I Reincarnated As A Villainess, But Why Did I Become A Cat Butler Instead? - Chapter 311

Chapter 156.1

Dimitri was tailing Herman, intending to hold him back. However, his expression wasn’t looking too good.

He narrowed his eyes.

‘D*mn, this is annoying.’

The racetrack was packed with people dressed in elaborate, overly extravagant outfits.

‘They look like a herd of zebras.’

Dimitri, who struggled to distinguish shades of red, saw the crowd as a chaotic blur of nearly identical colors. Because of this, he kept getting confused about which dress hem belonged to which person. He was distracted, trying to navigate through the crowd without bumping into anyone or stepping on the trailing hems of dresses.

Despite trying to stay aware of his surroundings, his focus remained fixed on Herman’s retreating figure. He was determined not to lose sight of him.

‘Of all things, why did he have to wear something so plain?’

Ironically, while many flaunted extravagant designs, just as many had chosen standard, nearly identical formal attire.

These were the people who quietly opted out of the unspoken fashion contest—most of them men. As a result, amidst the sea of extravagant dresses, the men in identical black suits and hats blurred together, making the background appear as if it had been copied and pasted repeatedly.

To make matters worse, Herman was also wearing the same standard formal attire, with the colored band on his hat being the only distinguishing feature. But of all colors, he had chosen an orange band.

For Dimitri, it was nearly indistinguishable from green.

‘D*mn it, they all look the same.’

To him, green and orange were indistinguishable. Both appeared as nothing more than different shades of withered grass to the average human eye.

That was why he thought of Rowaine as someone with the color of fresh grass.

The color Dimitri perceived as grass was different from what ordinary humans saw.

Dimitri struggled to distinguish between green and red. To him, both appeared as shades of gray, some with a hint of yellow, others slightly duller. With such a limited color spectrum, it was nearly impossible for him to track Herman’s retreating figure in the crowd based solely on the color of his hatband.

“Ah!”

In the middle of the commotion, he failed to avoid a woman’s dress ornament.

“My apologies.”

Even though he was the one who had bumped into her, the woman giggled and apologized instead.

“My dress is a bit much, isn’t it? You’re the third person to bump into it today.”

She spoke cheerfully.

Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who had been hindered by her elaborate dress. Others had fallen victim to it as well. On days like this, such encounters were common, and most people simply laughed them off, using them as an excuse to strike up a conversation.

But Dimitri simply glanced down at the woman, clearly annoyed.

“Oh my.”

The woman finally noticed Dimitri’s face and instinctively took a step back. The notorious shapeshifter duke, known for his rudeness and irritability.

Her eyes filled with caution.

Dimitri furrowed his brows but walked past her without a second glance.

‘Where did Count Heres go?’

In the brief moment he had looked away, three men had blended into the path Herman had taken. Ignoring the woman’s irritated tongue click as she muttered, “Seriously? No apology? I guess the rumors about him being rude were true,” he focused on pursuing the three men.

One of the men wore a hat with a blue band, making it easy to rule him out. Still, Dimitri couldn’t tell which of the remaining two, walking side by side, was Herman.

Without hesitation, he closed the distance and grabbed one of them by the shoulder.

“Count Heres. I need to speak with you for a moment.”

“Yes?”

However, the man who turned around wasn’t Herman.

Dimitri’s eyes widened in surprise, and he quickly scanned the crowd for the other man. In that brief moment, Herman had already slipped away and vanished into the sea of people.

A look of bewilderment slowly spread across Dimitri’s face.

̊ · : * ✧* : · ̊

“Oh dear, seems like you’ve heard everything.”

“….!”

I spun around in shock at the sound of the voice. Emerging from the shadows of a tree, Herman stood there with a sinister smile.

‘…He’s supposed to be with Dimitri right now. Why is he here?’

Did something happen to Dimitri?

As an uneasy feeling settled in, Agaliaept’s voice echoed in my head.

“Want me to tell you?”

‘How?’

Agaliaept must have taken my silent question as a request for help. The demon vividly showed me a page from a book about cats that had been buried in the back of my memory.

「 Compared to humans, cats have limited color vision and struggle to distinguish between red and green. This is because they have fewer cone cells, the photoreceptors responsible for color perception. 」

「 For instance, cats tend to perceive pink and orange, both containing red, as similar hues, and they often see red and green as nearly indistinguishable. However, they can see blue and yellow clearly. 」

The next moment, I recalled the scene from the previous day when Dimitri appeared, dressed completely in red from head to toe. Just a moment ago, when he stepped out of the carriage, he had been awkwardly bumping into people, clearly uncomfortable.

Then, my eyes landed on the orange band around Herman’s hat.