Chapter 20
The princess looked faintly excited as she told me that, if I wanted to attend the ball, I would first have to become a delinquent.
“Pardon?”
“It’s easier for me to вмеш in if you start acting out.”
“Why?”
“If I intervene when nothing is wrong, then it becomes interference in the family’s internal affairs. Of course, that would still be fine, but if I did it that way, the matter wouldn’t be handled cleanly. So you have to clash with the servants—especially the ones from commoner backgrounds. We need to argue that this happened because you’re an unacknowledged bastard, and that it violates the social order established by the imperial family.”
“Ah.”
“Then I can step in neatly. Because I’d be preserving social order.”
“I understand.”
So that was what she meant by creating a pretext.
When I nodded at a reason I could actually understand, the princess sat me on her thigh and, as if she were telling a fairy tale, began explaining how to act like a delinquent.
It wasn’t just about using violence. She started with how to verbally tear someone down, then went all the way to how to hold yourself without saying a word.
She told me things I would never have known unless she had done them herself, and for a moment I even wondered if she might have been a delinquent in the past. As she went on, I felt my disbelief steadily drain away.
If she were just spouting nonsense, I could have listened with half an ear. But this was…
“All right, then. Time for the real thing, Princess.”
“You look like you’re enjoying this.”
“I am.”
“I’m starting to think I need to reconsider my opinion of Your Highness.”
“Puhahah! Hurry up and go already. You remember our goal, don’t you?”
“……Yes, I remember. First, I cause conflict.”
When I sighed and repeated the first objective, the princess giggled and shoved me toward the door.
Unable to resist her hand, I left the room and entered the servants’ quarters, where I could feel disapproving looks settling on me.
They had never met me. They had never spoken to me. And still they looked at me like that.
It wasn’t strange.
The duke and duchess, and the young masters, were all good people, and I was the villain among villains to them—a threat to their lives and safety.
Maybe they even hated me more than they would have hated a serial killer caught far from home.
Honestly, though, I didn’t care.
Unlike the duke and duchess, these people had no direct power over my life, so whatever emotions they directed at me had nothing to do with me.
Even if the plan the princess and I had made fell apart from the very beginning, I probably wouldn’t feel a thing.
“Hmm.”
The princess had told me to start by finding a senior maid.
Apparently, if I wanted to act like a delinquent, I had to at least look like I knew what I was doing. Charging in to cause a scene with the lowest-ranking maid would only make me look ridiculous, not frightening.
A delinquent only became a delinquent when there was at least some knowledge behind it—and that knowledge had to be used properly.
I had to admit, I wondered whether philosophy was really necessary for becoming a delinquent. But if the princess said it, then I would follow her instructions.
Fortunately, finding a senior maid wasn’t difficult.
Unlike stewards or lady’s maids, ordinary maids handled work that depended on repetition and experience, so hierarchy mattered. And if you watched their hands, you could tell who had seniority.
If their hands were covered in cuts and fresh blisters, they were still new. Once calluses began to settle in, they were somewhere in the middle. And if their fingers had started to deform slightly, they were senior.
You could judge by face, too, but the hands were more accurate.
“You there.”
“Yes?”
“People keep wandering around the manor. What’s going on?”
When I spoke to a maid in her forties, the lines at the corners of her face beginning to deepen, she frowned, looked me up and down, and shook her head, saying she didn’t know.
Exactly the same reaction the princess had described.
At that response, I recalled what the princess had told me and stared at the maid in silence.
If I caused a ruckus here, I’d just be a second-rate delinquent.
Even if I broke things and threw a fit, so long as I had no intention of actually hurting anyone, the maid could probably handle it alone—and my behavior might even become a weakness they could use against me.
I needed to create something that a maid alone couldn’t possibly handle.
Remembering the princess’s lessons, I nodded obediently as though I’d been fooled by a transparent lie, then said that it was fine if she didn’t know and moved on to another area to ask the same question again, just as planned.
I went to the stables. I went to the kitchen. I wandered everywhere, and every time I did, I was driven out after hearing something unpleasant.
Then, when there was no one left to ask, I returned to the princess’s room—and I repeated the same behavior over and over again so the rumor would spread.
Once. Twice. Three times. Four times…
Even after hearing sneering voices behind me each time, I didn’t stop. I kept asking, and before long, rumors began to spread through the Blium manor that the cursed princess was roaming around asking strange questions.
