Chapter 5

“Pardon?”

“I mean that because of your neglect of duty, Stella ended up dying.”

Everyone listening to their exchange fell silent. In that silence, Chris’s voice, the only thing unchanged from usual, sent a chill through them all. He was clearly not in his right mind, yet he was covering that madness with the face and voice of calm he had been taught since childhood.

“N-no……!”

The maid trembled like a poplar leaf and collapsed to the floor. No one helped her up. Perhaps everyone was silently placing blame on her. In truth, everyone here was hoping that someone, anyone, would bear the responsibility.

“Th-that…… isn’t the poorhouse also at fault for…… for failing to keep the children clean!”

Now she was sprawling on the floor, blurting out anything. Her broken mind held on to only one thing: she had to survive.

“The poorhouse?”

“Yes!”

At the Crown Prince’s reaction, the maid answered brightly.

“Those children! Th-that ch-children were not kept clean, and also…… also…… the children too! We warned them in advance to be careful, but what about the children who did not listen!”

The most important thing was that she should survive. Chris merely listened quietly to the maid’s desperate struggle. The officials, who had been hearing everything while keeping their heads bowed, slowly raised their eyes at the lengthening silence, and then quickly lowered them again.

The Crown Prince had gone mad. A dangerous warning rang through their minds.

“Come to think of it, as you say, it is everyone’s fault for failing to serve her properly.”

“Y-yes…… yes! Of course.”

For a moment, it seemed as though the maid could see a light of hope.

“So I intend to punish all of them. You will be the first.”

Chris gestured toward the Knights standing behind him.

“What? Your Highness. Your Highness……!”

The Knights dragged away the maid, who had gone utterly blank.

“Crown Prince!”

With her final cry, the door closed, and silence returned. A stillness so complete that not even the sound of swallowing could be heard.

Everyone there understood instinctively. From now on, deaths over this responsibility, a responsibility no one could bear, would continue. But those who did not wish to become part of that death had no choice but to remain silent.

* * *

“Drag them all out!”

The Imperial Knights who had suddenly stormed into the poorhouse dragged out all the teachers who worked there.

“Why are you seizing people so brutally like this!”

Kina stepped in front of them.

“It is by the order of His Highness the Crown Prince. Please step aside.”

“You can’t suddenly do something like this by law……!”

Her body, which had been blocking them with both arms stretched wide, staggered at a single gesture from a knight, and she fell to the ground.

“Miss!”

“Move already!”

Annoyed, a knight shoved her hip with his foot.

The children of the poorhouse looked with frightened eyes at the teachers being dragged away mercilessly. Among them, some children burst into tears. Soon, as if it were contagious, most of the children were crying.

“Kina.”

Devilito, the only one not crying, came up to Kina and grabbed her hand. Yet his eyes were already filled with tears, as though he might cry at any moment.

“It’ll be all right, it’ll be all right.”

Kina pulled Devilito into her arms. It was a spell she was casting upon herself.

* * *

“Don’t come in!”

Bersha threw everything in the room. The maids of the Crown Princess Palace, who had been trying to stop and persuade her, could not even enter and were left standing outside. They themselves found the situation tragic, and they could only imagine how thunderstruck she, the person involved, must feel.

“That kind of law……! Because of such a ridiculous law……!”

The Crown Prince of the Estin Empire was to take as his Crown Princess the daughter of the highest-ranking family. Of course, there was the condition that the age difference had to be within ten years.

At present, there was no young lady in the Dukedom of the Estin Empire. So the opportunity had gone to the daughters of the Marquisates, and according to Chris’s choice, after he had fallen for Stella of the Panny Marquisate, she had been designated as the future Crown Princess.

Therefore, now that Stella was dead, the next Crown Princess was naturally Bersha. She had neither grounds to delay nor grounds to refuse. In the end, regardless of her own will, she was made to move her residence into the Crown Princess Palace.

Bersha buried her face in the pillow and cried. So sorrowfully that even the people outside could hear.

Even with the wedding ahead of her, she had no state of mind to prepare for it, nor did she want to. Even so, it had to be prepared. Unlike Chris, for whom everything was already finished and could proceed as it was, Bersha had to have a wedding dress tailored to her body and have all her things prepared anew.

“Head Maid.”

A maid hurried over to Sheila, who was standing before Bersha’s door unable to go in, and whispered something. At her words, Sheila hurried out of the palace, and then Chris could be seen entering with his escort.

“Your Highness the Crown Prince.”

Chris cast only a brief glance at Sheila, who bent herself quickly in greeting, and went straight toward the room where Bersha was. It was easy to guess why he had come. Many maids were standing outside the door.

“All of you, wait at a distance.”

At Chris’s short command, the maids quickly disappeared. Only after they had all gone did he open the door.

“Don’t come in……!”

Bersha’s throwing of the pillow and her noticing Chris happened at the same time. Her face as she looked at him was a mess from how much she had cried. The pillow she had thrown fell at Chris’s feet.

“So you still have some strength left.”

Chris spoke as usual, but Bersha knew. He was not as usual.

“So are you going to resist more?”

“……What is it?”

Knowing that Chris was carrying an even greater sorrow, Bersha asked in a somewhat softened voice.

“You’re a mess, just like me.”

Chris looked around the room, where things were strewn about in disarray, and sat down on the bed where Bersha was. The smell of alcohol came from him now that he was closer.

“You hate this marriage too, don’t you, Your Highness?”

Bersha clung to his arm.

“There is nothing for me to hate or not hate.”

With someone precious gone, marriage meant nothing at all to him. Being alive itself had no meaning for him. Stella, rising in his mind at every moment, made him want to die.

“Say that you hate it. Say that you’ll choose another woman. You can do that, can’t you?”

Bersha pleaded with pitiful eyes she had never shown before. If another man had seen her like that, he might well have lost his heart to her. But Chris only looked at all of it without feeling.

“The law is the law. You know that can’t be changed.”

“But you can do it, Your Highness. Please?”

Though she knew it was mere whining, she clung to him. There was no other way. She could not imagine marrying a man who was not Raon.

“It would be faster for you to run away instead.”

“Please……!”

The tears that had briefly stopped flowed again.

The situation was such that even the small countries not belonging to the Estin Empire, which had unified the vast land into one, were instead asking to be united under it. In such a world, what was the point of running away? It was obvious she would be caught before long.

“So let’s marry.”

It was surely the sort of thing that should have made one’s heart flutter, and yet it was a proposal that stirred neither the one saying it nor the one hearing it. Suddenly, it seemed that for that very reason, it was the proposal that suited them best.

“And have your love with Raon.”

Still crying and ignoring his proposal, Bersha looked at Chris with startled eyes at the word ‘Raon’.