Chapter 38
The Prince Died, So I’m Starting Over From Scratch!
I looked around frantically, but it was the same.
What is this? A ghost?
‘…No way. There’s no such thing as ghosts in this world.’
“Your Highness. Your Highness!”
I called for the Third Prince, lowering my voice to a whisper.
Judging by the bedside lamp still being on, he didn’t seem to be asleep yet, but I couldn’t see him anywhere.
“…Is this some kind of magic too?”
Given that the Third Prince was surrounded by all sorts of strange magic, every possible thought crossed my mind.
That he’d suddenly turned invisible, or that he’d teleported…
“Ugh…”
But fortunately or unfortunately, that guess seemed to be completely wrong.
I found the Third Prince, whom I had been searching for so desperately, behind the open door.
For some reason, he was holding his nose and groaning.
“Your Highness! Are you okay?”
Startled, I hurriedly rushed to his side.
The faint light from the bedside lamp spilled over to the doorway, allowing me to vaguely make out his form.
The first thing that caught my eye was a stream of black liquid flowing from under the Third Prince’s prominent nose.
“A nosebleed! You have a nosebleed!”
I was so flustered that I panicked and shook the Third Prince.
I couldn’t remember whether you were supposed to tilt your head forward or backward when you had a nosebleed.
Lean back? Or forward?
“L-Lulupel, Miss…?”
While I was in a panic, grabbing him by the collar and shaking him, the Third Prince, who had been wobbling weakly like a car bobblehead, barely managed to stop me.
“Oh! Sorry…”
It was only then that I realized I was acting like a fool.
A simple nosebleed shouldn’t cause any serious harm, but because the Third Prince was so inherently frail, I had overreacted.
I scratched my cheek awkwardly.
The Third Prince stared up at me intently.
It seemed I should help him up first. When I reached out my hand to him, the Third Prince hesitated, then took it.
I saw a fresh wound on the back of his hand that I hadn’t seen before. I could also feel his hot body temperature through our touching palms.
The Third Prince’s fever was much higher than yesterday.
It wasn’t surprising, given how much he had suffered during the day.
But seeing that he couldn’t stand up on his own even while holding my hand, his condition seemed serious.
“Shall I help you?”
“Huh?”
“I’ll carry you.”
I reached out for the Third Prince.
I had carried Anna before. Carrying the Third Prince, who was only half of Anna’s size, would be a piece of cake.
After effortlessly picking him up, I headed straight for his bed.
As if he were feeling dizzy, the Third Prince buried his face completely in his small palms.
His ears were bright red, as if they were about to fall off any second.
I hurriedly laid the Third Prince down on the bed and carefully tucked him in. Then, I picked up a nearby cloth and vigorously wiped under his nose.
The Third Prince, who had his eyes tightly shut, let out a whimper like a puppy with a stomach ache.
“Are you okay?”
“You, oof, you’re too stro, oof oof…!”
The Third Prince tried to say something, but I couldn’t understand a single word of it.
‘He’s probably asking me to wipe it cleaner, right?’
I put a little more strength into it and diligently wiped his face.
By the time I finished everything, the Third Prince was slumped over like seaweed strewn on a sandy beach.
“Oh my goodness! Are you okay? Should I call a healer right away?”
“…I’m fine,” the Third Prince replied in an extremely weary voice. He looked completely drained.
Seeing the small, fragile little duck looking so dejected made me feel sorry for him.
“Why on earth were you in a place like that? You must be tired, you should have gone to sleep.”
Without realizing it, my words came out sounding a bit scolding.
The Third Prince lay still, only his eyes rolling around, before weakly raising a finger.
“…I was trying to give you that.”
He grumbled sullenly.
“That? What is it?”
In the direction he was pointing, there was something that looked like a completely crushed steamed bun.
“Is it food?”
If it had been less than three seconds since it fell, it might still be okay to pick up and eat…
But it had probably been well over three seconds by now.
I clicked my tongue in regret and asked, and the Third Prince let out a sigh.
“…It’s a flower.”
“…That is?”
“Yes. Despite how it looks.”
“That kind of…”
I hurriedly ran over to the doorway and picked up the object that was presumed to have been a flower.
“It’s a really beautiful Jang… Mi? Flower.”
“…It’s a pansy.”
“Yes, a pansy! Didn’t I just say that? Haha… Even when I saw it from the carriage, it looked like a pansy.”
The Third Prince seemed very disheartened.
To comfort him, I carefully cradled the ruined flower and smelled its scent.
“Well, the scent is nice, at least.”
“…’The scent is’?”
“…The scent is nice too. And the color is, um, a really pretty black.”
“…It’s purple.”
“Aha… It was dark, so I must have seen it wrong…”
Silence fell between the Third Prince and me.
