Natural Death... Or Starvation
"It's closer to natural death... Or starvation." Splash—!
"Bring a cold wet towel!"
At Margareta's sharp cry, an ice-cold towel slammed into the back of my neck.
"Eek...!"
The sticky heat that had surged all the way to my scalp cooled instantly, as if a bucket of frigid water had been dumped over it. I flinched and curled into myself, only to find Margareta staring down at me with terrifying eyes.
"Have you come to your senses now, Your Highness? What sort of nightmare did you have from the crack of dawn that you're screaming like some common brute?"
"Ah... Um... Well..."
I clamped my mouth shut like a mute who'd swallowed honey. There was no way I could say out loud, I nearly went into heat after getting excited from staring at sausages and knights. That would be tossing the last scrap of my dignity as a mercenary-turned-knight straight into the gutter.
"Ah... Sorry."
"Sigh. I'll hurry with the dressing."
After that, I have no memory of how I finished getting ready. While the maids powdered my face and painted my lips with red rouge, I simply sat there with half-lidded eyes, panting.
The corset crushed my ribs. The skirt weighed a ton. But what tormented me most was this cursed body's instinct, constantly trying to betray my sanity.
Quickly... I need to see that archmage old man right now.
The moment the dressing was complete, I fled the room as if escaping a battlefield. The palace corridors stretched long and treacherous. In my original body I would have covered the distance in a few powerful strides, but the corset made every breath a struggle, and kicking the heavy hem of the dress that pooled around my ankles felt like hard labor.
Rustle. Rustle.
Worse, every step made the "daytime diaper" strapped to my crotch rub against my inner thighs, producing an ominous scraping sound. Terrified that passing servants might hear it, I shortened my stride, pressed my thighs together, and minced along like a proper lady.
Clenching my buttocks tightly might have looked elegantly refined from the outside, but inside I was already burning to ash.
Fuck... To think that I, a knight of this kingdom, am wearing a diaper and waddling like a penguin.
After what felt like an eternity, I finally reached the detached tower tucked in a corner of the palace—the archmage's laboratory. I dismissed the escort knights and flung the door open.
"Old man! Save me!"
The lab reeked of acrid herbs and ancient dust. At the desk sat the archmage, so gaunt he looked ready for a coffin, staring blankly into space.
"Ah... Sir Knight... I mean, Your Highness. You've come..."
The archmage's condition was wretched. Black circles hung beneath his eyes like bruises reaching his chin, and his sunken cheeks made him resemble a skull. He had clearly spent the entire night desperately trying to fix this mess. Under normal circumstances I might have pitied him enough to pat his shoulder, but right now I could barely keep my own head above water.
I clutched the heavy skirt and collapsed into a chair.
Rustle.
That damned diaper sound rang out again, but since the old man already knew my situation, I swallowed the shame.
"Old man. I think something's really wrong with me."
"Pardon? Where do you feel unwell? Your breathing is labored—is it the corset?"
"The corset's fucking awful too, but that's not the problem."
I buried my face in both hands. My cheeks still burned with lingering heat.
"This morning... I nearly threw up looking at a sausage."
"...Pardon? Have you developed indigestion?"
"No! That fucking... the sausage looked like a cock! And when I saw two knights outside wiping each other's sweat... my heart went insane and it felt like I was getting wet down there!"
Crude curses tumbled out before I could stop them. They were hardly words befitting a beautiful princess, yet the archmage simply sighed deeply, unsurprised.
"Haa... It's finally arrived."
"What? What's arrived? You knew about this?"
The archmage rubbed his face wearily and regarded me with hollow eyes.
"Body-swapping magic has almost no historical precedents. However, magical theory dictates that the soul cannot help but be influenced by the flesh it inhabits."
My vision spun. Dear god. Even if my mind stayed intact, this body going into heat on its own was apparently inevitable.
"Then what the hell do I do? Am I doomed to live as a pervert who drools over men's asses for the rest of my life?! ...Has there been any progress on breaking the curse? Huh?!"
My frantic demands twisted the archmage's face. Tears glistened at the corners of his eyes.
"Huk... Are you going to pressure me like His Majesty the King, Sir Knight? I'm going to die too, for real T_T."
