CH 6

“Wichth. Awe you waughing ath me?” (Licht. Are you laughing at me?)

“You’re unnecessarily so quick to catch on.”

He gave it to me as a gift!

My eyes blazed wildly as I was upset. Then, Licht, who looked even brighter today, perhaps because of his well-dressed robes, extended his hand towards me with smiling eyes.

“Yernian.”

“…Whath.” (What.)

“You look petty today.”

Recently, my hair had started to fall out more and more severely, and he gently stroked the empty spot on the top of my head and let go of it.

While leaving the bedroom, I didn’t know that Licht’s blue eyes would continuously drop from the top of my head.

“Whath awe you wooking at.” (What are you looking at.)

“The door is about to close.”

“Huh? Doow?” (Door?)

It was Mir, who followed one step behind us, who answered my questions.

“Ah. Originally, if it’s around these times, the fonticulus anterior begins to close, Your Majesty. Probably within a half year, it’ll be completely closed..

“Why does her hair fall out so often?”

“…It’s also a natural process of baldness, and it’ll start to grow properly soon. As I’ve said over and over again, humans grow slower than beastmen, Your Majesty.”

Is he really a beastman? At this point, I thought Mir might be a human being under the mask of a beastman.

Perhaps he was thinking the same thing as I did, and Licht, who was walking across the hallway, smirked.

“Why don’t you just go down to the continent and live there?”

“Thank you for your appreciation for my knowledge, but I will decline. Your Majesty’s side is the best in the world.”

“…Shall I just kill you?”

Reaching the garden lined with lanterns at regular intervals, Licht muttered with a brutal voice. 

I recalled the information I got through Alice just a few hours ago. 

‘I heard that the banquet is held in a detached palace.’

It’s said that an entire detached palace, the second largest after the main palace, was remodeled to be suitable for a banquet hall.

Hearing those words, I almost screamed.

‘Why must it be to that extent?’

As I approached the detached palace following the splendid lights, an unknown ominous feeling climbed up my back. Unconsciously, I clenched on the gold medallion on Licht’s robe with my hands.

His gaze, who had been treading on Mir with his words, was straight towards me.

“Yernian. Why.”

“…”

“Is there a problem?”

I hesitated, but I still asked without making eye contact with him.

“…Awe thhewe many beashthmen thhewe?” (Are there many beastmen there?)

He narrowed his eyes and looked back at Mir. Mir, who was quick to sense, listed the situation inside one after another.

“The 19 heads of families representing the Myo World attended the ceremony along with their family members according to His Majesty’s summon order, so it’ll be more than one hundred at the most.”

What? One hundred?

I opened my mouth, feeling like my eyes were about to pop out. I had no idea what Licht was trying to do at a gathering of more than a hundred beastmen.

“How many successors have been packed?”

“Argh, Your Majesty! Please cover your words in front of Her Highness the Princess!”

Licht lifted me up to his eye level, completely ignoring Mir’s criticism.

“Yernian.”

“…”

“Look at me.”

I reluctantly made eye contact with him, loosening the strength from my hand that was holding the gold. The wall engulfed in darkness felt more like a calm lake that couldn’t be understood today.

“Are you afraid of beastmen?”

I shook my head as I had been quietly in my thoughts.

“Naw.” (No.)

“Then.”

I’m afraid of the unknown purpose that you were trying to achieve through me.

Unable to say that, I swallowed the words in my mouth and lowered my gaze.

After looking at me for a long time, Richt moved at a slow pace. A voice softer than usual settled down in my pale ears.

“Don’t worry. As long as you stay quietly by my side, no one will dare touch you.”

Far from reassuring, those were the words that made my back feel numb. His words sounded like shackles telling me to stay by his side in the future, is it because of the mood?

I pursed my lips and slowly opened a distance from Licht. Pleasant low-voiced laughter was mixed and scattered in the warm night breeze.

At the same time, the two beastmen guarding the entrance to the huge detached palace bowed their heads politely toward Licht.

“His Majesty Licht el Persian, the only owner of the Myo World and the head of the Myo clan, eat it!”

…What? Persian?

Hearing his full name for the first time, a heart-wrenching shock came over me.

The door that had been closed opened without a moment to clear my messed-up brain. The soft melody that had leaked through the cracks in the door was cut off.

“I’m greeting the noble head of the Myo Clan.”

The beastmen lined up on either side set their manners toward Richt. A mixture of curiosity and surprise passed me by.

However, I was in a state of shock that I couldn’t even feel it properly.

‘Is he a Persian?’

‘Persian’ was the name of the family that those people who kidnapped me tried to get rid of. That’s why I remembered the name clearly.

I only thought it would be one of the most powerful families on the continent.

‘Why do those humans toward beastmen… ?’

Why were they aiming for the royal family of the Myo Clan, which were beastmen?

The more I tried to keep thinking, the more my head felt like spinning.

“Hic.”

Licht, who was moving forward at a slow pace as if taking a walk, stopped at the hiccup that came out unknowingly.

