The Materialistic Princess
Episode 4
“I suppose it’s time for a thorough cleaning. You seem to be hurting constantly because of the dust.”
She rolled up her sleeves and walked out of the room. Since this mansion was far too large for one person to clean, I followed her out to stop Verdi.
“Verdi!”
At that moment, Butler Bart approached with his characteristically stony expression.
“Young Lady, please rest a while longer. I shall prepare a meal.”
“Verdi says she’s going to do a thorough cleaning, so I need to stop her.”
At my words, Bart nodded.
“I shall try to stop her. If you recover your health quickly, she will not act so recklessly either.”
His words were reasonable, so I returned to my room and lay down on the bed. The butler looked me over and quietly went outside. Despite his blunt exterior, I could feel that he treated Laze and me preciously as well. It was an unfamiliar kindness.
“…Just like a real family.”
I thought back to what my original family had been like. It was an extremely barren household where not a single special memory came to mind. When I was in elementary school, my parents suddenly divorced. Since my mother was planning to remarry, I was nothing but baggage. ‘Honestly, neither side was probably any good.’ I lived with my father and was forced by him to call his ever-changing girlfriends “new mother.” The women didn’t like it. ‘Of course they’d be embarrassed if a grown child called them new mother.’ That was the entirety of my family. Compared to that, Laze cherished her younger sister enough that you could tell even in a brief moment. ‘I feel like I’m doing something I shouldn’t.’ I am Rozelia, yet I am not her. That sense of dissonance pricked at a corner of my heart.
“This is truly a place where only kind people live.”
Perhaps quite a bit of time had passed, for I was hungry. Since I could at least prepare a meal, I went down to the first floor.
“I suppose I’ve grown old too, Bart.”
I saw Verdi sitting on the stairs showing her ankle, and Bart examining her condition.
“What happened?”
Startled, I ran over to them. As soon as Verdi spotted me, she smoothed out her grimace and instead looked at me as if I were the one she should worry about.
“Why have you come out? Are you hungry?”
She tried to rise from her seat but let out a short groan and plopped back down.
“We’ll need to apply a splint.”
Bart, who had been examining her ankle, said so. It seemed she had twisted her ankle while cleaning.
“I’ll be fine if I walk carefully.”
“As Bart said, it’s best to splint it and move as little as possible.”
I draped her arm around my neck.
“Ah, Young Lady……”
Bart immediately helped support her as well. I said to Verdi,
“I won’t starve or get sick just because you don’t work yourself to the bone. You can lean on me.”
“Young Lady……”
The memories of having lived on Earth were a blessing. Though I had grown up in a household that could not be called happy, those memories were enough to make the current Rozelia strong.
Verdi’s eyes welled up with tears, and Bart pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and offered it.
“Oh my, see what I’ve gone and done.”
Verdi, arriving at the room and lying on the bed, couldn’t hide her embarrassment.
“Our Young Lady, when did you grow up to be such an adult?”
She grasped my hand tightly with her wrinkled hand. I couldn’t quite meet her eyes and pulled the blanket over her.
“Rest well until you’re fully healed. It’s the Princess’s order.”
At that, Verdi helplessly nodded.
Having come out of the room, I asked Bart,
“Do we have enough money to call a doctor to the house?”
He answered without hesitation.
“Not at present.”
It was the answer I had expected, but it was still disappointing. Then I remembered that I had occasionally borrowed money from maternal relatives. Though contact and support had been cut off long ago.
“I’ll have to write letters to relatives asking to borrow money.”
Then Bart said,
“We have run out of paper and ink.”
Right, that made sense. Running completely out of paper and ink at home was something that could happen at any time.
“Do we have money to buy them?”
“Not at present.”
This is too much, no matter how you look at it!
“I shall try to procure some. Please do not worry too much.”
As if Bart would have any money. Borrowing from him would be unreasonable.
“I must tend to Verdi’s ankle first.”
“I’ll look for a way too.”
