The Mischievous Princess Who Calls the Storm (1)
“Whoa—I finished it……!”
Canelly burst into laughter as she gazed down at the pair of earrings cradled in both hands. Ordinarily, a single person wore both earrings of a pair—but these were different.
Couple earrings, meant for two. And their effect? Real-time, wireless, two-way communication. An absurd creation born of her desire to hear the voice of her beloved Evan no matter how far apart they were.
Considering that ordinary magical communication required a predetermined location and an enormous amount of advance preparation, the earrings she had crafted held considerable strategic value.
“Eheh, eheheheh—with these, I-I can hear his voice anytime…….”
Of course, none of that mattered in the slightest to this deranged alchemist. The thought that the earrings could be used tactically or strategically never even crossed her mind.
They were a product of pure madness, forged solely for love—so of course they weren’t.
Canelly was just about to leave and present the earrings to Evan when she ran into the last person she wanted to meet in the corridor.
“Ah—Canellyyyy!”
“P-Princess Elenoa…….”
The First Princess, Elenoa. A golden-haired princess whose entire body seemed to glitter and shine. In both appearance and personality, she was the natural enemy of the gloomy, shadowy Canelly. Canelly clenched the earrings tightly in her fist and shrank back a little.
Elenoa, spotting her prey like an eagle, came charging over and leaned forward with her hands clasped behind her back.
“What is it, what is it? What did you just hide?”
“I-It’s nothing…….”
“No it’s not! I definitely saw it! Show me right now. Come on?”
“I-It’s really nothing…….”
“Should I tell Daddy?”
To an alchemist, a patron was an absolute superior. And anyone who could order that patron around was an even greater superior. Born as the youngest princess and furthest from the line of succession, Elenoa monopolized the affection of not only the Blue King but the entire royal family—making her the superior of superiors.
Unable to defy such a force, Canelly held out the earrings with trembling hands. After all, hadn’t she made them with royal resources in the first place?
“Wow—! Earrings? Why earrings all of a sudden? Don’t tell me even Canelly’s decided to start dressing up?”
“N-No. Just…….”
“Just? Who just walks around carrying earrings for no reason? Try them on! I bet they’d look cute on you?”
“Th-These are couple earrings, so…….”
“—Couple!?”
Canelly stopped Elenoa from trying to put both earrings on her and revealed what they truly were. That, however, was a mistake—a terrible one.
For a princess who lived inside the gilded cage of the royal palace and only ever heard of the outside world through stories, tales of love were the most stimulating seasoning imaginable.
And Canelly, of all people—who looked like she didn’t have a single friend, let alone a boyfriend—had a couple!?
“Who are you giving them to!?”
“T-To Evan…….”
“Evan? I’ve heard that name somewhere before…….”
Elenoa paused at the name of the person Canelly called her boyfriend. The name Evan rang familiar.
As a princess of this kingdom, the names she knew and remembered were vanishingly few. She only bothered to remember the names of truly, truly important people.
Evan, Evan…… Ah, is it the Evan from the First Royal Guard Knights? But that one’s dating a lady-in-waiting……
One by one, she crossed candidates off the list in her head until she landed on someone who had a connection to her and, at the same time, no lover.
Had she been just a little older, she might have fretted longer over the possibility of two-timing or an affair. But she was still pure enough to arrive at the correct answer at once.
“—The Swordmaster.”
Swordmaster Evan Kalshooter.
She remembered her father mentioning him at a family dinner not long ago.
Brother Alin said he was an ill-mannered brat, though.
Having never seen him in person, Elenoa felt her interest in Evan swell like a rising tide.
Just what kind of man had managed to steal the heart of Canelly—who had built an iron wall around herself and rejected every man who approached her (though she herself had no awareness of having rejected anyone)!?
Unable to contain her curiosity, Elenoa fixed Canelly with a mischievous look.
“I want to meet him.”
“W-Whaaat……?”
“That Swordmaster person. I want to see who he is!”
Elenoa’s eyes sparkled. Seeing that, Canelly let out a silent inner sigh.
Once she got like this, no one could stop her. She was, after all, the youngest princess adored by the entire royal family.
Ahh, Evan…….
Canelly’s face crumpled. She had planned to sneak off and enjoy a private date with Evan—but with things as they were, a secret visit had become impossible.
I want a girlfriend.
Lying on the bed and staring up at the ceiling, I clutched my aching side and thought exactly that.
When I carefully propped up just my upper body and turned my head toward the window, couples strolled past in a line, laughing and chattering away.
Spring must have arrived. You could tell by the way people clung to each other as if they never intended to let go.
What exactly went wrong…….
