5
The Imperial streets were stained red.
It was twilight.
Crossweil and the other miners, grimy from a day’s work, were just about to head home when Lavitch stopped them. It wasn’t often that the foreman himself would call them back.
“Huh?! We’re all getting special bonuses?!”
“That’s right. It’s a gift from Prince Yunmelngen. He wants you all to keep up the good work,” Lavitch told them.
“Oh, we definitely will! Thank you, Mister Crown Prince, sir! Oh, I love him!” Eve clutched the envelope containing her bonus to her chest as she leapt with joy.
They had never been given such special treatment in the past.
“Ahh, the Crown Prince is so amazing,” she said. “I could immediately see the elegance exuding from his face. I wonder if he might stop by again for another inspection tomorrow. Then maybe he could give us another bonus.”
“You really are simple, Eve,” Alicerose remarked, staring at her older sister.
“Say, Alice, what do you think of having a feast tonight?”
“What? We’re not gonna save it, Eve?”
“Why would I do that, you dummy? It’s my personal philosophy not to plan for tomorrow. Hey, Crow, you can head home early to put away the laundry. Alice and I are going grocery shopping!”
“Yeah, take your… Wait, they’re already gone.”
The two sisters had run off before he knew it. As instructed, he left straight for home.
He was walking toward the house, with his hand gripped tightly around the envelope holding his bonus, when…
“Hm?”
He heard someone running after him from behind. Were his sisters back? As he turned around, expecting to see them, his bonus was snatched right out of his hand.
“Wha?!”
He should have put the envelope in his pocket.
He didn’t even have the time to react. The boy ran past Crossweil, envelope in hand. The crowd parted for the boy, and he was gone before Crossweil knew it.
“W-wait!”
The thief had been a small boy. Though his shirt and pants were plain, he had worn a distinct hat on his head. Its purpose was most likely to obscure the boy’s face from Crossweil, but it was also perfect for tracking in the crowd.
“Hey! I’m going to get in trouble if you steal that!”
Though he was upset at losing his bonus, he was more frightened of his sisters’ wrath.
He ran at full speed through the capital streets. The thief was obviously a minor. Crossweil knew he could beat the kid in both speed and stamina, but…that only applied in ideal circumstances. Right now, after he had been toiling away and sweating up a storm all day, that wasn’t the case. Exhausted, he couldn’t run as fast as usual.
“Damn it. This just had to happen when I’m exhausted…!”
Though he wasn’t able to close the distance between them, he wasn’t letting the boy out of his sight. They kept up their race, and the thief was the first to give up. He turned a corner and headed down a back alley.
“Uh? This kid…”
The thief couldn’t have been a local. Up ahead was a dead end. Even Crossweil knew that, so the rest of the Imperial capital residents would have, too.
“Huh!”
Just as Crossweil expected, the boy in the hat stopped in his tracks. Walls surrounded him on all three sides. He had nowhere to go.
“I’ve got you now, you idiot!”
“Whoa, we’ve lost. You won by a landslide! We give up!”
“What are you talking about? There’s no ‘we’ in this. The only royal ‘we’ here is a royally-screwed thief.”
He pinned the boy’s arms from behind.
…?
…What is with this kid?
He’d been able to tell that the boy was tiny, but when he actually held on to him, Crossweil thought he was even scrawnier and more powerless than he imagined.
“U-unhand us! Stop! If you’re too rough, our hat will—ah!”
The boy squirmed in Crossweil’s grip. In his struggle, the hat the boy was wearing low on his face flew off.
…Which revealed his strikingly blue hair as it settled softly into place. Then Crossweil saw the boy’s delicate features as well. As he stared at the thief’s profile, illuminated by the evening sun…
“Huh! It’s you!”
“…Ah-ha-ha. You got us there.”
It was the Crown Prince, Yunmelngen. The Crown Prince whose eyes he had met briefly at the inspection was here, in front of his eyes, smiling sheepishly.
Crossweil was, of course, bewildered.
…Wait a second.
…What is he doing here? Why’s he stealing stuff? What’s happening?
The kid gave Crossweil a knowing look.
“Y-you do know who we are, don’t you? Let us go.”
“…” Crossweil silently thought for a while. Ultimately, he decided to pretend he didn’t recognize the prince. “I bet you’re just a doppelgänger.”
“What?!”
“I have no idea who you are, and I don’t remember seeing you anywhere. You’re a thief who stole my money. I’m taking you straight to the police.”
“Huh?!”
The color drained from the prince look-alike’s face.
“J-just wait! Y-you can’t. That would create an uproar!”
