“Come forth, the heir of this family! I am Yerina Frost! The future queen who will bring Evgenia to its knees and make it my vassal!”
DONG DONG DONG!
With a confident demeanor.
As I rushed out, I wasn’t the only one shocked by it.
But I quickly got knocked over by the crowd that rushed in from behind.
By the time I got up, I couldn’t even see in front of me due to the mass of people.
“Are you the prince of Palana?”
“Huh? The Crown Prince? No! I am the King’s eldest daughter!”
“Oh… The First Princess…”
“Where is the one who will be the heir? Hurry and greet your future queen!”
“Hahaha, I’ll guide you inside first, Your Highness. The heir is quite busy…”
The uproar settled down quickly.
The tension released.
And the crowd that had gathered started to gossip and disperse.
“Hey, what’s this? I thought it was the Crown Prince who came.”
“What’s a princess thinking talking about a throne…?”
“Yerina Frost. She’s been acting so erratically that even King Palana has given up on her.”
“Well, the First Prince wouldn’t just show up without any notice like this.”
What a weird girl.
A mentally unstable princess.
Everyone thought so, and so did I.
The Palana royal family is extremely patriarchal.
With the First Prince alive and well as an adult, the chances of the First Princess inheriting the throne are practically zero.
Therefore, although the crown prince’s proclamation is still underway, in private, everyone refers to the First Prince as His Highness.
“Welcome to the Evgenia main house, Your Highness. I understand this is your first visit. Would you like to take a look around?”
“Hmm, sure! It’s a lord’s duty to check out the territory of my future vassals! I’ll wander around while waiting for the heir!”
“We-uh… The heir is quite busy…”
“What? You expect me to just sit around doing nothing while the future queen is here?”
“Uh, I’ll inform her. This here is the garden…”
Everyone treated the princess perfunctorily.
Nobody seemed to treat her with genuine respect.
Another crazy act from the mad princess.
Just a minor annoyance to be dealt with.
That’s all anyone thought.
I also thought she was just a poor girl who was somewhat pitiful.
Someone to whom I had no ties, just a fleeting connection.
No, I didn’t even think it was a connection.
“What are you doing over there…?”
“Huh?”
Before I found the princess in the forbidden library.
The maid who was supposed to guide her had vanished, and she was browsing through books in the library freely, with no attendants or guards around her.
“You’ve been caught! What’s your name?!”
“Um, Alicia…”
“Alicia, huh. By the fact you can’t even say your last name, it looks like you’re nothing more than a leftover of this family.”
“Ugh…”
“But I promise you this: If you help me here, when I become queen and subjugate Evgenia, I will reward you properly.”
“What…?”
While the princess was talking grandly, the task she gave me was none other than to act as lookout.
She wanted me to check if someone was coming or not.
She said if I kept watch for her, she would help me in the future, but…
I couldn’t believe such an outlandish claim.
I was just hanging around out of boredom, with nowhere else to go or nothing else to do.
“I guess the maid got annoyed and left me hanging…”
How sad.
Even though it wasn’t in my place to say so, I thought that.
Even though she was a princess, look at this treatment.
The fact that Evgenia could commit such a faux pas meant that even the royal family discarded her and paid her no mind.
Nobody showed interest in her; she was just being neglected.
Like an invisible person.
I looked at the princess.
I thought we resembled each other.
I found myself within her appearance.
“I found it, the forbidden grimoire! There was an order to burn it all. I’ve gathered a weakness.”
“Huh…?”
With a CLANK CLANK, the princess unlocked the lock and found the concealed book.
I was shocked and speechless as she replaced the book and locked it back up.
She smiled with satisfaction and said.
“Everyone treats me like a madwoman and looks down on me, just like a foolish child. If I take advantage of that, revealing my family’s shame would be possible. Finding a forbidden grimoire is trivial, but I’ve also uncovered more dangerous weaknesses in other families. It was only possible because nobody cared about me.”
“…”
Saying to keep it a secret, she put her finger to her lips with a smile.
I was left at a loss for words.
It was my misunderstanding.
The princess and I were not similar at all.
Completely different.
While I had been escaping the reality of being discarded and treated like an invisible person.
The princess was actively utilizing it.
With nothing at all to her name.
She was gathering political weapons by taking advantage of people’s disregard.
The talk about her being the future queen was not a fanciful notion.
She was serious.
The princess had been abandoned by the royal family, and all she had was nothing.
Struggling tooth and nail to rise and become a queen.
While acting like a fool and a madwoman.
“Is there anything more I can do?”
“Are you claiming to be my subject?”
“Yeah! Uh, no! Yes! I-I pledge my loyalty! Is that right?”
HUH HUH HUH! “That’s enough! Your sincerity was received!”
That day, I swore my loyalty to my sister.
I vowed to make her the queen of Palana.
And at the same time.
I made up my mind to stand up on my own.
To walk on my own and to forge ahead.
It was courage I gained from my sister.
Exactly three years later.
I succeeded in entering the Magic Tower after stealing my siblings’ books and practicing wind magic through sneaky means.
And my sister was to be crowned the Crown Princess, surpassing the First Prince to take the throne.
Helping and supporting each other.
We achieved great things from our respective positions.
To each other, my sister and I were the most precious and trustworthy individuals.
Until a few days ago.
“What’s your deal? Speak clearly. You didn’t mention going to Elvenguard. How do these elders recognize your face?”
