After dinner.
Once everyone had eaten and drunk their fill, a deep, whole-body sense of relaxation settled in. Moments like this always made people feel a certain kind of happiness.
Lux was back to full energy, staring at Luke with bright eyes. "Poker?"
She couldn't wait to finally win a hand for once.
But Luke just shook his head lightly and smiled. "In a bit. I've got something to handle first."
With that, he stood up and headed upstairs.
Having her invitation rejected again made Lux's little face twist with suspicion.
Something was off. This guy was seriously off.
What could he possibly have to do at a time like this?
Luke returned to his bedroom, lit the lamp, and sat down at his desk.
He straightened the paper and pen, dipped the nib in ink, and began to think.
After only a few seconds, ideas started flowing. He lowered the pen to the page and began writing.
A while later, the door was suddenly shoved open with pure brute force.
Luke's train of thought snapped. He looked up, startled, toward the doorway.
"See?! I knew it! This guy's been secretly studying behind my back!"
Lux stood there with the expression of someone catching a cheater red-handed, glaring at the paper and pen on Luke's desk like they were the smoking gun. She looked downright furious.
Behind her, Kahina, Fiora, and Sona hovered like a "caught you" squad she'd dragged along as witnesses.
Lux stormed into the room. "Everyone, take a good look at his true face! He acts like he's totally carefree, but he's secretly grinding in private. This kind of behavior is downright unforgivable!"
She'd felt something was wrong for ages!
Back then, they had clearly agreed to slack off together, so why did this guy know so much?
Now she had the answer!
He'd been secretly working hard behind the scenes!
Luke, your whole vibe is ruined!
Hearing Miss Crownguard's indignant rant, the other girls stared at Luke in disbelief.
Their eyes practically said: Who would've thought you were that kind of person?
"?" Luke slowly typed a question mark in his soul.
What did he even do? How was this "unforgivable"?
"Studying? What are you even talking about?" Luke frowned.
Come on.
Was Luke the kind of man who studied voluntarily?
"You've been caught in the act and you still want to argue?" Lux shot back.
She marched to the desk, snatched up a few pages, and scanned them—then paused. "Huh? 'The Little Newspaper Girl'? What's this?"
She looked closer. It seemed like a short story.
Luke said, "Just something I wrote for fun. When the newspaper launches, I'm planning to print it."
Lux looked up at him. "You can write stories?"
Luke smiled. "A little."
The girls had heard that line from him more times than they could count.
Sure. You can do "a little" of everything.
At this point, they were numb to it.
"I'm going to see what you wrote!" Lux dropped her gaze back to the pages. The other three leaned in as well, their eyes following the lines.
The story opened with a drunken father stumbling through the door with a bottle in hand. He took one look at the bare, broken home and the sick mother on the bed, barely clinging to life, and started shouting about how unfair the world was. When he finally collapsed into a seat, he noticed a little girl crying quietly in the corner.
From the title alone, the girls could guess what kind of story it would be.
They just hadn't expected an opening like this—less than two hundred words, and a desperate, impoverished household was already painfully clear.
A mother bedridden with illness. A father who lived for alcohol. And the main character: a little girl.
It made them genuinely curious about what came next.
No one spoke. Their eyes moved down the page.
After seeing the girl, the father ordered her out to sell newspapers. The girl tried to protest, worried about the heavy snow outside and wanting to stay and care for her sick mother—but instead she received a savage beating.
Then he brutally threw her out the door.
In the end, the little girl stood helpless in the freezing snow, hugging a stack of newspapers, wearing her mother's oversized slippers and ragged old clothes.
That second section was longer, and the girls' emotions were already rising with the story. They were furious at the father and aching with pity for the child.
They kept reading.
The little girl wandered the streets beneath thick, swirling snowfall, lifting the newspapers in her arms.
"Newspapers! Newspapers! Does anyone want a newspaper?"
She begged with her eyes, but passersby ignored her.
She stopped in front of a house. Inside, adults were celebrating a child's birthday. The room was bright with warm light. A child about her age smiled happily, dancing and singing surrounded by family.
"Grandma… Mom…"
Tears slid down the little girl's face, but she quickly wiped them away and forced herself to keep going.
"Newspapers… would anyone buy a newspaper?"
Again and again she was ignored, but she still followed the crowd with stubborn determination.
In the third section, the poor little girl's resilience and goodness shone through. Watching her suffer only deepened the girls' sympathy.
Then came the fourth section—where it got truly cruel.
A carriage raced past the little girl. She panicked and scrambled away, and both slippers slipped off in the middle of the street. One was crushed to pieces beneath a second carriage. The other was kicked away like a ball by a mischievous boy.
Around her, street vendors kept shouting their sales pitches as if nothing had happened.
The little girl stood barefoot in the icy snow. Tears rolled down her cheeks and froze almost instantly.
