RPL 19

Chapter 19

‘I might have misread the emotional line, but…’

Whether it was pity or love, Yunid never left Reijina’s side, and Reijina began to use Yunid—the heir of a prestigious ducal house—to take revenge on everyone who had broken her and to become emperor.

‘Can that relationship really be called a romantic one?’

Was it even right to call Yunid the male protagonist?

Near the ending, Reijina would come to regret and reflect, and their hearts would fully connect.

“……”

I stared blankly at Yunid’s face, which still retained traces of childhood.

It would never happen, but if I ever decided I wanted to become emperor—

I would use this existence first. Exactly the way Reijina had.

‘Because that’s how the novel progresses. Using this child is part of the method to become emperor.’

But I didn’t want to do that.

Even if I did set my mind on becoming emperor, I didn’t want to use Yunid in that way.

‘That’s why the moment I sensed even a hint that Yunid might pity me, I hurriedly put distance between us…’

But simply keeping my distance hadn’t been enough.

Not when Yunid had come looking for me himself and said he was worried.

“Why are you worried about me?”

Having sorted out my thoughts, I snapped sharply at Yunid.

“Are you a pushover? You’re still worrying about me even after I tricked you?”

“…Is it strange to worry about someone?”

Yunid looked at me with deeply pitying eyes.

As if I, who didn’t even understand the feeling of worry, had become even more pitiable.

“Hey.”

I pushed aside the urge to go crazy and opened my mouth.

I had to make him thoroughly sick of me so he would never pity me again.

And if that made him never want to see me again—

That was fine.

‘No, it would actually be better.’

I raised my voice.

“Do I look ridiculous to you? Pitiful?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what? What is it?! Is it fascinating that a princess lives like this? Did you come to gawk and hand out some charity pity while you were at it?”

At my words that thoroughly degraded his kind intentions, Yunid furrowed his brow.

“Why do you only think of it so cynically? You look like you’re in a lot of pain right now and like you need help. That’s why I asked. Is that really something to react this strongly against?”

“Ah, so a worthless princess like me is supposed to be overwhelmed with gratitude for the merciful concern of a great young lord?”

I let out a loud “Ha!” to cut him off, then quickly continued.

“Who asked for it? That cheap pity of yours that you hand out even to the person who tricked you—who wanted that?”

“……”

“I never asked for it, so if you pity me, am I supposed to gratefully accept it? Huh?”

And I poked his shoulder with my index finger.

“Don’t give me your half-assed pity. It’s annoying.”

The moment I finished speaking, I turned my back and hurried down the stairs.

*Don’t grab me. Don’t grab me. I’ll pay you—just don’t grab me!*

I was truly grateful to those children.

The fact that they had come looking for me was merely part of the novel’s plot progression, and strictly speaking, they had only been used by the emperor.

But I was still grateful. Because they had come to me when I was on the verge of going mad and given me hope.

That was why.

That was why someone who had thought she would do anything as long as she could get out had ended up feeling guilty toward Kiseira.

And why she had spoken so harshly to Yunid, knowing it would hurt him, just so he would never get involved with her—for the sake of his future.

*My heart is pounding.*

Fortunately, Yunid didn’t stop me until I reached the room.

‘I seem to be playing the role of a complete bastard a little too well without meaning to.’

Talking back so rudely to the heir of a ducal house. Unnecessarily excellent performance.

I had deliberately spoken even more harshly because this wasn’t something that could be handled just for the moment.

“Hah.”

The moment I let out a sigh of relief, my stomach churned and I threw up.

Of course I didn’t have the energy to clean it up, and without even thinking of rinsing my mouth, I lay down on the sofa.

“This is filthy hard.”

I covered my eyes with my arm and let out a laugh.

Every single day was so excessively eventful that the motion sickness wouldn’t stop.

***

A bolt from the blue.

That was exactly how Yunid felt as he walked toward the secret passage Kiseira had told him about.

“Why are you here?”

Walking with a troubled heart, Yunid stopped when he spotted Kiseira squatting in the middle of the secret passage.

“Yunid.”

Kiseira lifted her head and looked at him.

“That liar is a bad kid. She’s a kid who deserves to be punished.”

But… the rest of her words trailed off, and her red eyes were full of hesitation.

No matter how much of a lying bad kid she was, no matter how much she deserved to be scolded—

Did she really deserve to be locked up in a place like that?

That place had been far too terrible. Even stepping foot in it for a moment had been unbearable.

“Why… why was she locked up there? What worse things did she do?”

Kiseira asked the question because she wanted to find justification for her own actions—for having put someone, no matter how much she disliked them, into that horrible place.

Yunid hesitated for a moment, then soon opened his mouth.

Unlike before, it didn’t seem like she would cause a major incident even if he told her now.

“She’s a princess. Princess Reijina.”

“What? A princess?”

Kiseira’s eyes widened like a startled rabbit’s.

