Episode 19
“Are you by any chance out of your mind…? N-no, that’s not it.”
It was the same language, the same words, and yet the imperial princess’s remark was impossible to accept.
As I struggled to understand what she’d said, my anger turned away from its original target and toward her instead, my gaze sharpening before I even realized it. The princess only laughed at the sight of me and watched me in silence, amusement glinting in her eyes.
“First, let me ask you something. What exactly is so funny to you?”
“Why, seeing you angry makes me happy.”
“……?”
The princess was an intelligent person.
That was an undeniable fact, and her social skills were on a completely different level from someone like me.
Would someone like that really repeat words no one could understand without meaning anything by them?
Maybe the princess was deliberately saying things I could never properly grasp.
That absurd thought, so ludicrous it bordered on delusion, crept into my mind, and I could do nothing but gape at her before finally dragging a hand down my face, trying to collect myself.
“Ah, fuck.”
If only the blood hadn’t started leaking out through my palm, this would have been fine.
With that thought, I spat out a rough curse and looked back at the princess. She laughed for a long time at the sight of me, as if I were the funniest thing in the world, and then set me down from her lap.
“Sorry, Countess. If I kept laughing like that, I thought I might drop you.”
“So what, exactly, does my getting angry have to do with Your Highness’s mood?”
“Why, because all that education I gave you is finally paying off.”
“My education?”
I had certainly learned a great deal from the princess.
Starting with art, which she’d told me to learn from her first, then moving on to swordsmanship and magic, I’d been given in condensed form the kind of education most noble heirs would never receive.
So I could say with certainty, “It’s a bit much to call it finally paying off. I’d say I learned fairly well.”
I had learned well. As for the artistic side of things, I had no real talent, so I was only a little better than if I hadn’t learned at all, but my skill in swordsmanship and magic was certainly real. In just half a year, I had reached the point where I could defeat the knight assigned to accompany the princess seven times out of ten in sparring.
Perhaps the knight had been holding back. That was possible. But in any case, he was someone selected by the imperial court and entrusted with protecting the princess. Even if he held back, he was almost certainly the sort of person an ordinary knight would never be able to lift his head against. I pointed that out and argued that there was a flaw in the princess’s logic.
She only asked, with a bright little grin, whether I really thought she’d ever wanted something like that in the first place.
“Do you really think I taught you swordsmanship and magic because I wanted you to become skilled at those things? Really?”
She pinched my cheek as she laughed under her breath.
The princess idly rubbed at my face, which was smeared with blood, and then echoed my own words back at me: did I honestly think she would invest in the abilities of someone who was going to die in two years anyway?
At that, I flinched and stared up at her in silence.
Roségold hair, skin a little pale, blue eyes so difficult to meet directly.
As I looked at each of them in turn, the irritation that had been ruling my mind began to thin out, slowly dissolving.
Like pouring clean water into black water until, little by little, it became clear.
“Haa.”
Once all the irritation had gone, what remained was the realization that the princess wasn’t wrong.
Clearly, if someone needed a knight or a mage, I wasn’t the one they would choose.
No one would ask a person who had two and a half years left to live to prepare for a future career.
If they needed labor right away, they could simply ask the imperial family to send someone. And if they needed someone who looked like a child, a noble heir who had taken the time to build real ability step by step would be far more useful than someone like me, who had crammed everything in at the last minute and was strong enough but still full of holes.
Then she must have taught me for some other reason—
“I don’t know.”
“Really?”
“Honestly, I just don’t want to think about it. You tell me you’re happy when a person’s angry, and you expect me to try harder?”
“Aha, well, yes, that is true. I suppose I was wrong about that part. I apologize.”
So she had known she was in the wrong.
“Still, you finally gave a response other than ‘whatever’.”
“……What?”
“Up until now, the Countess had always answered with that same indifferent ‘whatever,’ living like a doll. But now you’re finally showing something human. How could I not be happy? And Countess, do you know this?”
“What is it?”
“You’re rather cute when you’re angry.”
“Ha.”
Just the thing she’d said before was hard enough to understand, and now she was calling me cute?
Was the princess deliberately tossing out nonsense so I wouldn’t be able to get angry?
As I stared at her with that suspicion, she tapped my thigh and said we were still in the middle of a conversation. I shot her hand an irritated glance, then slowly got up and crossed to the chair opposite hers.
