RPL 9

Chapter 9

The emperor rested both arms on the desk, interlaced his fingers, and propped his chin on top of them.

In that posture he stared at me clearly.

“…….”

His eyes were the same as the countless gazes I had received while walking all the way here.

Condemnation, censure, reproach. And contempt.

In that moment, something inside my head went *snap*—and broke.

“Is that all you have to say?”

At the same time an indescribable emotion surged up, and my mouth opened of its own accord.

I did not know exactly how long I had been in that place. At some point I had lost my mind.

Regina’s hallucination had begun to appear around the time I lost my sanity.

The thought that came to me as I looked at that hallucination was: “How pitiful.”

Until I lost my mind I had reviewed the original story over and over. There was nothing else to do. That place was that kind of place.

That was why. Because I had been a reader. Because I was the only person who had entered Regina’s body and shared even a little of that time of suffering.

Even I, an adult, had collapsed after only a few months of that torment—yet Regina had endured it for years in a child’s body. I felt pity and sorrow for her.

So the moment I saw that man, I became angry.

‘Because no matter the reason, he was the one who threw Regina into that place.’

He had turned his back on Regina when she desperately called for her father, and after that he had never once come to see her.

But I was not the real Regina, so I thought I had no right to be angry at that man.

And yet—

‘Even so, even so, this is not right.’

He should not look at Regina—that pitiful child, his own child—with those eyes, as if he had no idea what he himself had done.

“Is that really all you have to say?”

I glared at the man who was still looking at me with contempt and spat the words out as if chewing them.

“Is that truly all you have to say to your daughter, whom you haven’t seen in years?”

If only he had paid even a little attention—just the tiniest bit—

“To the daughter you locked away with your own hands!”

He would have known what the soldiers bribed by the empress had done to Regina.

He would have known in what state Regina had barely managed to endure.

“Is that all you can say?!”

Without knowing anything.

Without knowing what had finally become of your daughter who entered a coffin of death and endured and endured until she could no longer.

“Look! Look at the state your daughter is in right now!”

I strode right up to the emperor. Then I shoved my face in front of his.

Look clearly at the small, frail, emaciated appearance of your daughter.

Look at the state of your daughter who has grown her hair and nails like a wild animal and is covered in blood!

“Even after seeing this, those are the words that come out of your mouth?”

But the emperor’s face remained as composed as when I first saw him, and at the same time I wanted more than anything to see that face stained with regret.

My lips moved on their own.

“You killed this child’s mother with your own hands—and you don’t even feel sorry?”

For the first time the emperor’s face furrowed, however slightly.

Regina’s mother, the previous empress, had been beheaded for the crime of treason. That was not all. Her head had even been displayed on the city walls.

The one who ordered all of it was that man—the emperor.

“What does the princess not knowing etiquette have to do with that?”

But he asked back in a bored tone, as if he had never furrowed his brow at all.

“Ha!”

Facing him across the desk, I burst out laughing at those words.

My cackling laughter echoed inside the room.

Everything had been a false accusation and a frame-up. The emperor himself had suspected as much.

Even while suspecting that he had been deceived by someone’s scheme and had killed his own wife—this child’s mother—with his own hands, he still acted like that.

‘Huu…….’

My insides twisted.

I abruptly stopped the laughter I had been letting out in desperation, stretched out both arms, and shoved the mountain of documents piled on the desk onto the floor.

“Etiquette? Isn’t that something you show to people?”

Amid the scattering papers I could see the emperor’s crimson eyes.

“Etiquette toward a beast worse than an animal who locked away his own child and turned his back on her? Ha! Etiquette?”

Even at my foul language his crimson eyes remained as calm as the surface of a quiet lake dyed by the sunset.

That only made my rage burn hotter.

“Don’t even think about being treated with respect! You’re nothing to me!”

“These things you have just dropped on the floor……”

At that moment the emperor picked up one of the documents that had fallen and stood. His tone was extremely calm.

“are documents prepared for the lives of the people of this country.”

Speaking in that tone, he looked down at me once more as if censuring, as if condemning me.

I opened my mouth again.

“This thing standing in front of you.”

I smiled and pointed a finger at myself—at Regina.

“is the daughter you abandoned.”

“Do you intend to live only on resentment? How foolish.”

“More than the people written on those documents!”

I shouted as I stomped on and crushed the papers that had fallen in front of me.

“Your daughter was closer!”

I was barefoot.

Before coming here Nife had given me shoes, but while I was wandering around half-dead they had slipped off and been lost. Without even having time to notice, it hurt.

I stamped on the documents with my dirt-covered bare feet as best I could.

“She was suffering closer by.”

Even I, an adult, had not been able to endure the time and the pain in that room.

And a young child had been receiving that pain. For far longer than me—for years.