The more I tried to be considerate of him, the more dejected he became.
Humoring a child’s feelings was really hard work.
I glanced sideways at the Third Prince.
He was looking very gloomy, fiddling with his fingernails.
It was the first time I’d seen a kid so sad about a ruined flower.
I had known it all along, but the Third Prince was truly a delicate child, without a doubt.
I vowed to send a truckload of pansies to the Third Prince first thing in the morning.
“…I heard that Miss Lulupel likes flowers very much.”
“Huh? Me? Flowers?”
“…Is that not true?”
“I don’t really like things like flowers that you can’t even…”
I was about to say ‘eat,’ but I hastily cut myself off. I had almost made a terrible mistake.
“…I like them very much.”
Hahaha. I forced an awkward smile, like a candidate running for parliament.
“And I heard that among flowers, you like pansies the most…”
The Third Prince looked up at me with a suspicious gaze as he spoke.
“Yes, that’s right. Pansies! I just love them to death. Hahaha…”
I nodded my head so hard I thought it might fall off.
The Third Prince let out a deep sigh and closed his mouth again.
“…S-so, why the flower? Not that I’m not happy, but why are you suddenly giving me a flower?”
I felt a sense of crisis, that I had to somehow fix this situation.
Because I was starting to understand the cause of this little commotion.
The rustling sound I’d heard from outside the door. The Third Prince collapsed by the doorway with a nosebleed. And the severely crushed bouquet of pansies that was also lying in that area.
Putting all the clues together, there was only one conclusion.
I had clearly slammed the door into the Third Prince, who had been loitering by the door to give me the flower.
If I had known this would happen, I would have knocked first before opening the door…
But it was too late for regrets now.
“…I’m sorry to you, Miss Lulupel.”
“Yes, I’m really sorr… Huh?”
But strangely, the apology that I should have been making came out of the Third Prince’s mouth.
His apology was completely unexpected. I wondered if he had hit the back of his head when he fell.
“Your Highness, is there something you should be sorry to me for?”
“…Isn’t it because I’m not resilient enough that I keep causing you harm, Miss Lulupel?”
The Third Prince confessed in the most lifeless voice I had ever heard.
As if he couldn’t quite organize his thoughts, he hesitated for a moment before continuing haltingly.
“I know very well how significant an engagement ceremony is for a typical noble.”
“I…”
I was about to say that I didn’t care about things like engagement ceremonies.
But the Third Prince cut me off first.
“Of course, I know that today’s engagement ceremony holds no special meaning for you, Miss Lulupel. But even so, it didn’t have to be this much of a worst-case scenario…”
The Third Prince was upset, blaming himself.
Perhaps because of his upbringing, he thought too much.
Being mature for his age wasn’t going to do him any good.
“Whaaat? You think it was the worst?”
I raised my voice defiantly.
“…Wasn’t it?”
The Third Prince looked puzzled, seeing my eyes widen.
“Not at all! The weather was great, and the atmosphere was lively, wasn’t it? And the guests couldn’t take their eyes off me!”
“That probably wasn’t in a good way.”
“Hey, that’s a matter of perspective, isn’t it? We can’t possibly know what others are saying behind our backs anyway, so why imagine the worst?”
I then proceeded to explain, even counting on my fingers, how wonderful our engagement ceremony had been.
Of course, if you examined each reason carefully, they were all completely nonsensical.
But they were sufficient, at least, to overwhelm the Third Prince.
“Think about it. How many people in this Empire can have their engagement ceremony at the imperial palace?”
“But we couldn’t hold a lavish banquet.”
“Instead, we had that spectacular fountain!”
“…Because of me, you had to wear a strange dress.”
“That wasn’t a strange dress, it was a special dress! It’s the one and only dress in the world that Anna poured her heart and soul into, working through the night for me! As long as I, the one wearing it, was satisfied, isn’t that enough?”
“Still, the other nobles might see it differently.”
“Ugh, I told you, you can never know what others are thinking. The only thing I can guess is that they’ll never forget my engagement ceremony for the rest of their lives.”
The Third Prince seemed almost convinced by my words.
Like a turtle hiding in its shell, the Third Prince, who had been buried deep under the covers, slowly raised his head.
“But Count Lulupel and the Countess seemed very upset.”
“That’s right. And that was the best part.”
“…Huh?”
“I’ve always thought that I absolutely had to play a trick on my parents someday.”
At that, the Third Prince seemed at a loss for words and just stared at me.
His lips, which had been pouting out like a sulking duck’s bill, parted slightly.
“On… on Count Lulupel?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s always deciding my affairs according to his own will. I’m an adult too… no, I’m eight years old now.”
I didn’t hide my triumphant feeling. Seeing my expression, the Third Prince made a face like he was about to cry.
“…Then, do you want to play a trick on me too?”
