Oscar von Valentine (1)
"I've wanted to meet you, my fiancée!"
"Who's your fiancée."
The name of this unpleasantly handsome man, eyes shining as if he might fling himself at me at any moment, was Oscar von Valentine.
In the original game he had been Evangeline's fiancé, and the very man who took her virginity in the happy ending I had once been aiming for. Judging only by how the game presented him, he was, in a word, the male lead of a romance fantasy. Handsome, tall, strong, clever, sweet, and big where it counted.
The trouble was that the work he appeared in was an erotic game. Human as he was, however impressive that part of him might have been, it could never compare to a monster's — and in the end, his resolve to keep Evangeline chaste until she came of age came back as a dagger named an NTR scene and ran him clean through the heart.
By now the original game, the happy ending, and all the rest of it had become more or less meaningless. Even so, it did not change the fact that the man in front of me was my fiancé.
"You're being too cruel."
An alpha male a good two heads taller than I was stared at me, on the verge of tears. To borrow a turn of phrase from the female-oriented side of things, he had the look of a golden retriever. It was a face that would have dropped any ordinary woman dead on the spot, but to eyes that still kept a male reader's tastes, he was nothing but an eyesore. I still liked pretty girls better than handsome men.
"And what brings you here."
So it couldn't be helped if my tone came out cold as midwinter.
"Why, because I heard that my future wife had finally set foot in Polaris, of course...!"
"Which is what I'm asking. Why am I your wife."
"Well, that's..."
Oscar tilted his head as if he'd just been asked the strangest question in the world, and answered.
"Because we're engaged."
"Princess, you are all right, aren't you?"
Unable to bear it any longer, Delphina cut in from beside me.
"...We were. Engaged. Yes."
I scratched my head and answered, sheepish. Say enough words and something's bound to slip your mind. It happens.
"But, Your Highness."
"You may call me Oscar, if you like, fiancée."
"Your. High. Ness."
I'd have to be out of my mind to call you by your name.
"When was it that we got engaged?"
"I was eleven, so... six years ago."
"Right. Six years."
I nodded, and asked him again.
"In those six years, how many times did we meet?"
"...That."
The prince looked away and let the sentence die. I wasn't about to let the opening pass.
"I don't remember. We met so rarely, you see. Do you happen to remember, Your Highness?"
The truth was that I couldn't remember because, by the timeline of it, I had only possessed this body after the betrothal ceremony was already over. The two years right after the possession were — how to put it — hazy. Like scenery glimpsed in a dream, they never settled clearly in my mind. And in fact, the times we had met could be counted on one hand. Not once since the war broke out. So by nothing but simple arithmetic, this was a reunion after four years at the very least.
"Th-that's—!"
The prince rushed to excuse himself.
"It couldn't be helped, could it? We're both royalty of our own nations, each of us busy with our duties, and the distance between us is so great..."
"True. Unfortunate, but it couldn't be helped."
I nodded, sensing my chance.
"But, Your Highness. When the distance between two people grows, their hearts grow distant as well."
"...That is true, too."
"I'm no different. Presumptuous as it may be to say, my feelings toward Your Highness, right now, are..."
I broke off and, without meaning to, glanced at Delphina.
"Wha—!"
Delphina was staring at me in open horror. We had known each other for all of two days, and still I caught myself thinking that even a face that pretty could make an expression like that. It was the look of someone demanding to know why I was lining up to soccer-kick a blessing that had rolled into my lap of its own accord. I could almost hear her voice, thick with disbelief.
"What could you possibly dislike about a man that perfect?!"
No — looking closer, her lips had been moving this whole time. She really was whispering it.
"...Is something the matter, Princess Evangeline?"
"Ahem. It's nothing."
I said it, straining to sound calm.
"Anyway. I think our engagement is something we need to reconsider. Seriously."
"Seriously, you say."
"Yes. It was nothing more than a betrothal made when we were eleven and knew nothing at all, and surely you have someone else you love, Your Highness?"
"...Yes. I do. Someone I love."
"You're going to say it's me."
"Caught. But hear me out, Princess Evangeline."
The prince clicked his tongue, and spoke all the same.
"That we have met in person so rarely is no problem at all."
He said it with a graver face than I had expected.
"Our meeting again here at Polaris Academy — looked at another way, is it not as good as fate? And if the shallowness of our acquaintance, the awkwardness between us, is a flaw, then we have only to fill it in from now on, as much as we please..."
He would not let go. So stubbornly that I could hardly understand why he would cling like this to a woman as worn-down and used-up as I was. Delphina, seated awkwardly at my side, had been doing nothing since earlier but shooting me scorching looks — looks that all but said to play a little hard to get, and then accept him.
Even I had no choice left.
...This, at least, was something I had never wanted to tell the prince.
"Your Highness."
