LSK 15

Chapter 15

“Hey, wake up.”

The moment I opened my eyes, I met the Crown Prince’s gaze. He was resting his chin on his hand at an angle and staring at me as if he were observing me.

My eyes were treated to a beautiful sight as soon as I woke up. His face was almost excessively sparkling, to the point that it felt overwhelming so early in the morning.

“Wake up quickly. We should get going soon.”

I rubbed my eyes and naturally asked the Crown Prince,

“When did you wake up?”

“Three hours ago.”

“What? You should have woken me up. What have you been doing all this time?”

We needed to hurry and go subjugate the non-human, but because of me, who had fallen into a deep sleep without realizing it, we had already wasted three hours.

When I asked him with a face full of guilt, the Crown Prince reacted as if he were somehow embarrassed.

He slightly avoided my eyes and said,

“Just…… stayed here.”

“……?”

He had spent three hours simply staying in a cave where the only things besides himself were me and a pile of fallen leaves.

“Anyway! Hurry up and get yourself together and come out!”

After answering like that, he suddenly stood up and walked out of the cave with long strides.

What was wrong with him? I really could not understand why he was angry again.

The side of his face that I saw just before he turned away was red.

Was he angry because I had slept too much?

He did not seem like such a narrow-minded person.

I suddenly lowered my gaze and saw that the bed of fallen leaves where the Crown Prince had been sitting until just moments ago was deeply pressed down.

It looked like he had been sitting there for quite a long time.

……No way.

Just because our bodies had changed, it was not as if I had suddenly become a narcissist. What fun would there be in staring at the sleeping face of a woman he hated?

If anything, he would be better off looking at his own reflection in the lake.

After convincing myself of that, I decided not to think any further about what the Crown Prince had been doing during the three hours I was asleep.

When I stepped outside the cave, I saw the Crown Prince standing there as if nothing had happened. He was looking down the cliff with an expression that made it impossible to tell what he was thinking.

I looked around the surroundings once and then spoke to him.

“But where are we supposed to go? We’re in the middle of the forest, so there’s no way to know where our companions are.”

“I put a tracking spell on that non-human. Since it was injured, it probably returned to its nest. If it dies, the spell will automatically disappear. It was seriously injured, so it would not be strange if it died at any moment. So we’ll join up with the others later and chase it like this for now.”

I politely nodded and listened to the Crown Prince, but then I found a huge flaw in what he had said and suddenly froze.

“Then what should I do?”

“Didn’t you hear me? We’re going to chase it like this.”

“…….”

He frowned slightly as if telling me not to ask twice.

I quickly thought about my shortcomings, meaning the reasons I could not follow the Crown Prince, and explained them in a way he could understand.

“I don’t have any abilities, so I won’t be of any help at all. On top of that, I’m injured, so I’ll only get in your way. It would be better if I just went somewhere safe—”

“Where in this world is safer than beside me?”

“…….”

At his confident words, I swallowed back the words I had been about to say.

It was a little annoying, but what the Crown Prince said was definitely true.

If I stayed alone in the middle of the Ater Forest, which had turned into a den of non-humans, I would inevitably be attacked by another non-human.

Besides, we had not confirmed the location of the people from Distian, so ironically, the safest choice was to follow the Crown Prince into the den of the non-human.

I sighed and followed behind the Crown Prince, who was looking at me as if asking why I was not coming.

For a long time, I followed him silently from about two steps behind. Then, suddenly, he spoke to me first.

“……I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“For hurting your shoulder…… I didn’t know it would turn out like that.”

“It’s okay.”

I answered casually, as if wondering why he was apologizing over something like that, but the Crown Prince’s brow furrowed.

His steps, which had been moving forward, suddenly stopped.

It seemed my reaction had once again offended the Crown Prince.

He glared at me disapprovingly and spoke as if scolding me.

“I’m sincerely apologizing to you. Don’t just brush it off so lightly. In the first place, you……!”

I had felt this for a while, but this Crown Prince really seemed to have a very short fuse. According to how he was described in the novel, he was supposed to be the cool and level-headed type.

Seeing signs that his long lecture was about to begin again, I deliberately changed the subject.

“Aren’t you hungry? Those fruits over there look like they might be edible.”

