“Haaaaa……”
Only after the rough footsteps of First Imperial Princess Victoria, accompanied by a clamor of metal, had completely faded away down the corridor did I finally let out the breath I had been holding deep in my lungs and collapse onto the soft bed.
Relief at having survived washed over me, and at the same time, a terrible exhaustion drained every last bit of strength from my body.
‘You really can’t reason with her. Seriously.’
When I had racked my brains and tossed out some haphazard talk about armies and cavalry formations to calm the First Imperial Princess’s anger, the atmosphere hadn’t been bad.
The problem was what she had excitedly gone on to talk about.
She explained, her eyes sparkling like a child showing off a toy, how she had trampled and smashed the dense infantry formations of my homeland, the Kingdom of Sterling, with that absurdly brutal cavalry of hers. The gruesome process of slaughter sent a chill down my spine.
{Of course, separate from how terrifying it was, her explanation itself of a textbook yet unconventional tactical maneuver that used the overwhelming shock power of cavalry to crush an infantry shield wall was quite excellent, so I did find myself nodding along and listening with interest.)
Trying to soften the mood a little, I asked what Her Highness had been like in her childhood. The answer I got was a story about how she had first gone to war at the age of sixteen, cut down an enemy commander with a single stroke, and washed her face in his blood.
After beheading the enemy commander who had been her first opponent, she had made a goblet out of his skull and made that nation’s king drink from it.
Listening to that bloodcurdling heroic tale right to my face, I had put so much of my soul into acting gentle that my facial muscles were on the verge of spasming.
But what made me even angrier than that was……
“……My raspberry tart.”
I stared at the empty plate, where only pitiful cream crumbs remained, and bit down hard on my lip.
The sight of the woman who had stormed into my room with a sword just moments ago, causing a scene, now sitting demurely with her knees together and her face flushed as she nibbled away at desserts the entire time, was certainly surreal.
But the problem was that she had eaten too damn much. Three fist-sized tarts!
Among them was even the glossy, jewel-like wild raspberry tart I had been looking forward to from the moment Amber and I left the imperial palace grounds, telling myself I would absolutely eat it with warm black tea once I returned to my lodgings.
She had shoved all of it into her own mouth.
Having come here as a hostage, I couldn’t get irritated, nor could I curse the empire’s First Imperial Princess, so I could only stomp my feet on the bed in frustration.
At that moment, Amber quietly appeared beyond the shattered doorframe.
Instead of her usual refreshing confidence, deep fatigue lingered on her face.
Amber glanced between the miserably destroyed oak door and me sitting before the empty plate.
Then, without saying a word, she raised one eyebrow.
“……I will immediately call the imperial palace carpenters and have the two doors and the marble floor restored to their original state, Your Highness.”
After leaving behind that brief yet weighty consolation, Amber disappeared down the corridor with steps that looked as if half her soul had left her body.
“…Wait, she broke something on her way out too?”
No answer came back.
#
While the broken door and marble floor were being temporarily repaired, I finished a light lunch, and Amber carefully asked me,
“Is there anywhere you would like to visit this afternoon?”
“Hmm. I would like to visit the grand library within the imperial palace. Did you not boast that it was the largest in the empire—no, the largest on the continent?”
At my answer, Amber readily nodded and guided me there.
Before long, the heavy iron doors of the vast grand library located deep within the imperial palace opened.
The moment they did, I genuinely couldn’t help but gape in admiration.
“Wow…!”
From the endlessly lofty arched ceiling all the way down to the floor, everything was books.
Massive bookshelves made from centuries-old oak were interwoven like a single labyrinth, and softly glowing magic lamps floated in the air like clusters of stars.
At the dry, alluring scent of old paper emanating from what looked to be easily hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of volumes, the heart of the humanities student in me began to pound like mad.
“Splendid. This is truly an incredible scale. I doubt I could read all of it in a lifetime.”
