episode_0109

“Step forth, the head of this family! I am Yeri Frost! Kneel before me and become my servant, for I am the future king of Evgenia!”

A booming voice.

A confident demeanor.

I wasn’t the only one who was startled and rushed outside to see, but I was quickly pushed over by the crowd that had gathered.

By the time I managed to get up, I was blocked from seeing the front by the crowd.

“Are you the prince of Pallana?”

“Huh? Prince? No! I am the body that will become the king’s eldest daughter!”

“Ah… Princess… the first princess…”

“When will the head of the family appear? Hurry and come out to greet the future king!”

“Haha, we will escort you inside for now, Your Highness. The head of the family is busy…”

The commotion that had erupted was quickly resolved.

The tense atmosphere dissipated.

The people who had gathered murmured and turned away.

“Ah, what’s this? I thought Prince Royal had arrived.”

“What does a princess have to do with the throne…”

“Yeri Frost. Have you caused so much trouble that even the king of Pallana has given up?”

“Well, the first prince wouldn’t just come without any prior notice.”

A strange woman.

A mad princess.

Everyone thought so, and I was no exception.

The royal family of Pallana is a thoroughly patriarchal society.

Since the first prince had grown up healthy and become an adult, the possibility of the first princess inheriting the throne was almost nonexistent.

Therefore, even though she had not yet been formally appointed as a princess, in official settings, everyone referred to her as Prince Royal.

“Welcome to the Evgenia main house, Your Highness. I believe this is your first visit. Would you like to take a look around?”

“Yes! It is the duty of a ruler to explore the territory of the one who will serve as my subject! I will wait for the head of the family while sightseeing!”

“Um, well… the head of the family is very busy…”

“What? Am I supposed to sit still and wait when the one who will become the future king has arrived?”

“Yes. Let me explain. This is the garden…”

Everyone treated the princess with indifference.

No one sincerely respected the princess.

Another outrageous act of the mad princess.

A minor yet annoying task that could be easily managed and sent away.

That’s how everyone saw it.

I, too, thought of her as a pitiful and unfortunate child.

An encounter that had nothing to do with me.

No. I didn’t even think of it as a fateful encounter.

“What are you doing there…?”

“Hmm?”

Until the princess was discovered in the forbidden library.

The servant who was supposed to guide the princess had disappeared.

She was reading books freely in the library without any attendants or guards.

“You’ve been caught! What is your name?”

“A-Alicia…”

“Alicia, huh. Judging by the fact that you can’t even address me by my title, you must be a mere scrap of this family.”

“Ugh…”

“But fear not. If you assist me here, once I become the king in the future and restore Evgenia, I will reward you appropriately.”

“What…?”

The grand task that the princess entrusted to me.

It was nothing but checking whether someone came to the library or not.

She said she would help me in the future if I checked the library… but it sounded too grand to believe.

I had nothing else to do or anywhere else to go, so I just went along with it.

As a pastime.

“Did the servant leave me here because they were lazy…”

It’s a pity.

Even though it wasn’t my place to say, I thought that way.

Still, even though she was a princess of a country, to be treated like this.

The fact that Evgenia could allow such disrespect meant that the royal family didn’t care about the princess either.

No one cared enough to treat her properly.

I just let it go.

Like a transparent person.

I was looking at the princess.

Thinking that she resembled me.

I was trying to find myself in her appearance.

“I found it, the forbidden magic book! There was an order to burn it all. I found a weakness.”

“Uh…?”

With a click-clack sound, the princess unlocked the lock and discovered a hidden book.

I was surprised and speechless.

The princess put the book back in its place and locked the lock again.

With a satisfied smile, she said, “Everyone treats me like a madwoman, laughing at me like a child or a fool. By using that, it’s possible to expose the family’s disgrace. The forbidden magic book is trivial, but I have found more fatal weaknesses in other families. It was possible because no one paid attention to me.”

“…”

The princess laughed, asking for secrecy, bringing her index finger to her lips.

I was speechless.

It was my mistake.

The princess and I were not similar at all.

Not at all alike.

While I was being abandoned and treated like a transparent person in reality, the princess was actively using it.

Without having anything, she was using people’s disregard as a political weapon.

The story of the future king that the princess was talking about was not a lie.

She was sincere.

Having been abandoned by the royal family, having nothing given to her.

She wanted to rise up and become a queen from that reality.

Acting like a fool and a madwoman.

“Is there nothing more I can do to help?”

“Are you declaring yourself my servant?”

“Yes! Oh, no! Yes! I will serve you faithfully? Is that right?”

“Hehehe! That’s enough! Your sincerity has been conveyed!”

That day, I swore allegiance to my sister.

I vowed to make her the queen of Pallana.

And at the same time.

I stood up on my own legs.

I walked on my own and prepared to move forward on my own.

It was the courage I gained from my sister.

Exactly three years later.

Through stealing the siblings’ books and mastering wind magic through theft and robbery, I finally succeeded in entering the palace.

And my sister was decided to be engaged to the first prince and inherit the throne.

Helping and supporting each other.

We both succeeded in our own positions.

To each other, my sister and I were more precious than anything.

And more trustworthy than anyone else.

Until a few days ago.

“What are you? Speak properly. You didn’t mention going to Elvengard. How did the elders recognize your face?”

“…”

The moment my lie was exposed.

