Show Me

“Kind? Me?”

I gave a slightly playful shrug, but Lady Shitoen’s body remained as stiff as ever.

“When we first met at the betrothal ceremony, you protected me… And ever since I came to this country, you have treated me so well…”

“No… I mean.”

I hunched over slightly so that I would be in her line of sight.

“Because we’re going to be husband and wife, right? It’s only natural for a husband to treat his wife well.”

Husband and wife.

Lady Shitoen murmured the words.

At that moment, I felt that something was off.

The woman before me was directing her clear eyes straight at me.

But.

How should I put it?

It felt like she was looking at something beyond me.

Through me, she was looking at something else.

What was it?

I stared fixedly at Lady Shitoen.

But without saying anything, she remained silent for a long time.

“…Um, Prince.”

How much time had passed? At last, she called out to me.

Her eyes as they looked at me were filled with tension, and her shoulders had been rigid this whole time.

“Would you look at my dragon crest for me?”

Naturally, she asked me that in polite speech.

“The dragon crest… No, that…”

Even I was shaken.

Because.

Hadn’t she said it was right in the middle of her chest?

“My dragon crest was my pride. At least, back in my homeland.”

Lady Shitoen’s face was small and round.

Usually, she smiled gently, her lips drawing a calm crescent.

She had always been like a patch of sunlight, warm and comforting like freshly baked sweets.

But right now, she was taut, carrying an air like the sky before lightning struck.

“In my country, the dragon is our god, and also the nation itself. I was raised being taught that a member of the royal family who bears its mark is, by that alone, noble, and the embodiment of the country itself.”

Lady Shitoen’s eyes were like amethysts.

Lady Shitoen herself was like a precious stone.

Lady Shitoen’s very existence was like a jewel to me.

“I’ve heard the same.”

I nodded honestly.

And yet.

She let out a single breath, pained and strained.

Even though she looked as though she was suffering that much.

She still said, “Thank you.”

“I truly feel nothing but gratitude toward the people of this country who show understanding and sympathy toward my country’s history and culture.”

“That’s because Shitoen loves this country in the same way.”

In fact, until I urged her to, she never spoke her native language, and even now, she had not once tried to wear the clothes of her homeland.

“However, I learned firsthand that not every country returns courtesy with courtesy.”

Those words slipped from the mouth of the woman who had lowered her gaze.

“…I’m sorry. That was inappropriate of me.”

With a stiff expression, she raised her face. Her silver hair of that strange hue swayed, leaving afterimages drifting in the air.

“The fault lies entirely with my own inadequacy.”

“Stop blaming yourself for everything that happened.”

The sharp words slipped out before I knew it, but for some reason, Lady Shitoen looked pleased.

“You really are kind, Prince. Just as you always were.”

Smiling, she then closed her mouth again for a while.

Again, I thought.

Again, she said I was “just as I always was.”

When had we met? Where?

I had absolutely no memory of it.

I gazed at her intently.

She bit down on her lower lip and did not move.

She was hesitating about something.

But she was trying to say it.

She was trying to tell me something.

Then all I could do was wait.

Silence is not evil.

Sometimes, time gently wraps itself around someone.

“That… when it comes to feelings of revulsion, there is simply no helping them.”

Quietly.

Lady Shitoen began to speak.

But it was not about having met me in the past.

“Well, for example… I dislike spiders. Their many long legs, and their compound eyes.”

Perhaps she imagined them, because her shoulders trembled slightly.

“Is there anything you dislike, Prince?”

When she asked, I answered at once, “My mother and the Crown Prince,” and she burst out laughing.

“Let me see… Hmm.”

Still carrying the lingering afterglow of her soft laughter, Lady Shitoen blinked several times.

“That… for example, let’s say there is a person who hates spiders, like I do… And then a person with a spider tattoo appeared before that person.”

Lady Shitoen looked at me and smiled sadly.

“Could you come to love someone who had something you utterly hated engraved onto their body, Prince?”

Ah, so this was it.

I guessed she meant Crown Prince Arios.

I did not know what that bastard hated.

Fish? Scales? Tattoos? Or perhaps the Kingdom of Tania itself?

Crown Prince Arios.

He had felt a visceral disgust.

Toward Lady Shitoen.

No, toward the dragon crest engraved on Lady Shitoen’s body.

That was what provoked his revulsion.

“If I possessed something that someone instinctively rejected… then surely they could never come to love me.”

Rather than feeling sad as I listened to Lady Shitoen speak so matter-of-factly.

I started getting angry.

With those tear-filled violet eyes, and those pink lips.

I desperately held back the urge to shout at her not to talk about that man.

I wanted to scream at her to forget all about him.

That the one in front of her now was me.

That he was gone now.

“So, Prince. Please look at my dragon crest.”

“And what then?”

Before I realized it, my voice had come out sounding belligerent.

“What, you want me to hate it? To say it’s disgusting? Like that man did?”

Nothing but spiteful words kept spilling out.

Even though I was five years older than the girl before me.

I was so irritated I could hardly stand it.

Why was this girl trying to compare me to that worthless man?

“That Crown Prince and you are different, Prince.”

Lady Shitoen declared that to me without hesitation.

Clutching the pillow tightly, she leaned toward me as though about to rise from the waist.

“I tried to come to love that Crown Prince. I thought I would love him. I tried to respect him as my husband. But I couldn’t. How could anyone think I could forgive someone who loathes, feels disgust toward, and mocks me? I am not a saint.”

The moment I saw tears like crystal beads spill from her violet eyes, I came back to myself.

I had gone too far.

Even though I should have known how hard she had tried, how much she had suffered, how painful it had been for her.

“Shitoen…”

I called her name, but nothing came after it.

I’m sorry, forgive me, that’s not what I meant.

Before any of those words could come, Lady Shitoen spoke first.

“If someone I feel nothing for hates me, it doesn’t hurt. Even if someone like that rejects me, it doesn’t pain me in the slightest. But, A…”

Lady Shitoen started to say something, then swallowed the end of it.

As tears like transparent jewels streamed down her cheeks, Lady Shitoen said to me.

“I don’t want you to hate me, Prince.”

She forced the words out.

“I think very fondly of Prince Saryu. I love you very much, you who treasure me. I even find myself wishing that you would come to love me.”

With a jolt.

Lady Shitoen’s words squeezed at my chest.

At the same time, my breath leaked out, along with a meaningless, “Huh?”

“But if you feel an instinctive revulsion, then I will have to give up. Because no matter what I do, you will never come to love me.”

Lady Shitoen held back a sob deep in her throat, looking so fragile she might blur away.

It felt as though, if things went wrong, she might disappear from before me just like that.

“I won’t hate you.”

Just to keep her from vanishing, I reached out a hand to catch her by the elbow.

“That is exactly why I want you to look at my dragon crest. Here and now.”

But twisting away as if to escape my hand, she shook her head. Tears scattered.

“If you look at it and think it is disgusting, then I will erase these feelings of mine. If it is now, I can still bring myself to do it. I can live as nothing more than a doll. And then I will simply continue this marriage for the sake of your country and mine.”

The remnants of tears fell from her eyelashes. Keeping her dignified expression, she looked at me.

She was trying to test me.

“So please, the dragon crest—”

“Show me.”

I cut off Lady Shitoen’s words midway.

Silently.

Those violet eyes turned toward me, and then she gave a single wordless nod.