Mulan certainly intended to get something to eat, but he had no plans to return to his previous seat. As he picked out tasty food and piled it onto his plate, he noticed someone beside him doing the same.
Unlike Mulan, this person kept eating while loading up his plate, indiscriminately devouring cake, vegetables, fruit, meat, and everything else. He ate so hurriedly that his table manners left something to be desired.
As Mulan watched him, the man suddenly raised his head and looked straight at him. Mulan froze for a moment, then gave him a friendly smile and gestured at his own plate to show that he, too, was a food lover.
After that, Mulan lowered his head, added two more pieces of roast meat, and left with his plate.
After walking a dozen paces, Mulan turned his head slightly and glanced back at the man out of the corner of his eye. What keen senses he had. More importantly, that gaze had been downright bestial, sending a faint chill through Mulan.
Clink, clink, clink~
Behind the second-floor railing, the count, a vigorous man with a thick, two-part mustache, gently tapped his wineglass with a spoon, drawing the attention of the men and women in the hall.
"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for attending my daughter's birthday ball. Our guest of honor will make her appearance shortly. In the meantime, please feel free to dance."
The count raised his glass high, and the guests in the hall raised theirs in response. The music, which had briefly stopped, began again, and many of the young men and women invited one another to dance.
It was a very leisurely sort of ballroom dance. Mulan watched for a while before losing interest. Already standing in a corner, he simply took his plate down a corridor. He had seen some nobles go that way earlier, anyway.
The count's residence was enormous indeed. Rooms lined both sides of the corridor. Mulan ate as he walked, spotting a set of double doors at the far end that probably led to a garden on the other side.
Just as Mulan reached for the door handle, he heard muffled sounds from beyond the doors. Moving a little closer, he could make out faint smacking noises. The corner of his mouth twitched. It was not hard to imagine a couple outside, locked in a passionate embrace and kissing like there was no tomorrow.
Mulan speared a piece of roast meat and chewed as he looked to his right, where there was another staircase. A house this large could hardly have only the staircase in the main hall; there were stairs on both sides. From the halfway landing upward, this one was surrounded by glass.
Mulan immediately softened his footsteps and headed up to the landing. Through the curved picture window, assembled from small square panes, he looked toward the doors below. He swore he was no voyeur. He merely wanted to confirm whether those two nobles were behaving indecently in the count's home so he could thoroughly condemn them in his mind!
He tried several angles, but could only see bits of arms and clothing, not enough to make anything out clearly. When he finally got a proper look, he could not help cursing inwardly and immediately turned his head away.
"Damn it!"
To his surprise, it was not a young man and woman outside at all, but two men. Mulan had nothing against homosexuality, but applying his earlier imaginings to those two made him shudder several times.
After turning around, however, Mulan noticed a girl in a bright green dress standing before an open double window at the end of the second-floor corridor, looking outside. The evening breeze blew through the window and lifted her long, coffee-brown hair. She seemed to be taking deep breaths.
The corridor projected outward. From where the girl stood, she could not possibly see the two people being intimate outside the doors below, so she could not have been spying on them.
Looking at the somewhat familiar girl, Mulan hesitated, then decided to say hello. After all, she was the one who had invited him.
"Miss Blanclin."
The girl turned in surprise and looked toward his voice, spotting Mulan on the stair landing with a plate in his hands. She had not expected anyone to come this way. Despite her surprise, her good upbringing prompted her to smile at once.
"Hello."
Seeing that she did not seem especially enthusiastic, Mulan inwardly mocked himself for reading too much into things. Though he had no improper designs on Lily Blanclin, he had previously guessed she was interested in him. Now it seemed she had only been curious because she had just read the newspaper, and that initial excitement had already faded.
Still, courtesy was courtesy. Mulan nodded to the girl.
"Thank you for inviting me to your birthday ball. Um..."
Mulan tried to think of something polite to say. Complimenting the luxury of her home seemed inappropriate, and saying the noble young ladies were lovely to look at was no better. As for dancing, he knew nothing about it. After hesitating for a second or two, he blurted out a remark.
"The chef is really good. Everything tastes delicious..."
