Episode 40
“B-but…….”
The youngest princess was wearing a dress as brilliantly pink as the color of my hair, with pale pink shoes.
As lovely as a spring fairy all alone, she would be instantly marked if mud got on her.
‘Why on earth is he telling the youngest to fetch the ball?’
Even without using the dress as an excuse, there seemed to be no need for the youngest princess to move at all.
She was clearly the smallest among them, and there were plenty of noble boys nearby who looked as sturdy as Ren or the Crown Prince.
The tallest princess stepped in, pressuring the youngest princess alongside him.
“You said you wanted to join in too, didn’t you? If you can’t even handle your assigned role, we can’t play with you anymore.”
Looking around belatedly, Ren saw that the other noble children were, surprisingly, all smiling.
He saw the Crown Prince, whom everyone at the banquet had been fawning over.
He didn’t seem to be playing bowling himself, but he was standing close enough to clearly see and hear the commotion, yet pretending not to, ignoring it all.
‘Ah, my head….’
Perhaps because of the irritating situation, his head throbbed with a splitting pain.
Without even realizing it, Ren took a step forward.
“I’ll.”
The moment he spoke, the headache intensified so much he felt nauseous.
Clenching his teeth, forcing down the urge to vomit, he continued.
“May I retrieve it for you?”
He was well aware that his mother had spent a fortune on his first imperial palace banquet outfit.
Although he too disliked the idea of ruining his clothes, if it meant ending this situation quickly, he was willing to sacrifice anything.
‘If I use helping the princess as an excuse, maybe Mother will forgive me.’
But the golden-eyed princess sharply rebuked him.
“Which family’s child are you? How dare you speak to the imperial family first?”
“I am Ren Daphte.”
Ren answered, feeling a slight regret—perhaps he should have just let himself vomit.
“It’s my first time at the imperial palace, I didn’t know I shouldn’t speak first. My apologies.”
In truth, no such rule existed.
Under his mother’s pressure, Ren had read about seven books on imperial etiquette and memorized them thoroughly.
Then, his gaze caught the youngest princess.
She was so pale, she looked like she might collapse at any moment.
‘So, it was a trashy banquet after all.’
Thinking he never wanted to attend such a banquet again, Ren repeated his offer.
“Since I’ve already been rude, may I at least retrieve the ball?”
“Oh my?”
The first princess, who looked about Ren’s age, intervened again.
“This is a game for girls. A true gentleman doesn’t interfere in ladies’ play.”
Just as the surrounding glances swept over Ren, smirking,
the nausea surged again, and as he gritted his teeth, something strange happened.
“Eek!”
The first princess, who had been standing right in front of Ren, floated into the air.
“W-what are you doing?! Y-you’re a mage?”
As the golden-eyed princess interrogated him, Ren simultaneously caught his breath.
‘Did I do this?’
It hadn’t even occurred to him that he might be the cause.
But the moment he averted his gaze, the floating princess plummeted down into the grassy field.
“Kyaaah!”
Ren couldn’t pay attention to the princess’s scream.
Suddenly, his vision became clear.
The wind around him, the surprise and fear of the watching children, all felt vividly tangible.
He experimentally focused on the ball instead of the princess.
Then, the bowling ball stuck in the mud shot up into the sky and fell down onto the princess’s head at a terrifying speed.
—Thud!
The mud caked on the ball splattered messily in all directions.
“Ahh! You, you…!”
Thus, his ill-fated connection with Princess Jenais began in such a spectacular fashion.
“Your Highness, what is the matter?”
The guards, having heard the commotion, came running.
Amidst that chaos, the most unfair thing was that the youngest princess, to whom Ren hadn’t even spoken a word, was the first to faint and collapse.
The pink dress he had wanted to protect was now a miserable, muddy color.
“Reni, what on earth have you done?”
After that, Ren was severely scolded by his mother, but the headache that had plagued him vanished completely from that day on.
The Emperor, a staunch meritocrat, replaced all punishment by immediately enrolling him in the Magic Tower. Ren no longer had to attend unwanted banquets or study the seven subjects.
Because he was recognized as the Empire’s youngest mage.