Wondering if there was anything at all to pick up and sell, I wandered around the house. Finally, after looking through the entire house, I stood in the lobby and stared up at the ceiling where only a rope hung uselessly, the chandelier long gone.
“There’s really nothing but the house itself.”
Is this what they call being house poor? There wasn’t a single thing in this house worth selling. Truly, not a single one!
“No, there has to be something. Even in a beggar’s den, if you keep your wits about you, there should be at least something to earn a meal with.”
Because Denbridge and the Carneff mansion were special places entangled with another race, the estate or the house could not be sold except by returning them to the state.
I carefully tried to think if there was anything I was missing.
“As expected, is that the only thing?”
One thing came to mind immediately.
“The Fragment of the Soul……”
The core material of the novel, and the very thing that allowed Serena to function as the female protagonist—the Crown Prince’s Fragment of the Soul!
The Crown Prince could feel emotions when the Fragment of the Soul was nearby. I planned to exploit that.
“I’ll make money as an emotion peddler.”
In the novel, Serena picks up a blue bead while taking a walk on the beach at Rockingham.
At that time, a boat capsizes in a storm, and she saves the Emperor who had fallen into the sea and is granted a title. She is invited to the imperial palace for a week, and there she comes face-to-face with the Crown Prince.
‘How am I supposed to get to Rockingham?’
I found an old cloth bag and packed a few carrots from Verdi’s vegetable garden inside.
“I’m going to Bimuem.”
I told Bart, who had come out after treating Verdi.
“Please be careful.”
The problem was how to get to Rockingham, but for now, I planned to go to Bimuem.
“It’s fortunate that Bimuem is right next to Denbridge.”
That was the only advantage. Denbridge was a special place where there was a lord but no territorial residents.
‘That’s why they can’t even collect taxes. What a useless family.’
The Founding Emperor bestowed the name Carneff upon a subject who had rendered great service in the founding of the nation and guaranteed its independence.
‘Because the House of Carneff serves as a contract confirming the friendship between humans and elves.’
As the years passed, the elves disappeared. The elven blood flowing in House Carneff had thinned as much as it could.
However, the still-inherited purple hair and turquoise eyes continued to represent that symbolism.
The long-lasting youth and extended lifespan were also rather inhuman traits. Though now it was merely at the level of being long-lived for a human.
‘Thanks to that, they’ve earned the Emperor’s displeasure.’
Generation after generation, the Emperor subtly revealed hostility, or jealousy, toward House Carneff.
How much of a thorn in the side the Carneff Duke must be, living nobly with influence while maintaining a young and beautiful appearance throughout changing imperial generations. The Holy See also kept House Carneff in check.
‘So the moment young Laze inherited the ducal seat, they stripped the family of everything.’
Of course, if Laze had been a bit more aristocratic, they wouldn’t have ended up so utterly destitute.
However, Laze possessed the free-spirited mindset of spirits and elves rather than that of human nobility.
“But I’m not.”
The elven mindset is truly useless. To live with nature without greed and be satisfied with small things! There was a reason they couldn’t escape beggary.
That Rozelia’s parents’ generation had lived in abundance was almost a mystery in itself.
“That must be Bimuem.”
As I approached the checkpoint, a guard who spotted me stopped in my tracks.
“Halt—”
The inspector frowned slightly at the few carrots in my bag. He called his colleague and pointed at my bag.
“Are these subject to tariff?”
I had packed quite a generous amount of carrots, but to impose a tariff on these. They were nothing but thugs.
“This is my lunch.”
As a Princess, I spoke down to them. The inspectors’ eyebrows twitched.
“Carrots as lunch?”
They sneered at my appearance. They seemed to have decided that no noble would carry raw carrots around as a meal.
“Your appearance is suspicious to begin with; what are you planning to do with so many carrots!”
“No, these are just carrots……”
The inspectors didn’t seem inclined to listen to me. It was around the time I felt they were trying to pick a quarrel,
“What is the matter?”
A man with dark circles under his eyes and hollow cheeks, giving a tired impression, approached. His clothes were shabby and his appearance unkempt.