My eyes trembled, my breath stopped, and I couldn’t speak properly.

But I wasn’t too worried.

I hid Eugene for my sister.

For Pallana.

And for justice.

I thought my sister would understand.

I thought she would trust me.

But that was my mistake.

“Ha. That’s right. All the reports to me were lies… I understand. I saw everything in Elvengard. Let’s go back.”

“Sister?”

“I’ll start by dealing with Yevgenia first when we go back. Yevgenia will be designated as a traitor’s family, and all Yevgenia descendants will be punished. Oh, right. You didn’t like Yevgenia anyway, right? So it doesn’t matter what happens to Yevgenia, right?”

“Sister! I was wrong. Oh, no, I was wrong…”

“You knew and did it anyway? Did you seduce my man knowing all that?”

“Oh, no… That’s… ”

“No need to explain. When we return to Pallana, you’ll be burned in the torture chamber anyway.”

“…!”

I was the one who didn’t understand.

Unni’s feelings towards Yujin were more intense than I had expected.

I thought it was just a simple, innocent love.

But that was all my mistake.

Unni was willing to break the noble family and disrupt the country’s affairs just to find Yujin.

Or maybe she was prepared to sacrifice everything for Yujin, even Palana.

Having been so close to Unni.

It was a side of her that I had never known.

In an instant, I was branded as a traitor.

Yevgenia’s death sentence was confirmed.

And on the way back to Palana, taking advantage of the lax security, I managed to escape.

After days of covering my tracks to avoid being tracked, I finally reached Taepyung City.

I had lost everything – my lord’s trust, my position in the family.

.

.

.

As Alicia finished her story,

a moment of silence fell over the lounge.

I struggled with whether to speak these words, swallowing hard.

“Isn’t this all my fault?”

After all, I betrayed myself.

I disobeyed my lord’s orders and got caught.

No matter how strong the trust we had built, it was inevitable that it would all crumble.

“It’s not that simple, is it?”

Well, some might think so, but…

That’s too simplistic a way of thinking.

In reality, I also played a part in this mess.

From Alicia’s perspective, disobeying the order was the best course of action.

As Yevgenia’s closest aide, she had been by her side since she was a lowly member of the royal family.

So, having spent so much time together, emotional exchanges would have been frequent.

Alicia would have noticed at some point that Yevgenia was acting strangely.

Seeing Yevgenia regain her memories from the previous chapter, she could only conclude that she was not in her right mind.

In a romance movie, they cut out all the buildup and only show the part where they’re madly in love.

So, it’s understandable to think that Yevgenia had lost her mind.

As a loyal subject, how should one act when the lord loses his mind and abandons the affairs of the state to search for a man he’s never met?

A loyal subject would unquestioningly follow the orders given, but as Alicia, she had no choice but to hide the fact that she had found me and focus on restoring Yevgenia to normal.

“In the end, isn’t it your own doing? You did betray the loyal lord. Even monsters don’t easily abandon their faith.”

“Hey…”

In the end, the words I had swallowed were spoken by her instead.

When I tried to stop her, she looked at me as if I were strange.

She didn’t know that I had returned and ruined Yevgenia, which is why she said such things.

It seems like some damage control is needed.

“I was foolish.”

“No, it’s my fault. If I had explained more about my relationship with Yevgenia-”

“It’s because I coveted Unni’s man-”

“Huh?”

“What?”

Alicia’s lips, which had been fidgeting, stiffened.

Realizing my mistake, Alicia looked at me with wide, shaking pupils.

Me, coveting someone?

I had just been mentally preparing myself for battle.

Suddenly, she let down her shield.

What am I supposed to do now?

“Hey, who are you coveting? You really did betray me, didn’t you?”

“Oh, no! It was a slip of the tongue! I didn’t mean it!”

This girl is a complete lunatic.

I thought Yevgenia had been unfairly driven away in a fit of hysteria.

But now, it seems that Alicia also had enough reason to blame herself.

“You’re guilty, girl. I didn’t know you saw me like that. Where did you even get the idea? When I was squeezing lemonade?”

“Excuse me?! It’s a misunderstanding!”

“What’s there to misunderstand?”

“So, um! I haven’t fallen for you yet, you know? It’s true that I felt a masculine charm from you! But that’s natural for a female, right! That’s separate from my loyalty to my sister! I’ve never thought about deceiving my sister and monopolizing you for myself!”

“······.”

What does that mean?

So, is this like saying I drank but didn’t drive under the influence logic?

As I was feeling dizzy and unable to focus, Alicia blushes and adds another word.

“Please don’t misunderstand! Just because I felt a masculine charm from you doesn’t mean I like you! Just because something catches your eye suddenly doesn’t mean it’s love, right? It’s the same principle! People often mistake sexual desire for love, right? Huh? Ugh! It’s unbelievable!”

“······.”

Alicia fans herself continuously with her now very red face.

I’m too dizzy to think straight.

So, did I just hear ‘you look damn good’ to my face?

Being blatantly sexually harassed makes me doubt if this is really sexual harassment, and my head is spinning.

‘Is this the mating behavior of rabbit anthros?’

Alicia continues to fidget with her flushed face, unable to calm her excitement.

A rabbit anthro with no sexual inhibition, this is such a straightforward way of speaking.

Powerful.

Incredibly powerful.

No wonder rabbit anthros have the highest birth rate and marriage rate in the world.