Chapter 6 · Papa

Paeon’s eyes went wide.

It was the first time I had seen him this startled. Even when I had spoken of the fake revelation earlier, he hadn’t been this shocked. Was that ant-sized conscience of his pricking at him just a little?

“Does the angel like ‘Papa’ too?”

I asked with an innocent sparkle in my eyes.

“That…”

He cleared his throat for a long while, but even so, he could not hide the trembling.

“You cannot use that title.”

“Why not? Why is evwything else okay but that! You said anyfing but angel was fine…!”

“It goes against royal protocol.”

“Then just vewy occasionawwy… when it’s just us… can’t I use it as a pet name?”

He dropped to his knees in front of me, grabbed my tiny body tightly, and spoke urgently.

“Princess, we will not have many occasions to meet from now on. We live in different places, and I have duties I must attend to.”

You don’t have to grab me so hard! It’ll bruise! Then again, how much experience could you have dealing with children?

“So absolutely! Never, anywhere, under any circumstances, must you call me by that title.”

“…”

Plip.

Tears welled up instantly—from the physical pain of his too-tight grip on my arm, and from the resentment toward this man who was trying so desperately to push me away.

“…!”

“Hngh… The angel is too cowd to Asha. Asha… Asha wikes the angel so much…”

“P-Princess.”

“Hngh… hnn… hnnn… Waaah!”

I trembled and wailed at the top of my lungs.

“What’s the matter?!”

The knight who had stepped out of the room came rushing back in. Paeon, flustered, let go of me, but it was far too late to stop my tears. By now, even I couldn’t control them.

“The angel…! Asha… Asha said she wanted to call you Papa…! And now you say you won’t have any business with Asha anymore! Hngh… Asha… Asha wants to be cwose to the angel… She wanted to call you by a pet name…! But you said no and got so… so scawy… Hnngh…”

As I poured out my grievances, shedding big, fat tears, the knight looked at Paeon reproachfully.

“Good heavens, Sir Parsiel! Making such a fuss over a mere pet name is too much. The princess is still a young child—you shouldn’t treat her so roughly as you would an adult.”

“…I apologize. I overstepped.”

He apologized to me reluctantly. His restless gaze drifted to my forearm, reddened by the marks of his grip. But he quickly turned his head away as if he had seen something he shouldn’t have. Seeing that, I cried even more sorrowfully.

“Hnngh… Asha… doesn’t have a single fwiend… I was so jealous of fwiends who call each other by pet names… Snff. So… so… because the angel is my first fwiend… I wanted to call you by a pet name…”

“A friend…?”

When he asked back in disbelief, the royal knight Konrad took my side.

“The princess has gone this far—just let her have it. Wouldn’t it be an honor for a knight to receive a pet name from the princess?”

Apparently unable to argue, he looked back and forth between Konrad and me with anxiously wavering eyes. Then he bowed his head deeply and let out a long sigh.

“…Do as the princess wishes.”

With those words, he fled the room without even a proper farewell. Even when I called out in a tearful voice, “So it’s awight if I call you Papa then?!” he did not look back.

“Good grief, that rude bas—, ah.”

Konrad cursed at his retreating figure, then began to console me.

“Princess, please don’t be so upset. That man is famous for having no blood, no tears, and no heart. Honestly, I question why he receives God’s love at all. I doubt he’s ever heard or spoken a pet name in his entire life.”

When I just glared at the door Paeon had left through without answering, Konrad seemed to think I was deeply heartbroken and continued.

“Hehe, Princess. Forget about him—how about calling me by a pet name instead? I would welcome it anytime!”

Just because you scolded Paeon a bit doesn’t mean I’m forgiving your incompetence over the past several lives, you pig!

“Asha is tiwed. I want to be awone.”

He seemed a little taken aback by my cold eyes.

“Uh… th-then please rest well. The maids will be here to attend to you soon.”

He scurried out of the room. I heard him mutter, “What kind of child has eyes like that?” as he left.

Left alone, I climbed onto the guest chair with much grunting and grumbling, and calmly organized my thoughts.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to love you. No matter how much you’re the child of the daughter I cherished.”

Under normal circumstances, the king should have said those words to me today. I had heard them for the first time in my first life and had been deeply wounded.

The fact that I was a princess of this country and that my grandfather was the king had been so unrealistic that it hadn’t quite sunk in. But how great had my expectations been for the first ‘real’ family I’d ever had? I had thought they would at least be different from House Windmilld… What fell upon me instead was that curse-like sentence: ‘I cannot love you.’

Repeating my second and third lives, the pain dulled, but the deep wound remained as a scar, and I gradually became convinced that no one would ever be able to love me.

But at least today, one big thing had changed. The king had come to feel favorably toward me. Thanks to the oracle calling me a ‘child of God,’ his trust in me had deepened.

“Princess, we are the maids temporarily dispatched from Ollentia Palace (the palace where Aquila and Stella reside).”

Just then, a flock of temporary maids came rushing in.

“I am Laurentia, the temporary head maid. Until the official maids and ladies-in-waiting arrive, we will serve the princess with all our care.”

Official, my foot. I was going to be stuck in this guest palace where visitors came and went, becoming a socially maladjusted princess who couldn’t take a single step out of her room for fear of being watched.

