Fish Don't Know About Water - Chapter 1
PART 1.
Chapter 1. The Prince and the Little Lady
The city was bustling with allied soldiers out for the weekend. Viett Hartmann passed through the noisy crowd and entered a shabby alley. He was standing in front of a bakery, looking up at the overcast sky while smoking a cigarette.
Several defense airships were seen drifting beyond the clouds.
At that moment, he felt a presence a few steps away.
“Is there anyone there?”
A woman was murmuring to herself, clinging to the darkened bakery glass door.
She was a young woman in a nursing assistant uniform. She wore a light blue skirt that reached her ankles, a white apron tied around her waist, and loosely draped a military jacket over her shoulders. She looked like a nursing assistant working in a field hospital camp.
Viett glanced at the woman’s attire with startled eyes. Her messy golden hair was haphazardly pinned up with a pencil, and to top it off, she wore scruffy indoor slippers on her bare white feet.
If she hadn’t been wearing a field hospital nursing uniform, one might have thought she was a crazy homeless person or war refugee sitting on the street.
“Well, I guess I’ll have to wait a bit longer.”
He stared at the woman muttering to herself like a child, as if she were crazy. Despite her seemingly sober appearance, he somehow didn’t feel like getting closer to her. Viett shifted his body away from the woman sitting in front of the bakery and checked his pocket watch.
I should head in soon. He opened his pocket lighter, extinguished his cigarette, and headed towards a nearby tea house.
The interior of the tea house was warm but had only one customer, and there was no sign of a waiter. He made eye contact with a young woman sitting elegantly looking into a hand mirror. She was his fiancée.
“Lionel.”
His fiancée lowered the hand mirror and called out his alias. Then, she glanced around quietly, stood up from her seat, and politely bowed.
“Your Highness.”
Viett approached the table without showing courtesy for her to sit and sat across from her with a sullen expression.
As he sent a questioning look, his fiancée awkwardly cleared her throat and began to avoid his gaze.
“I heard you prefer tea over coffee, so I’ve already ordered it in advance.”
Viett nodded silently and took a sip of tea. The bland cheap scent made his tongue feel bitter and unpleasant.
“In fact…I have something to say to Your Highness, so I dared to be impolite and asked to meet outside the camp.”
Despite finding the tea leaves that come with allied supplies better than nothing, he took another sip while his fiancée got straight to the point with a determined face.
“Our engagement… Can we pretend it never happened?”
“S-sure.”
He replied nonchalantly and set down his teacup. His fiancée looked at him blankly with wide eyes.
“Are you… serious?”
What’s the point of asking if he’s being serious? Especially when she’s the one who demanded that they break up the engagement first. Viett nodded insincerely and placed a few banknotes on the table.
His fiancée stood up and looked at him with a bewildered expression.
“Your Highness, wait a moment.”
It would be roughly the right time if he took this woman to the nurses’ dormitory and then returned to the officers’ quarters. Viett mentally mapped out the overall layout of the special forces camp and left the tea house.
“Your Highness!”
His fiancée’s sudden shout flew towards Viet’s back. He slowly stopped, turned around, and looked back. His fiancée rushed out of the tea house and approached him until she was right in front of him.
“Is that all you have to say?”
“……”
“Where in this world is there a man who, when his fiancée asked to break their engagement, casually says ‘sure’ and quickly leaves?”
He didn’t say ‘sure’ casually but rather slowly and hesitantly. But that didn’t seem so important to this woman.
Moreover, it was not appropriate to attach the rash words ‘casually leave’ to a prince. It seemed like she had forgotten that he shouldn’t be called ‘Your Highness’ here in Costonia.
“I-I told you to…call me L-Lionel…”
Before this woman could continue her whining further, Viett calmly corrected her mistake with sympathetic eyes. Instantly, his fiancée’s face flushed red with embarrassment.
But that was just for a moment. Soon after regaining composure, his fiancée put on her usual arrogant expression.