"Ah, no... I didn't mean to pressure..."
"Haa... We are conducting case studies at the moment. There is no immediate solution. Besides, His Majesty gave me a separate, far more pressing task."
The archmage gestured at the mountain of parchment piled on his desk. The King's ultimate task was to unravel the Curse of Early Death that plagued the royal women.
For generations, the kingdom's princesses and queens had died before reaching twenty, as if by some grim pact. The Princess Celestia whose body I now occupied had turned exactly twenty this year and had recently collapsed, lingering in illness for days. The King's fierce, overprotective love stemmed from the terror that she might die at any moment.
"Doesn't look like there's been much progress."
At my question the archmage glanced around nervously before dropping his voice to a whisper.
"Sir Knight. I spent day and night combing through the medical records and daily routines of every past princess. But this... it may not be a curse at all."
"What? If not a curse, then what?"
The archmage swallowed hard and handed me a sheet of parchment.
"It's closer to natural death... Or starvation."
"What? The royal women are starving to death?"
"Yes. The causes are lack of physical activity and severe malnutrition. They simply don't eat properly."
At his words I unconsciously glanced down at the corset crushing my waist. The half-eaten apple and remaining milk from breakfast floated before my eyes.
"Consider it. They wear those heavy dresses all day without moving. With their waists cinched until breathing becomes impossible, how could food even go down? Add the stress of high society, the heartbreak of political marriages, and depression on top of that. It's simply... an environment where the body grows weak and death becomes likely."
It felt like a hammer blow to the skull. The hellish fatigue I'd experienced walking here in this body, the dizziness that stole my breath, the pain like my bones were being shaved away.
Fuck... Wearing this torture device every day and eating barely more than birdseed—of course they'd drop dead at twenty!
Even a battle-hardened knight like me felt ready to die after one day. How much worse must it have been for the real princesses, raised like delicate flowers in a greenhouse?
This wasn't a curse. It was murder committed by the royal family's twisted beauty standards.
"Hey... Can you actually report this to His Majesty?"
I asked, face pale with disbelief.
"Will you be all right? His Majesty is utterly convinced it's an 'evil magical curse.' If you tell him, 'Your Majesty, the princesses died because they wore corsets and refused to eat,'... you'd be marching straight to the guillotine."
The archmage's face drained of all color. Those dark circles reaching his chin had been born from exactly that fear.
"I know T_T I'll obviously be cursed at! But medically speaking, there isn't a single trace of black magic!"
"Then why is His Majesty so certain it's a curse?"
In response, the archmage opened a thick, dust-covered history book.
"This goes back three hundred years, to the bloody wars between neighboring nations. We captured the capital of a weakened ally and beheaded their king."
"Ah, I know that part."
"Right before his execution, the enemy king supposedly shed tears of blood and uttered this curse: 'You fucking traitors! The women of your royal bloodline shall never live to bloom past twenty years! I will curse you for all eternity!'"
The archmage's eerily realistic imitation made me swallow.
"The problem is... that's precisely when the women of our royal family began dying young. For three hundred years straight."
"Huh."
A dry laugh escaped me. The timing was fucking terrible. Had the moment the enemy king cast his curse simply coincided with the rise of these insane corsets and suffocating dresses? Or had the curse manifested as a culture that strangled women's lives?
Coincidence? Or had the curse actually taken root?
"Haa..."
I pressed hard against my throbbing temples. Returning my soul to its rightful body already seemed impossible, and now I wasn't even sure this body could survive another few years.
Princess Celestia was twenty. Whether curse or natural death, the countdown already had its fingers wrapped around my throat.
"For now... delay the report to His Majesty as long as possible. Old man, focus on finding a way to return my soul to my original body. At this rate I'm going to turn into a crazy bitch who spends all day running around the training grounds staring at the knights' asses."
"I will keep it in mind, Sir Knight. I mean, Your Highness."
I gathered the heavy skirt and rose from the chair once more.
Rustle.
The sound of the restraints filling my lower body scraped at my nerves again. If I didn't want to starve to death at twenty—or lose my mind to shame before then—I had to find some way to control this body's horrific instincts.