Chapter 2

I hadn’t heard a word about this, not a single word!

I never signed up for a scenario like this!

“Um… Your Highness. Why are you at my estate?”

When I asked straight out, unable to hide my surprise, the prince tilted his head with a slightly displeased look.

“Why? Didn’t Bertia become my fiancée? It’s only natural to visit my fiancée’s home, isn’t it?”

“A-a fiancée?! Me?!”

I couldn’t help but echo his words.

I was supposed to have done nothing at all. I knew my father had looked worried when he saw me sleeping in bed, and I also knew my mother had muttered something like, Isn’t it still a bit too early for an engagement…?

Was this the correction force of the game? It was far too terrifying!

“That’s right. Starting today, you can go ahead and call yourself my fiancée.”

“H-huh… Um, if I may ask a rather blunt question, why me? To be completely honest, I don’t feel like I’ve done anything special at all.”

If anything, I felt like I had mostly given him rude treatment.

When I asked, the prince widened his eyes slightly, let his golden hair sway softly, and smiled oh-so-beautifully.

“Let’s see… If I had to force a reason, it’s because you looked interesting.”

“Interesting…?”

“Yeah, is there something wrong with that?”

Interesting, my foot! That sounded just like a line straight out of a shoujo manga. Surely, there was no love between Bertia and the prince. If so, this development was exactly like the game itself.

Interesting or not, the moment the prince didn’t like me changed nothing from the game.

“No. It is an honor, Your Highness.”

“Yeah, I’m counting on you, Bell.”

Hearing the prince suddenly address me by a nickname made it impossible not to realize he was truly a capture target.

Time flew by, and about a month had passed since I was chosen as the prince’s fiancée. Our relationship had made zero progress. He simply came to my house once a week, and the two of us spent the entire time deep in casual small talk.

It wasn’t particularly fun, and it consisted mostly of polite social pleasantries disguised as chit-chat. When this started, I had wondered if once a week wasn’t a pretty excessive frequency, but apparently, that was normal for royalty.

Supporting a royal husband was a wife’s duty, something impossible without a foundation of trust, which was why he visited with such regularity. The fact that royal men welcomed fiancées at the tender age of ten was supposedly related to this.

Since he was destined to end up with the heroine anyway, it didn’t hold much meaning, though.

Without deepening my bond with the prince, the only impressions I gathered from seeing him about four times a month were trivial things like how handsome he was, how he was always smiling, or how helpless I felt.

We were practically running out of topics for small talk, and I felt guilty making him come all the way here, so I honestly wanted to tell him he didn’t need to visit anymore.

…I wanted to tell him.

“Isn’t Your Highness scheduled to come the day after tomorrow?”

For some reason, the prince had shown up at my estate today, even though he was originally supposed to arrive two days later. This time, he didn’t look like he had come for small talk; he was simply sitting on the sofa in the parlor, reading a book.

He pulled his gaze away from the book, glanced briefly in my direction, and smiled brightly.

“I had a few circumstances of my own. You don’t need to worry about it.”

Giving a casual wave of his hand, he went right back to reading. I took a seat across from him and let out a stealthy sigh.

Even with the prince right in front of me, there was no way I could just start reading a book myself, nor was I allowed to leave for somewhere else. He really was a troublesome guest…

Sighing once more, I sipped my black tea and gazed out the window to somehow kill time. It felt like the longest stretch of time I had ever experienced in this present life.

“Sorry to bother you again today.”

My expression was probably completely dead.

Your Highness, what day of the visit is this? Aren’t you showing up way too many days in a row? Recently, this has basically turned into a reading club.

Around the second day, I had simply given up and decided to read books as well. (Not difficult ones like the kinds the prince read, but actual storybooks.) The two of us sat in silence in the parlor, entirely absorbed in reading.

Reading was fun. Even with the prince sitting right there beside me, I could lose myself in it so I didn’t feel bored. …Still, would it be crossing the line to question him about this? If the prince stayed here all day long, my mother and the maids would likely shrink away in tension. In truth, to be completely honest, it caused me quite a bit of mental fatigue as well.