“Hmm.”
“Give me a break. I don’t even want to sit across from you right now.”
“Are you sulking?”
“……”
“Aha. Anyway, if you’re angry, shall we go make a nuisance of ourselves?”
“……What exactly are you planning to do?”
No matter how imperial princess she was, she couldn’t interfere in the internal affairs of the Blum family.
This was land ruled by the Blum family, and refugees weren’t flooding in on a scale that would require the empire, or the central government, to step in either. What could she possibly mean by making trouble?
As I looked at her in confusion, the princess grinned and pointed at me.
“You’re an illegitimate child, yes, but you’re still unmistakably a daughter of Blum.”
“……I am.”
“A daughter of Blum, guaranteed by me, the imperial princess. Those curses left on your arms and legs are proof enough.”
“Don’t tell me—”
“Yes, it would be impossible for me to interfere directly. But for you, it’s possible. They’re all going to try to settle this among the sons anyway, so if I make a scene, you can throw yourself right into the middle of that mess too.”
Having said she could stir up that much trouble, the princess rose slowly from her seat and came up behind me, massaging my shoulders lightly as she continued.
“If you’re angry, then naturally you should let it out. But you don’t enjoy swordsmanship, or magic, or singing, or painting. You only see all of that as work, not as something to enjoy. So it’d be impossible to vent your anger through a hobby like that.”
“That’s—”
“So let’s go and say something to the person who made the Countess angry. All right?”
The princess prodded me on with a grin.
I gazed at her face in silence, and she told me that managing four thousand refugees would most likely happen at a ball.
“No matter how much it’s a political marriage or they’re looking for a concubine, a noble lady wouldn’t want to be sold off like a slave at auction. They’ll probably hold a formal dance. Countess, let’s debut at that ball.”
“With these ridiculous arms and legs?”
“Exactly, isn’t that better? If you’re going to pick a fight anyway, it’ll make for a good excuse if they even frown at the sight of you.”
“Ha.”
“Let’s go ruin it. Right now, let’s give shame to the members of the Blum ducal family who could come up with a solution this quickly but still didn’t consider you at all, as if they meant to turn you into livestock.”
“Is that really something the princess should be saying?”
“Of course not. Even the dedicated physician might scold me for it.”
“Then shouldn’t you not do it?”
Was the princess, too, like me—did she want to die?
That wouldn’t do. Then I might not be able to die myself.
“Well, Blum is a good family, from what I can tell.”
“Pardon?”
“The people who work in the estate, and the citizens outside it, seem to spend far more days smiling than not. It may even be a happier city than the capital.”
“And yet?”
“Because of that, their servants have a rather excessive sense of loyalty. There was even someone who told me that my efforts to care for and understand the Countess were pointless.”
“Are they out of their minds?”
“I suppose they thought they were saying it where I wouldn’t hear. They also looked down on the loyalty of my own people and found fault with what I was doing.”
“Huh? Ah, did they tell those maids and knights that teaching me anything was pointless?”
“Heh. What do you think?”
“You should have just said that from the start.”
Why had she been speaking so roundaboutly?
Was there some reason she had to be this indirect?
No, there wasn’t.
There wasn’t anyone here the princess needed to be careful of.
So why in the world was she—
“Hrrngh.”
No, stop thinking about it.
For now, I should just do what the princess wanted.
If I didn’t become the sort of person she wanted, then I couldn’t die.
It was a little unexpected that she was the sort of lolicon pervert who would call me cute when I was angry, but it wasn’t enough to make me reject everything outright.
Thinking that, I asked where and how we were going to start, and after a moment’s thought the princess said we should begin by gathering information, then pulled me to my feet.
“Shall we start by shaking down the maids?”
“What?”
“The next two and a half years. Doesn’t it seem like living as a mad dog would be much more fun than living as livestock? Countess.”
“Weren’t you the one who said you wouldn’t take a life unless it belonged to someone responsible for it?”
“Justified mischief isn’t bad behavior. It’s good behavior.”
“Is that so?”
With a dry laugh, I let her pull me up, and the princess urged me along while quickly laying out a plan to debut at the ball. Watching the slightly childlike way she behaved, I swallowed another bitter laugh and listened carefully to every word she said.