Chapter 103: Lady Mariko's "Boring" Past

(Mariko POV)

I watch them celebrate. It is loud. It is chaotic. It is inefficient.

It is nice.

I do not do loud. I do pragmatic.

I was raised to be a product. I was the perfect daughter of the wealthy Kanzaki shipping family. My value was determined by who I could marry.

I learned tea ceremony at four. I learned piano at five. I learned three languages by ten.

I did not have a Toujo to put gum in my hair. I did not have a Hiroto to make me terrible outfits.

I had tutors. And I had silence.

When I was sixteen, my father arranged my marriage to Fuji Takahito, the Crown Prince.

It was the ultimate merger.

Takahito was just like me. He was cold, efficient, and a product.

We would have been perfect together. We would have ruled Japan like a well-oiled machine. It would have been a very successful and very boring life.

Then Kenji happened.

It was not my fiancé. It was his son.

Kenji was different. He had a spark. He hated the suffocating perfection of the Palace.

I saw him trying to escape. I saw him pretending to be normal.

And then, he met Aoi Isuzu.

I investigated her, of course.

She was everything I was taught to hate. She was loud, rude, violent, and unrefined.

She was a disaster.

And she was magnificent.

She was the chaos that Kenji needed. She was the chaos I secretly wanted.

When Takahito broke the engagement because Kenji disgraced himself, my father was furious. He told me I was damaged goods.

That was the day I stopped being a product.

I stole his flash drive. I decided I would not be sold. I would be the one doing the selling.

I look at Aoi now. She is wearing a book on her head, holding a fork like a dagger, and arguing with a professional gamer about dress colors.

She is a disaster.

But she is my disaster now.

I pick up my phone. I have one more call to make.

The Cello Plan is in motion.

It is time to be pragmatic.

"Hello? Is this the Imperial Quartet manager? Yes. I am afraid your cellist has come down with a sudden, very lucrative case of food poisoning. I have a replacement. Do not worry. She is very enthusiastic."