The vibration seemed to have been transmitted with a touching body, to the shame of the body to avoid showing as much as possible.
‘What a shiver!’
I distorted my face by his poor choice of language. But I didn’t have the energy to get angry, so I replied helplessly.
” ..not just because it’s cold.”
“Then?”
The prince inquired quickly.
“Just…”
“Just?”
I tried to gloss over it, but it didn’t work for a man of extraordinary tenacity. I held and rubbed the cold hands, trembling intermittently under the crown prince’s large cape, and tried to pretend nothing was wrong.
“When I closed my eyes… I keep thinking about what happened earlier.”
“What happened earlier?”
The crown prince frowned and said, “Ah!” to see if he thought of something soon.
“… …when you fall off the cliff? Oh, I thought you were fainting as soon we fell. Look like that’s not..”
“…..”
“Or you mean when you almost got hit by a bear while coming forward without fear?”
“Ha… Yes.”
Now I’m tired of reacting to everything.
“I trembled like a dog because I come forward without fear and almost got hit by the bear.”
I muttered in a voice that was beyond measure for a person who was shaking with fear.
With a deep sigh and an exaggerated admission, there was no further noise from the Crown Prince. I thought you’d say, “Crazy dog ever does that?” I thought you’d be sarcastic…unexpected.
In the cozy cave, where the bonfire rose, peace in sleep came.
Certainly, as I talked to the Crown Prince and gradually came to my senses, the cold and trembling that had been severe to the end of my head gradually subsided. However, as if replacing the position, a heavy fatigue came.
I leaned my head against the thick forearms around my ears.
‘He hugged me first without my consent, so He should at least play the role of a pillow.’
It was around the time when only the eyelids were slowly blinking.
“…when I was a kid.”
Suddenly a sigh of voice came from the bedside. I was too lazy to turn my head, so I only turned my eyes and checked. The prince looked down at me with a subtle look and then opened his mouth again.
“I think I was about nine or ten.”
“…..”
“I’ve encountered a bear about the same size that a princess encountered today in this forest.”
“……the bear?”
“Yes.”
I wondered why he brought up such a story out of the blue. But I heard his story quietly.
“There was once a time when the second prince’s birthday overlapped with a hunting contest, when I first saw my brother.”
The Crown Prince’s eyes became a little dim as he recalled that time. The figure made him feel a little bit human.
But it was a snap. Callisto immediately twisted his lips and put on a fierce look.
“As a kid, I thought I could harm a newborn baby, so I couldn’t see a single hair because the Queen had been wrapped up for years..”
“…..”
“All the nobles gathered to attend the hunting competition, but it was only nominal. Gifts for the Second Prince were lined up throughout the tournament.”
“….”
“I was the only one who took part in the position empty-handed.”
His muttering face suddenly became hollow. Looking back, he looked a little disappointed.
“I wanted to give my one and only brother a nice present.”
“…..”
“So, in spite of the opposition of the father, I sneaked into the hunting ground with a bow.”
“…..”
“I was going to catch a little animal like a rabbit and give it to him as a gift.”
Calisto soon recovered his spirits, as if he had felt despondent. His face, smiling back at me, was so mischievous.
‘I can’t believe he had such a naive and sad time…’
Somehow the fact seemed quite strange. I looked strangely at the Crown Prince, who told me a story.
In any case, I was so busy dying that I lacked much information about the ML in his hard mode. In order to survive in the future, it was better to pick up anything and use it. Therefore, I carefully engraved the childhood that Crown Prince confided in me.
“I did find prey that I like, but it ran away so quickly that the arrow didn’t hit it. I was chasing after the prey and unwittingly came into the deep woods.”
“….”
“And ran into a bear.”
I was a little surprised. It was a very similar story to what I had today. The Crown Prince, who noticed my interest, continued his words without a break.
“I couldn’t even shoot an arrow at the bear running, unlike the princess.”
“……”
“I was horribly scared. I just managed to escape just before I got hit by its front foot.”
“……you ran into it when you was a lot younger than I am now, right?”
To the self-contradictory tone of Callisto, I blinked my eyes and answered back.
Ahead of the coming-of-age ceremony, I’m also shaking because the fear of meeting a bear is still lingering. Only nine, ten years old. What was the fear of the Crown Prince, who would have faced a huge beast at that young age?
