The Prince Is Dead, So Let’s Start Over Everything Again! - Chapter 3.1 - 3. The Prince's Hidden Agenda

After concluding the engagement contract with the 3rd Prince, feeling half-cheated, I didn’t see him for a while.

It wasn’t just the Count and Countess Lurupel who became incredibly busy due to the suddenly decided engagement ceremony.

My days also passed in a blur, not knowing how time flew by.

I, who had been thinking of Hariella and the 3rd Prince’s engagement ceremony as casually as the neighbor’s dog’s birthday party, couldn’t help but be flustered.

Combining the number of servants from the Ludbekia Court and the Lurupel Count’s household, it was at least in the hundreds.

I thought with this many people, an eight-year-old child could just loaf around…

But as always with worldly affairs, it wasn’t that easy.

Anyway, three weeks was an impossibly short time to prepare for an engagement ceremony.

It was so bad that a week ago when Anna heard that my engagement ceremony would be held in three weeks, she screamed while scratching her cheeks with her nails.

“What? Three weeks? Three months wouldn’t be enough, and you say three weeks? You’re not joking, are you? Oh, Miss. Please tell me I heard wrong, okay?”

“Unfortunately, your ears are fine, Anna.”

“That can’t be! This is absurd! It must be the devil’s scheme!”

Rather than the devil’s scheme, it was the 3rd Prince’s scheme.

However, saying that would be considered blasphemy, so I kept my mouth shut.

Anna sat crouched in the corner of the room for a while, denying reality.

I just quietly looked down at Anna with sympathetic eyes.

“Three weeks, three weeks… How can we fit a dress in just three weeks? Oh, no, Anna. Don’t think such weak thoughts. You can do it. No, you must do it…”

Anna, who had lost her senses, muttered eerily as if possessed by a ghost.

The content of her monologue was positive, but the tone was tragically gloomy.

Standing opposite Anna and comforting her with clumsy hands, I suddenly noticed something strange in Anna’s monologue.

Dress? What dress?

“Huh? What do you mean by dress? Are you planning to order another dress? Why? We have a mountain of dresses that haven’t even been worn yet?”

Each word I uttered was accompanied by a question mark.

I frowned deeply in puzzlement.

After all, there were plenty of dresses piled up in the dressing room that had been made under the pretext of preparing for the 3rd Prince’s welcome party.

Moreover, many of them had never been worn even once.

Unless the season changed in three weeks, ordering new clothes was a tremendous waste.

However, Anna, upon hearing my words, looked at me with an expression that seemed to say she was dying of frustration.

“But we haven’t made a single dress that matches the violet-blue sapphire!”

Anna suddenly raised her head and grumbled in a sulky voice.

“Sapphire? What sapphire?”

“The one His Highness the Prince gifted… Ah! Perhaps you don’t know yet, Miss?”

“Know what?”

“The custom. In Letitia, there’s a tradition of gifting a jewel the same color as one’s eyes to the other person when getting engaged. The woman wears it as a necklace, and the man as a brooch on the day of the ceremony.”

“Really? What a strange custom.”

“I heard that when the first Emperor proposed to Her Majesty the Empress, he gifted her a blue diamond exactly the same color as Her Majesty’s eyes. It’s a tradition that has continued since then. Isn’t it romantic?”

Anna explained with a dreamy look in her eyes, but I wasn’t particularly moved.

I decided to quickly change the subject before Anna, who loves love stories the most in the world, started to recite the love story of the first Imperial couple.

“So, the 3rd Prince gifted me a sapphire?”

“Yes! They say it’s a rare sapphire with very large stones and a clear violet-blue luster! It must be true since a well-informed maid told me. She said she saw His Highness handing the sapphire to the Countess from afar.”

“Really? When did he give such a thing? He’s quick…”

“During breakfast this morning! It must have been before you arrived at the dining room, Miss.”

“Ah. So that’s why Mom and Dad were in such a good mood?”

I inadvertently solved one nagging question that had been bothering me all along.

But it only made me feel even more rotten.

Right, it’s all about money in the end, isn’t it? Why are these wealthy people so obsessed with jewels…

Even though they weren’t my real parents, I couldn’t understand why I felt disappointed.

“By now, the Countess must have gifted His Highness an emerald too. We need to hurry if we want to finish the crafting within three weeks. …Ah! This won’t do! We need to call a tailor!”

Anna rang the bell in the room to call a servant, then ordered them to bring all the tailors in the domain.

Good heavens.

How many tailors are there in the domain that you’re calling them all?

The servant looked clearly flustered, but rather than impertinently questioning the order, they chose to hurriedly depart to carry out the given task.

“Then, I’ll go see the Countess for a moment! To make a dress that matches the gifted sapphire perfectly, I need to know how the Countess decided to craft the necklace!”

“Alright. Go ahead.”

“Yes! I’ll be back soon!”

Anna greeted me energetically and cheerfully before quickly leaving the room.

It seemed almost unbelievable that she had been so depressed just moments ago.

I decided to do my own task while Anna was out of the room.

My task was something like this: hiding the contract I shared with the 3rd Prince in a secret place in the room.

After wandering around the room looking for a suitable place to hide the contract, I finally decided to hide it between books again this time.

Anna showed no signs of returning for a long time even after I had hidden the contract.

Wondering what to do in the meantime, I decided to take a bath.

I called a servant to draw the bath water. Then I enjoyed a leisurely bath alone after a long time.

When I returned to the room after finishing my bath, hell had broken loose in the room.

The tailors Anna had called were lined up in the room!

The tailors had spread out their designs and fabrics on the floor, waiting for Anna’s inspection.

“Miss! How about this design?”

“…Good.”

“Then, what about this design?”

“…Excellent.”

“Ah! I think this design might be nice too!”

“…Fantastic.”

Anna, who had chosen dozens of designs she liked among them, asked for my opinion several times.

Anna chattered away, holding a piece of paper with a sapphire necklace drawn on it in one hand and a piece of paper with a dress drawn on it in the other, saying this matches better, that matches better.

Of course, I couldn’t tell what was what.

As time passed, more and more tailors arrived. I wished I could just collapse right then and there.