The Incubus Archduke Dreams of a Pet Human

“Amazing… your eyes are the color of honeycombs. Your hair is like the shell of a silk beetle…”
Theticia couldn’t stop her awed murmurs. No wonder, the shimmering, gem-like violet of his eyes was breathtaking. His black hair glowed with a golden-green luster whenever it caught the light.
So this is what they call handsome, she thought. Even though she was seeing a man’s face for the first time, she understood it easily enough. The innocent observation in her gaze made those jewel-like eyes narrow with suspicion.
“What did you just say?”
The man’s strong hand snatched the wrist that had been tracing his face. He pulled Theticia right up to his nose, growling like a beast.
Theticia, finally regaining her wits, shook her head quickly.

“Ah, uh, I’m sorry. Honeycombs… that’s such a poor comparison, isn’t it? It’s just… that’s all I know. And I’m sorry for touching you, too.”
Theticia’s greatest shortcoming was always her inability to overcome curiosity. Even knowing it was rude, she simply couldn’t hold back. She had to be sure.

With an awkward smile, she added,
“I have a chronic condition… This is the first time I’ve ever really seen someone’s face.”

A lifelong affliction she had carried without cause or cure.
Theticia couldn’t see other people’s faces, not just that she couldn’t remember them, but that she simply couldn’t perceive them. To her, a face was like a palette smeared with paint, and the eyes, nose, and mouth were small sailboats drifting across it.

Naturally, her interest in fauna and flora was born from this very illness. This barrier that made closeness with people impossible.

So, the man before her was the first person whose face she had ever truly seen. Unsure of her own vision, she had to touch it to be certain.
“I’m sorry for startling you. I also apologize for the window. And for touching you without permission. You must be quite upset, right? You… you’re angry, aren’t you…?”
Judging by the way the man’s brow furrowed and the veins stood out on his jaw, he didn’t seem very pleased. Still, Theticia, clinging to the hope that her terrible condition might one day be cured, remembered the expressions of every character she’d ever read about in books.
Thanks to her unusually good memory, she could guess at his state even though she was seeing his face for the first time.
His pupils narrowed sharply.
“Say it again. What did you say about my face?”
And that voice, thick with anger. Theticia wasn’t quick to read the room, but even her well-trained ears could hear the fury in his words.
Wanting to calm his rage, she hurriedly said what she’d seen.
“Ah, yes, that’s right. I can see your face. Black hair, violet eyes. Lips like rose petals… well, maybe most people have lips like that, haha.”
“How do you know what my face looks like?”
What came from his lips was as baffling as Theticia’s sudden behavior. It sounded like he was saying that she shouldn’t be able to see his face at all.
“Normally… if someone is right in front of you, you’d be able to… ugh!”
Before Theticia could finish her puzzled answer, the man’s large hand suddenly closed around her throat without warning.
“So you’re the kind of human who…”
He clamped down on her windpipe and spoke in a growl. The voice that had once been so smooth now turned so sharp it could cut.
“I’m asking how you can see my face.”
Theticia heard the anger, the confusion, the trembling uncertainty in his voice.
“I-I’m just as surprised! I even went to a healer, but they said there was nothing wrong with my eyes. I’m the more curious one. Why can I see your face now?”
Theticia was the one most curious about why she could see his face. She had been planning to find a cure for this condition in Kraven. To think the man she had stumbled upon might be holding the answer…
But his expression was far too fierce for her to say anything romantic.
“That can’t be. You’re not someone I love. At the very least, you’d have to be my ideal type.”

“What? Lo…Love?”
Caught off guard by the sudden topic, Theticia drew in a shallow breath and asked back. The question made even less sense.
Theticia didn’t have a lover. She didn’t even have a single friend to call her own. Whenever she went to social gatherings, the endless, jumbled faces made her stomach churn. How could she possibly feel love for faces that seemed monstrous to her?
In the dizziness that blurred her vision, only the man’s straight, beautiful face remained clear.
Theticia remembered how, as a child, she had dreamed of this moment.
Someday, if there was someone she could see, someone like her, the only one in a world full of monsters, she was sure she would fall in love with him.
“What are you?”
Yet in this moment, which should have been filled with rapture…
The Incubus was staring at Theticia, who had recognized his face, like she was the monster.