LSK 9

Chapter 9

“Things were better before. Why are you acting like this? Have you decided to change the way you torment me? I feel like I’m going crazy because of you. If you’re going to go crazy, do it alone!”

He finished speaking as if he had been vomiting out his words, then took several rough breaths to calm himself.

The Crown Prince, who had not even broken a sweat after running a hundred laps around the training grounds, was now breathing heavily with his head hanging low.

My shoulders hurt from his tight grip, but I couldn’t say anything.

I had intended to act shamelessly as usual, but I was too overwhelmed by his forcefulness to do so.

……What, what had I done?

I went over my memories, trying to recall whether I had ever tormented the Crown Prince so badly that he would explode like this without my knowing it.

……I don’t know!

The only thing I could think of was that I had said a few slightly harsh words to the Crown Prince as advice. Even that was probably a hundred or a thousand times better than what Lady Celebi usually did.

But seeing the Crown Prince, who was famous for his warm and kind nature, express this much anger, I must have done something wrong without realizing it.

I placed my hand over the Crown Prince’s trembling hand on my shoulder and spoke in a shaking voice.

As soon as my hand touched him, the Crown Prince flinched as if he had touched a disgusting insect.

It was an unconscious reaction.

But he did not forcibly shake off the hand I had taken.

He seemed to understand that the contact had no sexual intention.

“I-I’m sorry…….”

“…….”

I didn’t know why I had to apologize, but I apologized anyway, hoping this situation would end quickly.

However, the Crown Prince said nothing even after my apology, keeping his head lowered.

Do your thinking on your own!

I didn’t want to interrupt his thoughts, but it was becoming difficult to endure.

I spoke in a trembling voice.

“S-Slowly…… I think my bones are going to break…….”

At my words, he was startled and quickly removed his hands from my shoulders.

The Crown Prince seemed to have been so absorbed in his thoughts that he hadn’t even realized he was still holding my shoulders.

The shoulder he had been gripping throbbed with pain.

Even though the Crown Prince was only fourteen years old, his grip strength far exceeded that of an adult man.

The pain was so strong that I almost let out a groan, but I didn’t want to show weakness, so I clenched my teeth and swallowed it.

We stood facing each other in silence for a long time.

Finally, the Crown Prince opened his mouth as if he had made a decision.

“……Do you remember?”

“…….”

“The day you killed someone for the first time.”

There was no emotion on the Crown Prince’s face as he spoke of that day.

His eyes were so cold that it was difficult to believe he was the same person who had been pouring out his anger just moments ago.

Unable to meet those lifeless eyes, I lowered my head without saying anything.

The reason Lady Celebi had committed her first murder……

What was the point of explaining it? Of course, it was because of the Crown Prince.

The victim was the daughter of a count whose name I couldn’t even remember.

Lady Celebi had misunderstood the relationship between the Crown Prince and the girl, then rushed over and pushed her into a lake. That was the whole story.

The incident was covered up through the power of the ducal family and was treated as an accidental death, but it was a major event that caused the Crown Prince to suffer from guilt for the rest of his life.

After realizing her feelings through that incident, Lady Celebi began obsessing over the Crown Prince like a madwoman.

Kidnapping, confinement, violence, drugs…… She used every method she could. Although they all ended in failure.

The Crown Prince let out a deep sigh, as if all the suffering he had endured until now had been concentrated into it, and spoke.

“……Enough. This time, I’ll listen to you. If you die because of me, you’ll probably keep following me even after death.”

The Crown Prince looked extremely exhausted as he said that.

He looked like someone who had given up on something.

“……According to my subordinates, it seems you’ve turned over a new leaf. But I don’t trust you. People don’t change that easily.”

“…….”

“No matter what you do, I will never come to like you.”

Those words sounded less like something he was saying to me and more like a vow he was making to himself.

“…….”

I thought it was incredibly fortunate that the person standing here was me, not Lady Celebi.

Even I, who could be considered a third party, felt my mood sink after hearing those words. If Lady Celebi had heard them from the Crown Prince she loved, she probably wouldn’t have been able to go on living.

I had no idea what I should say in response, so I kept my mouth shut for a long time.

The Crown Prince sighed and began to walk away.

“……I’ll leave you now.”

And so, the Crown Prince disappeared, leaving me alone in the infirmary.

I remained alone in the infirmary after the Crown Prince left and fell into thought.

In this world, there are things that can be forgiven and things that cannot.