By this point, Lux and the others were so angry they practically wanted to hit someone, but they forced themselves to keep reading.
Soon, the girl passed a father and daughter holding hands. The daughter saw the little girl's bare feet and wanted to give her coat—but the father yanked her away in disgust, acting like the girl was too dirty to touch.
The wind grew sharper.
No one bought the newspapers. The little girl tore some pages and stuffed them into the holes in her clothing, and only then did she feel a little warmer.
After a few more steps, hunger and cold finally overwhelmed her. She leaned against a wall and slowly slid down, exhausted.
She rubbed her red, swollen hands together, blowing warm breath onto them again and again, trembling violently. Then she noticed a few discarded matches nearby.
She struck one and used it to light a newspaper page, holding it in front of her.
She hurriedly warmed her hands near the flame, flexing stiff fingers until she could move them again. A sweet smile appeared on her face as she stared at the little fire without blinking.
The flame felt as warm as a stove.
She stretched her feet toward it—
And the fire went out.
The little girl quickly lit a second newspaper page. In the flickering light, she saw roasted chicken and fresh bread, and her eyes widened.
The second flame was dying too. She didn't want to waste another page, but she was freezing.
So she added one more.
This time she saw a birthday cake, candles glowing, and people around her singing "Happy Birthday."
Only then did she remember.
Today was her birthday.
The fire threatened to go out again. She kept feeding it page after page until warmth finally seeped back into her body.
When she ran out of newspapers in her arms, she tore out the pages she'd been using to patch her clothes and tossed those into the flames too.
When the last page was gone, the fire finally started to die.
And then she saw her grandmother walking toward her.
The little girl couldn't believe it. She rubbed her eyes hard, then sprang up and threw herself into her grandmother's arms.
Her gentle, kind grandmother had come to take her home.
Her grandmother stroked the girl's head with a warm, steady hand and told her she would bring her somewhere with no cold and no hunger.
As the story reached its ending, the page ended with two final paragraphs:
The scene shifted to a warm room. The little girl, finally eating roasted chicken and birthday cake, lay in her grandmother's arms beside a glowing fireplace. Listening to her grandmother sing, she smiled sweetly and drifted into sleep.
Completely absorbed, Lux finally exhaled in relief. "That poor girl… but at least the ending is happy."
Fiora, Kahina, and Sona all nodded along.
Honestly, it was a good story. From beginning to end it wasn't long, yet with simple descriptions it made the little girl feel real and alive.
Other children had birthday cake, a loving family, and more new clothes than they could ever wear.
This girl had nothing. On a night of heavy snow, she still had to go out and sell newspapers just to keep the household alive.
The contrast made her suffering hit even harder.
Anyone who read it would hate that awful father. Anyone would pity the little girl.
By the time they reached the latter half, they'd almost believed Luke was going to make the girl suffer all the way to the end.
Thankfully, he had at least a little conscience—he let her grandmother come for her.
At that point, the girls' eyes softened when they looked at Luke.
This guy… was not completely terrible.
"Huh? There's more?" Lux flipped down further and made a small sound of confusion.
She raised her eyes to the next lines.
Fiora, Kahina, and Sona leaned in too, seeing that there were two more short paragraphs—set the next day.
The next morning, people found a little girl sitting in the corner by the wall, cheeks flushed red, a smile on her lips.
She was dead.
The new day's sun rose and shone on her small body. She sat there with a smile, beside a heap of ashes frozen into ice.
In truth, there was no roasted chicken. No birthday cake. No warm fireplace. No gentle grandmother.
It had all been nothing more than a dying child's final illusion.
"Wha—"
Lux instantly broke. The pages slipped from her fingers and drifted down to the floor.
She stared at Luke, and anger slowly rose in her eyes. Then she slammed her small hand on the desk.
"Does your conscience not hurt?!"
That little girl was already suffering so much, and he still made her die at the end. It was too cruel!
Luke just smiled faintly. "This story is purely fictional."
Lux didn't care whether it was fictional. She glared. "Change it. I strongly demand you change the ending!"
"That is the real ending. A little kid in rags, out in a blizzard all night—if she doesn't freeze to death, that's the strange part."
"But you wrote it! You can change it however you want! Why does it have to be realistic?!"
"If it isn't harsh, how is it going to stick in people's minds? And didn't you read the title? This is advertising for our newspaper."
Luke looked at the girls still glaring at him, completely unwilling to budge. He smiled. "Seeing your reaction… I'd say the story's a success."
All of them reacted strongly to the ending. The emotional swing hit its peak with that last twist.
That kind of short story was made to force people to think. The point behind it was obvious.
Luke had simply borrowed the structure, swapped in the newspaper angle, and adjusted it to fit Demacia's current reality.
The core didn't change—but the effect he wanted was already there.