The girl paused in mild surprise before replying.
"I wasn't the one who invited you. That would have been Lily, wouldn't it?"
A possibility immediately occurred to Mulan. Twins?
"My name is Hathaway. Hathaway Blanclin."
The girl lifted both sides of her skirt and dipped into a small curtsy. Mulan hurriedly bowed slightly in return, holding his plate in one hand and resting the other lightly against his chest.
"My name is Mulan Jonester. It's a pleasure to meet you."
Hathaway looked slightly surprised, and her smile grew more sincere.
"I know who you are, Mr. Jonester. I'm delighted you could come."
Then Hathaway took a few more deep breaths and spoke apologetically to Mulan.
"Please make yourself at home. I need to go back to my room for a moment."
Watching Hathaway depart gracefully, Mulan could not help thinking that the count's daughter still seemed a little nervous about being the guest of honor at today's birthday ball.
In fact, Hathaway very much wanted to talk with Mulan some more, but she felt she could barely breathe. The tight undergarments and corset did nothing to improve her already outstanding figure. They certainly accentuated her bust, but they were also terribly uncomfortable.
Hathaway walked partway down the corridor to her room and shut the door immediately after entering.
"Quick, quick! Undo this for me. I can't stand it anymore!"
The maid in the room hurried over to help Hathaway undo her clothes, then loosened the corset laces.
"Whew..."
Hathaway let out a long breath.
"Miss, you really should get dressed again quickly. You'll have to go downstairs soon."
"Why should I have to wear something like this? This dress makes me uncomfortable all over. And this corset-I don't need anything like it!"
"But miss, today is a special occasion..."
"I'm not putting that corset on again, no matter what!"
The more Hathaway spoke, the angrier she became. Holding up her half-removed dress, she delivered a vicious side kick to the bedpost.
Smack~
The bedpost shook several times, and an exquisite high-heeled dancing shoe went flying.
With a crash, it smashed a hole through the window.
"Oh no, my shoe!"
Mulan was still standing by the stairway window, eating and admiring the stars outside. It was a midmonth weekend, and the moon appeared as two overlapping images of different sizes. The one in front was dim, while the edges were brighter: the Wyrd Moon stood before the Radiant Moon.
This strange celestial sight was something he could never have seen on Earth in his previous life, and Mulan gazed at it in a slight daze.
Hurried footsteps came from the second floor. Mulan turned to see a maid rushing toward him. As she passed, she lifted her skirt slightly in greeting, then immediately hurried downstairs.
"Uh, outside those doors..."
The maid was too fast. By the time Mulan realized what she intended to do, his warning was already too late. She reached the doors below and pulled them straight open.
"Aaaah!"
Two disheveled young men, still locked in an embrace, toppled straight inside.
"Sorry, I have something urgent to do..."
The maid hurried outside, though she glanced back several times as she went. The two men picking themselves up by the doors looked rather embarrassed. Meanwhile, Mulan had already fled from the stair landing into the second-floor corridor at lightning speed.
Holding his plate, Mulan hid around a corner of the second-floor corridor. Only after glancing toward the stairs did he let out a breath of relief.
That had been close. If those two saw him on the landing and thought he had been spying, he would never be able to explain himself. If they thought he was into men too, explaining would be even harder.
Mulan looked at the plate in his hands. He had eaten everything, and now he was a little thirsty. He might as well return to the hall and quietly stay there until the ball ended.
After seeing how the nobles lived and feeling the enormous gulf between them, Mulan had lost any desire to make connections with powerful aristocrats. The gap was too vast; they were far beyond his reach.
Mulan waited until the two men downstairs had stood up, straightened each other's clothes, and left. Then he went downstairs and headed back along the corridor he had come through.
Yet as he walked, Mulan suddenly felt something strange. The corridor seemed unfathomably deep, and the way ahead seemed to grow darker and darker. Though his steps were perfectly steady, he felt the same rocking sensation he had once experienced in a ship's cabin at sea.
Mulan shook his head. Everything he had just felt seemed like an illusion.
No, it wasn't an illusion!
Mulan suddenly went on alert. He touched a spot on his clothes. The dolls there had all fallen silent.