By the time we finished talking and came out of the café, it was already late afternoon.

Sebelena said she wanted to see more of the festival and ran straight toward the square. Khalid and I exchanged a glance, then followed after her.

An arm-wrestling competition was in full swing in the square.

“......”

Right there, in the middle of a crowd packed with enormous people, the foreign Princess boldly threw down a challenge.

And then...

“Oh my, this is so fun!”

“Urk!”

Thud.

She won.

“The prize money’s pretty nice too!”

“Urk!”

Thud.

She kept winning.

“Really? Again?”

“Urk!”

Thud.

She won so much that the organizer finally couldn’t take it anymore and threw her out.

“Ma’am, please go. We don’t allow the strongest. Didn’t you read the notice over there?”

The man pointed lazily toward the information tent, where a sheet of paper fluttered in the wind.

[ To protect the participants’ mental health, anyone falling into the categories below is strictly forbidden to register.

Heroes and the strongestMeteoric rising talents(Not that it would ever happen) mages ]Oh. Dad, Khalid, and I are all banned side by side, then.

Sebelena smacked her chest in protest.

“But I’m not a hero, not some rising knight prodigy, and not a mage either!”

“Doesn’t matter, you’re still not allowed! You’re killing morale!”

“What is this? No spirit at all.”

Clicking her tongue roughly, the Princess finally climbed down from the platform.

Even so, her arms were full of gold coins by then.

“Princess, you’re incredibly strong.”

I meant that sincerely.

Sebelena looked pleased with herself.

“If you want to survive in the forest, you have to build strength. That’s true of everything!”

“Ooh... a hard-work type...”

Her bronze skin shone healthy under the blazing colors of sunset.

“Princess. Have you ever built a house out of logs? Tied a raft together? Shaved down bars for a cage? Butchered a boar?”

“Wow, that’s amazing. Is that how you get strong?”

“That’s exactly how.”

Sebelena gave a smug little laugh.

A wild, physically powerful beauty...

Honestly, she was kind ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) of my type.

“Wow! I think there’s a play over there! Come on, Nova!”

Sebelena dashed off toward the far side of the square with all the force of a storm. The knight named Nova ran after her with a mournful little wail, staggering under the weight of her mountain of gold coins.

“The Princess really is energetic.”

Watching the two of them disappear into the distance, I muttered it under my breath.

Khalid, who had been keeping an eye on the surroundings, asked quietly,

“What do you think?”

“The Princess?”

“Yeah.”

I started walking in the direction Sebelena had gone and smiled faintly.

“Well... I think she’s still hiding something.”

“You think she’s concealing something?”

“Probably. Something about this still bothers me. I guess you could say the Princess’s purpose doesn’t feel completely clear.”

She wanted to help me because of the second’s request?

Was that really all there was to it?

If that were true, she could’ve just sent an anonymous letter. Or sent someone in her place.

Wouldn’t that have been safer?

Why had she needed to come all the way to Babilon and meet me in person?

Of course, it’s not like I don’t understand how desperate she must be to stop dark magic from reviving. Her own childhood was ruined by dark creatures too.

Khalid turned his head slightly.

“So you’re saying the Princess is an enemy?”

“It’s not that simple either.”

I thought for a moment, then spoke again.

“Do you know how many times she got her title for the King wrong while we were talking earlier?”

“Her title for him? Come to think of it...”

A loaded wagon rattled past us just then. Khalid pressed me deeper toward the inner side of the road as he muttered,

“I don’t think she ever properly called him ‘my father.’”

“Right. And if she went through all the trouble of finding her father, only to end up disappointed instead of happy... that would make sense.”

So what the Princess had said probably wasn’t a complete lie.

The King of Casalia really was helping the Magic Kingdom in secret.

“They say it’s hard to fake unconscious habits like that.”

I knew that better than anyone, considering how long I’d struggled with titles that never came naturally to me either.

“For today, let’s just keep an eye on the Princess.”

I turned to look at Khalid.

“It might actually be a good thing you ended up as her escort. If you stay close to her and watch her, it won’t look strange at all—”

My mouth snapped shut right there.

Huh?

“If you stay close to her and watch her—”

Huh?

“Stay by her side and... wait?”

Why couldn’t I finish that sentence?

“Ruby?”

When I still didn’t continue, Khalid stepped in.

“So what you mean is... you want me to keep watch on the Princess?”

My feet stopped dead.

“What? Do you want something to eat?”

