LIGHTNOVELWORLD Chapter 59
59 Chapter
Time is like a handful of sand grasped by the seaside.
In the blink of an eye, like sand slipping through fingers, time too has passed just as fleetingly.
So, it was said that the delegation from the Atara Kingdom had arrived.
“Sister Shushu! What are you going to wear to the delegation’s welcoming banquet? Let’s match our dress codes!”
“I’m going to match with Shushu’s dress code. You didn’t match last time.”
“Don’t curse and just go out, elder brother. She’s going to match with me.”
“The cursing is what you’re doing. What about black and gold? I saw a nice uniform design the other day.”
“Hah! Sister is going to match with me in burgundy! Burgundy uniform sounds good, right? I’ll place an order at Catherine’s Tailoring Shop!”
“Look at Shushu’s expression. It seems like she’d rather die than match dress codes with deceitful and venomous you. You say you love Shushu, yet you force her opinion like that? Truly amusing.”
“The adorable little one who should be exterminated is acting all high and mighty… Are your eyes squinting? That’s the expression Sister makes when she’s happiest. Oh, elder brother, you haven’t lived with her for months, so you can’t even read her expressions? You have no fond memories with her from when you were young? How pitiful.”
“……It’s absolutely horrible. If you keep this up, Shushu will come to hate you too.”
Amidst the two bickering violently, I took a sip of tea, trying to mediate with a compromise.
“Why don’t we all match the same way? Like blue or something…”
“Why the hell would I match with this jerk?!”
“It would be better to just walk around naked.”
Of course, the compromise was immediately dismissed.
Having seen them on the brink of throwing punches countless times, I resigned myself to other thoughts.
‘The Atara Kingdom’s delegation is like a prelude to war.’
A full-blown ‘Fairy Night.’ This was the point where serious content would begin.
‘Alexandros Leonid Atara.’
The young king of the Atara Kingdom who seized the throne stained with blood and ashes. Born as the seventh prince, he was a man of determination who somehow sat on the throne, demonstrating how birth order significantly impacted royal succession in Atara.
‘He is literally a sword-wielding madman.’
At just 15, Alexandros achieved the level of Sword Expert, slaughtered all his brothers and sisters, and at 17 became king—a crazy munchkin with a ferocious personality who cut down anything that stood in his way.
‘Surprisingly, he was comparatively calm for such a thing.’
Watching Kal and Aria bicker from a distance, I glanced down at the newspaper in my hands.
Since recalling the original, I’ve been diligently reading the newspaper without fail.
‘Until now, there hasn’t been a single article about Alexandros’s tyranny in the paper.’
I remembered that the entire continent was buzzing with noise when Alexandros began his mad tyranny the moment he ascended to the throne in the original work.
However, in the Sun Daily, which I read diligently daily, not once did it mention Alexandros’s tyranny. The only notable article on the front page today was about the delegation’s arrival.
‘Thinking of Alexandros’s extreme tyranny as described in the original, there’s no way it wouldn’t make it to the papers… Could it be that the original can’t be trusted?’
With a faint sigh, I folded the newspaper.
No matter how many times I vowed not to overly depend on the original, I found myself unknowingly judging people through the lens of that original work.
I hated myself for this, yet in order to protect my dear ones in the upcoming war, I had no choice but to rely on the original to some extent.
‘According to the original, Alexandros disguised himself as one of the ambassadors and came to the Empire.’
It was an utterly implausible scenario.
Even when the original was serialized, readers had poured in questions about how the king could leave the kingdom, to which the author replied that there was only one thing Alexandros saw—Aria.
‘It was rather justifiable. Alexandros was truly crazy about Aria.’
I sighed again while watching Aria curse at Kal with her lovely light pink hair flowing and sweet brownish lips.
The reason Alexandros would engage in such a historically unprecedented and insane act of leaving the royal palace to visit the Empire was solely for Aria.
In the world of the novel, Alexandros was a typical, heavily-layered character.
Born as the seventh prince, he had the most minimal position concerning the right to ascend the throne, making him a burden to his elder brothers who were securing their claim.
From birth, being ignored and marginalized was his everyday life, and eventually, when he turned twelve, he confronted an assassin sent by the second prince.
‘You must become strong. So, you must take revenge! I don’t want to remain as just a prince’s nanny! Please become a king. Become a king, and let me remain as a minister who laid the foundation for your reign!’
With the sacrifice of his only ally, the nanny, who stayed by his side, Alexandros barely managed to teleport and escape, gravely injured and dropped into a back alley of the Solarit Empire.
‘Mmm! There’s a person here…!’
And there he met Aria.
‘According to the original, Aria was meant to heal Alexandros and plant a flag… but…’
I glanced at the two now biting at each other like dogs, wearing a pitiful expression.
