Chapter Chapter 113: 12. It’s not over til it’s over (11) (1/2)

12. It’s not over til it’s over (11)

#13 Their story: Atia nel Karuan’s story.

I watched Iris and Ast battle it out.

There would be no hope for success if things went on like this.

Iris was at her limits merely evading the silver-coloured cludgel.

Simply surviving for that long against a blatantly broken weapon that inflicted pain simply by making contact with your sword would be an incredible feat in itself.

If it were any other time I would have praised her even if she lost, but not this time.

It’s Ast.

For ten years I waited, for ten years I prepared.

Yet the man whose face I never saw once through all ten of those years was right in front of me.

I could almost touch him if I just reached out my hand.

If I just reached out… I was within capturing distance…… but why did my hand never reach that place?

Ever since I was little, I had obtained everything I wanted.

The Karuan Empire was a superpower on the continent, and even the head of that superpower, the emperor, my father, could not refuse my words.

But, for the first time in my life, someone rejected my words.

At first it was fascinating.

All his actions were that of a petty lowlife’s, but if I thought of the way he treated me, there was no man as bold as he was.

He was not a genius.

But neither was he an idiot or a simple commoner.

Sometimes he looked like an idiot in the way he didn’t know obvious things, but at others he created new methods that not even I had managed to think of.

There was an old saying that the line between a genius and an idiot is a thin one, and watching Ast made me realise just what kind of person that idiom referred to.

So I was happy.

Because he and I could converse with each other on equal grounds, something that no one else had managed.

He was different to those who simply bowed their heads in front of imperial title.

Ast’s eyes had no traces of fear or wariness.

Instead, how would I say it. Looks of exasperated apathy and ones that questioned just what was I up to again were plentiful.

Nor did he, like the ones who knew of my fate, look at as if I was a monster or send me looks of pity.

Instead he gave me looks that said ‘what kind of madwoman is this’ or ‘let’s not give her any attention’.

‘…All of a sudden it feels like I was treated quite meanly but that’s just me, right?’

As a laugh threatened to escape my lips as I recalled past memories, I clamped my mouth shut and barely managed to stop it.

Ast was always like this.

Unlike the others, he was close to me, much like Reia did, who knew everything.

But the only came close, he kept some distance from me and always maintained it.

A quaint distance that was neither too friendly, nor too distant.

Was it because of that distance?

I had always been thinking of death, and had thought I would die alone, but when death came for me, when I heard Ast’s voice, and unlike my normal self, I entertained a sudden small thought.

If I asked Ast to die with me, would he really die with his master?

The moment I thought of that I immediately knew the answer.

That he would never, ever do such a thing.

And so I smiled faintly as I said.

I’m inside so come in.

And I thought to myself.

If it’s together with you, at least the path to the underworld won’t be boring.

But because Ast came into my room that day, my fate was overturned.

Ast took away the death that had come for me.

The thing that all the people and resources of the empire couldn’t solve, Ast went and solved it.

I was surprised at my unexpected new life, but thinking that good things were good, I began to enjoy it.

I spent the days with Ast and Reia, and that didn’t change even after the Great War began.

We bullied Reia as if to outdo each other, we laughed along together at Ast’s acts of lunacy, and after we played together like that a few times the neighbouring country was conquered, and so we picked out a new target and started another war.

But in the middle of all that, Ast vanished.

At first I thought that Ast was insane enough to oversleep in the middle of a war.

When he was not discovered in his chambers I wondered if he was preparing something weird somewhere else.

And when the letter that said he would be leaving the imperial court was discovered, I worried whether he had been kidnapped by an enemy nation, in a manner quite unlike myself.

When I found out that he was originally a spy for the organisation named Howling, I was the most furious that I had ever been in my life.

That he had used me? No.

It was anger at the fact that between Howling, a parasite leeching off the empire, and myself, a princess of the empire, he had chosen Howling.

That I would lose to Howling of all things, there was no greater shame than this.

“Bring him to me, right now!”

In the middle of a war, I brought together my subordinates and began to throw a tantrum.

The empire’s hidden darkness? Trash naturally accumulated itself when you cleaned it out, so we had simply left the trash that was easy to take care of.

I could not stand the idea that my belonging was in the middle of that trash that could be dealt with at any time.

But right now we were at war.

No matter how much momentum we had behind us, in a situation where anything could happen, there was no way I would permit the creation of internal strife, and because of that, all I could do was endure and end the war as quickly as possible.

And so as I tempered my anger, and drank tea made with Reia’s amateur skills.

“Your Highness… you really like Ast too much.”

As Reia said so with a bitter smile, I dropped the teacup I was holding.

Like? Me? Ast?

I ignored a shocked Reia as I deeply thought over it.

Why was I so angry.

Why did it feel so stifling just because Ast wasn’t here.

Why did I so openly express my wish to see Ast.

“So it is.”

I, liked Ast.

It took two entire days for me to come to that conclusion.

And the answer I found at the end of those two days made me happy.

I never thought I would ever have the chance to love anyone, but thanks to Ast I had obtained yet another thing!

So I ceased all activity related to Ast’s search.

Ast had run away in disgust when I had simply threatened to marry him as a joke.

And how horrifying were his escape skills?

He had escaped without anyone the wiser in the middle of a warzone under maximum security.

If I were to carelessly lay my hands on him then I would only give him the opportunity to escape.

Therefore I had to set a perfect trap and create a situation where escape was impossible.

To create that scenario, I suffered a bit to end the war.

And I even lifted up my little brother so that he would become victorious in the fight for succession.

I created all sorts of excuses to liquidate the nobles that had ties with Howling, and I secretly had my spies infiltrate Howling.

I also recruited his disciples that he had trained at Howling, and identified each and every one of the choices and decisions he could make.

And when I believed everything to be perfect, I eliminated Howling.

But… I missed Ast.

Everything was for the sake of capturing Ast, but the most important Ast escaped.

How much had I regretted my choices back then.

If I had taken action personally, the results could have been different.

So despite the opposition of countless bureaucrats of the imperial court, I had taken action personally.

I roamed many countries of the continent, sometimes I wheedled them, sometimes I threatened them.

And let alone humans, I had even been searching through the kingdoms of other races for Ast as well, and how happy was I when I heard that he was actually in the capital!

He was waiting for me in the best place where I could eliminate as many outlying variables as I could, where I could stage my plan the most effectively!

It was the moment when the scenario that was so perfect I even imagined that Ast could actually be waiting for me to arrive.

‘Although that’s broken now…’