“No, I didn’t know. Are you doubting me now, Lou
I gloomily pondered the words Ren had left behind.
But if he truly hadn’t known, wouldn’t Ren have scolded me, saying my speculation about the demonic sword was absurd?
Instead of denying my words, Ren had comforted me.
‘And he’s not even normally that kind-hearted….’
So, even if he was a character I had set as a minor role, everyone here had their own lives and personalities.
‘I just didn’t know about them.’
And judging by the diary entries revealed over the past few days, Ren was far from kind-hearted; he had a peculiar personality.
‘No wonder Louise wrote a page full of curses about Ren every day she had ‘Basic Arithmetic’ class.’
Come to think of it, because he had shown up so suddenly early in the morning, I hadn’t checked the diary yet.
While Pippy was away giving orders for breakfast preparations, I quickly opened the diary.
Placing my finger on the pattern, a new diary entry was revealed.
The Magic Tower Lord’s eccentric behavior knows no end.
For some reason, since last time, he’s been looking at me instead of the professor during class, and it’s driving me crazy.
Then today, in the middle of class, he suddenly asked:
“You, by any chance, are you the imperial family’s little runt?”
He’s been sitting next to me for two weeks now, and only just realized my existence.
I let out an involuntary sigh.
I could almost hear Louise’s agonized groan, ‘I’m a member of the imperial family too!’
Before I could even feel embarrassed, he added:
“You’re already old enough to be at the Academy?”
So, the Magic Tower Lord, even after learning I was imperial, continued to use informal speech with me.
“You, don’t you know me?”
I think I was so flustered I used formal speech by mistake.
“I know you.”
The Magic Tower Lord continued his brazen informal speech.
“Yeah? Who am I?”
“You are the Empire’s Magic Tower Lord, Ren Daphte.”
At my stupidly formal reply, the Magic Tower Lord looked disappointed for some reason.
“The Empire’s Magic Tower Lord, Ren Daphte….”
He repeated his own name, known by everyone in the empire, and smiled wryly.
“Right, I’m Ren. Talking to you, little one, isn’t as hard as I thought it would be.”
I could barely understand anything he said after that.
I just felt keenly aware that I was an imperial family member whom everyone found incredibly easy to push around.
I read the diary entry two or three times over and realized.
‘It seems Ren knew about Louise from the very beginning.’
Did he know about the demonic sword back then too?
That same dawn, Rurik had a restless night.
“But now that we’ve taken the entire upper reaches of the Dunèz River, the plains of Whitnil are looking tempting.”
The Empress, speaking so nonchalantly.
“If our youngest were to get married, Rurik would be unbearably lonely.”
The Crown Prince, chiming in so immaturely.
The unsettling matters that had to be shelved because Louise collapsed kept grating on his nerves.
There was no reason to discuss war with those who didn’t know the smell of death and the bitter emptiness, but he wasn’t magnanimous enough to sleep soundly after hearing such words.
“My son, spread the name of Brentani.”
When he wore the commander’s armband at the age of seventeen, his father, the Emperor, had said those words to Rurik.
Rurik was happy that he won that war.
It felt like he, who had been incomplete, finally fully possessed the name ‘Brentani’ for the first time.
By the time he was victorious at nineteen and twenty-two, he no longer vomited at the sight of blood.
Whether it was disgust or something else, his joy diminished.
The name felt heavy.
At twenty-four, the Emperor’s goal, ordering yet another war, seemed difficult to achieve.
But his father had added:
“This is the last one. When you return, you must start a family too.”
When had it started? Looking down at his hands, his vision was tinged with red.
Despite that, dreaming of peacefully building a family like others felt strangely new.
But there was someone he wanted to protect.
‘Louise.’
The nobles praised him to his face but whispered behind his back, calling him a warmonger.
He didn’t know why they attached such a derogatory term to him, separately from the one who gave the orders, but regardless.
However, he couldn’t give up on his only younger sister, from whom he had grown distant while living as a warmonger.
“If our youngest were to get married, Ryurik would be unbearably lonely.”
If His Highness Crown Prince Hart wished for him to roam the battlefields on his behalf for the rest of his life, as he had until now, then he should not have spoken Louise’s name so carelessly.