“…”
At the moment my lies were caught.
My eyelids twitched nervously, and it felt like my breath had stopped, making it hard to speak properly.
But I wasn’t too worried.
The reason I hid Yoo Jin was all for my sister.
For Palana.
And for the greater good.
I thought my sister would understand.
I thought she would trust me.
But that was my misunderstanding.
“Ah, so that’s how it is. All your reports to me were lies… I get it. I’ve finished up all my business in Elvenguard. Let’s go back.”
“Sister?”
“We’ll first deal with Evgenia. Evgenia will be designated as a traitor’s family, and all those from Evgenia will be purged. Ah, right. You hated Evgenia anyway? Then it doesn’t matter what happens to Evgenia, right?”
“Uh, Sister! I’m sorry. I-I made a mistake…”
“Did you know? Did you know and took my man from me?”
“Uh, no… That’s not…”
“No need to explain. Once we return to Palana, you’ll confess everything in the torture chamber.”
“…!”
I was the one who didn’t understand.
I didn’t realize my sister’s feelings for Yoo Jin were to this extent.
I thought it was just a naive crush.
That was all my overestimation.
My sister was willing to tear down the close family and trample on the nation just to find Yoo Jin.
Or maybe she was prepared to sacrifice everything of Palana.
How had I lived so closely to her, yet never understood this aspect?
Just like that, I was branded as a traitor in an instant.
The extinction of Evgenia was sealed.
As I was making my way back to Palana, I successfully escaped through a gap in security, erasing my traces over several days to finally reach the Clockwork City.
With all that I had lost.
My lord’s trust.
My status in the family.
All of it gone.
.
.
.
After Alicia finished her story, silence filled the lounge for a moment.
I contemplated whether I should say something or not, nervously licking my lips.
Isn’t this all self-caused?
In the end, she did betray.
She disobeyed her lord’s orders and got caught.
Regardless of how their relationship had built up until now, it was only natural that it got shattered.
But it can’t be seen so simply.
Some might think so, but…
It’s true that I was partly responsible for this mess too.
From Alicia’s perspective, disobeying an order was the best course of action.
Alicia had been a loyal retainer to Yerina since the days when she was a mere leftover of the royal family.
Thus, having spent so much time together, there was likely a lot of emotional exchange.
So, Alicia might have noticed.
At some point, Yerina had changed.
Seeing Yerina with her memories from a previous life, she probably had no choice but to judge her as crazy.
After all, it was like a romantic movie that only showed the part where someone goes insane without any build-up.
Of course, it would make sense to consider Yerina mad.
As a loyal retainer, when a master had lost it, disregarding the nation and only searching for a guy she had never met, what should a loyal retainer do?
If she was a treacherous person, she would obediently follow the orders without question.
But for Alicia, she had no choice but to keep the fact that she had found me hidden and focus on bringing back Yerina to normal.
“In the end, wasn’t it your own doing? The fact that you betrayed your master is true. Even monsters don’t easily break their loyalty.”
“Hey…”
In the end, the words I had swallowed were spit out by the centipede girl instead.
When I tried to stop the centipede girl, she looked at me strangely.
She didn’t know that I was the one who destroyed Yerina by regressing.
It seems I need to clean this up.
“I was foolish.”
“No, I’m sorry. If I’d explained my relationship with Yerina in more detail—”
“I’ve sinned because I coveted my sister’s man—”
“Huh?”
“Uh?”
Alicia’s lips, which had been moving, suddenly froze.
As if she realized her slip of the tongue, she looked at me with trembling eyes.
You coveted me?
No, I’ve been defending her in my mind until just now.
Suddenly, she just pulled my defense away.
What does that make me?
“Hey! Who are you coveting? I’m definitely betrayed, right?”
“N-no! I misspoke! My true feelings slipped out by mistake!”
This girl is completely nuts.
I thought Alicia was mistakenly dismissed as a victim of Yerina’s hysteria, but now I see she also had plenty of responsibility.
“You’re guilty, aren’t ya? I didn’t know you were looking at me like that. Where exactly did you fall for me? When I was squeezing lemonade?”
“Excuse me?! It’s a misunderstanding!”
“What’s misunderstood?”
“Um, well! It’s not like I’ve fallen for you yet! I do feel some masculine charm from you! But that’s something any female would feel naturally! That and my loyalty to my sister are separate! I’ve never thought I’d push my sister away and monopolize you!”
“…”
What is this logic?
So, it’s like saying you drank but didn’t drive afterward?
Just then, as I was becoming dizzy and struggling to gather my thoughts, Alicia said another embarrassing comment with a flushed face.
“Don’t misunderstand! Just because I felt charm from you doesn’t mean I like you! Just because I get suddenly turned on walking down the street doesn’t mean it’s love! It’s the same principle! I guess human folks often confuse desire with love? Hmph! How absurd!”
“…”
Alicia, her face all red, fanned herself repeatedly.
I was so confused that I couldn’t arrange my thoughts.
So, just now, I definitely heard “I think you’re super hot,” right?
Being boldly sexually harassed, I doubted if this could even be considered sexual harassment and was utterly speechless.
Is this how rabbit demihumans talk?
Alicia was still flushed and huffing with excitement.
A rabbit demihuman without a libido suppressor is indeed this direct.
It’s powerful.
So powerful.
No wonder rabbit demihumans top the charts in reproduction and marriage rates worldwide.
