Chapter – 50…
Before the Crown Prince headed to the street with the Lemer Count family’s warehouses.
‘Wh… Crown Prince?’
‘Yes. I am the Crown Prince. I heard you were in an unjust situation.’
He had just used the power accompanying his position as Crown Prince to free the young lady from the countryside who was accused of theft and murder at the Callient Ducal household.
When his aide first brought up the story, he had assumed she had received a fitting punishment, but after the garden incident, the Crown Prince personally looked into all the records of that case and its subsequent handling.
And he concluded.
‘I acknowledge your petition that the Duke imposed a harsh punishment. Return to where you came from. And never dare to crawl your way out again.’
Thus, the country lady who had tainted the Callient Ducal house with blood was able to return peacefully to her hometown thanks to the Crown Prince’s ‘decision’.
Naturally, the Crown Prince probably didn’t even consider the implications of negating and overturning the Duke’s decision.
To him, he was merely correcting his elder brother’s mistake.
As had always been the case, ever since strange rumors began circulating around the Duke—no one knew exactly when.
“One is done, now let’s see…”
The Crown Prince, having received another glass of rum, mulled over the conversation he had with those he met on the outskirts, past the warehouses.
‘I also didn’t hear any explanation.’
‘Likewise.’
‘There’s clearly some kind of scheme behind this.’
Indeed, there were quite a few second sons who had had their engagements broken off due to the Duchess selection contest.
Of course, most of them accepted their families’ decisions and were quickly seeking other marriage prospects, but some did not.
‘The Ducal house must have used some trick!’
‘To suffer such humiliation…’
The second son of a Viscountcy and two other second sons, who had been unilaterally rejected and, unable to contain their anger, sought out the Crown Prince, all shared a hostility towards the Callient Ducal house.
Having had their engagements broken off without even hearing a reason, it was only natural to blame the most apparent cause.
‘Now, now, everyone, calm down. A union between families doesn’t break without reason.’
The Crown Prince calmed them and advised.
‘Just because you didn’t hear a reason doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Look for that reason within your own families.’
‘Your words mean…’
‘It’s the family you’ll inherit anyway, isn’t it? It should be fine to borrow a bit of the family head’s authority a little early.’
At the Crown Prince’s words, the second sons swallowed dryly but soon nodded.
They left with resolute faces, as if they were generals bearing the fate of the empire on their shoulders, promising to find clues.
“Well, as always, my elder brother went too far this time as well.”
The Crown Prince muttered without realizing it.
It was merely him reciting excuses to negate the instinctive feeling that what he did wasn’t right.
But the Crown Prince lightly brushed aside the nagging feeling.
He had a very plausible justification.
Correcting his elder brother’s mistakes was his duty as the younger brother, and the Duke’s sins were something only the Crown Prince could resolve.
Whether Ludwig had actually committed a sin or done something wrong was unknown.
It was just that when the Crown Prince ‘judged’ it to be so, he would act accordingly.
His promise to appease the anger of the jilted second sons was also solely because the ‘Crown Prince’ judged that they seemed to have been treated unfairly.
“No need to complicate things and twist them this way and that. Shall we head to the Ducal residence?”
Just as the Crown Prince was about to leave, his ear twitched.
“I’m telling you, it’s real!”
It was a rough voice, like an old door creaking, but it seemed to be spilling some interesting story, didn’t it?
The Crown Prince, without hesitation, approached the owner of the voice and tapped his shoulder.
“Hey, what’s this about?”
“Huh? Who’re you!”
The bald man, showing immediate aggression towards a stranger, was met with the Crown Prince’s chin gesture.
“I’ll buy. Two more glasses.”
“Oh, my friend!”
The bald man, who had instantly become a friend over a few free drinks, began to ramble.
Most of it was nonsensical and preposterous, but one thing—
“They say a really strange thing happened up north.”
“Tell me about that in detail.”
“Huh? Detail, my foot, that’s all there is.”
The bald man waved his hands dismissively, but the Crown Prince, smiling, ordered an entire bottle for him.
“What kind of strange thing was it?”
The bald man, his mouth agape, filled his glass to the brim and spoke.
“Well, what was it… they say a cliff appeared out of nowhere?”
“A cliff?”
“Yeah. They say a cliff formed overnight.”
The red-nosed man waved his hands enthusiastically, continuing to chatter about something, but ultimately, the only worthwhile information was that a cliff had suddenly appeared.
“Did a mountain collapse?”
“If that were the case, people wouldn’t be calling it strange, would they? They say people woke up and the ground was just deeply sunken in, so of course they’d gossip.”