His curious gaze touched my face that was blushing as if it was about to explode.

“Yernian? Why is your face like that?”

“… Hic.”

In the silence, the sound of my hiccups resonated particularly loudly.

The beastmen who had their heads bowed now openly glanced at me.

Whispers such as ‘She has no ears’ and ‘I think the rumors that the Chief brought a human are true’ pierced through my sensitive hearing.

“Why is she like this?” Licht frowned slightly, looking back at Mir who was following him.

“I think Her Highness the Princess was very surprised. Looking at how she is hiccuping.”

“… Hiccup?”

I desperately covered my mouth to contain the leaking hiccups.

“How do you stop this?”

Licht, who looked at me in distress with an annoyed expression, urged Mir.

“Usually by drinking lukewarm water or pinching the soles of the feet…”

I tapped Licht’s shoulder with one hand, who had stopped walking in the center of the banquet hall.

“What. You want me to pinch the soles of your feet?”

“Hic. Go quicwwy.” (Go quickly.)

The gazes that stabbed my cheek from before were stinging like a thorn.

Then, as he was conscious of those glances at me, he spoke in a cold voice.

“All eyes.”

I was so startled by those words that the hiccups went away without even having to get the soles of my feet pinched.

And I met the child who was staring fiercely at me from a distance.

‘The Fourth Prince.’

It was the red-haired cat that attacked me in the garden at sunset yesterday. Even today, he was passionately expressing his hostility toward me with fiery eyes.

Next to him was Noha, the Third Prince with a blank face, whose thoughts I couldn’t tell today. He was staring at the long table close to the podium, not me and Licht.

Fountain pen, blue yarn, jeweled sword, pink hourglass, and…

What Noha couldn’t take his eyes off of was a pendant with golden strings overlapping each other to form a star.

‘What else are those?’

There were things that couldn’t be found in common no matter how much I looked at them.

Before I knew it, Licht suddenly climbed onto the podium, sat obliquely on the throne, and put me on his lap.

I looked down blankly at the beastmen who had gathered around the podium. Those beastmen were so beautiful that I wondered if all of them looked like this.

Among the beastmen who exchanged glances, one who looked close to middle-aged came forward.

“The rumor that you brought a human baby to the Myo World must have been true, Your Majesty.”

“As the Duke sees it.”

“Today’s banquet is for the human baby, isn’t it?”

“That’s right.”

At his calm affirmation, the murmur among the beastmen grew stronger.

The middle-aged man touched his forehead and let out a deep sigh.

“Your Majesty. It is not a question to be answered so simply. Please explain the specific reason why you suddenly brought a human to the Myo World and held a banquet like this.”

“For specific reasons.”

Licht’s blue eyes slipped towards me sluggishly.

I gripped the frills on the dress, feeling so anxious that my heart was about to explode.

‘Please.’

Don’t do anything.

But this time, Licht didn’t listen to my prayers.

“Yernian el Persian.”

“…?”

“The name that this child will be using from today.”

At the end of Licht’s quiet declaration, a silent astonishment spread. I looked back at him with a pale face.

‘Are you crazy?’

To change my surname, which was Merni, to Persian meant that I, as a human being, would be accepted as a member of the royal family.

Violent protests began to pour in among the nobles of the Myo Clan, who had reached a conclusion similar to mine.

“This is ridiculous! You want a human baby with no relations to become a member of a noble royal family!”

“No matter how much Your Majesty is the owner and head of the Myo World, you can’t act as you please without the consent of our Senate!”

That’s what I’m saying!

I can’t become a member of the Persian family like this. It was clear that I would face them, who were desperate to get rid of the Persian family.

Just thinking about it made me sick to my stomach.

Grasping my trembling fingertips, I tried my best not to let out a physiological cry.

‘You can never burst into tears.’

I couldn’t waste a golden opportunity to learn new information by crying. I somehow gave strength to my eyes to keep my reason.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know much about ‘Persian’.

It was because they kept quiet in front of me, who had developed hearing instead of sight. All I knew was that they were trying to defeat a huge force called the Persians using the mana inside me.

‘Why are them human beings aiming for the royal family of the Myo Clan?’

While struggling, I looked at my arms exposed under the sleeves of my dress.

Instead of a bare arm full of injection marks and bruises, a slightly plump and pure white arm came into view.

‘In this life, I will never…’

I won’t let them run wild.

Anyway, as long as my existence was publicly exposed anyway, there was a high probability that my news would reach the ears of those who were watching the Persians.

‘Now that this has happened, it’s impossible to run away.’

Even if I changed my face with magic and ran away, they would still follow me.

I can’t live in anxiety because I don’t know when I’ll be caught in the time I barely returned.

‘I’d rather do that.’

In this lifetime, I hit them first.

It was when my eyes twinkled with a cold light that didn’t resemble a child.

Licht, who was silently listening to the complaints of beastmen in an oblique posture, opened his mouth.