YMPDKMA Chapter 20

Rupert answered with conviction. He clearly liked the fact that the raccoon was docile only with him. Among the many people in this Red Palace, he liked Tori best, and the next rank belonged incomparably to the animal, the raccoon.

Would he find me cute if I acted like that? Front paws—no, hands—rubbing together while smiling? I seriously pondered whether I should take a mere animal as my example and met the raccoon's eyes with their glasses-like round markings.

How did you become this prickly person's pet? I asked silently, but the creature just blinked its shifty-looking eyes, apparently unable to hear my thoughts.

"Where's Tori?"

"Ah, her stomach hurts a bit."

Rupert rarely separated Tori from himself. He was already looking for her though she hadn't been gone long—I felt deflated. I was his lady-in-waiting too, but wasn't this favoritism a bit excessive?

"Your Highness must really like Tori."

At my words, Rupert's eyebrow rose obliquely. He frowned slightly and looked at me with an expression that said stop talking nonsense.

"Not really."

Not liking her yet keeping her by his side all day made no sense. Was he perhaps embarrassed? Though growing at an alarming rate lately, his slightly delayed development made him look quite young—yet he was already fourteen. Right around when Rehan had been stubbornly contrary.

The age that yearns for spring. Puberty.

The age when one might harbor feelings for an older woman or a girl one's own age. I couldn't detect any youthful flutter between Tori and Rupert, but they shared a bond I couldn't understand.

I wasn't particularly perceptive about these things—maybe I'd failed to notice his secret admiration. It was hard to imagine, since the idea that he could feel affection for anyone didn't quite register.

"But you do like her."

I plopped down beside Rupert and timidly doubted the sincerity of his answer.

"What makes you think that?"

Rupert, wearing the raccoon like a scarf, sat up fully. He leaned against the massive ancient tree and propped one arm on his knee, resting his chin on it. The posture was far too boyish for someone pretending to be a girl—I rolled my eyes.

"If you sit like that, people might see under your skirt."

"Let them look if they want."

I had no desire to see under a fourteen-year-old girl's—no, a boy pretending to be a girl's—skirt, not even for money. I shook my head and sighed. Perhaps due to Madam Chrissie's harsh lessons, I was quite sensitive about posture and bearing.

"A person of Your Highness's status shouldn't sit like that."

"My sitting on this dirt ground itself violates etiquette."

He was right. I couldn't criticize further and returned to the original topic.

"Anyway, you do care about Tori."

"Do you care about everything you like?"

"Isn't it the opposite? You care because you like something."

At my counter-question, Rupert paused. His expression hardened as if pondering, but with a raccoon draped over his shoulders, the serious face just looked absurd.

"Just because you like something doesn't mean you care about it."

"If you like something, you should care about it."

"Do you?"

"Most people would."

I didn't understand Rupert's question. Which part of "you care about what you like" didn't make sense? If you like something, you care for it; what you care for, you like.

"I guess I'm not part of 'most people,' then."

"Your Highness is saying you're not?"

An ambiguous answer. I pricked up my ears and focused, thinking the topic might help determine how to approach him.

"I only care about what's mine."

What's mine.

Rupert often made such distinctions, almost like talking to himself. What he had and what he didn't. What he held and what he didn't hold. As if the two existed in different worlds.

"Preference doesn't matter."

Whether he liked it or not—if it was his, he cared for it. I moved close to Rupert, who'd risen and set the raccoon down as if returning to the palace.

"Tori is yours, isn't she?"

I knew the answer. Tori and the raccoon were Rupert's possessions. So he cared for them. But his assertion felt different from twisted possessiveness or obsession—the more I asked, the more confused I became. It sounded not like he possessed them because he liked and cared for them, but rather that he happened to have acquired those two, so he cared for them.

"Yeah."

"What about me?"

A question I'd asked before. Time had flowed idly until spring arrived, but even this warm spring sun couldn't melt his sharp, frozen wariness. Still, I waited hopefully for his answer, finding myself ridiculous for laughing self-deprecatingly.

I hated that child more than anyone else in the world, yet here I was desperate to enter that person's boundaries—it was irritatingly funny. I forcibly swallowed my nervous laugh and waited for Rupert's answer.

"You."

Rupert's small mouth opened slowly. His lips curved up gradually, as if mocking me waiting with bright, eager eyes.

"No."

"But I'm Your Highness's lady-in-waiting."

"You're a lady-in-waiting of the Red Palace. Assigned to me."

"What if I become wholly Your Highness's lady-in-waiting?"