In the original, Kashmir was supposed to disappear next to Aria at the age of ten, but as I became Kashmir, I got to share Aria’s childhood.
According to my memories of living alongside Aria for a lifetime, she never brought home even a single dog, let alone Alexandros.
‘Actually, it was me who picked up a bunch of things.’
I thought of the Kartel and Leo I’d picked up as a child, as well as Diego, whom I had picked up later, and wore a complicated expression.
Looking back, I had always been gentle towards the weak and vulnerable since childhood.
‘I never imagined that these connections would evolve into this… what deep fates they are.’
Now, recalling the grown-up Reiner and Elio, I never could have imagined we would meet like this after growing up.
‘Who would have known that the kids I saved back then would grow up to be the male leads!’
Honestly, just thinking about that still drives me crazy.
I understood their ambiguous attitudes now, but I had no clue how to relate to them.
‘Elio told me to act like I don’t know, so I’m playing dumb, and Reiner also said he’d ignore it, so I’m pretending not to know… but…
They’re all pretending not to see, but it doesn’t mean they truly have no idea. The days spent with them are still shining precious memories from my blood-stained childhood.
I wanted to reminisce and share memories with them, but both were acting like they were just pretending not to know, which made me a bit disappointed.
“Good grief… They’re both older than me and one holds a higher position than me, so I really can’t scold them… How should I even approach them…”
In the midst of my complicated thoughts, I ruffled my hair. Then suddenly, I realized that of the three boys who saved me in childhood, only one had yet to meet again.
‘Leo.’
There was a boy who introduced himself as Leo, around 13 years old, lying injured in an alley. I had quite a bit of annoyance dealing with him when tussling in the cabin where I tended to Diego, but now that I think about it, it’s one of my few childhood memories.
‘…Wait a minute.’
A sudden outrageous hypothesis arose.
Based on my unfortunate or somewhat fortunate encounters with the male leads, it was a ludicrous speculation.
If I was 13, then Alexandros would be 12. Alexandros had escaped to the Empire when he was around that age.
At that time, Alexandros was injured and collapsed in the Empire’s back alley, and Leo, soaking wet from torrential summer rain, was also heavily injured and lying there.
‘Leo is… Alexandros…?’
That single sentence sent a jolt through my head.
I hurried to check Alexandros’s face in the newspaper. The ridiculously handsome face once again triggered a déjà vu in me. My instincts flashed danger, but I first settled my thoughts calmly.
‘That… snarling cat couldn’t have turned into a sword-wielding madman like Alexandros. The hair color is different. The face… well, it does look somewhat similar, but… the situation is almost identical… No, really? No, no. I won’t know until I meet him in real life.’
Without realizing it, I began biting my nails.
It wouldn’t be a problem to say I saved Alexandros.
The issue is that during our time together, I handled Leo, who acted like a snarling cat, quite roughly.
‘Will Alexandros disguise himself as an ambassador like in the original…? No, without the incident where Aria saves him, he might not come. But… what if, what if the Leo I saved is Alexandros and is now coming back for revenge against me…?’
My head throbbed with countless thoughts. While I had often thought about wanting to see Leo again, I had never imagined he might have grown up to be a sword-wielding madman like Alexandros.
‘Who could that crazy person El was talking about…’
Thinking about the delegation brought El’s advice back to my mind, adding to my headache.
After a long while of wrestling with my thoughts, I sighed and decided to stop.
‘Everything will be revealed at the welcoming banquet for the delegation next week.’
I just needed to find out who that crazy person El mentioned was and if Leo really is Alexandros.
‘If Leo… really is Alexandros… and so he came disguised as an ambassador with a grudge against me… then I won’t back down. What can I do?’
No matter how much of a sword-wielding madman he is, as the Princess of Crisis, he can’t just take me down easily. I’m not someone who’s easily taken down anyway. I resolved to be bold about it since things have turned out this way.
‘From the beginning… those times I spent with Alexandros in that cabin might not have meant much to him. So he might have forgotten… he might not even recognize me.’
Reaching this thought made me feel a bit bittersweet. Although those moments were quite precious to me, it was a little sad that they might not have meant anything significant to him.
However, despite the tangled and complex relationships that might deepen, the prayer I made for the boy who had suddenly come into my life and vanished, leaving only the scent of rich lemons, would not change.
‘Still. I hope Leo, whether he’s Alexandros or just a simple farmer in a distant land, is happy.’
It was a small wish from a child who lived in a muddy world.
While lost in thought, I managed to finally persuade Aria and Kal, who were about to grab each other by the collar over my dress code, to find a compromise.
As a result, my outfit would be a uniform appropriately mixing burgundy, black, and gold; Kal would wear a tailcoat made of black and gold; and Aria would wear a burgundy dress. This was because both Kal and Aria were adamant about not wearing similar dress codes.