My Beloved Princess ~The Boy Called Incompetent Rises with Only a Sword and the Princess's Devotion~ - Chapter 114: Confession

Chapter 114: Confession

Time turned back a little.

To when Princess-sama was bowing in a kowtow before Kirin.

Chasing after Seiran, whom his mother had sternly ordered to leave, Kishō ran out of the hut.

They were in gently rolling hills. A dirt-coloured country road stretched through the short grass. In the familiar landscape, there was no sign of Seiran.

“Wait. Shō-kun, I’m coming too.”

Ōka caught up behind Kishō as he looked around and let out a breath.

The two of them carefully scanned the area together, but there was no one in sight beyond the open stretch before them. The low grass was evenly lit by the sun, and there was nowhere to hide.

“She’s not here. But there’s no way she could’ve made it back to town in this little time.”

Less than thirty seconds had passed between Seiran running out and Kishō deciding to chase after her. If so, she had to still be hiding somewhere nearby.

“Around the back. Let’s go.”

“Y-yeah.”

What had happened between his mother and Seiran? Even if he pressed her for answers, his mother would never tell him. Kishō felt that with a certainty so strong it was almost a premonition.

“I think I was still pretty little. I asked Mom once why we didn’t have a father at home.”

The curt answer she had given him was, “He passed away before you were born.” Even when he tried to ask for details, she hated talking about it any further.

“It felt like back then. The cold look in Mom’s eyes when Dad came up. Even as a kid, I could tell. Something bad had happened, and Dad died because of it. That’s why Mom was angry. She had that same look in her eyes today.”

When they rounded the hut, they found a field, a pasture, and behind them a large stable.

He quickly swept his gaze over the field and pasture, then split up with Ōka to look for Seiran. Resting her hands on the pasture fence and leaning forward to look over the cows in the distance, Ōka said,

“So what you’re saying is… you think the headmistress might’ve had something to do with your father’s death.”

“Yeah.”

There had been a great war before Kishō was born.

His father’s death should have overlapped with that war.

According to Ordo, relations with the neighbouring country had only been restored a few years ago. In other words, the enemy in that war had been the dragonkin.

And on top of that, there had been the stream of abuse his mother hurled at the guardian who had come to offer marriage greetings. No matter how outrageous his mother was, even that had gone too far. All of it matched up, backing up Kishō’s intuition.

“It’s not like I want revenge. I’ve never even met my father. But I need to know. I need to know, if only so my marriage with Kuroyō won’t be broken off.”

The answer he had been seeking for years was right in front of him. Driven by that feeling, Kishō put his hand on the only place left to search: the stable door.

He pulled the ill-fitting double doors open a crack with a creak, then slipped through the gap.

The stable was spacious.

Its ceiling was as high as a three-storey building.

And it was just as deep, with more than enough room to match.

Even if all the livestock his mother owned were brought inside, there would still be plenty of space left over. At the moment, though, the animals had all been let out into the pasture, so none were there.

The stable’s corridor ran straight ahead. Feed boxes and hay sat on the cold stone floor. Beyond the fences were individual stalls for the livestock, each laid with a bed of straw.

Seiran was crouched and trembling in one corner of the large room at the very back.

When Kishō and the others approached, she let out a frightened little cry of “Hih” and scooted backwards on the floor while still seated. But her back immediately hit a mountain of straw nearly tall enough to reach the ceiling, and she could retreat no farther.

Even then, Seiran seemed too deep in her panic to care. She clawed desperately through the straw, struggling to bury herself inside it without a thought for how she looked. Every so often, she grabbed fistfuls of straw and hurled them at Kishō. She did not even care that her lavish dragon robes were getting filthy, casting aside even the dignity of one of the Six Consorts. Faced with how utterly shaken she was, even Kishō could only stare in bewilderment.

First he had to calm her down. Otherwise, there would be no talking at all. He dropped to one knee and met her eyes. Then Kishō gestured as best he could to show that he meant no harm.

“It’s all right, Headmistress. Mom isn’t here.”

At those words, Seiran’s arms and legs, which had been flailing around like a broken wind-up doll’s, stopped dead.

She raised her deathly pale face, and with cracked blue lips trembling, she groaned,

“So you were… that woman’s son.”

“Yeah. Kirin’s my mom.”

“Then why did you lie and say you couldn’t use Breath? If only you’d used Breath, if only I’d seen that savage power with my own eyes, I would’ve realised at once that you were that woman’s son. Why disguise yourself like that? Why did you have to lie!?”

“What are you even talking about!?”

Kishō was taken aback by Seiran’s hysterical scream.

It was common knowledge that Kishō couldn’t use Breath. What on earth was she talking about now?

Seiran stared fixedly at Kishō’s stunned, speechless face, then crumpled her pale features and nodded to herself as if she had reached some conclusion on her own.

“I see. I understand now. It was a trap to lure me here. And without ever realising it, foolish me came trotting right into it!!”

Then, still collapsed on the floor, she clutched her head and burst into loud sobs.

“Your paranoia is way out of control!?”

He had heard that the one who proposed coming along had been the headmistress herself.

She had forced her way onto his trip home, and now this was what she had to say? Kishō shouted back at full volume.