Ever since I’d returned from Nine Lives, things between Rainia and me had turned awkward. Considering how close we’d been before that, I must have messed something up in that short span of time.
The problem was that I had no idea what the problem even was. I’d quietly asked Rebecca, the guild staffer, and Anes, Rainia’s party member—but both of them just gave hollow laughs and told me to figure it out myself.
Isn’t the whole point of asking that I don’t know? If you know, just tell me straight.
Nursing a quiet grudge against the two of them, I carefully got up and headed downstairs.
“Oh, you’re up? Breakfast?”
“Something simple, please.”
“Sure thing. Go wash your face first.”
I was earning well over a hundred thousand elso a month now, but I still lived at an inn. A somewhat higher-class inn, sure—but the self-contained convenience of inn life kept me from leaving.
A place to sleep, a place to wash, meals provided, cleaning done for me…… For a single man living alone, there was nowhere more comfortable than this.
The money going out was a bit of a downside, but for a Special Class adventurer whose debt was measured in the millions of elso and whose monthly income was measured in the hundreds of thousands, it was pocket change. So it was fine.
Maybe I should just give up and buy a slave…….
Books like that had been popular lately. Stories of love not with traditional beauties who were strong-willed and independent, but with slaves who obeyed their master’s every word without question.
Of course, after years of traditional fairy tales and love stories, I’d become a hopeless romantic of the pure-and-dense variety and refused to acknowledge that kind of love as real—but lately, even I found myself thinking that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad……
“Here, breakfast.”
“Thank you…….”
“Your voice has no energy. Something on your mind?”
“No, just…….”
“Morning blues, maybe? Cheer up! What’s a young man like you doing looking so down?”
The innkeeper lady said that, thumped me hard on the back a couple of times, and disappeared into the kitchen. She had good hands. In more ways than one.
After finishing my meal, I headed straight for the guild. It was a kind of routine. Wake up, eat, go to the guild to check requests, and if there was nothing special, swing by the training grounds.
The guild I arrived at, however, was far busier than usual. Guild staff were running every which way, and for some reason adventurers were clearing out one by one……
“—Ah! Evan!”
Rebecca, who’d been racing around the back with an armful of documents, spotted me and let out a cry of relief.
“Rebecca, what’s going on…….”
“Please ask the Guildmaster for the details! He’s looking for you too!”
“Ah, yes ma’am.”
Chased off before I could get another word in, I made my way to the Guildmaster’s office with a dazed look on my face.
When I knocked, the Guildmaster called out as if he’d been waiting.
—Is that Evan?
“Yes, Guildmaster.”
—Get in here. Quickly.
With permission granted, I stepped inside to find the Guildmaster processing documents at breakneck speed. The staff downstairs were the same, and so was he. I tilted my head, wondering what could have them all so frantic—when the Guildmaster finished his papers and eyed my clothes with a low hum.
“Hmm…… Is that all you’re wearing?”
“Clothes, all of a sudden……?”
“What about that suit you always wear?”
“That’s equipment, so I don’t wear it casually…….”
“Go change into it right now. No—wait. You keep clothes in your subspace storage, don’t you? Change here. Right now.”
Faced with a Guildmaster who clearly couldn’t care less about my bare body and just wanted me dressed immediately, I found myself changing clothes right in front of him before I knew what I was doing.
True to form, the Guildmaster showed zero interest in my naked body. That stung my pride a little. I’d thought I had a pretty decent physique……
“Done changing?”
“Yes. But what’s this about?”
“The princess is coming.”
The Guildmaster let out a long sigh, covered his face with one hand, and spoke.
“—She says she wants to see you.”
“……Excuse me?”
I immediately turned to the mirror and fixed my hair.
A princess. I’d never seen one, but weren’t they the kind of beings the heroes in stories fell so hard for that they literally threw their lives away?
What would a real princess be like—my heart started pounding.
Don’t tell me the reason things suddenly went bad between Rainia and me……
Maybe this was it.
“—All clear.”
“You there. This area is off-limits.”
“Sheathe your weapons. This is for the princess’s safety.”
The princess arrived accompanied by the Royal Guard Knights.
The knights who entered the Adventurer Guild treated everything in sight as a potential threat. In other words, they picked fights with anything and everything that moved.
Under normal circumstances, the prideful adventurers of the guild would never have stood for it and would have exploded in rage—but any adventurer stupid enough to blow up in a situation like this had long since been weeded out by natural selection.
While everyone else quietly cleared out of the guild, Evan sat in the Guildmaster’s office, calming his racing heart as he looked at the princess seated before him.
“I am the First Princess, Elenoa Astra.”
Emerald-green eyes, glittering like gemstones, fixed directly on Evan.
A smile full of mischief bloomed at the corners of her lips.