Chapter 83

Chapter 83

Borton eventually confessed.

“... So, you’re saying you gave it to him?”

“Yes, yes, I did.”

However, he confessed it in a way that made it as defensible as possible, by saying that he had just given it away.

“Why would you just give a Fireball scroll to that child?”

“I... I felt sorry for the kid who was trying to hawk a counterfeit scroll on the streets!”

“... Why are you making up such an unbelievable lie? Earlier on, you said it was stolen and that he was a thief, and now you’re claiming that you gave it away out of pity?”

“Y-yes, that’s right! I’m telling you that I just gave it away!”

Charlotte looked incredulous, as though she couldn’t believe he was expecting her to fall for such a lie.

I had thought this man incredibly stupid and stubborn when he just handed the Fireball scroll to me back then, but I was realizing that about him all over again.

My annoyance began to boil over.

Charlotte easily debunked this guy’s lies, but he kept recycling the same obvious lies.

“Hey, old man. Do you think we’re fools or something? It’s obvious that you thought that the kid had a talent for drawing fake scrolls, and planned to use him to make counterfeit scrolls that you could sell yourself! You probably gave him the Fireball scroll and asked him to bring back a replica or something. But then, you began to regret what you did, and are now putting on a show!”

My irritation reached its peak, and I blurted out everything I knew about the situation.

“That’s right. I was thinking the same thing.”

Charlotte seemed to have already guessed this much, since she didn’t seem too surprised by my conjecture. As Borton’s excuses were exposed and the truth came to light, his complexion turned pale.

“N-no, no! H-how can you accuse s-somebody of being a swindler without proper evidence? What did I do to deserve this?! I lost a Fireball scroll! I’m the one who suffered a loss!”

Charlotte let out a deep sigh. The most uptodate novels are published on n0velbjn((.))com

“Listen, Mr. Borton. Imperial law does not punish intent. Even if you intended to do so, since you didn’t actually sell any counterfeit scrolls, you’re not a swindler, okay? What I want is the truth. So, the child didn’t steal the Fireball scroll. Am I right?” Charlotte said softly.

Borton began to regain his composure.

“Y-yes, yes, that’s right. He didn’t steal it. I... I gave it to him myself. That’s really the truth.”

In the end, he still did not admit to the fact that he had planned to mass-produce counterfeit scrolls and commit fraud. Though I couldn’t see Charlotte’s expression, it was clear she felt extreme contempt for the man in front of her.

With that, Charlotte turned around as if her business had concluded and left the store.

“I-it’s true! I really just gave it to him! No strings attached!”

Borton protested his innocence until the end, but Charlotte didn’t bother to respond any further.

Once we were back on the street, we found ourselves standing in the Aligar shopping district amidst the rays of the setting sun. Charlotte covered her face with her hands and let out a deep sigh.

“... Are you mad?”

“How could such ridiculous people like him exist?”

Charlotte’s face had become red with rage. She seemed filled with fury, from the top of her head to her toes.

“Ugh... Ughhhhh!!!”

Charlotte trembled uncontrollably, as if she couldn’t contain her anger.

Despite the extent of her apparent anger, her reaction just seemed too cute, and I almost felt sorry for finding it so.

She was so angry that she grabbed me and looked me directly in the eyes

“Seriously. How could someone tell such stupid lies with a straight face?” she said. “Was he mocking me? Huh? Did he think I would believe any of that? What on earth was he on about?”

Charlotte seemed more upset about Borton’s boldness in telling such stupid and obvious lies than his lack of character.

“I still can’t believe how a person can be that stupid. This is why we need to introduce a public education system throughout the empire as quickly as possible. Maybe that way fewer idiots like him would exist!”

‘Wait, is that what she was angry at this whole time? Is she implying that the existence of such stupid people is due to the lack of a public education system? Does she feel that it is the empire’s responsibility and was that what fueled her frustration? Does she feel obligated and embarrassed whenever she sees someone like Borton and it makes her angry?’

“I-I see... I think you’re looking at this from a different perspective, but yeah...”

As expected of a princess. She really had an altogether different way of thinking.

However, I couldn’t agree with her completely, since I’d seen plenty of fools still thriving in a world where public education was properly implemented.

“A-anyway, could you... calm down a bit?”