What Lady Celebi had done belonged to the latter.

Besides, the Crown Prince was second to none when it came to being just. There was no way he would forgive Lady Celebi, who had gone mad over him and even committed murder.

If the Crown Prince ever came to like Celebi—or rather, me—even a little, it could only be called a miracle.

The promise had been made by slightly forcing his hand, but the Crown Prince still kept even such a small promise.

That didn’t mean our relationship had improved.

If anything, an even colder wind was blowing between us than before.

In the first place, Crown Prince Raven was not cruel enough to harshly push away someone who approached him with goodwill.

But because of what Celebi had done while trying to approach him kindly, a great contradiction seemed to have formed inside the Crown Prince.

Even if he wanted to look at me again, he seemed to think he shouldn’t because of the guilt he felt toward the people who had been sacrificed because of him—or rather, because of Lady Celebi.

Of course, the Crown Prince had no way of knowing that the person inside me was completely different.

And I had no reason to risk being treated as a madwoman by explaining my situation to him in detail.

It would have been easier if I simply acted according to my feelings, but the Crown Prince was too moral for that.

So after that day, I didn’t even pretend to approach the Crown Prince anymore.

Even if he didn’t actually hate me, there was no way I wouldn’t be hurt when he openly treated me with disgust.

No matter how I approached him with a pure heart and no ulterior motives, the Crown Prince was not someone who would believe me at face value. Instead, I would only make him suffer more.

In fact, it would be more accurate to say that I had half given up.

Now that I knew how much he hated me, I was wasting my time in a state of emptiness, thinking, “Whatever happens, happens.”

And so, I simply lived my life indifferently toward the Crown Prince, as if I were neither here nor there.

It was a holiday that had come around after quite some time.

Because so many things had happened, I somehow felt that I needed to make the most of this particular holiday.

I left the house early in the morning, avoiding the servants’ eyes.

As a rule, it seemed that nobles always had two or three servants accompanying them when they went out, but I disliked having people around because I preferred being alone.

Instead, I pulled up a hood that covered my face so that I wouldn’t reveal that I was a noble.

First, I planned to visit the tea shop I had often noticed on my way to and from work.

Then I would stop by the bookstore to browse, buy the ingredients I needed for cooking since it had become my job now, and return.

Thinking about that, I walked along excitedly, even humming to myself, which was unlike me.

Then, a loud sound came from somewhere.

I stopped walking and looked in that direction.

A child had been hit by a moving carriage, making a loud noise.

“You damn commoner!”

A man who looked like a nobleman got out of the carriage and began kicking the child lying on the ground. His kicks were filled with irritation.

Judging by the situation, it clearly seemed that the carriage had hit the child first. So why was he getting angry instead?

“…….”

Anyway, I thought, He must be having a hard time doing a noble’s work first thing in the morning.

I began to turn back toward where I had been going.

I was not on the side of justice. If we were talking about personality alone, I was closer to a villain.

I had never killed anyone like Lady Celebi, but I was not the kind of person who couldn’t stand injustice when I saw it, like Crown Prince Raven.

If anything, I found getting involved in things like this annoying.

So I was about to ignore it and turn my head away.

If only the commoner child hadn’t run up to me, grabbed me, and looked up at me as if I were a lifeline of salvation.

“P-Please help me…….”

“…….”

I looked down at those desperate eyes.

By then, the knight who had been guarding the carriage had approached and was looking back and forth between me and the commoner child.

Even with my hood pulled up, my appearance and the silver hair that could be seen at a glance probably didn’t make me look like a commoner.

But I didn’t look like a high-ranking noble either. Unlike the man over there, I had neither a knight nor a servant accompanying me.

The knight looking at me opened his mouth.

“Do you know this child?”

“……This is a child I know. What happened?”

I let out a small sigh inwardly, then answered while hiding the commoner child behind me.

I wasn’t a particularly just person, but I wasn’t so cruel that I could ignore someone after hearing them ask me to save their life.

“Please hand him over to us.”

“Why? If this is about the accident, I’ve been watching the whole time, and it seemed like your side hit him first. Please just let it go if possible.”

“I don’t think that will be possible. The Baron has always been keeping an eye on that commoner child, saying that he feels unpleasant because the child has the same hair color as him.”

“Ah.”

I let out a small exclamation as if I understood.

I see. What a ridiculous excuse.

He probably caused the carriage accident on purpose too.