Chapter 200.

Probably wanting this, he hugged me, like a baby, and jumped up from his seat. Then, setting aside the ashes and gold coins, he walked briskly towards the passageway we first escaped from.

On the floor he glimpsed as he walked, the corpses of the magical creatures he’d scrawled messily with his sword were strewn everywhere.

“Crazy ……” It was a tremendous sight with tears falling from his eyes.

Stride up the extensive staircase and sit behind the dustiest and less cobwebbed pillar. Then hold me tightly in your arms. Don’t touch anything dirty. I squirmed in his arms until then, gently lowering the uncomfortable mirror stick between him and me.

“Is …… better now?”

The Crown Prince asked apprehensively. For sitting on him, it was too close. A little embarrassed that I had just bawled, I sniffled hard and avoided the sight.

He suddenly reached out to me.” It’s not the baby, it’s the crying.”

“I-I’ll wipe myself!” In order to avoid his hand that wanted to wipe the bodily fluids with his own hands, his hands were busy rubbing his eyes.” Don’t rub. Your hands are dirty.” Startled, he took my dusty hand.

My open eyelids narrowed my frown and I stuck out my tongue.

“Tsk, it’s already red.”

Eventually, wordlessly, the Crown Prince’s hand grabbed my face. Unlike my hand, which had grown dark from stealing the dust that had accumulated on the mirror, it was a clean hand that hadn’t been spattered with a single drop of blood. Callisto carefully wiped away the moisture that had condensed in the corners of his eyes with his fingertips. Then, “Hoo, hoo”, he gently blew in the sucking pupil.

As a result, the bangs gently moved and the forehead tickled. The hand that was completely gentle like treating a child made my heart skip a beat.

“It’s better now.” Finally, he carefully wiped the corners of his eyes and let go of the hand that had flung out. As if satisfied, drawn curved lips came to adulthood in front of his nose.

I felt like crying again.

“Don’t ask. I’m not going to ask anything, so why don’t you unclench that shit-chewing expression.” I don’t know what kind of expression I had, but he quirked his eyebrows and shrugged in annoyance.

“…… Your Highness.” The guy I hadn’t heard nasty words or actions from in a while followed by rubbing my eyes spoke up not long after. Half of it or so was impulsive.

“You sound crazy, but I’m not actually Penelope.”

“Oh.” The Crown Prince uttered the exclamation with a surprised look on his face.

“That’s the latest thingy I’ve heard from you.”

“I’ll leave it at that.” Staring at him as if he wasn’t listening carefully, he immediately dropped his tail when he closed his mouth again.

“…… Just kidding. Seriously, listen. Go on.”

“Wrong thing to say. Hmm?”

Looking at the corner of his eye that had been hit hard with a puppy dog face, he relaxed.

I know you’re cheating. But I just wanted to say. Whatever, whatever. The depressed me situation that I’ve been working so hard to hide all this time, my secret.

“…… I was living well in a place far away that your highness doesn’t know about when I was suddenly dragged here.”

“Why were you suddenly dragged here?”

“I don’t know. Just how absurd it is to open your eyes and say it’s the house of the Duke of Eckhardt …….”

“That’s bad luck. It’s Duke Eckhardt’s house that only has tender yellow stuff on the side.” The crown prince said to him with a smile on his face as if he was making sauce for a child. The mood was a bit like that, but it wasn’t wrong. Out of the many debutantes, why Penelope was the one who was annoyed a million times.

“…… But I tried anyway.”

“What?”

“Just this and that.” To be precise, following the game’s story of survival.

“I know it’s the spirit or the intellect of an ancient sorcerer that sends the poor home if they listen. So, I worked hard as requested ……”

“But you know. Even if you follow hard, you can’t see the end. If you try to do well, something else comes along …… really ends, and something new breaks in …….”

“I just can’t take it, and even if I die, I want to see a solution, and I can’t die now.” Know this now. You can’t go back to reality even if you die here. Because reality’s body also turned to mush and fell into a coma.

Maybe that’s why I entered here. Suddenly, bewilderment swooped in front of me.

“…… What do I do now?”

I looked to Callisto for answers with a grim face. But I don’t know if you know about this bewilderment I’m feeling, he brazenly put it well.

“What to do, what to do? I’m going to take you to live.”

“Please don’t say such horrible things.”

“Oh, is it horrible to live with me?” The Crown Prince, who had vented absurdly, immediately narrowed his brows and asked.” …… Why should I go back.”

“Yes?”

“Did you hide the honey altar? Going back is not a reason.”

“Must …… there be a reason to go home? That’s it, that’s all …… it is.” While answering like this, I was distressed. Why do you want to go back so desperately.