“Huh? Oh... Ah. Sorry.”

Charlotte had become so agitated that she was nearly nose-to-nose with me, passionately airing her grievances. To be infuriated not so much by the immoral nature but by the stupidity of a citizen was a challenging perspective that I found hard to understand.

After a few deep breaths, Charlotte seemed to calm herself down.

“Oh...”

When I saw that expression of hers, I simply couldn’t find the words to say to her.

“When someone reaches a dead end, they all become the same. Noble or commoner, in the end, they’re all the same.”

Charlotte had witnessed how the masks of dignity and the cloaks of status that people lived with their entire lives became worthless in the face of the absolute need to survive. And she realized that she wasn’t any different.

“The most horrifying part wasn’t the torture, the threats, the curses, or anything like that,” Charlotte said, her expression growing dark as she quietly looked down at the churros she was holding. “It was seeing the people, starved to the extreme, turn on each other for food. And then seeing those same people be struck by the horror of their deeds afterwards and go mad.” Charlotte looked at me. “It wasn’t the demons that scared me the most while I was there. It was the humans.”

It was humanity that she feared the most.

“I was afraid that I could just as easily become one of them if I was pushed to my limits as well. That was the most terrifying and dreadful aspect for me.”

Charlotte found the decline that humans went through more horrifying than demons because she knew she could easily become like them.

“It was so terrible and frightening, and I felt like I was going mad... No, in that place, I had already gone mad.”

I remembered that time clearly.

Charlotte was holding onto a corpse, weeping.

Charlotte didn’t go into details, but I remembered how she looked at that time, and I understood why she did not elaborate any further.

She had been holding onto a corpse.

She looked as though she was in immense pain.

“Then, a child came to me. The only other survivor besides myself, unbelievably, appeared right before my eyes.”

When Charlotte had been sobbing softly, unable to even weep properly, I had appeared.

The only other survivor besides her.

“That child gave me the only bit of food he had found. He didn’t even take a bite of it himself.”

It was just a single biscuit. Something that was far too meager to fill a stomach.

“I was literally on the brink of going mad... but it was thanks to that child that I managed to stay sane...”

The boy who had generously handed over his precious food to her.

The only other survivor besides herself.

It seemed that, at that time, Charlotte found reassurance in my mere existence alone. She appeared to have been moved simply by the fact that someone else was alive.

I knew that all of that was a lie, and I could not bear to meet Charlotte’s gaze directly as she relayed this memory to me.

Perhaps feeling weighed down by the heavy topic, Charlotte let out an exaggerated laugh.

“So, yeah. I haven’t been fussy about food since then.”

“Ah... So, do you mean that after what you went through, everything tastes good to you now... or something like that?”

Charlotte shook her head.

“No. I’ve realized that I’ll never eat anything more delicious than what I’d had at that moment. So now, whatever I eat, it’s just okay to me.”

It wasn’t that she had come to appreciate all the food she ate after that incident.

Rather, she understood that she would never experience a more profound taste than the biscuit she had eaten then; therefore, Charlotte was no longer fussy over food.

‘Wow... Not finding anything good just because nothing will beat the taste of what you had back then?’

“... Don’t you think that’s a pretty pessimistic way to think?”

“Wouldn’t you say that it’s a lot better to become a pessimist rather than go insane?” Charlotte asked with a wry smile.

It was sad to hear her having to hold the thought of not going mad itself as a blessing.

But Charlotte’s smile was so beautiful that it left me momentarily dazed.

“Can you stop telling me things that I shouldn’t know? At this rate, I wouldn’t even be surprised if you said, ‘Now that you’ve heard all this, I’m going to have to kill you!’”

‘Let’s be honest, you and I aren’t even that close! Of course, it does seem like you’ve opened up to me a bit, but isn’t this a little too sudden? Or have you always wanted to tell someone these thoughts but never found the right person, so you just grabbed the first sucker who came along and proceeded to unload your feelings?’

Charlotte responded with a sly grin.

“Ah, you know me too well! Yep, sadly, I’m going to have to kill you now.”

“Oh, in that case, I’m out. I apologize for any inconvenience I’ve caused until now. Peace.”

I stood up abruptly, and Charlotte grabbed the hem of my clothes.

“Oh come on, I was just kidding!”

It seemed she found teasing me quite amusing.