The Winter is Almost Here – Q of Diamonds (Part 2)

Note: Please don’t read it in the little pop-up for the reader. For some reason it doesn’t reflect my later edits (which I often make a lot of after publishing), so please click ‘view original’.

One Day I Became a Burikko Villainess Noble Girl, out now.
Honto tutorial here.

Think of it as throwing money at the author and Alphapolis, and getting a book with squiggles and pretty pictures as a pleasant extra.

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“C-, Could you please stop with that? I’m-…”

I reflexively glared at His Highness Royce, but he wasn’t perturbed in the slightest.
With that gentle and warm expression still on his face, he just lowered his eyebrows a little, looking troubled.
…I’m sure he isn’t troubled at all.

“Sorry, sorry. I suppose it’s about time to get down to business. Your angry face is cute too, though.”

“Cu-…”

Cute? Me?
Beatrix was a character who you could describe as beautiful, rather than cute.
Her orange eyes slanted upwards, and her features were fierce-looking to match, so to call her cute is…
As you’d expect, I wasn’t wearing bright red lipstick right now, but even so, I think that my face should be quite villainous. The forceful types.

“And so, would it be fine to assume that you want to know why we’re engaged?”

There are various other things I’d like to ask as well, but that’s the thing I want to hear the most, so I nodded silently.
The issue of our engagement should include the details on our two nations and various other things as well, after all.
In this room filled with high-class furniture, ran a short silence.
I stared right at him.
Letting out a short sigh, he opened his mouth.

“Let’s see. First of all, have you heard from Camille about the schoolgirl named Frau Monier?”

“Yes. Roughly.”

In the game, Frau Monier was the default name for the protagonist.
A commoner girl with enormous mana…
I heard from Miss Camille about how she was manoeuvering against Garnet’s royalty and nobles.

“She was a little troublesome… and so I wanted to do something about her and the commoner extremist movement.”

“Certainly. It does involve your life.”

I’d like to avoid the guillotine too.

Thinking about it… I moved my gaze away from him, and thought back on the contents of the game.
In the game, this person sure was unlucky, huh. Getting executed for example, or losing a war and getting imprisoned…
If the heroine picked any route besides his, His Highness would unfailing meet with tragedy.
Could it be… That’s why Miss Camille learnt magic to protect him?
A certainly possibility about her came to mind.

“Ahh, if I remember correctly, I got executed in the story, right?”

His Highness spoke casually. He probably heard about this from Camille as well.
Even though it’s about him, he’s speaking like it’s somebody else’s business.
By story, I suppose he’s referring to the game.
It’s reasonable that when trying to explain the game in this world, she changed the terminology.

“…Yes. In the revolution caused by the K of Clovers and the Heroine.”

“Right, right, and we can’t let that happen, can we? So I’m working to prevent that right now.”

So he knows about this much.
Having heard about it from Camille earlier, this much is within expectations.
The problem is my engagement though…

“As for our engagement, there’s the matter of my feelings… but that isn’t all.”

“What do you mean?”

“…It’s not really something I’d like to get into with you.”

“Your Highness, I will be troubled if you do not tell me.”

“Hmmm, maybe I’d be persuaded if you called me Royce.”

This again?
Even I thought that I had led the flow of the conversation away from this… He’s unexpectedly stubborn.

“…”

“So?”

Even if I keep resisting, I get the feeling that he’ll just be having fun with it.
J-, Just calling him by the name is no big deal. I’ll say it as many times as he wants.
Or so I was thinking, but when I tried to open my mouth, I found myself at a loss.

“W-,  Won’t you tell me, …umm, R-, Ro-, Roy, ce…”

My voice went a little shrill.

“…Well, fine.”

Thank goodness…
Although he sighed, it seems that he agreed.

“There are a number of reasons, you see.”

“Yeah, please tell me everything. I heard some things from Camille, but it seemed that she didn’t understand everything.”

“That’s because Achille was keeping things from her. I thought it’d be fine to tell her but… he really is overprotective.”

An overprotective Achille… I really find it hard to imagine.
But once that exchange between Camille and Achille in the hallway came to mind, I got that feeling too.
In front of Camille, he makes a lot more expressions.
He even came to directly pick her up when she was drunk, after all.

“The first was to get your lord to stop with his proposals to Camille. I think that he was aiming for Camille’s knowledge in magic, but he kept trying to propose.”

Speaking of which, that time when she visited his room, he did say something like that, didn’t he.
It seemed that Miss Camille wasn’t very interested, but had he still not given up…?
Baka-sama uses authority for everything, so it seems like something he’d do.
And in fact, right in front of her, he once said something outrageous about doing something about her engagement with his authority.

“I support Achille and Camille being together, and I wanted Camille to stay in Garnet as well.”

And so, His Highness Royce *also used his authority to keep Miss Camille here, is it?

“Well done keeping Miss Camille here…”

Baka-sama is surprisingly stubborn.
I can’t imagine that he’d easily let somebody snatch away a woman that he likes.

“Mn, so I had a chat with King Topageria. I’ll be taking a Topagerian as my wife, so stop the Second Prince from pursuing Camille, I said.”

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