Chapter 12
Once the princess left for her bath with several maids, the ones who remained came toward me, dragging a hanger packed with dresses.
A hanger crowded with plain, unadorned one-piece dresses.
Too small to belong to the Fourth Princess.
And yet too well kept to be something from long ago.
If I thought about it that way, those clothes were probably the Eighth Princess’s.
Come to think of it, where had the Eighth Princess gone?
She had only come to visit because she was worried about the Fourth Princess. She wasn’t a patient, so there was no reason for her to stay at the Blium household, but even so, it would have been nice if she had been here.
If she had been, I would have asked her to kill me.
She was royal, so didn’t she also receive training in how to kill people?
Things like: to save these people, kill those people. That sort of thing.
She had a reason to save her sister, so she might have killed me a little more easily.
“Ah…”
I had just told the princess recently that I wanted to die, and then, the moment I hit an obstacle, I gave up just like that.
At this rate, it really looked as though I wanted something other than death.
“Haa…”
My head wouldn’t turn over.
The relief and lethargy that came from the fact that someone I disliked was gone made me forget the goal I had set for myself.
It made me chase comfort.
Death was death no matter who gave it to me, so I should go to the Eighth Princess right now and beg her to kill me.
I should get away somehow, no matter who tried to stop me, and beg the royal family to kill me.
“My lady.”
Dreams were something I had never had any right to begin with.
Imagining things and hoping for them was something people who were worthy of love, people with the ability to be loved, could do. Someone like me, who had been made with a specific purpose, shouldn’t step outside that purpose.
I had been born to die at ten, so I had to die somehow before this year ended.
“Excuse me, my lady.”
“Ah, ah, I’m sorry.”
No, this was bad.
At this rate, I would never be able to deny what the maid had said earlier.
I had to genuinely want to die.
Like the people who had become the image I wanted to be, like them, I had to become someone who was biologically alive but mentally already dead.
But could I do that?
To say I needed to become a certain state meant that, until now, I had not been in that state.
In other words, I had been alive all this time.
As my younger sister’s ornament, and as a cursed straw doll.
I had lived like that as a person.
...That had been the life of me, that human being.
I had to recognize it. I had to.
Only then could I truly die.
“Haa.”
But could that really be called living?
Could I recognize that life as having been lived as a person when, back then, I had been treated not as a human being but as something no more than a living lump of flesh?
...No.
No, I couldn’t.
I didn’t want to recognize that as life.
When a tool grows old and breaks, people may use a polite expression and say its time has run out, but that doesn’t mean it truly lived and possessed life in the first place. In the same way, even if I killed myself, that didn’t mean I had brought an end to a human life.
I—.
“It suits you rather well, Princess.”
“Ah.”
...The princess had come looking for me.
She was looking down at me after changing into immaculate clothes.
Her eyes were somehow quizzical.
And behind her, I could see the maid who had asked me whether I really wanted to die.
She was still looking down at me with eyes full of pity and self-loathing.
A gaze that was still hard to meet.
When I turned my head away first, the princess burst out laughing, then said that if it was hard for me to stand, she would carry me herself. At those words, I forced my legs to move and pushed myself upright.
“You didn’t need to refuse so bluntly.”
“...You should carry the Eighth Princess instead, Your Highness.”
“She says she’s all grown up now, so it’s hard to carry her. It feels a bit wrong to ignore a hardworking child and just scoop her up on my own.”
“I…”
“You’re a patient like me, aren’t you? If it’s extreme starvation, no one’s going to complain if I carry you around until the flesh comes back.”
“Th-”
“Well, enough joking. Shall we walk?”
The princess held out her hand, saying it was time to exercise.
After interrupting herself several times to say everything she wanted to say, she gave a snort of laughter, led the way, and started walking. I declined the shoes the maid offered me and followed behind the princess.
“You’re not wearing shoes?”
“If I do, my toes stick together when I take them off, and I have to tear the skin apart.”
“I see. Well, I suppose it’d be bad if you got hurt while walking around the inner garden.”