‘And after throwing that child into suffering, what?’

Documents prepared for the lives of the country’s people?

I glared into the emperor’s crimson eyes.

“Don’t act like a good emperor after killing two people with your own hands. It’s hypocrisy.”

Some emotion flickered across the emperor’s eyes.

Looking at that trace of emotion—whether surprise or displeasure I could not tell—I spat out my final words.

“It’s disgusting.”

Leaving those words behind, I walked out of the room.

Outside, the knight who had brought me here was standing with an anxious face.

Seeing me come out unharmed, he could not hide his surprise.

“Bow.”

The knight’s body jerked.

“I-I don’t recall agreeing to a bet……”

“Bow.”

The man looked around with an extremely aggrieved expression, but no one would meet his eyes.

The fact that I was not being confined again meant my return as a princess—whether this counted as a return was laughable, but in any case that was how it was.

From now on, defying my will would put him in a difficult position.

At least on the surface.

‘Though it seems I’ll be confined again soon.’

When I recalled what I had just done, a laugh escaped me.

Unaware of my situation, the man dropped to one knee in front of me just as he had earlier and lowered his head.

Even then he could not hide his resentful expression.

‘That’s why you shouldn’t have…… ah, could he be on the empress’s side?’

Had he heard through Nife that I had come out, and immediately sent a knight to pursue me?

Had he tried to force me back into that place by force before I could meet the emperor?

Because he knew what the emperor was thinking?

“You.”

Pushing aside the thoughts that kept rising uncontrollably, I raised my hand.

At any moment the emperor might fling the door open and shout, “Confine this one again!”

Before I was confined again I needed to vent the resentment this man had caused me.

*Slap—*

I struck the man’s cheek with my open palm.

“Know your place.”

A face that looked humiliated.

How much could it really hurt for a full-grown adult to be hit by a child—and a weak, sickly one at that?

Even so, being slapped on the cheek was a humiliating thing.

Especially while kneeling helplessly in front of a child far younger than himself.

‘Better than handing over his neck, though.’

A pity. If it were up to me I would have beaten him to a pulp.

‘The empress will take care of him properly anyway.’

Even if I were confined again for having offended the emperor, the fact that this knight had failed to properly carry out the empress’s orders would not change.

Someone like that empress would never leave this knight alone.

I turned away from him and walked out of the palace. It was an escape.

—

* * *

—

I blankly looked around my surroundings.

“Nowhere to go.”

I had run away for fear of being confined again, but the same situation as earlier had repeated itself.

If I had only suppressed my anger and acted according to the original story, I would have been given a residence.

No matter how pitiful she was, it was someone else’s affair—why had I gotten so furiously angry as if it were my own?

‘Maybe…….’

I looked down at the ground and smiled bitterly.

My relationship with my family had not been good.

More precisely, my relationship with my parents. Because of that I had cut ties with them long ago.

Perhaps I had seen the shadow of my own parents in the emperor.

The shadow of parents who do not love their child.

So for a moment I had projected myself onto Regina’s situation.

“Hmm. Or maybe I was just angry?”

I raised my previously bowed head and scratched it.

If the emperor had not confined Regina in the first place, even if I had suddenly possessed Regina I would not have been locked away.

‘By the way, am I really going to be confined again?’

Surely he wouldn’t actually do that?

He only brought me back because he wanted to keep the empress in check.

The emperor had suspected that the previous empress’s treason had been a frame-up.

The person he suspected was Kiseira’s mother—the current empress.

She had entered the imperial family as an imperial consort when sons were scarce and had given birth to Kiseira.

Having a child is an unknown realm beyond human control, so that event must have been mere coincidence.

But she had used Kiseira as a backrest and stirred up a succession struggle in the once-peaceful imperial family.

After that, the previous empress’s treason was revealed. With Regina confined, the woman who had temporarily become the mother of the only imperial grandchild became the empress.

The one who had gained the most from Regina’s mother’s execution.

The one who had raised her voice louder than anyone else in demanding the stripping of Regina’s succession rights.

‘Even without evidence, it was only natural to suspect her.’

Because of that suspicion the emperor had no intention of making Kiseira—the empress’s child—the crown prince.

The reason he had tried to have Regina escape was also for that purpose, in the face of the nobles’ clamor to establish the succession by elevating the current only imperial princess, Kiseira, to crown princess.

To tell the nobles who supported Kiseira—and the empress who controlled them from behind—that Kiseira was not the only imperial princess.

‘But the emperor has no intention of passing the throne to either Kiseira or Regina.’

He planned to have descendants with other imperial consorts and make a clean, uncontroversial imperial grandchild the crown prince.

In other words, Regina was nothing more than a shield to prevent Kiseira from becoming the crown princess while the emperor waited for other descendants.