The man was right. Cliffs weren’t that unusual a terrain, but if one formed overnight, that was a different story.
The Crown Prince’s expression became one of piqued interest as he rubbed his chin.
“A cliff in the north, is it? I should look into this.”
And so, the unprecedented anomaly that had occurred in the north, something that had never happened in history, was gradually spreading from mouth to mouth.
Around the time the Crown Prince was downing rum and ordering by the bottle.
After receiving a confession from the Lemer twins and becoming friends, Ashilly, who had returned to the mansion, collapsed face-first onto the sofa and let out a pained groan.
If only she could fall asleep, even pass out, right then.
They say when you’re overly tired, sleep doesn’t come.
Of course, that probably wasn’t the only reason.
Ashilly hugged the pillow she had buried her face in and muttered.
“I need him.”
The words that escaped with her groan were 100% sincere.
“Who do you need?”
At the low voice coming from behind her, Ashilly’s shoulders jumped up like a harpooned tuna.
“Eek!”
Having shot up so abruptly that she almost rolled off the sofa, Ashilly swatted at the firm arm wrapped around her waist.
“You scared me! Why do you creep around like that!”
“I thought you were asleep. More importantly, who did you say you need? That ‘him’?”
“Who else? It’s you, Ludwig.”
The answer came as naturally as breathing, and the silent sandstorm in Ludwig’s blue eyes quickly cleared into a serene sky.
“I heard you went all the way to the warehouse district on the outskirts of the capital.”
“Yeah. You know the Lemer twin young ladies, right?”
“Yes. I heard they visited.”
“Their family suffered unimaginable damage from the dust explosion. Having seen it, I couldn’t just ignore it.”
As Ashilly grumbled, Ludwig brushed the red hair away from behind her ear and smiled, furrowing his brow.
“You said you hated anything bothersome. Yet you always step up to help someone like that…”
Ashilly, her ears turning red, covered his mouth with her palm.
“Okay, that’s enough. It’s embarrassing, stop.”
He knew.
He knew Ashilly was particularly shy about praise.
He had brought it up deliberately just because he wanted to see her blush.
The next moment, a dull ache shot through his heart.
Her expression, her voice, her gaze, her gestures—all seen in an instant.
You who came like a dream, will you leave like a dream?
Suppressing the pain constricting his heart, Ludwig removed her hand.
Ashilly rubbed her palm, which had touched his lips, as if it felt strange, then spoke.
“And, you know…”
Ashilly started to speak, then only moved her lips silently.
Ludwig picked her up effortlessly and said,
“Love?”
“No.”
“Justice?”
“No.”
“It must be peace or friendship then.”
“The latter.”
Their back-and-forth, reminiscent of a game of Twenty Questions, wasn’t much different from in her dream.
Ashilly often avoided spelling out the meanings of the words Ludwig listed or spoke evasively.
“Some things never change.”
“Saying those kind of grand, national-value words out loud is just embarrassing for me.”
Ludwig, holding her perfectly naturally in his embrace, asked.
Ashilly, in turn, quickly wrapped her slender arms around his neck and clung to him.
As the familiar warmth washed over her and his scent enveloped her entire body, her frazzled nerves began to gradually relax.
Ludwig, slowly stroking her back, added with a faint smile,
“Friendship with the Lemer twins?”
“Yeah. Who’d have thought I’d hear ‘Let’s be friends!’ at this age?”
Ashilly burrowed into his embrace and giggled.
“It felt nice.”
“I heard the Lemer twins are quite particular.”
“Then it feels even better that I caught the eye of such particular people.”
Ashilly refrained from saying things like ‘That’s just a rumor, they weren’t like that with me. You have to experience people yourself. Rumors are just rumors.’
Having been in society for a long time, she knew that while rumors were often just rumors, there were also countless cases where there was a reason for the rumor to exist.
Remembering the Lemer twins, their faces the color of ripe tomatoes, repeatedly calling her name while expressing both shyness and joy, Ashilly chuckled softly to herself before suddenly hardening her expression.
“Ah. I also met the Crown Prince.”
Ludwig gently rubbed the wrinkles forming on her brow.
“It was so quick I thought I might have seen wrong, but there’s no way I did, right? Why would I mistake someone for the Crown Prince of all people?”
“You probably didn’t see wrong. The unexplained explosion happening over there is something he would be interested in.”
The next moment, Ludwig’s eyebrow shot up impossibly high.
That’s because Ashilly, who had been absentmindedly fiddling with his fingers, added as if she had just remembered.