“You already made a spectacle of things yourself, I’d say,” Crossweil replied.
“We didn’t mean anything bad by it!”
“Sure seems like something a criminal would say. Uh, if I remember correctly, the closest police station would be…”
“W-wait! All right…then let’s make a deal. We will give you ten times the amount of this bonus. So please, let this be the end of it.”
“Oh, where could a police officer be…”
“Listen to us!”
The culprit started to thrash about. Since he was so scrawny and small, he couldn’t escape from Crossweil’s grip no matter how hard he tried.
“You want to pay me ten times this? Then why’d you go to all the trouble stealing it in the first place?”
“It’s true! Who do you think we are?!”
“I have no idea,” Crossweil shot back.
“Look! Look at our face!”
Since the kid was just asking him to look, he did turn to face the boy, staring at his profile from up close.
Eve had described his face as “dainty,” and it did have a sort of charm to it, with its long eyelashes and the large, adorable catlike pupils. He didn’t look quite like a boy or a girl—he was androgynous.
“The Crown Prince Yunmelngen.”
“Yes!”
“…Almost looks like you, you fake. Let’s add fraud to your list of crimes, then.”
“No! No!” The kid started to struggle again. “Don’t you see the elegance in our face, in our voice?! It’s practically oozing from our whole body!”
“Doesn’t seem very ‘elegant’ to describe yourself like that.”
“…We are warning you. Roughhouse us anymore, and we’ll tell the guards about it. Is that what you want?”
“…?” Crossweil couldn’t understand what the thief was getting at. Even if, in the slightest chance this kid were important, the Crown Prince was just a title given to the successor to the throne in this country.
“You are so discourteous,” the boy continued.
Even when pinned in Crossweil’s grip, the boy seemed to be looking down on him.
“You’ve manhandled us and haven’t even noticed?”
“…”
That didn’t seem like something a boy would say, but at the same time, Crossweil didn’t feel like he was touching a girl, either. He didn’t know what to believe.
“……Well, it’s fine. I’m starting to get tired anyway,” Crossweil said.
He let the boy loose. They were at a dead end, anyway. The kid had nowhere to run, even if he wasn’t holding on to him.
“C’mon, cough it up.”
“Well, if we must,” the boy said. “But you would do well to make sure it’s not stolen again.”
“You sure are condescending for being the thief who took it.”
“We are not a thief. We are the Crown Prince.”
The would-be Crown Prince obediently handed back the envelope. Then he picked up the hat on the ground, dusted it off with his hands, and continued, “We have no interest in physical attachments. We were simply curious as to what would happen if we stole it.”
“Well, obviously you would’ve been caught by me,” Crossweil replied.
“We wanted to know how the people would react to having something they carry stolen so suddenly. Whether they would shout or create a scene. Also…how they would behave upon realizing who we are. We thought you would be shocked and apologetic.”
“…Hunh?”
“We have no earthly desires,” the Crown Prince Yunmelngen said, holding his hat to his chest. “This hat, these clothes, we can obtain anything we want. But because we lack worldly desires, we instead have an interest in obtaining knowledge.”
“…So what? You just spend all your time satisfying your intellectual curiosity or something?”
That seemed very much like a philosophical problem only the Crown Prince would have. If the kid had been facing Eve, she definitely wouldn’t have hesitated to drop-kick him for even uttering that sentence out loud.
…He seems like the real deal.
…His explanation for stealing from me is too weird to make up.
It seemed he actually wasn’t an imposter, then. This was in fact Crown Prince Yunmelngen, who had come to observe them that very afternoon.
“No, wait. I don’t care who you are. You still stole my cash.”
“Please, just pretend it never happened.” The kid stared at him like a kitten begging for food. “Yes, we know just the thing!”
The Crown Prince clapped his hands, as though he’d realized something.
“If you’ll see it in your heart to let bygones be bygones, then we will give you a special honor!”
“What honor?”
“You will be given the privilege of being our conversation partner!” The Crown Prince flung open his arms. “We were just looking for someone to fill the role. Father is always so busy. And we are so bored but want to know more about the people.”
“Wait. That doesn’t benefit me at all.”
“You would be our conversation partner,” the Crown Prince said. “That should make you happier than any other person in the world, shouldn’t it?”
“…”
There was a sparkle in the boy’s eyes. But Crossweil coldly stared down at him.
“All right.” Crossweil grabbed the prince’s wrist. “I think I will turn you in to the police.”
“Why would you do that?!”
And so, Crossweil’s life in the capital began, living with the Nebulis twins and now spending his days with an eccentric.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login