“Fine. Commander Lionel Coulson. I was foolish enough to forget even the fact that you use an alias here!”
Without responding, Viett removed his tightly buttoned military cap. When his face half-covered by the brim was revealed, his fiancée, who had been staring at him lost her words in surprise.
It seemed like she forgot that she should be angry with him and instead looked at him with an enchanting gaze. The cheeks that had trembled with anger gradually turned red.
“So, what I want to say is…”
Viett looked down at his fiancée who hesitated with compassion in his eyes.
“I…want you, Your Highness.”
The anger that had been bubbling up in the woman just moments ago suddenly subsided.
“It was a lie that I wanted to break the engagement. I said it out of anger without even realizing it.”
His fiancée coughed awkwardly as she spoke.
“I’ve been in Costonia for nearly four months now… And during all this time, you’ve never visited me at the field hospital where I work.”
“……”
“No matter how busy you are with training… Even though you are my fiancé, don’t you think it’s too much that you’ve never shown your face to me?”
Viett stared down at his fiancée.
You’re trying hard.
Her cunning nature was clearly visible, and it looked quite pitiful.
His fiancée wanted fame. Her goal was to become someone like Princess Amelia, who was loved by all the people of Westenia.
Even if her partner was the ‘problem child of the royal family,’ once she became the prince’s wife, she could monopolize the envy of Westenian women.
She probably didn’t anticipate that the Second World War would break out at the same time as the engagement. Viett looked at his fiancée with an even harsher gaze.
“…Please think of it as a foolish complaint on my part, and think about it again, about breaking off the engagement…
“……”
“You know how much I love you, Your Highness.”
Whispering like a plea, his fiancée grabbed Viett’s sleeve. Viett frowned as he stared into her tear-filled eyes.
When Viett was deployed to a distant allied camp, his fiancée bravely volunteered as a nursing assistant and followed him. It didn’t take long for her to be greatly discouraged.
Amidst a situation where she couldn’t even see her fiancé’s face, the danger of bombings grew larger by the day. Working with the healing mages from the Magic Department was more demanding than she could have imagined.
So, on a golden weekend evening, she called him outside the camp to demand to break up the engagement with a pitiful display.
In retrospect, it was a harsh situation. But Viett had no intention of indulging his fiancée’s naive outburst.
“Your Highness. Please respond, just say anything…”
“Th-the love you speak of… there would be nothing as… as trivial as that.”
Hearing his slow words, his fiancée’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Your Highness?”
“Gi… given the circumstances. Let’s proceed with the annulment, and make… make it quick.”
Her pale face gradually turned bluish. The eyes looking up at him were a mixture of shock and contempt.
Viett swallowed a bitter smile, he was already expecting this reaction.
It had been about half a year since their engagement, and they had known each other for even longer. During this time, his fiancée had attempted to converse with Viett many times, but he always remained silent.
Even when he spoke, he only gave short responses like ‘Yes, I understand,’ so it was natural for his fiancée to think he stumbled over his words because he was nervous in front of her.
“Your Highness, why…”
“Don’t worry. I-I will publicly announce that Lady Cecilia r-rejected me.”
Viett turned away, cutting off the woman’s words. At that moment, he locked eyes with someone standing upright in the misty alley corner.
Wasn’t that strange nurse he saw earlier staring blankly in front of the darkened bakery?
The woman seemed even more strange as they stood face to face. She had round, wide green eyes and a somewhat pretty face, but her dreamy expression and strange attire dimmed her beauty.
“Cochrun!”
If his fiancée hadn’t shouted loudly like a scream, Viett would have just passed by the woman.
Cochrun? If it was Cochrun, wasn’t it a count family from Wills? Viett furrowed his brow and turned to look at his fiancée.
“Hello, Cecilia!”
The nurse smiled widely and extended one hand. Viett alternated between looking at her shaking hand and his fiancée. His fiancée’s complexion turned pale enough to faint immediately.
Translator
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ianthe
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