“First, please take off those priestess robes. We’ll dress you in this negligee. We haven’t been able to procure a dress for the princess’s age yet, so…”

Haven’t been able to procure, my eye. You’ve been dressing me only in nightgowns until I’m five! Using the absurd excuse that children grow quickly!

Of course, I had no intention of staying in the palm of Aquila’s hand like this.

‘I need to drive in the wedge within a few days.’

◇ ◆ ◇

Three days later.

King Ferdinand rose at four in the morning that day as well. Despite being exhausted by mountains of state affairs every day, he had not the slightest thought of skipping the sacred rites.

“Your Majesty, the air is cold today. You overexerted yourself yesterday, so perhaps you could rest from the dawn prayer for just one day…”

“How can you say such a thing! Even now, Lord Lux is listening beside us! Sloth is the first sin that leads to the abyss.”

He snapped.

“…Then I will escort you to the temple.”

The familiar chapel he visited every day. Yet somehow, unfamiliar sounds were coming from within. His escort knight bustled ahead to check the source, but the king pulled him back and put a finger to his lips with a “Shh!”

“Stay still.”

This was the king’s private prayer room, accessible only to the king himself. Who on earth had set foot in this sacred place? To his astonishment, a tiny head of hair appeared in the king’s green eyes. So small it could be held in one hand.

Whisper, whisper—a small voice whose content was hard to make out. Its owner was the granddaughter he had met for the first time a few days ago: Anastasia.

“…!”

In the dim room, with the sun not yet risen and only the light of three or four candles to rely on, the girl praying fervently looked holier than a baby angel. The king stared blankly at the sight for a moment, then came to his senses and cleared his throat with a “Hem, hem.” Startled, Anastasia looked back.

“Your… Your Majesty?!”

“…Your Majesty? Didn’t you call me something different last time?”

“Gwand…fathow?”

He cleared his throat again, seemingly satisfied.

“No, where is your escort knight… and you’re here alone?”

“The knight is sweepin’ in dweamwand, so Asha came awone. Waking the knight would be a nuisance.”

“What? He’s been an escort for only a few days and he’s already slacking off!”

The king burst out in anger, then, seeing that Anastasia seemed startled, asked again in a gentler voice.

“How did you find this place?”

“I just… woke up and it felt wike I could hear Wux’s voice somewhere. So I just wawked, and… when I came to my senses, I was here. Did Asha do something wong? Awe you going to scowd the knight? Pwease don’t.”

The king’s face was filled with emotion.

“No, no… I won’t scold anyone if you don’t want me to. But what on earth were you praying so earnestly about?”

“I was apowogizing fow my sins. Asha is… a sinner.”

“A sinner? What sin could a tiny child like you possibly have committed?”

“Asha… before coming here, had never once gone to the temple to pway. I couldn’t go because they wouldn’t wet me… but even so, that’s a sin.”

“…!”

As a citizen of Santra, one was duty-bound to visit a nearby temple for worship every ten days on the ‘Day of Prayer.’ It wasn’t legally enforced, but it was a natural duty as a citizen of Santra, and failing to do so was something one could be pointed at for.

But his granddaughter had been in no position to go to the temple. Her adoptive parents, worse than demons, would never have allowed it!

“No, Lord Lux would not consider you a sinner! You don’t need to apologize for such a thing!”

The king sighed and tried to comfort her, but she shook her head in small turns.

“No… Even if Wux fowgives Asha, Asha’s heart is not at peace. I… I have no pwace to stay in the pawace!”

“What nonsense is that? You deserve to enjoy everything you should have enjoyed all along!”

Anastasia shook her head vigorously and clung to the king’s leg.

“No. Asha doesn’t desewve it. Gwandfathow. Pwease… wet Asha stay at the temple.”

“What? At the temple?”

“Then I can be with Wux evewy day and pway as much as I couldn’t before.”

“Child, you can just go to the temple to pray every day. It’s right next door—you can go anytime you want! Why on earth would you, a princess, insist on staying at the temple?”

“I don’t want to do it while enjoying evewything I have. I want to vowunteer at the temple. At weast fow as wong as I couldn’t go.”

The king’s voice grew agitated, unable to believe what he was hearing.

“What kind of child are you… How deep are your thoughts! I’m this old and still so stained by the world that I don’t feel the slightest discomfort about what I enjoy! You… you truly must be a child of God. There’s no other way your soul could be this pure!”

‘My soul is already worn down to the bone, thank you very much…’

Anastasia thought, but decided to leave him to his misconception for now.

◇ ◆ ◇

That afternoon, I was walking toward the temple as if flying, holding Rosa’s hand on my left and Yuz’s on my right.

“I can’t believe the princess is going to stay at the temple!”

Sierra said with an elated face.

“Really. I thought at best we’d only be able to watch from afar.”

“But will you be all right? Is it truly acceptable for someone as noble as the princess to stay at the temple…?”

“Yep! Asha knows how to do waundry and fowd cwothes. I can clean too.”

“Oh, Princess! You don’t need to do any of that. We’ll take turns looking after you. Though we won’t be able to match the palace maids or ladies-in-waiting.”

“That’s right, and please feel free to call us by our names now.”

Far in the distance, I spotted Paeon. When he saw me, he froze on the spot like a statue.

His face said, ‘Why are you here?’

Ah, this is exhilarating.

“Papa!”

I ran to him with a beaming smile.

From now on, we’ll be living under the same roof—please take good care of me, Papa.