Khalid asked it like nothing was wrong.

Of all places, we happened to be standing near a row of festival food stalls, and the smell was delicious—but for some reason I didn’t feel hungry at all.

What is this feeling?

Quietly, I curled my hand into a fist.

When the silence dragged on, Khalid turned fully toward me and looked down at me in silence.

“Judging by that face... I must’ve done something wrong again.”

“Nnno.”

“There. See? You’re clenching your molars right now.”

Saying my teeth would suffer at this rate, he went and bought me a skewer of seasoned chicken from a nearby stall instead.

To be fair, the Princess is so beautiful the whole world would probably cling to her just out of sheer exhaustion. She has the kind of face that makes you want to stare even if she’s standing still. So if he’s guarding her at close range... he’ll feel it even more, won’t he?

Her eyes? Sharply upswept.

She looked taller than Hazel without even trying, and with that sleek pointed chin and lightly sun-kissed skin, she was overflowing with charm to the point of forming an entire sea.

A beautiful woman with overwhelming grown-up allure...

That was what I had wanted to become too...

“By the way, Ruby. There’s something I’m curious about.”

I was still buried in my own tangled mood when Khalid pressed a spicy skewer into my other hand and asked it.

“Hm?”

“What you said earlier.”

“What did I say?”

“‘It’s hard to fake unconscious behavior like that in the first place.’ You said that.”

“Wow. What is that memory?”

“The way you said it made it sound like something someone told you.”

“Oh, that? Well, obviously...”

I swallowed a bite of skewer and answered.

“Licht. Who else around me would say things like that? He says that’s why he lives paying attention to every last little movement, right down to his fingertips.”

Honestly. I had no idea how someone could live like that.

No matter how you looked at him, he was absolutely the type to become Crown Prince.

“So you two... must’ve gotten pretty close.”

“Well, yeah, I guess we have?”

At that, Khalid lowered his gaze to the ground and pressed his lips into a flat line. He stayed silent for a moment.

“...That’s infuriating.”

“What?”

“It pisses me off.”

“What?”

He had said it through clenched teeth, so I hadn’t heard properly.

I frowned for a second, then held out the other skewer I was holding.

“Here. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but you need one of these too.”

With an expression that looked strangely, deeply aggrieved, Khalid took the skewer from me.

“The seasoned one’s good, right?”

“...Hah.”

“Oh, but that one’s spicy. That’ll really heat you up.”

“......”

Munch. Munch.

Without another word, we walked through the street, chewing our skewers in silence.

*****

“Over here! Over here!”

Sebelena waved at them energetically.

Khalid let out a low sigh, then turned his head.

Under the cloak, he could see Rubian’s eyes shining brightly.

Her cheeks, which used to round out a little more, looked slightly thinner now, though he could not tell whether that was simply because time had passed and she had lost the last of her baby fat.

He wove through the crowd, moved Rubian safely into a clear spot, and only then did Sebelena speak as if she had been waiting for them.

“It’s a play about ancient Babilon mythology. Do you know it?”

“Yes. More or less.”

“They said it’s the story of the war between the Goddess and the first Mage King. The Mage King—well, by ancient terms, the Dragon God—cursed the Goddess, and while she was running away from it, she met the first Emperor of Babilon, and then...”

“Ah...”

Rubian answered brightly.

“That theory’s going to change.”

“What? Really?”

“It turns out it wasn’t a war story at all. It was actually a love story. One of our Academy professors unearthed a new old text this time, so...” 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

“Oh my.”

“They did fight, but apparently they were also in love. You could call it a thoroughly doomed love story...”

“Oh my, oh my!”

The two of them chatted away, completely animated.

Honestly. She says she’s being cautious...

Judging from her expression alone, she looked like someone who had already fallen in love with the Princess.

Is she really that pretty?

That was what Rubian had muttered to herself without realizing it while they were walking over.

Khalid knew that ever since she was little, whenever Rubian found a woman in a book illustration who looked exactly like Sebelena, she would carefully cut the picture out and paste it into her diary.

So...

Apparently, Rubian had wanted to grow into someone like that.

Fine. I can see she’s got eyes, a nose, and a mouth where they belong.

Looking at Sebelena, Khalid thought it.

Her limbs worked well enough too, so yes, he supposed she was perfectly fine.

But no matter how he looked at it, the one who was prettier to his eyes was—

“Khalid. Do I have something on my face?”

“...No.”

Rubian.