“We were inspecting a suspicious person. She might be an unregistered witch.”
At the word “witch,” I had no choice but to remove my robe’s hood and reveal myself. The people nearby gasped.
“It is the Princess of Carneff. I am Count Millric Harris.”
“I am Rozelia Carneff.”
He glanced around with a slightly annoyed expression, then looked at me.
“Would you come to my office?”
Count Harris guided me to his office.
“Please forgive the inspectors’ rudeness. They likely intended to pick a quarrel and extort money.”
The Count’s attitude of asking me to forgive a crowd who dared try to shake down a Princess was absurd, but I had no desire to escalate matters either.
“I don’t have anything but carrots anyway.”
I answered nonchalantly.
“How is it that the Princess is out alone?”
“I was in the middle of finding a way to Rockingham.”
While answering, I thought this was a fortunate turn.
“But I only have carrots.”
I gazed at him intently, wordlessly pleading for his help.
“…I apologize, but I have no money.”
“I want to go even if I have to ride in a freight cart.”
When I said that much, Count Harris let out a short sigh.
“I believe I can procure a freight cart.”
“Thank you.”
It was a small but decisive kindness, and I was grateful.
“I will definitely repay the favor.”
“It’s fine.”
The Count went out to procure a freight cart, and I waited in the office for a while. Hungry, I took out a carrot and crunched on it.
About the time I finished one carrot and patted my growling belly, Count Harris returned. He introduced me to a merchant.
“I’m called Kyle.”
The merchant’s attire was the most decent and impressive among the three of us. Kyle pointed to an empty freight cart.
“The interior is spacious, so it’s good for resting.”
I was about to climb into the cargo bed but briefly bid farewell to Count Harris.
“This is all I can give you right now.”
I took a carrot out of my bag and held it out to him. The Count stared blankly at the carrot.
“Please take it without refusing.”
I pressed the carrot into his hand, almost by force, and climbed into the cargo bed.
“Depart, merchant!”
Giddy-up!
The carriage departed.
*** Crunch, crunch.
I stared at Kyle while chewing a carrot. He had said he made big money.
Perhaps that was why Kyle was having lunch of meat sandwiches and fragrant wine.
I kept crunching on carrots.
“…Would you care for some?”
Without a word of shame, I accepted a sandwich and ate it.
“All I have are these carrots; will you at least take one?”
“No, it’s fine.”
“There’s no need to refuse so stubbornly.”
I shoved a carrot at Kyle. He laughed awkwardly.
“Ah, no. This fellow!”
Before I knew it, the carrot I had given was being chewed by the horse. Kyle hurriedly made excuses.
“It was such a fine carrot that I was going to share it with this fellow, but he ate it all.”
“It’s fine. I’ll give you another.”
“…Haha.”
The carrots had already dwindled quite a bit, but I could hardly not give another to the kind soul who had offered me a meat sandwich.
“We’ll soon arrive at a checkpoint.”
Spending time in a freight cart for three days was boring. Soon the carriage stopped.
“We have arrived at the place you mentioned.”
I headed straight for my destination.
“That must be Count Enes’s estate.”
The Enes family had purchased a beach as private property. The reason Serena could secretly stroll on such a beach was that she knew a place where she could avoid watchful eyes. Of course, since she was Jane’s childhood friend, it wouldn’t have mattered even if she were caught.
“This is it.”
At the very end of the beach, there was a place where trees were densely packed like a forest. I entered the beach through that path. White sand and an emerald sea stretched out before me.
“Come out, my business capital!”
I had to find the Fragment of the Soul before Serena did. Without wiping away my flowing sweat, I scanned the ground with fire in my eyes.
Dig! Dig! Dig!
“Huh?”
Then I heard someone approaching from behind. Bewildered, I turned around to see armed soldiers, and they leveled their spears at me.
“Trespasser! Arrest her!”
“…What, why only me?”
Serena was never arrested even once! I was dragged away by the soldiers.