The garden was flooded with sunlight.
The shrubs, grown to the height of an adult woman’s shoulders, made the gardeners’ efforts obvious at a glance.
It wasn’t that I thought it was beautiful, exactly.
I lacked both the knowledge to see flowers and the aesthetic sense to grasp their beauty.
And yet, looking at those shrubs with their almost obsessively smooth curves, I could tell.
The person managing this garden checked and trimmed every branch of the shrubs as they grew irregularly by small amounts each day.
Unlike the rough cuts of an apartment complex’s brush cutter or chainsaw, they must have worked in tiny sections with little pruning shears, all while keeping an eye on the whole shape.
Unlike the other servants, they couldn’t even avoid the sun. They must have sweated through their clothes and smiled the whole time, shaping whatever beauty they believed in.
“Princess?”
“Ah.”
“...I’ll have Clara hear a thing or two from me later, so don’t take it too much to heart.”
“No, it’s not... her fault.”
“Yes.”
It wasn’t the maid’s fault.
If some madwoman approached someone precious to you, then whether that person was dangerous or not, the natural thing was to stop it first and ask questions later. I couldn’t really blame her for that.
If there was anyone to blame, it was me for somehow having begun to want something else.
“...How should I put this.”
“?”
“It’s a slightly shameful thing to say as a royal, but I’ve never personally killed anyone.”
“...Is that shameful?”
However little ordinary treatment royals received, it shouldn’t be so bad that they’d be ashamed simply for never having killed anyone.
“It is shameful. What would you think if police officers couldn’t kill criminals and, as a result, caused harm all over the place?”
“I wouldn’t think anything in particular.”
“...Yes, well, what would ordinary people think?”
“They’d think those police officers should be fired. The trouble would come back on them otherwise.”
“Exactly. It’s the same for the royal family. I’m not saying I must personally cut someone’s throat. I’ve never once driven a person to death, whether they were good or bad. At most, I’ve confiscated property and honor.”
“I see.”
“So when I was told that I could live by taking your life, I was taken aback. It’s a funny thing. Another royal would have taken your life without hesitation. My elder siblings know the weight of life, so they can bear it, and my younger siblings are still at the age when they are ruled by instinct.”
“It would have been nice if that had happened.”
“Ha-ha, you mean as a transitional human being.”
“So what?”
“So, I intend to do what I said before. If I truly take your life, then, even if it means making an enemy of the Blium family, I’ll kill you if you’re a human being worth living for. If not...”
“...”
“Would you kill me?”
“...?”
“I dislike the idea of dying like a corpse after suffering from illness. I want to remain beautiful at all times.”
It wasn’t a joke.
Those eyes were not lying.
There was playfulness at the corners of her mouth, but her eyes were serious in their desire for her own beauty.
Beauty was more precious than life, then.
It was hard to understand, but not impossible to accept.
...In any case, whether I accepted it or not, all I needed to do was wait for her to kill me.
“It’s life on the line for both of us, isn’t it? Fair, wouldn’t you say?”
“Fair...”
“Yes, I value fairness.”
“Why?”
“Princess, you shouldn’t need to think about things like that.”
“Well, why do you think?”
“...”
“Maybe you could call it instinct. Just as you desire death, I desire fairness. Well, unlike your wish, mine is difficult to fulfill.”
“Is that so?”
“There’s no such thing as a truly fair thing in this world.”
“Hmm.”
“In that sense, you and I are rather alike.”
“Me?”
“We both desire goals that are difficult to reach, don’t we?”
“I...”
“Heh-heh, don’t deny it. If you truly wanted to die, you could have killed yourself, and yet you couldn’t do that, could you?”
The princess smiled with her eyes as she patted my head.
I should have gotten angry, but the way she blocked me from doing so left me with my lips sealed shut. Then the princess gave a light clap and asked if I could make one promise to her.
“A promise?”
“Yes. It shouldn’t be such a bad offer for you. If we’re going to do as we wish, then we’ll need time together.”
“What is it?”
“For three hours a day, study painting with me.”