At first, those voices couldn’t be heard near the princess’s room.
It was probably because she was an outsider, someone too high in status to be spoken of carelessly.
But that kind of private internal discipline didn’t last long.
Because I had stayed here for half a year, I had gained some understanding of what sort of person the princess was. And because she was kind, that had happened.
Even when the maids made mistakes, if it wasn’t a serious one they could have their own ladies’ maids clean it up. And although she could have forced matters when it came to security, she still moved in line with the schedule of the Blium family’s knights.
According to the princess, subordinates who had never met their superiors in person couldn’t really tell the difference between someone kind and someone easy to push around.
In a situation like that, how long would an unwritten rule really be obeyed?
The answer was: less than a week.
“Princess! Why didn’t you tell me!?”
A shout that made it impossible to mistake for acting.
It wasn’t just raised voice; it was the kind of barked cry that seemed to be thrown like a weapon, so full of force and presence that even though I knew the princess was genuinely angry on my behalf rather than at me, I still flinched before I could stop myself.
“Why didn’t you tell me the servants hadn’t been answering you, so I ended up scolding you for it!? That means I’d be the one unfairly blaming someone who did nothing wrong, wouldn’t I!?”
“……I’m sorry.”
“That! No, no, it’s not your fault. I’m sorry, I’m the one who’s sorry. Hoo. The real problem is those servants who keep refusing to answer even though they know perfectly well I’m fond of you! Princess, I’m sorry, but I need one more favor. Gather up the servants who didn’t answer you. I’ll hold them personally responsible!”
The princess kept shouting until the servants gathered outside the door, then wrapped her arms around me and declared that it wasn’t my fault but the servants’ fault, that she would see them held accountable, and she flew into such a rage that I could hear everyone bolting at once.
I didn’t know where they were running, but perhaps they were just trying to get somewhere I couldn’t see them.
As I stared outside at the now-empty corridor, the princess hugged me lightly and whispered into my ear.
“Be careful on your way, Princess.”
“Your Highness.”
“Mm?”
“May I ask something impertinent?”
“Hmm~? What is it?”
“Do you perhaps go out in disguise often? Because otherwise, how could you…?”
“Haha, have I been found out?”
“If you’re ill, you should be resting inside.”
“Heh heh! I’ll do that, so hurry along.”
She pushed me out with a laugh, and when I returned to the servants’ quarters, the gazes fell on me again.
This time, unlike before when they had been full of contempt and disgust, they were filled with fear.
It was rather amusing.
I had not changed.
I still had no feelings toward those people, and I still had no intention of getting angry.
And yet, merely because the princess had shown anger, they had all turned craven.
It was difficult to understand.
If the princess usually treated me as though she felt nothing at all for me, I could have understood. But she cherished me—the lifeline she intended to keep in reserve.
She cherished me enough to personally teach me all sorts of things, praise me every time, and even eat with me, and she never bothered to hide that from the people of the Blium family.
And yet they had failed to remember that, spent their time hounding me, and now things had turned out this way. They had also failed to anticipate a perfectly foreseeable situation, and now they feared me, the very person they had treated like a beast or livestock.
Where in the world could one find a fool as foolish as this?
If one thought about it rationally, wasn’t the best way to deal with me simply to be businesslike?
Just as no one developed ill feelings toward a pig or cow that wandered about a little too annoyingly, and simply fed it or dumped feed into its trough, if they had treated me that way, none of this would have happened.
“You there, why are you hiding?”
“P-Princess.”
“……? Now it’s Princess? Last time you ignored me without even looking at me and said you didn’t know me. Anyway, hurry up and come out. Her Highness the princess is waiting.”
Why did they have to infuse their treatment of me with emotion only to bring about this kind of disaster?
If they had treated me as a human being before, fine—but they had looked at me as though I were a stray dog and pig from the neighborhood, so why were they suddenly…?
“We still have to go see the others, so get up quickly. Otherwise, I’ll say it’s because of you that we’re late.”
I really could not understand it.
If they thought of me as livestock, they should have thought of me as livestock to the end. Why say I was livestock while acting differently?
As I turned away with a faint, puzzled feeling, I heard not laughter behind me, but the sound of someone crying bitterly.