I looked him straight in the eye.
"I understand your feelings."
"I'm glad. In that case..."
"Even so, I cannot accept them."
I let out a small breath. It ached, a little, that I had to go this far to be rid of him — but what else was there? For my own sake, and for his, a prince of an empire.
"Because I cannot have your child."
"...What?"
The prince asked it back looking as if someone had struck him over the head.
"P-Princess."
Delphina spoke in a rush. Even she couldn't hide what she felt this time; the panic was plain on her face.
"Y-you mustn't say such awful things. Having a baby is something anyone has the right to..."
There had been something I'd shown her on the airship, and Delphina seemed to be taking my words in that direction.
"That isn't what I mean."
If I had to say which kind of meaning it was... the blunter one. The physical one. I shook my head and quietly drew up the hem of my top.
"H-hyaak!"
The prince flushed scarlet at once, clapped a hand over his eyes, and cried out.
"Princess Evangeline! To bare your skin so carelessly, out where anyone might— see..."
He never finished. The hand half-covering his eyes came down, little by little, and the eyes he had squeezed shut flooded with confusion and shock. Neither the prince nor Delphina could look away from my navel. More precisely, from the scar beside it — one long stroke, a line that ran straight and yet curved, cut into the skin.
"...Princess. That wound. What in the world—"
"A wound I took in the Ballisterd Subjugation."
The Ballisterd Subjugation. To raise, even slightly, the chance that the detached force under Sir Scabbard would succeed, we had thrown ourselves into a wild melee against a Demon King's army a third again the size of our own. Two legion commanders had been sent in on their side for the purpose of taking me. It was the battle in which we turned the hunt around and brought down one of the two — the Eighth Legion Commander, Ballisterd of the Black Blade.
And there, I lost my left arm... and my future.
"It was gouged out rather badly. The physicians said... that it would be difficult for me to have a child, going forward."
For me it was already a matter of some time past, so I said it calmly, and for the prince and for Delphina that very calm seemed to make it harder to hear. Delphina began to shake, one hand pressed over her mouth, and the prince, still lost in the shock, only stared blankly my way. The two of them were too shaken to go on. I understood. In an age where rank, nobility, and monarchy still remained, being unable to have a child was treated as a grave defect, whether one was a man or a woman. For me in particular, a princess of a kingdom, a body that could not bear children might by itself become an enormous disgrace.
"This is only a supposition, of course. But if it ever came out that the consort of an imperial prince could not provide an heir, wouldn't that be a serious problem?"
At my words, the prince's face went as if he had packed his mouth full of sand and started to chew. Whatever he thought of me, the betrothal would be broken over this. Unlike the Prince Oscar I knew, the emperor now on the throne was a cold man. He would have no use for a prince's consort who could not bear children, and he would move with the annulment already in mind. How our kingdom chose to deal with that was a problem that had nothing to do with me.
"...Princess Evangeline."
At last the prince spoke. The tone was nothing like the one he had used a moment ago.
"None of it matters to me."
...What?
While I was still reeling at words I had never expected, he spoke again.
"I will not break my betrothal to you because you cannot have a child, or because you have one arm, or because you bear an unsightly scar."
What is he even saying. So he means to marry me anyway? Right now?
"Because, from the very moment I first met you..."
Don't. I can already tell what you're about to say, so please — don't.
AAAAAAAH!!
I kept thinking there was no way — and he actually said it?! Don't make that face! Don't put on the most sincere expression in the world! Don't look at me with those pure eyes!! Delphina! Don't you cry with that moved look on your face!!
"If you were pushing me away on purpose out of regard for my position as the prince of a nation, then I regret to say you've misjudged me."
Whether I was inwardly thrashing and screaming or not, the prince went on.
"But if that isn't it. If you are still hesitating over your betrothal to me..."
He rose as he spoke.
"Then I shall simply have to try all the harder. So that you might turn and look at me."
"W-wait."
"The hour is late. I'll take my leave. Princess Evangeline, and Lady Delphina. I wish you both a peaceful evening."
With that for a last word, the prince was gone.
"No — wait. Hold on. That's, what I mean is—"
Thrown, I stared blankly at the place he had left.
Then, from the seat beside me, came the sound of sniffling.
"...Princess."
I turned toward the teary voice, and Delphina was looking at me with eyes brimming.
"What do I do, it went well... it went so well..."
Don't cry. Went well? What part of this went well. Since when do you get to decide.
Before I could get a word out, Delphina — having misunderstood the whole of it exactly as she pleased — pulled me into her arms and soaked the nape of my neck with tears.
...Fine. Whatever.
Unable to do one thing or the other, I patted the sobbing Delphina and sank halfway down onto the sofa, as if collapsing into it.
The first night at Polaris, which had blown through like a storm, was slowly drawing to a close.