“I am glad it pleases Your Highness.”
As I excitedly tried to look through the shelves, Amber approached from behind and whispered softly.
“However, His Majesty the Emperor often comes here without prior notice to enjoy quiet contemplation, so please do not relax too much. Though the area reserved for the imperial family is separated.”
Remembering that suffocating conversation in the audience chamber yesterday, I swallowed and gave a small nod.
“Then may I look around at the books inside now?”
“Ah, yes. I will be waiting at the café in the central area. I am not particularly fond of books.”
“…Is that all right?”
“Well, if Your Highness runs away, it will become my responsibility… but I trust you will not.”
“Of course not.”
For now, I headed first to the history and geography section.
I pulled out several thick hardbound books on the founding history of the empire and topographical maps of the surrounding nations, then took a seat by the window.
Perfectly understanding the empire’s course of history and its geography would increase my chances of survival from now on, after all.
But no matter how much I liked history, after spending over an hour digging through boring topographical maps of another country packed densely with nothing but text, my vision gradually began to blur and my head started to spin.
‘Ah, my head hurts. Maybe I should’ve started with military history…’
Military history was usually interesting, so I should have started with that.
I considered reading it even now, but my interest had already waned somewhat, so I no longer felt particularly inclined to.
‘Should I read a novel or something?’
I rolled my stiff neck, rose from my seat, and moved toward the literature section.
It was something I’d felt since I was young, but this was a worldview whose cultural elements weren’t all that different from the real Earth.
After all, it was a shallow world created by my ex-girlfriend, the original author, by straight-up copy-pasting the history and classical literature of the real Earth, even Latin quotations.
‘Thanks to that, I even experienced the bizarre situation where the archaic language of a Western-style imperial family was Mongolian.’
As my gaze slowly swept down the shelves packed with old-fashioned gold-embossed hardbound books, it stopped on one old yet exceptionally thick and vividly red leather-bound volume.
“…”
Bingo.
Without realizing it, I parted my lips and murmured the novel’s famous opening line.
“All happy families are alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way……”
I was so glad to find this book, one of my favorites, here.
Just as I unconsciously reached out and took hold of it, a single slender, bloodlessly pale finger extended through the gap from below on my left and touched the red leather spine I had been about to grasp, just one beat too late.
“Oh.”
Startled by the cool body temperature that touched my fingertip, I froze and turned my head beyond the bookshelf.
“…….”
Amid dazzling sunlight pouring obliquely through the gaps between the shelves, my gaze became perfectly entangled with that of a girl whose beauty was no less unrealistic than the First Imperial Princess I had met that morning—no, its direction was entirely different, but it was every bit her equal.
Her brilliant blonde hair flowed softly down to her waist like waves, gleaming gently against skin so pale and white it seemed almost translucent in the sunlight. My gaze slipped for an instant to her chest, which asserted a striking presence unsuited to her small stature, a whole head shorter than mine.
Startled, I hurriedly raised my eyes, only to meet a pair of uniquely mysterious and cool violet eyes, exactly like those possessed by the Emperor and First Imperial Princess Victoria.
For a moment, my heart dropped.
Violet eyes were the absolute symbol of power that, in this vast empire, only the imperial family of Argenheim could possess.
I flinched in shock, let go of the book, and stepped back, hurriedly lowering my head to show respect.
“My apologies. I failed to recognize that you were a member of the imperial family and acted rudely……”
But the girl brought a slender index finger to her red lips with a shh, then shook her head very lightly to stop me from speaking.
Then, as if checking whether there were any other librarians or guards nearby, she carefully leaned her face a little closer through the gap between the shelves and whispered to me in a voice as light and gentle as a feather.
“Are you Prince Ian of the Kingdom of Sterling?”
A faint, utterly lovely blush spread across the girl’s pale cheeks.
“My name is Chloe von Argenheim. I am the Second Imperial Princess of the empire. It is a pleasure to meet you.”