The Prince Is Dead, So Let’s Start Over Everything Again! - Chapter 2.3

“I sent a marriage proposal to the young Duke Cal-something?”

“Eep! Did I say such a thing? Oh no! I should never utter such disrespectful words!”

Anna covered her mouth with both hands and looked around.

Of course, there was no one in the room except me and Anna.

Nevertheless, Anna rolled her eyes around for a while like a frightened meerkat.

“There’s no one here, Anna.”

“But you never know. They say even walls have ears.”

“Is this story something that needs to be so cautious about?”

To my eyes, not knowing the circumstances, Anna seemed to be making a fuss.

I couldn’t understand why she was hesitating so much, as if the young duke Cal-something was some kind of child-snatching tiger.

Hearing my nonchalant question, Anna raised her eyebrows in doubt.

“Of course! You know that too, don’t you, Miss?”

“No, I don’t know.”

“What? You don’t know?”

“Yeah. Maybe because it happened when I was young, I don’t remember it well.”

To be precise, I didn’t remember because it happened before I entered Hariella’s body, but I couldn’t tell the truth, so I added a little lie.

“You don’t remember?”

“No.”

Anna was confused as she watched me calmly deny it with a straight face.

“That’s strange… How can you not remember when such a big incident happened…?”

“Well, I’m only eight years old. At this age, each day feels like a year.”

“…I suppose that’s true.”

I was prepared to showcase my excellent acting skills to deceive Anna if she didn’t believe me, but the loyal maid Anna didn’t doubt her mistress’s words for long.

Instead of picking at my words further, she repeatedly confirmed if I really had no interest in the young Duke Cal-something.

“I don’t.”

“Really?”

“Of course, really. Don’t you trust me, Anna?”

“…I do. Sigh, alright, I’ll tell you. But you must not tell anyone that I told you this story! Especially not His Grace!”

“Okay. I swear. I’ll even stake my life on it.”

I nodded my head neatly and answered obediently like a good child.

I even staked my life, which Anna liked so much, to increase the credibility of my oath.

“…No. Don’t stake your life.”

Hmm, it seems Anna doesn’t need my life either.

“When you were young, Miss, this is what happened…”

Anyway, the story Anna told me went like this.

It was back when Hariella bla-something Lurupel was just four years old.

Count bla-bla, the lord of a nearby estate to Lurupel, invited Hariella to his mansion. This was because he had a daughter around Hariella’s age.

Leaving her estate for the first time, Hariella couldn’t hide her excitement like a child would.

The young Hariella, who was bold and full of adventurous spirit, ditched the servant who accompanied her and attempted to explore the unfamiliar estate on her own.

Naturally, a pretty and noble-looking child-like Hariella wandering alone was a perfect target for crime.

As Hariella entered a gloomy alley, she found herself in danger of being kidnapped by a suspicious person.

“And right at that moment! The young Duke of Caledonia saved you, Miss!”

“Cal-something did? How? He must have been young too at that time. Oh, did he have a knight with him?”

“What? No. Oh! You don’t remember this either. The young Duke of Caledonia is a prodigy in swordsmanship.”

“…A prodigy in swordsmanship? How old was he? How impressive could a sword wielded by a child be?”

“Well, since he’s exactly three years older than you, Miss, he must have been seven years old then? And by that time, the young Duke of Caledonia had already reached the level of a Sword Expert.”

What on earth is a Sword something?

I frowned at Anna, hearing this unfamiliar term for the first time.

Then Anna chuckled and kindly explained that a swordsman who can emit sword energy is called a Sword Expert.

“Is that impressive?”

“Of course! Many swordsmen go their entire lives without even seeing sword energy. I heard that when the young Duke of Caledonia was four years old, he swung his sword once and caught ten flies!”

This is ridiculous.

Is he some kind of Jumong?

T/n: Jumong was a king and conquerer who built Goguryeo, one of the ancient Three Kingdoms of Korea alongside Baekje and Silla in 37 BCE. He stands out as a heroic figure since his story is a mixture of myth and historical fact.

The more I heard Anna’s explanation, the less I liked this Cal-something young duke whom I’d never even seen.

It was too much of a setup for a child to have.

The young Duke Cal-something in Anna’s story lacked any sense of reality.

Aren’t children supposed to be like the 3rd Prince, with chubby cheeks and crying “Waaah” when you poke them?

“Did he happen to make grenades out of pine cones?”

“What? Gre-gre-nades? What’s that?”

“Never mind, forget it.”

Still, there was one thing I could glean from this.

That was the fact that the young Duke Cal-something was definitely the male protagonist of this novel.

“Thank you, Anna. That was very helpful.”

I felt like I didn’t need to hear the rest of the story.

Hariella, who fell in love at first sight with the male protagonist who saved her, must have sent a marriage proposal to the Cal-something ducal family on her own, and it became a rumor throughout the empire.

I wanted to send Anna away soon and pick up the contract I had thrown on the floor, so I tried to wrap up the story quickly.

“You don’t want to hear more? This is where the real story begins.”

“Huh?”

However, Anna’s following story was too shocking to cut off midway.

“After returning to the mansion, you secretly sent marriage proposals to all the ducal families in the empire without His Grace knowing.”

“What? Not just to the Northern Duke?”

According to Anna, the young Hariella was unfortunately a child who acted faster than she thought.

Instead of pondering over the long and complicated name of the young Duke Cal-something that was hard to remember, she chose to steal the family seal and magic pigeons from Count Lurupel’s study.

Then she wrote letters expressing her desire to be engaged to the young duke who saved her and sent them to all the dukes in the empire.

Hariella even tied red ribbons to the legs of the carrier pigeons.

Red ribbons were rarely used even by the imperial family unless it was for urgent matters like war or treason.

Five carrier pigeons, each carrying a letter with the same content, headed to their designated destinations.

Ten days later, it was only natural that Lurupel County was turned upside down.