as though to check if I was still there looking at him. The expression on his face was quite smug.
I lingered over my tasks until he finished clearing the path.
“I’m finished,” said Prince Baiyu. He handed the broom back, along with two sacks that were full of fallen leaves.
“Thank you,” I said.
I put the sacks in my inventory and stood there like an idiot for several minutes, just staring at him while holding the broom.
He coughed and said, “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“In?” My brain seemed to have short-circuited. I couldn’t stop staring at him.
“Inside the house?”
“You want me to show you inside the house while you’re half naked?” I tore my eyes away from his body and looked up into his eyes. “You’ll give my staff a heart attack.”
“You want me to put my robe back on? Are you sure you don’t want me to take off my pants instead?” He smirked at me.
“What, here outside?”
“Then you want me to go inside and take my pants off…?” He was laughing at me now.
I covered my face with my hands. “Please put your clothes back on.”
When I had first seen him, I had thought that he was the cold and aloof type, but he was really a naughty, devilish rogue.
Shaking my head, I waited until he was decently clothed before showing him into the house.
“By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you why your house is decorated with dragons,” he said, frowning at my gate.
“I like it that way,” I said.
“People in the Westerlands normally use tigers as a motif, or one of the other clan gods like the fox, wolf, bear, or lion,” he said.
“I like dragons,” I said.
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“...”
“Don’t take it personally. It’s just that I have had a lot of dreams about dragons,” I said.
“I wish you would dream about a white tiger instead, specifically, me,” he said.
Oh, what a flirtatious man he was!
“No, I haven’t dreamed about you,” I said.
“But you’ve dreamed about a dragon?”
“Yes, it was quite funny.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it?”
The dream was quite vivid, and I had a good time describing it to him. In the first dream, I found myself in a lush, tropical forest where I wandered for a long time without finding anything to eat. Just as I was about to collapse from hunger, I saw an enormous egg rolling down a hill.
“It was this big!” I used my arms to indicate an egg half my size. “I was like, ‘hooray! food!’ and rolled the egg into a nearby hot spring to cook. Have you ever eaten onsen tamago?”
I accidentally used the Earth word for it.
“What is that?” asked Prince Baiyu.
“It’s an egg cooked in a hot spring. Anyway, just as I was looking forward to my meal, the egg started glowing red and vibrating. Can you guess what happened next?”
“It hatched?”
“That’s right! A baby dragon hatched out of the egg, and I was extremely disappointed that I still had nothing to eat. It was very cute though, and it came waddling up to me and cooing over me like I was its mother.”
“That doesn’t sound like a pleasant dream at all.” Prince Baiyu made a sound of disgust.
We walked inside the house after I opened the gate as I continued the story. “I guess the baby dragon imprinted on me because it kept following me wherever I went. I thought I was going to starve to death, but various animals and birds brought me nuts and berries to eat.”
“You poor thing. You should stop dreaming about a dragon and start dreaming about me. I’m sure that will be a lot more pleasant.”
“The baby dragon in my dreams is cute! Those dreams are really nice…”
Prince Baiyu made a rather inelegant snorting sound.
We had reached the outer courtyard, so I stopped talking because Fengying was there. She hurriedly went to greet the prince, bowing low from the waist. The next few minutes were spent on the necessary courtesies.
“I’m sorry. There’s not much I can do to entertain you. I am but a humble farmer,” I said as I showed the Prince to the reception room. He didn’t eat human food, which meant that I couldn’t even offer him tea and snacks.
“You’re far too modest,” he said. “And you don’t need to entertain me. If you like, I can play the qin for you.”
“You play the qin?” The qin was a seven-stringed zither. I had watched YouTube videos of people playing it, but it seemed a rather old-fashioned hobby, but this place was rather similar to ancient China back on Earth. Perhaps the White Tiger clan warriors were expected to be adept in the four arts of the Chinese scholar? I wouldn’t be surprised if Prince Baiyu had mastered the qin, calligraphy, painting and the strategy board game weiqi, also called Go.
If I hadn’t seen his muscles for myself, I might’ve thought that he was a scholar rather than a warrior because of his austere-looking features.
“I have some minor talent in it,” said Prince Baiyu, by which I knew he meant he was a genius qin player.
I asked one of the maids to get a suitable table and chair, and the Prince regaled us with an impromptu qin recital.
His hands moved gracefully over the zither’s seven strings, and the sounds that came from the instrument were sublime. Every movement he made was so fluid that he looked like an angel with his long white hair and beautiful face. The music was so peaceful and calming that I felt like I was in a trance, completely mesmerized by his playing. When he finished playing, the maids, assistants, Fengying, and I clapped loudly.
“An excellent performance,” I said.
“You’re too kind,” he said as he put away his instrument.
By the time he finished playing, it was lunchtime. Seeing as it would’ve been awkward for me to eat while he didn’t, Prince Baiyu tactfully said his goodbyes while promising to come back tomorrow.
Didn’t he have anything better to do? If he kept on like this, I might start thinking that he had fallen madly in love with me.
