CH 2

So, with no doubt, she answered his question about her plans after growing a little bigger. She wished to leave the mansion for her dream of becoming a merchant.

“Yes, that plan. I’ll help you, too. After all, I have more access to information than you do. Will it be of help to you?”

“What? But… won’t you be in trouble?”

“It’s okay.” 

Ritter said forcefully to Beatty who was hesitating.

“Actually, I have always felt sorry for you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. I want to save you.”

Unlike her, who looked puzzled, Ritter smiled like a real prince in a fairy tale.

“Just wait a little longer, Princess.”

“It’s not Princess, but it’s Royal Princess.”

(t/n: Originally, it was written as 공주 ‘Gongju’ and 공녀 ‘Gongnyeo’. So, that’s why I put it as Princess and Royal Princess. What’s the difference? Princess is the king’s daughter and is only referred to as the queen’s daughter. Meanwhile, a Royal Princess is a princess who could be an illegitimate one, or has a lower rank among multiple princesses, or the name of an unmarried woman related to the royal family.)

“Yes, Royal Princess. Will you give this little prince a chance?”

With her friend’s repeated persuasion, eventually, she shared her plan with him.

The location she saved the travel expenses that she had been collecting without her aunt’s knowledge, how to avoid the mansion’s security, which merchant association she was going to apply for. And…

“So, when are you going to leave?”

“To hide my signum, I have to become an adult. Therefore, on my Coming of Age.”

The exact day of her plan to be carried out, too.

***

And finally, the day before her Coming of Age.

With all the arrangements in place, Beatty faced Ritter, who visited her for a final greeting before her departure.

“Well.”

“Yes?”

“This is going to be our last time.”

She looked at him with both of her arms wide open. Then, Beatty smiled shyly and hugged her friend. She murmured while being drenched in emotion.

“You have to take care of yourself.”

“….”

There was no response from her friend.

“Ritter. You have to say someth—ugh!”

Beatty hurriedly shook him off due to the strange touch on her neck.

‘Did Ritter just bite my neck?’

The area around her neck suddenly felt like it was burning hot.

Gulp.

Before she could organize her thoughts, a handful of something fishy vomited out of her mouth.

‘Blood?’

Because of the sudden physical abnormality, Beatty called her friend in a trembling voice.

“Ritter…?”

Beatty looked up at him with shaky eyes. He smiled like nothing happened, making Beatty feel that what had just happened was merely an illusion.

‘Ah, as expected, it was a misunderst—‘

“What? I’m not finished yet.”

At the next moment, Beatty’s eyes were wide open as she heard her aunt’s voice.

‘Oh, crap. What should I do?!’

Her aunt shouldn’t be in this place right now. Ritter said he had taken precaution beforehand.

“Didn’t you say, my aunt will be out of the mansion today…?”

“Ah, right. I did say that.”

Ritter replied to Beatty who looked at him with trembling eyes. He had his usual pretty smile plastered on his face.

“It’s a lie.”

Beatty’s eyes shook uncontrollably.

Her aunt came into the room, but unlike their usual awkward  countenance, she was seen to be closing in on Ritter.

“I mean, who introduced you to His Highness? Why would my relationship with His Highness be worse off than yours?” 

As if she noticed Beatty’s gaze, Firina laughed to her heart’s content and fanned herself gently.

The aunt who imprisoned and locked her up, and her one and only friend. 

‘Both of them… are on the same boat?’

“Ritter! Since when did you deceive—c-cough!” 

Beatty raised her voice but couldn’t even finish her sentence. Only thick vomit of blood kept gushing out of her mouth.

The dark, red blood that kept spewing out drenched the hand that was covering her mouth, flowing down her arm.

She couldn’t breathe and her lower neck to her jaw felt so stiff.

Dung. Dung.

Beatty, who eventually had run out of energy to stand still, fell to the floor.

As if everything inside her body was spitting up blood, puddles of red liquid that proceeded to leak from her mouth were pooling on the floor.

‘It hurts… s-someone help me. Please…!’ 

She begged someone without even realizing it.

*Cough*

While she was rustling on the floor and hardly turning her head, she could see her friend approaching.

‘Ritter?’

It was him, reaching out his hand as if he would help her who was in distress.

“I almost forgot about this.”

Beatty’s signum was taken away.

“I mean, it’s the most precious thing, right?”

She was aware that a shapeshifter’s signum was more expensive than the highest-grade mana stone.

‘But, in the midst of this….’

