“How are things over there? You haven’t run into any danger, have you?” Princess Lia asked straight away as she opened the door.
“Don’t worry, Your Highness, everything is perfectly fine.” Tina’s tone was relaxed. “But I wonder, has Your Highness felt terribly lonely because I’m not there?”
“Not at all.”
From the other end came a slightly sulky retort, “I’m just asking how a certain heartless person can be so careless as not to report back safely.”
“De……”
To be honest, Tina hadn’t expected this. Had their relationship really gotten to this level?
Just as she was about to reply, another voice interrupted.
“Hehe, dear Tina, don’t listen to this princess. You don’t know—she’s been sitting in front of the crystal ball daydreaming for nearly an hour.”
“If I hadn’t made her call, she probably would’ve fallen asleep hugging that crystal ball tonight.”
“Phyllis! You?!”
The girl’s cheerful laughter was unmistakable, and Tina immediately recognized her.
As for the red-haired girl who had exposed her, Lia was so flustered that she blushed and scolded her on the spot, then curled up under the blanket, refusing to come out.
“Waaah—dear Tina, the princess is bullying me.”
Phyllis tried to take the opportunity to get some sympathy, but Tina sided entirely with Lia. “Phyllis, really, how can you treat the princess like that?”
“What? Tina, you’re taking her side too? That’s so unfair—I thought you always sided with me before!”
“That was then, this is now, Phyllis.”
“Waaah, fine.”
Phyllis wasn’t sure how she ended up the loser in this.
“Well, Tina, if you have time during the Carnival…”
Before Lia could finish, Tina already guessed what she wanted to say.
“I hope to spend the festival in the city with Your Highness. Might you grant me that chance?”
“Huh?”
Lia was stunned. This was exactly what she wanted to ask. Her visit tonight was originally for this purpose. Unexpectedly, it was Tina—who seemed cold—that extended the invitation first.
“Ahem, sure. Consider it a reward for completing your task. Then I’ll have you accompany the greatest princess in the kingdom for some real fun.”
“Oh, right, Your Highness, I specially brought a few books. I promised you I’d tell you stories every day.”
Tina flipped open the pages. “Although not being by your side, it might not be as effective.”
“Hmph, that’s okay~ I’m just happy you remember me.”
Though separated and unable to meet, Lia still listened intently, quickly drifting into a sweet dream beneath Tina’s gentle voice.
***
In the same royal city, of the same bloodline, another person was trapped in a completely opposite nightmare.
“I am Rune Daniels. I am the prince of the Keliville Kingdom, and Lia’s—brother.”
This sentence echoed suddenly in his mind.
It was his self-description, and also the relationship he most wanted to escape from yet found hardest to sever.
Rune dreamed of his past, his childhood.
Now, he viewed his birthday from an omniscient perspective—
That day, the entire nation celebrated. Everyone was thrilled by the birth of the prince, looking forward to a new future for the kingdom.
But no one could have anticipated that shortly after giving birth to the prince, the queen would suffer a sudden accident and vanish from the public eye.
From joy to sorrow in an instant, the banquet celebrating Rune’s birth was canceled and turned into the queen’s funeral.
From that moment on, the public perception of the prince began to shift.
Some said he was a cursed child, born to kill his own mother, and should be disposed of as soon as possible.
Others said he was inferior to the princess in every way, that his existence had no meaning for the kingdom’s continuation and could be ignored.
“Whatever the rumors, whatever the outcome, the world only saw me as the extra one.”
But why was it you, Lia? Why was it you who reached out to help me then?
The dream shifted to when Rune first started to remember things.
From the moment he entered the Royal Academy, there were always people—noble children whispering behind his back.
How could he not know?
Teachers, classmates, even his own father, all harbored prejudice against him.
During those days when he was bullied into a corner, insulted as the useless prince, he suffered humiliation after humiliation.
When he tried to take his own life, it was his sister, a year older, who found him and stopped him.
“You were the only one without the right to stop me…” he still remembered saying that.
“Sorry, Rune. My existence has caused you a lot of trouble, hasn’t it?” Before him was his sister, full of guilt yet still caring for him.
The unheard words caught him off guard.
“…No, it’s not your fault.” He choked back tears.
“This is my problem. If I had never been born, mother wouldn’t have died, and father wouldn’t have fallen into despair.”
It was all his fault.
The glass shard in his hand grew tighter in his grip, piercing the skin and drawing bright red blood.
This pain was nothing compared to the scorn he had borne since birth.
“Stop it!”
His hand was forcefully slapped away, the glass flying into the air and shattering heavily on the ground.
“Why do you care about me…”
He lowered his head.
“Because you are my brother. We are family.”
Even now, those words were etched deep in his memory, impossible to forget.
“What does being family even matter? Father has always ignored me! If family is different from those villains, then prove it to me! Prove that family can bring me warmth, not disregard!”
Rune didn’t understand why he had lost his temper like that.
Perhaps it was because finally someone cared about him. He couldn’t help but pour out all the pain he had endured over the years. What he wanted most was probably just some comfort.
“I’ll apologize to father on your behalf. He truly loved mother but shouldn’t have sunk into despair for so long. I’ll find a time to talk to him.”
His sister, taller than him by a head, embraced the fragile little boy he was then.
“Sorry for telling you all this so late. It’s my fault for realizing it too late. From now on, no one will bully you anymore. Trust me. Trust your sister.”
He knew all too well his sister wasn’t in the same year as him and that it was reasonable she didn’t know much about him.
—Because their lives barely intersected beyond meeting at dinner after school. Apart from that, they had no real connection.
At that time, he had many things to say, but in the end, all his thousand words were summed up as ‘family’.
Leaning on his sister’s shoulder was the happiest moment he had.
Since then, as Lia had said, no one ever bullied him again.
Classmates changed their attitude toward him completely, and his father seemed to have recovered from the grief of losing his wife.
He didn’t know what his sister had sacrificed for this.
All he knew was that she had become very tired, and… smiled much less.
He couldn’t bear it.
So, he had to work hard. He had to fight for hope.
If he could prove he had the strength to rule the kingdom, could he make everyone look at him differently? Could he lighten his sister’s burden?
He would become king, and make his sister smile.
—That was his dream, until that incident happened.
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