What he wanted was simple: when people saw the newspaper later, the first thing they remembered would be that poor little girl.
If that happened, then the marketing worked.
It was moral marketing—targeting people with a conscience.
And in Demacia, people like that were everywhere.
Living in a country like this, how could Luke not make money?
Hearing him say that, Lux deflated. She bent down, picked up the pages she'd dropped, and reread a few lines before sighing.
Even she understood.
That was reality.
Even in Demacia, things like this happened all the time. Just look at the orphans in the churches—some had been abandoned, others had lost their parents.
If there were no Illuminators, those kids wouldn't end up much better than the little girl.
To help them, Luke really had put a lot of thought into it.
Maybe it had something to do with his past. These days, his status as the second prince looked dazzling and glamorous—
But don't forget that before he ever came to the capital, he and his mother had lived in grinding poverty. Maybe this story was closer to his own life than anyone realized.
The reason he worked so hard for those children…
Could it be because, when he looked at them, he saw his past self?
And that was why—so the same tragedy wouldn't happen again—he poured so much effort into everything, from printing presses to bicycles.
Thinking about it that way, his image grew taller in the girls' hearts.
The looks they gave him softened with a hint of tenderness.
Luke saw those expressions and seemed to guess exactly what they were thinking. His lips curled into a perfectly natural grin.
"Exactly. I'm just that great. Go on—praise me."
The second he said it, all that tenderness vanished.
Seeing how shameless he was, they suddenly felt like they'd been overthinking everything.
Their expressions turned flat with instant disinterest.
"Checkers?" Lux turned to Kahina.
Kahina nodded. "Sure."
The two of them walked out together.
Fiora also turned to leave, and none of them bothered paying Luke any more attention.
"?" Luke stared after them, baffled. "What is that supposed to mean? At least say something nice!"
"Tch." Lux glanced back with a look of pure contempt, snorted, and walked off.
Kahina followed.
Luke looked at Fiora, who hadn't left yet, and couldn't help asking, "Can I interview you? How do you see me?"
He suddenly got curious what he looked like in their eyes.
Fiora thought seriously for a moment, then answered with complete sincerity.
"An edgelord."
Luke: "?"
Edgelord? That was basically calling him an insufferable jerk!
Seriously?!
Luke clenched his fist, trembling with rage. Even though it was the middle of summer, he felt chilled to the bone.
Having answered, Fiora walked out.
Luke turned to Sona, giving her a look that clearly asked: Am I a jerk?
Sona covered her mouth and smiled. She neither nodded nor shook her head, then stepped away with light, graceful footsteps.
Sometimes, when Luke got smug, he really did have that edgy, aggravating vibe.
But Sona didn't dislike it.
In the blink of an eye, the lively room was empty, leaving Luke alone.
He looked at himself in the mirror and huffed.
This tall, sharp-jawed, handsome, icy male lead—how could that possibly have anything to do with being a jerk?
Clearly the problem was their eyesight!
After admiring his face for a few minutes and regaining his composure, Luke finally headed downstairs.
From now on, he would not smile!
He was going to change their impression of him no matter what!
The moment he got downstairs, he saw the girls seated around the poker table.
Lux turned her head, glanced at Luke coming down, and invited him. "A few rounds?"
"Heh."
Luke looked at her and gave a cold laugh.
In his eyes, it was like a pie chart appeared out of nowhere: thirty percent cool detachment, thirty percent icy aloofness, forty percent careless indifference.
He didn't say a word.
Not knowing what new condition he was having an episode of, Lux rolled her eyes.
Fiora frowned at him. "Are you playing or not? Use real words."
"I suppose I can spare you two rounds."
Luke's voice was short and clipped, radiating an aura of do not approach. He walked to the table and sat down slowly.
His whole body gave off a proud, cold air. His sharply defined face looked unusually aloof.
The girls couldn't help staring at him a little longer.
Honestly… he looked pretty good like this.
Had what happened upstairs actually gotten to him?
This was nice. When he didn't open his mouth, he was just a cool, handsome guy.
And sometimes you really do need a handsome guy at the table for your eyes.
In this moment, Luke's new "personality" was exactly what satisfied them.
As they played, their eyes kept drifting from their cards to Luke's face.
Their impression of him was genuinely starting to change.
But it only lasted a few hands.
After drawing a card, Luke didn't even look at it. He confidently slapped it down on the table, then fanned his cards out with swagger, the corner of his mouth lifting into an obnoxiously smug grin.
"I've got it! No wilds, closed hand, three hidden sets, single-card finish—eighty-two points total. Eight gold and two silver from each of you!"
He clicked his tongue. "Wow. No one's going to be broke by the end of today, right? Honestly, taking the whole table every time… it's almost embarrassing. Almost."
//Check out my P@tre0n for 30 extra chapters on all my fanfics //[email protected]/Razeil0810.