Perhaps I had changed the subject too obviously, because the Crown Prince’s face stiffened. He stared at me with an incredulous expression for a while before irritably walking away.

Looking in the direction the Crown Prince was walking, it seemed that even though he was grumbling, he was going to pick the fruit from the tree I had just pointed at.

Just as I thought he was too short to reach the fruit, the Crown Prince kicked the tree irritably as if taking out his frustration on it.

The impact caused the fruit to come tumbling down onto the ground.

I stared blankly at the sight.

The fruit rolled across the ground and came to a stop right in front of me.

“Eat.”

“……Thank you.”

I carefully picked one up and put it into my mouth.

He was a person whose kindness—or lack of kindness—I could never figure out.

I crunched on the apple-like fruit as I followed behind the Crown Prince.

I was walking along mechanically while chewing the fruit without thinking about anything, when the Crown Prince suddenly stopped.

I ended up bumping into his back.

“Why did you stop?”

The Crown Prince turned around and pointed at something with his chin.

I narrowed my eyes and looked where he was pointing, but all I could see was the same dense forest we had been passing through until now. There was nothing I could see.

“……?”

When I tilted my head because I did not understand immediately, he frowned as if dissatisfied.

With an impatient expression, he suddenly reached his hand toward me.

Thinking that something on my body was about to break again, I tensed myself in preparation for the pain that was about to come. Fortunately, however, the Crown Prince stopped his hand before it touched my body.

“…….”

I slowly raised my head and saw the Crown Prince staring at me with eyes filled with very complicated emotions as I stood there completely tense.

I cleared my throat as if nothing had happened and straightened my back again.

Then, pretending to look completely calm, I asked,

“What is it?”

“……Follow me.”

After staring at me for a long time with an expression I could not understand, he lowered his hand and clenched it tightly into a fist.

I followed closely behind him as he had told me to.

After walking for some time, the being the Crown Prince had discovered finally began to come into my sight as well.

“Uh…….”

It was an elf.

A young elf.

I could recognize it immediately even from quite a distance.

Pointed ears, skin as white as if it were glowing, and above all……

Wow. Amazing. I thought the Crown Prince was really pretty too, but this was something else entirely.

“So beautiful…….”

Elves were the most beautiful race in this world.

I stared absentmindedly at the beautiful face of the elf, whose appearance was almost breathtaking.

Even though we were quite far apart, I felt as if I were being captivated by the pheromones coming from the elf’s body.

The Crown Prince seemed to be saying something beside me, scolding me in an annoyed voice, but I could not hear him at all.

In all my life, this was the first time I had ever felt my heart race this much because of another being.

Then, the elf child, who was standing far away, suddenly turned to look this way.

“……!”

When our eyes met, the elf’s eyes widened like a startled rabbit. But soon, they filled with curiosity, and the elf slowly began approaching us.

The elven race was very curious by nature, which often made them targets for other races.

Especially young elves who had not been born long ago had an extraordinary amount of curiosity.

The closer the elf came, the more wildly my heart beat.

And when the elf finally came close enough that I could reach out and touch them, I lost control of myself……

“What are you doing!”

At that moment, the Crown Prince shouted loudly, grabbed my arm, and pulled me away from the child.

I was startled, but apparently he had controlled his strength because it did not hurt.

“Gasp.”

Only when I felt his hand blocking me did I finally come back to my senses.

W-What was I about to do……?

If the Crown Prince had not stopped me, I might have reached out and touched the child without even realizing it, as if I were under a spell.

They really were said to be the most beautiful race in the world. Just having one standing in front of me was enough to make someone like me, who was normally almost indifferent to everything, lose her grip on reason.

I looked at the Crown Prince to thank him for helping me regain control of myself.

But the Crown Prince, whose face I felt as if I had not seen in a long time, was standing there with an expression that looked extremely angry.

He ground his teeth so hard that they almost made a sound and said,

“You really can’t resist anyone as long as they have a pretty face, can you?”

“What?”

“…….”

The Crown Prince questioned me out of nowhere, so I asked back as if I had no idea what he was talking about.

But he only glared at me with a face full of dissatisfaction, breathing angrily, and gave me no answer.