chapter 14
Honestly, these female leads always have ridiculously sharp instincts—that’s the problem. Avoiding Aurora’s piercing stare, I shouted,
“Don’t slander me like that. Anyone hearing you would think I’m sneaking off for a romantic rendezvous. I just think he’s suspicious, so I’m going to interrogate him.”
“Then take me with you.”
“That’s not possible.”
The moment I refused flatly, Aurora’s eyes narrowed into sharp triangles.
“As the Saintess who protects this kingdom, I have a duty to eliminate dangerous individuals. You have a chronic weakness for handsome men, so you’re a security risk.”
“But Aurora, there’s something only you can do.”
“What is it?”
Half of what I said was sincere, and the other half was simply because I wanted to shake her off.
“Go to the Altar of Holy Blood and check whether the holy relic is still stable. If the prince is truly a threat to us, the relic should have reacted by now. But there hasn’t been anything unusual about it so far, right?”
“Well...”
“You understand the relic better than I do. I’ll talk to the prince, so you go check on it.”
Aurora hesitated for a long time before finally nodding.
“Fine. But keep your head on straight while talking to him.”
After getting ready, I headed for the greenhouse garden where he was supposedly waiting.
Worried he might be late again, I had taken the initiative and said I would come to him this time. Thanks to that, I found Leonard already seated on the terrace right on time.
He was wearing a silk shirt and a gray suit.
Unlike him, who was dressed casually for a simple tea meeting rather than an official banquet, my outfit was absurdly extravagant.
Leonard stood to pull out a chair for me and remarked with a dumbfounded expression,
“...I suppose Sinkester fashion would be difficult for someone from Blake to understand.”
I had guessed he’d already abandoned any pretense of gentlemanly behavior, but I didn’t expect him to insult me with such dedication.
Unwilling to lose, I returned the favor with an even more carefully crafted comment.
“I heard Blake wasn’t exactly a fashion backwater. Perhaps your understanding of fashion is just exceptionally unique?”
“If you’re going to pick a fight first thing in the morning, have some jasmine tea. It might help calm you down.”
“I’m perfectly calm.”
Really, no matter how much of an imperial prince he was, I was still the princess of the one and only Holy Kingdom on the continent.
The beloved younger sister of the Pope, no less, and the cherished friend of the Saintess.
Far more noble than some sixth prince desperately clawing his way through a succession struggle.
Do you even know who I am?
Granted, that sounded a bit like something an entitled troublemaker would say.
But if a troublemaker doesn’t realize they’re a troublemaker, are they really one?
I dropped heavily into the chair he had pulled out and spoke as bluntly as possible.
“You asked me to help you yesterday, right? I came to give you my answer. It’s no.”
Leonard’s eyes narrowed.
“Even if Sinkester is destined to fall in the future?”
“That’s exactly why I’m refusing. I don’t believe it. You haven’t shown me any evidence, so why should I trust you? I already finished this story. And I finished it perfectly.”
Mm. What a flawless line.
Certain there wasn’t a single flaw in what I’d just said, I elegantly lifted my teacup.
“Still, as fellow reincarnators who ended up in a romance-fantasy world as royalty, I do feel some need for cooperation. You said you want to become Emperor, right? Depending on how you treat me, I might even help—”
“I didn’t transmigrate into a romance fantasy. I transmigrated into a fantasy novel.”
“A fantasy novel?”
Did I hear that right?
Resisting the urge to stick a finger in my ear, I asked again.
“You mean a romance fantasy, right? Unless you’re lying because you’re embarrassed that a man reads romance fantasy novels.”
“Just fantasy. Not modern fantasy. Traditional fan-ta-sy.”
He pronounced each syllable deliberately, making it abundantly clear that the genre he was talking about was not the genre I knew.
I was bewildered.
“B-but I transmigrated into a romance fantasy! The male lead was raised as a slave, grew up with a twisted personality, fell in love with the heroine, treated her horribly, never realized his mistakes, and after the heroine finally couldn’t take it anymore and attempted suicide before running away, he became a wreck consumed by regret until they somehow ended up together. I read that regret-romance story! Five stars out of five!”
Without even pausing to breathe, I rattled off the plot of The Saint Hides Her Divine Power From the Whole World.
That was how memorable and entertaining it had been.
But Leonard merely frowned slightly.
“You don’t need to explain it in that much detail. I roughly know the story already.”
Soon, he began fiddling with the family ring on his little finger.
Maybe it was an unconscious habit.
His gaze never left me.
The dark ring, seemingly carved from obsidian, looked heavy even at a glance.
“The novel I transmigrated into is Song of the Sky, Fire, and Moon. And that damned novel hasn’t even ended yet.”
“Song of the Sky, Fire, and Moon? Weren’t you also transmigrated into The Saint Hides Her Divine Power From the Whole World? And if it’s a different novel, the settings shouldn’t even be the same.”
“I’ll explain it slowly. Listen carefully.”
I nodded and listened to his long explanation.
In summary, this was the situation:
“That’s impossible...”
By the time he finished, my head was throbbing.
“So the romance fantasy I read and the fantasy novel you read were actually part of the same series? And the authors were married?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“And because of a villain from your story, our Sinkester is going to be destroyed?”
“As far as I know.”
What was with that shamelessly casual attitude?
In the end, I had no choice but to leap across the table and grab the stupid fantasy-novel transmigrator by the collar.
“You bastard!! What have you been doing all this time instead of killing the villain?!”
I...
I wrapped everything up for the sake of my perfect retirement.
I thought it was all over.
But what he was saying meant my tragedy wasn’t over yet.
That was completely unfair!
“Do you have any idea how hard I worked for nine years getting rid of all the villains? You can’t even imagine it! So what exactly have you been doing?!”
I was so frustrated and miserable that tears even started to well up.
My reaction seemed to catch him off guard.
Meanwhile, the atmosphere among my knights and maids was growing increasingly dangerous.
We had deliberately brought only a small number of attendants so we could talk privately.
Which meant the people present were those closest to me.
“Princess.”
Leonard grabbed my hand.
“Charlotte!”
Once again, just like last time, he called my name.
In Sinkester, calling someone by their given name without a family name was a sign of affection and familiarity.
The realization snapped me back to my senses.
Flustered, I quickly masked it and slipped my hand from his grasp.
“D-don’t call my name without permission.”
“Fine. Just calm down.”
There were too many eyes watching us for me to keep making a scene.
With a stiff expression, I waved off my guardian knight, Sir Lucas, who was approaching, signaling that everything was fine, and started returning to my seat.
At that moment, Leonard stood up and pulled something from his coat.
“Use this.”
It was a brown plaid handkerchief utterly devoid of any sense of style.
The sort of handkerchief that reminded me of an engineering student...
No, a magic-engineering student.
After staring at it blankly, I snatched it from him and—
HOOONK—
blew my nose.
It wasn’t even enough to count as revenge.
“Fine. Whether I believe you or not, I need to know what this Song of the Sky, Fire, and Moon is about. Tell me everything.”
“...”
At my words, he started touching his ring again.
Rather than handling it carefully, it was more like he was scraping at it.
Though if it really was made of obsidian, there was no way it would actually wear down.
“It’s a long fantasy novel with over five hundred chapters, and it still wasn’t finished even before I transmigrated.”
The story went something like this.