“She’s the daughter of the previous empress, Lady Iellie. When Lady Iellie was executed for treason, she received a sentence of confinement.”

Kiseira rolled her eyes this way and that as if she didn’t understand Yunid’s words, then opened her mouth.

“So her mom did something bad, and that’s why she got locked up?”

That was the conclusion Kiseira reached after hearing Yunid’s rough explanation.

Kiseira broke into the uniquely cute smile of a child.

“What. So she got locked up because she deserved it? And on top of that she lied to me!”

Her words were thick with relief.

“She knew she was in the wrong, so she obediently went back in.”

Kiseira seemed to have gained the conviction from Yunid’s words that there was nothing wrong with hating Reijina.

She had obtained the justification she had wanted.

“Well… I’m not so sure.”

“Huh? Why? If you do something bad, it’s natural to get punished.”

“She’s not the one who’s bad.”

“You said her mom did something wrong. Then she should be punished too.”

Yunid sat down next to Kiseira and let out a short sigh.

“Kise, what if you…”

He rolled his thoughts around looking for an appropriate analogy and quickly found a good one.

“Let’s say you became an adult and entered a dance floor for the first time.”

Kiseira pouted.

Yunid had chosen this analogy because he knew Kiseira’s dancing skill.

What great dancing skill could a child have? But even taking that into account, Kiseira was a bit serious.

“And then you accidentally fell.”

Kiseira’s face went pale.

“No! No matter how bad I am at dancing, there’s no way I’d still be bad at it even after becoming an adult!”

“I said what if. It’s a hypothetical. Anyway, that happened. And then people started blaming Her Majesty the Empress.”

Yunid met Kiseira’s eyes.

“They said the empress was the one at fault for raising her daughter that way. That the empress was bad.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

Kiseira shot up from her seat.

“F-falling was my fault, not Mom’s! Mom didn’t do anything wrong. I was the one who made a mistake!”

“It’s the same.”

“The same…?”

“The previous empress committed the crime. She was executed as punishment for it. But that girl was locked up in there just because she was her daughter.”

Kiseira blinked a few times. Then she sank back down as if her strength had left her.

“She might have helped her mom plot something bad.”

“At the time she was only five or six years old, I think.”

What was I like when I was five? Kiseira fell into thought.

At five she had been a complete child. The age when she went to sleep hugging a teddy bear or a rabbit doll.

She didn’t want to admit it because it was embarrassing, but she had even wet the bed.

‘There’s no way a five-year-old could do something that bad.’

Kiseira pressed her lips tightly together and fixed her gaze on the floor of the passage for a long time.

“Yunid.”

“What.”

Kiseira was the one who spoke first.

“How long did she live in there?”

“I heard it was several years. I don’t know the exact details.”

Kiseira drew up her knees and hugged them.

“I… I, you know.”

“Yeah. I’m listening.”

“I don’t think I could live in there.”

Kiseira recalled that room.

“Not for a year, no, not even for a month, a day, an hour, a minute, a second. I don’t think I could live in that room.”

In that pitch-black, dark space there had been a smell. A musty smell she had never encountered in her life.

The dirty thing the lying fairy had lifted up had made an unpleasant sound.

The bugs swarming over the blackened bread-like object had been not just disgusting but repulsive.

At Kiseira’s words, Yunid faintly furrowed his still-immature brow.

“If I had been locked up, I… I…”

Kiseira trailed off, but both Yunid and Kiseira knew what the rest of the sentence was.

*If it were me, I would have done even worse things to get out of there somehow. I would rather have died.*

And both of them thought about just how far they would go—what severe acts they would commit—in exchange for getting out of that room.

Of course, the pictures they painted differed clearly due to the differences in their imagination and experience.

But they were imagining in the same vein. And they reached the same conclusion.

‘The lies that girl told us… weren’t they actually quite mild? I might have done even worse things to get out of there. Just lies…’

Just that much.

“I’m going.”

Kiseira shot up from her seat.

‘I shouldn’t have seen it. I shouldn’t have gone looking for her. If I hadn’t, I could have just hated her to my heart’s content…’

Because of that liar she had been scolded by her mother and been hated. So that liar was an existence she was supposed to hate.

She hated herself for feeling pity toward such an existence.

‘But…’

Did she really have to hate that pitiful child?

‘And she’s family…’

If Yunid’s words were true, that child was her older sister. Even if the person who gave birth to them was different.

A frightening mother. A father who was always busy and whom she rarely met.

Because she had parents like that, Kiseira was instead obsessed with the relationship called “family.”

If even she didn’t cling to it, it felt like the precious fence called “family” would shatter into pieces.

That was why, the moment she recognized that Reijina was family, it was only natural that the hostility Kiseira felt toward her began to thin.

“So you’re not going to come here anymore?”

As if he knew what she was thinking, Yunid asked from behind her.

“No! I am going! I’m going to go and make sure she can’t get out!”

Kiseira, who had flinched for a moment, shook her head vigorously as if trying to shake off her own thoughts.