Gazing squarely at the prince, who was sitting on the sofa today and smiling apologetically, I stated clearly:

“Your Highness, reading is something you can do at the royal palace as well. If you have some sort of circumstances, please tell me.”

Perhaps he hadn’t expected me to speak so frankly, as the prince blinked in surprise.

“…It’s nothing you need to know, Bell.”

I was startled by his hardened tone. It looked like his usual smile, but it carried an obvious pressure of rejection.

However. I wasn’t the kind of woman to back down easily here. If I were a more sensible woman, I wouldn’t have bothered worrying about my stubborn best friend back in my past life.

Without saying yes or no, I simply kept my eyes fixed squarely on him. His sapphire eyes wavered under my sharp gaze, as if thrown into confusion. We stared at each other in silence for a while.

Then, suddenly, he averted his eyes with a soft breath.

“Heh. I really can’t beat you, Bell.”

Raising both hands in mock surrender, he let out an exaggerated sigh, yet he also looked somewhat happy. It felt rude and presumptuous to act this way toward a prince, but at this rate, it wasn’t doing my mental health any favors either.

“I am sorry. I am well aware that I am being meddlesome…”

“You don’t need to apologize, Bell. I’m the one who barged into your house without explaining my circumstances, so I’m far more impolite.”

Sorry, he murmured, wearing that manufactured smile once more.

“Circumstances… Right. I never expected things to turn out like this, either… I don’t get along with my siblings.”

“Siblings… Do you mean His Highness the First Prince and Her Highness the First Princess?”

“That’s right.”

“You don’t get along?”

“Huh? I thought that was pretty common knowledge.”

The prince wore a completely devoid, inorganic smile. It was the kind of smile that made you think he had pasted a mask over his face.

At that moment, I finally realized I had touched upon an area of the prince’s life that should never be breached. I had asked something far too tactless. The person before me was the prince of a nation. He was bound to have one or two troubles. Poor relations among siblings were practically standard in a monarchy.

It had been careless of me.

“My older brother loathes me, a child born from a concubine, and he frequently plays nasty tricks on me.”

I hesitated, wondering if I should speak up to stop this conversation, but the prince continued without noticing my reaction. His vacant pupils stared blankly out at the garden visible from the parlor.

“When I was five, my older brother chased away all the people who were close to me—my private tutors, the maids, everyone—from the royal palace. That’s why there’s no place for me in the palace, and because anyone who gets close to me gets fired, nobody ever reaches out a hand to help.”

That was precisely the kind of malicious harassment made possible by holding power. If someone was subjected to that during the crucial developmental period when personality is formed, anyone would become warped.

His own flesh and blood had driven him to the point of psychological distortion. And he had done it not by giving love, but by the method of stripping it away.

“Didn’t His Majesty the King stop what the First Prince was doing?”

“Unfortunately not. His Majesty favors my older brother above all else. He doesn’t even glance my way.”

The prince offered a self-deprecating laugh. It wasn’t his usual refreshing smile; it was a mix of agony, sorrow, and hatred all tangled together.

“And your mother…?”

“She passed away when she gave birth to me.”

The prince had been entirely alone since he was five years old. He must have spent his days in the royal palace constantly plagued by a sense of isolation, never receiving any love.

“Bell… don’t make such a sad face.”

Since the prince was enduring it and forcing a smile, I had no business putting on a heartbroken expression. Sympathy was completely out of the question. If I were him, I would think, What could you possibly understand? But what kind of expression was I supposed to make? There was no way I could just put on a blank face and say, Oh, I see.

Unlike me, who carried memories of a past life, he was a genuine child.

“Bell, you’re so kind. Actually, I managed to anger my older brother just the other day as well. And that’s why I’m in this mess.”

He shrugged his shoulders and quickly looked away from me.

“So, I’ll be intruding for a while.”

As he smiled and said that this conversation was over, his expression now seemed entirely filled with agony.