It happened to be a comforting aspect, but Callisto shook his head firmly.
“Age doesn’t matter to the heir of the throne. The Emperor must always be flawless.”
“But…”
“In addition, I did not avoid it completely, but stupidly, his claws brushed against my arms. If it were a little later, it wouldn’t have stopped at tearing, but this arm would have been blown away. I was lucky.”
“Eughh….”
I was fed up with the cruel description of my left arm. The crown prince drew the corners of his mouth as if it was funny to see me like that.
“I’m running away frantically, avoiding the monster that’s chased…..and suddenly an arrow came from the other side.”
“Are the guards there?”
“I thought so at first.”
The crown prince suddenly narrowed the middle of his forehead.
“On the way, I ran to a dying lion, and the assassins in black suit shot me with a bow.”
“Assa, assassin?”
“They sent to kill a 10-year-old child.”
I opened my mouth to his calm explanation. If you were the Crown Prince, you wouldn’t know? Is it really normal to release dozens of assassins on the hunting ground to kill a child?
Twenty assassins encountered today came to mind.
‘…..it’s something you’re going through often.”
Somehow, suddenly facing the assassin in the middle of the hunting ground, the crown prince was surprisingly calm and cool. The tyrant’s childhood, which had not been detailed in the game, was worse than expected.
“…who sent it?”
“Well, in the end, the investigation ended in smoke, and it wasn’t clear who was responsible for the assassination, but…”
He stroked his chin with one hand, and suddenly his red eyes flashed.
“It must have been sent by the empress or a foreign country without having to disclose it. The Second Prince was a poor kid who couldn’t even write properly at that time.”
I could not feel a handful of affection in the voice of calling the one and only brother.”
I was suddenly worried.
“But the story right now…..Can you tell this to me?”
“What wrong with that? It’s not like you’re going to come the Second Prince and joining him. Even so, I don’t know what useful from the story.”
I was angry, but he was right. But why are my fists clenching up?
‘Since He was a child, He had his personality destroyed… ‘
Once again I was deeply convinced by the formation of his character, and sent a look of hastening the story.
“So?”
“Anyway, I’m running away from the bear towards the assassins who came to kill me, and suddenly I was hit in the chest by the bow they shot and fell to the slope.”
“Che, Chest?”
“Yes. Fortunately, I didn’t die because of my mother’s belongings I had on my neck.”
I looked reflexively down and looked around Calisto’s neck. But not to mention the belonging, they were only hard bare chests without a piece of cloth.
“I didn’t use it now. I couldn’t use it after that, so I kept it separately.”
The crown prince laughed and mocked.
“Are you done with seeing appearances?”
“Ehm!”
His face glowed belatedly. I turned my head hurriedly, coughing in vain.
“So, what happened next? What about the bear that chasing?
When I tried to turn the topic around, the crown prince was picky, sneaky and gentle.
“It’s funny but surprisingly, thanks to the fall down the slope, the bear I was chasing passed over me and ran to the assassins.”
He wrenched the corners of his mouth up again, as if he thought of that time.
“It was a bloody fight. The bear was very intelligent. He fought well against ten men with weapons.”
“Crrrrrrrrrrrr!”
Somewhere the bear’s howling sounded. A giant monster bear that’s going crazy. The image of a young prince watching the assassins being swept away by the bear’s wielding feet was depicted.
“…… so who won?”
The crown prince answered immediately with a blank face.
“Both have been wiped out.”
“Both… Both?”
“The assassins were outnumbered, but they didn’t have close-range weapons to minimize the trace.”
“…..”
“On the contrary, the bear swept them away and won, but the poison on the arrow spread and eventually died.”
After all, it was only the young prince who survived the scene of the great slaughter.
“I survived, and what do you think I did next?”
This time the Crown Prince suddenly asked me a question.
“…..”
My lips were chapped and I couldn’t answer anything.
What did you do? If it were me, I would have fled desperately by the time the bears and assassins clashed and had already escaped the forest.
“I cut off the dead bear’s neck.”
However, the young prince, who heard through the mouth of the person concerned, committed an unexpected act.
“And proudly won the hunt.”
“…….”
“After the ceremony, the head of the bear that I brought with me was thrown into a pile of second prince’s birthday presents. It was quite a spectacle to see the blood that hasn’t cooled down yet.”