Seeing the guy she thought of as her friend coveting it and trying to take it off from a dying friend’s body…

‘Ritter, you bastard!’

With her body slowly losing strength, Beatty burst into anger.

“I’m on your side.”

She believed in that word.

‘If… if only I’d known that he was like that!’ Then, she would never have been fooled by such poisonous sweet talk!

Grrrack.

She ground her teeth.

‘That… I have to punch that traitor!’

It was unfair.

She didn’t even have the strength to lift her hand. She could only let the traitor in front of her off.

The emergency escape fund that she had never used had become a waste.

‘If only I succeeded in escaping, I would be free.’

The girl’s world had always been as wide as her room. The regret for trusting him gripped her heart until the end. 

Her vision gradually narrowed.

‘I wanted to go far, far away.’ 

While imagining her unfulfilled dream, Beatty closed her eyes.

It was all dark.

***

And, now.

The sense of her whole body slowly turning into stone was still vivid, but the boy in front of her, who had a good-natured face like he knew nothing, held out his hand.

“Now, shall we say hello again? I’m Astrum Empire’s Second Prince, Ritter Astrum.”

Looking blankly at his hand, Beatty thought. 

‘I used to blush while holding that hand.’

She, who at that time was excited about meeting a friend of her age for the first time, didn’t know.

‘I also didn’t know that he was that kind of guy.’

The vision of the hand that stretched out to seize the signum from a person’s dying body overlapped with the hand in front of her. 

Unlike his used-to-be fully grown hands, the hand in front of her was ultimately of a small boy’s.

“….”

Beatty looked down. Like the boy, she also had small hands. 

“Young Lady?”

Beatty raised that little hand of hers, then—

Whack!

“Kyaak! Your Highness!”

She hit that abominable face with all her might, while displaying an innocent look.

The physical sensation of her palm hitting his face was as satisfying as it could be. She could sense the genuineness.

“You, you, what’s the meaning of this!” She heard her aunt screaming with a suffocated voice.

“What—”

Ritter had his mouth opened, clearly stupefied. His sharp fangs peeped out of his mouth.

‘You bit me with that.’

On second thought, Beatty clenched her reddened small hand to a fist, getting pissed off again.

Thud.

‘I’m gonna smash your fucking fangs!’

Everyone was startled by Beatty’s action, who slammed her fist against the prince with the intention of breaking all of his fangs.

“Ackk!”

“Aaaah! Guards! You guys, what are you looking at!”

“Y-Your Highness!”

The guards, who belatedly came to their senses rushed ahead, then grabbed the child’s short arm that was cutting through the wind.

“I caught it!”

“Hold it still! It seems like she can’t tell what’s right and wrong and a little upset today—“ 

‘Huh!’

While her aunt’s threatening words simply went in one ear and out the other, Beatty put a lot of strength into her body.

Pop!

The silhouette engulfed in the smoke quickly became smaller.

“N-no? But I’m sure I was holding her arm?”

The guard looked around in bewilderment at Beatty, who had slipped out of his grasp.

Pat. Pat.

A small squirrel who jumped out of a height soon went out of sight.

Her aunt, who had been watching the area below since the smoke blocked her view, pointed her finger at a fast-moving little figure and shouted, “There, catch that rat kind of thing!”

‘Huh, but it’s a squirrel?’

Pyung.

Beatty, who puffed out of breath, ran straight to the window.

The windows were high, but for her, climbing a window sill full of embossed decorations…. ‘This is nothing!’ … was a piece of cake for her squirrel form.

Beatty jumped out through the open window and ran across the garden.

“There! Can’t you stop!”

She could hear her aunt’s hideous scream from behind, yet she didn’t look back.

“You stupid thing! Do you think you can survive outside?!”

As usual, that sickening voice.

“I won’t care even if you got sold to the auction house then regretting everything!”

That cursing piece of advice.

“Get back here now!”

Also, that sharp command.

Leaving behind everything that had once bound her, Beatty never turned her head and ran, until the voice that had been torturing her ears finally disappeared.

***

Crack.

He could feel a piece of something rolling inside his mouth.

*Spat*

When he spewed it out, it was a white tooth.

“Ha!”

With a dumbfounded face, Ritter shed a cold, chilly smile.

‘I know this is childish, however…!’

No matter how he thought of it, getting his tooth knocked out by a girl of his age hurt his pride.

Dugh.

Ritter’s annoyance was flaring up as he went through his teeth and sensed the empty socket of his missing tooth.

‘That Duke’s little bitch.’

He tried to be nice to her, but she had crossed the line from the very first meeting.