“…… Actually, school is a bit of a giveaway.”

“School?”

“I learned hot blood, into the chief.”

“You’re …… Chief?” He looked back at me with raw eyes.

Feeling a little bad, I clenched my teeth for emphasis.

“Yes, Chief . First place, number one.”

“That’s the place to learn what. Ways to insult royalty?” “Archaeology.”

Probably an unexpected answer, the red eyes grew larger and resumed their original shape. I mumbled sullenly at the mere thought of my major.

“…… I’ve dreamed of being an archaeologist since I was a child.”

“Ah. So. No wonder I want to look like I can dig up artifacts …….” Remembering the events at the distant hunting convention, he nodded silently.

“Why do you want to become an archaeologist?”

I paused for a moment at the rhetorical question. What even I had forgotten, my long past. After entering that corner of the house, hearing the voice of the “beggarly girl” and sitting with sores in my ears, that past was so smelly and disgusting. I wanted to erase it. If I could, I would like to erase the memory of my mother who died tragically.

But when I think back, I don’t have a dream era like that.

“…… As a child living alone with my mom, my family was really poor.”

“Friends bragged every weekend that it was the zoo, it was an amusement park, went to play …… The only place mom took me was the city museum in front of the house.” I looked at Callisto’s eye color and added.

“Elementary school kids get in free ……”

“You did.” Expecting sarcasm or ridicule or something, he listened to my story with a serious face.” …… I was afraid my mom would be sad, so I memorized all the relics on display and read them every time.”

“Then when I went home and made a list of what I saw, my mom clapped and said our daughter was the smartest in the world ……”

‘We’re smart …… and so can archaeologists.’ Really? Then I’ll be an archaeologist!’

A distant memory swept through his mind.

“Even when I went back with a zero on a test, my mom always praised me. In order to become a blameless daughter, I worked desperately hard, thinking that I had only taken a step …… now. Being dragged here has turned into useless behavior.” That was the moment when the bitter face spat out memories.

“Same as me.” Suddenly the Crown Prince spoke.

I snapped out of it “Eh?”

“Because of the mistress of the insignificant baronial family and my father who was beaten to the point of increasing insanity, my mother whispered to me to make me an unclean emperor.” He added.

“I wanted to ascend to the highest position my mother wished for and raze this damned country to the ground.”

Crazy, that’s a completely different story I know why Callisto is so obsessed with being the “perfect emperor” and can’t help but jaw out and spit it out.

“…… I didn’t expect that kind of insularity?”

“Before meeting you, of course.” The Crown Prince wrinkled his nose as he spoke.

“Just now I thought it was okay to throw away the damn Crown Prince position or something ……”

“Changed my mind after hearing your story. Best to keep it in my hands.”

“…Why?”

“So that when you do what you want to do, there won’t be creeps.” He listened as if nothing had happened on my account. Giving up the position of “Crown Prince”, he continued to keep that position.

“I’ll make it happen for you. Whether it’s magic or archaeology. Everything you want to do.”

“So …… don’t think about going back, can’t you be here?”

He slowly raised his hand to my cheek. The hand tickled as it slowly drew beneath his eyes.

“…Why?” I asked the reason again. Without realizing it the expression on my face slowly disappeared. I spoke in a crisp voice.” What is our relationship?”

If it’s all over, the game is only over, and there’s no reason for me to stay here anymore. I don’t know why I said something that shook me again. Appropriate voice, didn’t want to hear it twice, so I clenched my teeth.

“Don’t look like nothing.” Suddenly Callisto contorted his face.

“Because it’s not any relationship.”

“Have you forgotten? The rejection I did before the Bar Mitzvah.”

“…… How could I forget that.”

After meeting again, he became a man who would laugh painfully.

“You, after hearing my nonsense …… how disappointed, see clearly how to die.”

“Why drink poison when you simply slap me if you’re angry.”

Drinking poison is not because of him. But Callisto’s face was like the one of someone in too much pain to just open his mouth at that moment.

The crown prince who was quietly looking at my hot lips suddenly opened his mouth and suddenly realized me.

“Did …… you go to an academy that only teaches bad things, picking out only good things to say every time like you’re stabbing someone with a knife.” “Who on earth would say ……”

“Royal insults are also measured, dare to do what can’t be done in front of the crown prince can do. Meanwhile, why is the expression always so, tsk tsk.”

The crown prince stared at his red eyes and interrupted my mumbling, murmuring in dissatisfaction. But unlike before, the hand stroking his cheek was affectionate.

“But nevertheless ……”

He whispered with a vague smile.

“I love you, Penelope Eckhardt.”