Ōka lightly tapped Kishō on the shoulder. When he turned to her in confusion, she whispered into his ear.

“Maybe it’s Yō-chan’s scheme?”

That did sound plausible. For a moment, Kishō almost accepted it, but he immediately shook his head.

“Kuroyō didn’t seem to know the two of them knew each other. Which makes sense. If the grudge between them started with something that happened before I was born, then there’s no way someone our age could know about it. Even Kuroyō can’t build a scheme around information she couldn’t possibly have.”

It was possible she had steered Seiran here for some other reason. But as Seiran was claiming, Kishō did not believe she had led her here to hurt her. Princess-sama had said they could settle it by talking, and he ought to trust her on that point.

To begin with, even if Seiran opposed the marriage, she was still part of the pack. To Princess-sama, Seiran too was someone who had to be protected.

“Kuroyō didn’t mean any harm. I’m sure of that. More than that, what bothers me is… why she’d even think I can use Breath in the first place.”

Seiran kept crying in fear of his mother. Her whole body trembled so violently it was painful to watch, and she seemed like a completely different person from the overbearing headmistress who had carried herself with such high-handed arrogance. Seeing that pitiful transformation, Kishō suddenly looked up.

…Can Mom use Breath?

According to Princess-sama, his mother and he had the same attribute affinity.

If so, then in theory, whatever his mother could do, he should be able to do as well, and that meant even the long-range attacks he had thought impossible ought to be possible. But…

“Breath is something you can do as naturally as breathing, right?”

“Yeah. It feels like an image just wells up in your head on its own, maybe. Usually around the time you become aware of things. On average, people can use it by around age five.”

“Right. Unfortunately, I can’t picture myself using Breath at all. I have no sense for it whatsoever.”

Kishō himself understood better than anyone that it was impossible.

So was Seiran lying?

But looking at Seiran’s face, soaked and ruined with tears and snot, he could not believe she had the leeway to lie. Even now, she was shaking in terror of his unseen mother from the bottom of her heart. She looked so wretched that he almost felt sorry for her.

Or maybe… she’s not in her right mind…

The instant Kishō merely reached out a hand, Seiran overreacted, wildly swinging her arms to keep him from getting close. It was exactly like a small child, so badly shaken it made him fear she was regressing into infancy. Tossing her dishevelled bangs, she rejected him with such violent force it looked like her neck might twist right off. Unable to watch any longer, Kishō finally grabbed both her shoulders to try and calm her down, but she shook him off with tremendous strength.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was cruel.”

For some reason,

Seiran suddenly dropped into a kowtow right there on the spot and slammed her forehead against the stone floor. Right in front of the dumbfounded Kishō and Ōka, she repeated it again and again, and her forehead gradually reddened. The two of them hurriedly stepped in to stop her and tried to pin her down by force. It turned into a scuffle.

“What are you doing? Are you out of your mind, offering a kowtow to a student!?”

“Yeah, yeah. I agree with Shō-kun. Even Yō-chan would be totally put off by that.”

Where was all that strength coming from in a Seiran who was utterly spent?

Their valiant struggle came to nothing. They failed to restrain the rampaging Seiran and were flung away by the violent oval whipping of her shoulders, landing on their backsides.

Free again, Seiran pressed both hands together toward heaven, struck her forehead toward some unseen thing, and pleaded through torrents of tears.

“Ahh, Dragon God-sama. Please forgive foolish me. Watching him mow down Upper School students one after another without using either Breath or sorcery… it made me remember. That must be why. Even though I was in the position of headmistress, where I should have been fair, I passed an unfair judgment because I couldn’t accept something so inexplicable. Ahh, yes. I knew it. Deep down, I knew it was wrong. I knew I couldn’t go on like this. But… but ever since I witnessed his meteoric rise, I’ve dreamed of that night every night. Of that monster. The monster from that night! My heart found no rest. My chest hurt the whole time, and I wanted to look away from the nightmare… I wanted to drive away the monster’s phantom. So I used General Consort-sama’s orders as a pretext and justified treating him as an enemy. And this is the result. It is all my lack of virtue that brought about this disaster. But please, please… do not abandon foolish me. Save me. O Dragon God-sama, our founding ancestor.”

She spilled out those words of confession in rapid succession.

Apparently, they were directed toward Dragon God-sama in heaven.

Kishō could not understand all of it, but he did feel as though he could make out fragments of the situation through it.

Judging by the circumstances, the monster she spoke of was probably his mother. Seiran carried trauma planted in her by his mother, and the way Kishō fought had served as the trigger that brought that trauma back to mind.

Out of a defensive instinct to protect her own mind, Seiran had turned hostile toward Kishō and tried to stabilize herself by denying his existence. That was probably more or less what had happened.

“I’ve got some thoughts about that misplaced grudge… but looking at this mess, I can’t even bring myself to get angry…”

Seiran, trembling in fear and begging for salvation, was now nothing more than one pitiful, helpless girl.

Even if she was his father’s enemy, he still could not bring himself to do anything about her.

With all sorts of emotions swirling in his chest, Kishō could only stand there, unable to do anything.

Then Seiran, still sitting on the stone floor, began to speak haltingly.

Through her sobs, toward empty air. Her exhausted eyes were vacant.