"I can't trust that."

Expected, yet disappointing. Confirming my expression hardening, Rupert coldly turned his back without telling me to follow and began walking away.The distance felt like a hundred thousand miles. No matter how much I walked, it never seemed to close—that vast remoteness.

But I had to close it, so I stood abruptly. Even if I had to rub my front paws together like that sinister creature and force a humiliating smile—I would follow you.

"…Ett, Lariette!"

"Mm…"

I never slept deeply—my temperament was too sharp, too easily roused—but after two nights awake I'd finally fallen into a dream so warm and soft I didn't want to leave. Someone's voice called me. I ignored it, sinking back down into that sweet darkness.

In the dream I was eighteen. The Emperor was still Rupert Rasperikh I, but he didn't hate Bellua. He'd never given it a thought. That ordinary day when I was eighteen—nothing special about it, nothing remarkable—somehow filled me with tearful happiness. I walked through Bellua's beautiful fields holding the hand of a faceless man.

…A hand?

Now that I thought about it, someone really was holding my hand. Shaking it. The bitter truth settled in slowly: I'd never held a man's hand, never walked alone with one. My hand kept shaking, faster and faster. Caught between dream and waking, I opened my eyes very, very slowly.

Ah. I'd only just fallen asleep.

Irritation surged as my mind dragged itself back to reality.

"Lariette! Lariette!"

Tori's urgent voice forced me awake. I swallowed my annoyance and turned my head. She stood in the narrow gap between my bed and the olive-green wall, biting her lip hard as she stared at me. I hadn't expected anyone there—for a moment she seemed ghostly, unsettling—but I recognized her quickly enough.

"…Tori?"

Pale moonlight caught in her dull, brittle hair. Her face was sun-darkened, freckles scattered thick across her cheeks—proof she'd been wandering outside too long. Tears rolled down in fat drops, wetting everything. I was too stunned to push her away as she grabbed me and shook me wildly.

"Why? Why? What's wrong!"

"La, Lariette… hic."

My voice came out hoarse as I tried to calm her. She'd been sobbing, half out of her mind. When I finally sat up fully, shaking off sleep, she grabbed my wrist and pulled me out of bed.

"His Highness is, something's wrong with him… He's having a nightmare, sniff, I think, but he's not, hic, breathing."

"Tori, calm down. Don't cry."

Rupert wasn't breathing, and Tori didn't seem to be either. She was drowning in her own nightmare, sobbing so hard she couldn't catch her breath.

I rubbed her trembling back, frowning. Tori had told me Rupert couldn't sleep at all—I'd thought she just meant he lay awake. But nightmares. That was the reason.

"Did you call the physician?"

"I can't, hic, call him! His Highness… won't wake up, sob, and he said, not to, sniff, call anyone! He has a fever! A terrible fever, hic, so high!"

"I have fever medicine. And sleeping pills."

I hurried past Tori to the dresser and found my emergency supplies. I'd been sickly as a child—I knew medicines well. Turning back time hadn't changed my weak constitution, so I'd brought plenty of medicine to the capital, just in case.

I followed Tori out, watching her stumble in her rush. My thoughts turned petty and small: such a waste of good medicine. Doctor Ailey only prescribed medications from Champagne Pharmaceuticals, and everything from Champagne Pharmaceuticals cost a fortune. I only took one pill at a time, and only when absolutely necessary.

There was an old saying: even the hated child gets an extra bun. But medicine cost far more than buns, and my heart stung at the thought. Rupert wasn't even someone I hated—he was worse than that.

I'd have to charge him for this later. I finished my petty calculations as I approached Rupert, who lay gasping for air, with Tori hovering nearby, nearly out of her mind with worry.

"Your Highness?"

His skin—already pale—had gone deathly white, almost blue. He was drenched in cold sweat, limbs twitching weakly. Like someone caught in sleep paralysis, unable to move, breathing in hard, irregular gasps.

I couldn't pity him. Any normal person would worry themselves sick seeing a beautiful, delicate girl suffering like this—would feel her pain as their own. But I felt something uglier: a dark satisfaction.

Ah. I couldn't smile at that shameful feeling flooding through me. I'd never wanted to be the kind of person who took pleasure in another's pain. But the one who'd made me this way was the small boy in front of me. I hated Rupert. Before hate, I feared him. I feared the monster growing inside him, the cruel nature hidden in that thin, fragile body.

Translator: I feel like I'm watching her turn into a monster because of her own emotional biases and ignorance.