LUCIA

DAMIAN(11)

The faces of the ash-haired boy and the brown-haired boy fell when they saw Chris approaching. The ash-haired boy, Henry, was the second son of a Count and the brown-haired boy, Steve, was the third son of a Marquis. They had fought with Chris not too long ago, so they didn't want to have to go out of their way to greet each other.

Steve held a huge grudge against Chris. Although it had been refreshing to watch the arrogant Damian get suspended, Steve had been disgraced at the disciplinary hearing before the punishment was handed down.

Actually, Damian had been quiet but Chris had actively tried to defend Damian, testifying to the number of times that Steve and Henry had come to look for Damian's trouble.

Steve believed that Damian had tattle to Chris, who was volunteering every detail.

Steve's elder brother was a member of the Council in charge of their first disciplinary hearing. Thanks to that, Steve and Henry were able to receive light punishments. And later on, Steve was called out separately by his brother and criticized heartlessly.

[I am not asking a lot from you. I only ask that you do not disgrace our family, is that so difficult? What kind of low-grade act is this? You're not even a child. I am scolding you because my face is heated from embarrassment.]

He was very displeased because Steve had chosen a cheap method like that of a vulgar street rat, not because Steve had harassed Damian. Steve was sick of his elder brother acting every time like he was trying to teach his pathetic little brother. His elder brother wasn't even that much older than himself. But because his brother had helped him, he couldn't reply back and could only hang his head while his face burned.

"Been a while." (Chris)

"...It has been a while, Sir. Philip." (Steve)

Steve sourly accepted the greeting. He didn't want to greet Chris but ignoring someone who had greeted you first was an immature, undignified behavior, so he was forced to act polite.

Chris chuckled inside. The reason he rarely ever hung out with other noble children was because he didn't like their pretentious imitation of adults. Once they made their debut in the social circle, they only talked to each other with honorifics, never addressed each other by their actual names and made sure to always add the title 'Sir' to their family names.

Only knights or title-holding nobles could use the address 'Sir' in an official occasion, but among the nobles, there was a fixed practice of adding 'Sir' to the family name when they referred to each other.

But it was too much for children who were not even of adult age to be calling each other 'Sir/Lady'. The adults referred to children who hadn't yet come of age as 'Mr./Miss', even if they had debuted into high society.[1] Therefore, it was more reasonable for the kids to call him 'Mr Philip', than 'Sir Philip'.

Chris swept a glance over the gathered group. There were faces he recognized and faces he didn't. They were likely all children from families ranked Count and beyond. Chris didn't like this sort of thing either. The kids were already only hanging around with people who matched their standards.

Chris thought the privilege of being young was the freedom to get along with all sorts of people and not care about status. Just because your father was a Count, didn't mean that all of your father's children would become Counts. Non-successors were not likely to get titles and there was no guarantee that a Count's daughter would become a Countess.

When Chris was around ten-years-old, his mother was pregnant with his younger brother and suffered from severe depression. Due to this, the atmosphere at home was dark and the busy Marquis didn't have time to take care of his young son. So he left Chris with his grandparents for a year.