Chapter 2

2. Breaking News

Marquis Helcot de Orlet stepped out of the car with an oddly anxious look in his eyes.

The townhouse in Manon that Prince Oscar had recently purchased was even more magnificent and imposing than the rumors had claimed.

Very few nobles owned a townhouse this grand in the heart of Manon, the capital, where land was the most expensive.

Marquis Helcot’s expression darkened once more as he saw with his own eyes the truth of Oscar, who was said to have grown his assets monstrously through personal investments and a shrewd head for business, quite independent of the patronage of his aunt, the Marchioness of Dumarque.

The rumor that the king of Denburg, a neighbor of Osana and also a rival it kept watch on, had recently bestowed a dukedom upon Oscar seemed not to have been idle gossip after all.

For a prince who had already been cast out of Osana and who seemed to lack for neither wealth nor honor, it was not without a sense of being far too late to come now, appealing to him with the king’s tearful denial and trying to win him over.

Ironically, the very man who had carried the bloody newborn Oscar to the Marchioness of Dumarque and placed him in her arms was Helcot himself.

Soon a rich scent of oud drifted from somewhere, and Helcot rose as though bewitched and stared in one direction.

When he finally came face to face with the prince, an indescribable sigh escaped Helcot’s lips in a low murmur.

Decades ago.

Facing the prince, who was the very image of the king’s beautiful face in his youth, a face that had once set the entire country abuzz, Helcot somehow began to feel fear.

“It’s been a while.”

At the prince’s pared-down greeting that followed, Helcot hurriedly observed the proper courtesies and bowed deeply.

“Your Highness, I trust you have been well all this time.”

“Sit.”

The prince’s eyes, curved in a faint smile as he offered a seat, were certainly beautiful but strangely chilling, and Helcot swallowed dryly without meaning to.

“It is the greatest honor to see Your Highness again like this.”

“Honor, indeed.”

Before a prince who showed the utmost indifference at a meeting where nothing less than the position of Osana’s crown prince was at stake, Helcot found himself fumbling as he carried on the conversation.

“I trust you have been fully informed of His Majesty’s wishes.”

“Hm.”

“The fate of Osana now rests in Your Highness’s hands. Is it not a position of the highest nobility? I beg you, return to your homeland for the sake of Osana.”

Noble position, my foot.

At the marquis’s plea, which amounted to an open demand that he become Osana’s dog, Oscar couldn’t help but burst into a snort of laughter.

Was the position of Osana’s crown prince not a precarious, hollow shell of a royal seat, in which one might become cannon fodder at any moment?

In this wretched situation, where all of his wealth might become the royal family’s property overnight, Oscar barely held back the laughter bubbling up as he slowly opened his mouth.

“Very well.”

“…Pardon?”

“It is a task commanded directly by the great Majesty of Osana, so I have no choice but to uphold it.”

At Oscar’s wholly unexpected, docile answer, Helcot was instead left dumbfounded and stammered.

“Y-you’re serious?”

The prince, who had been lightly tapping the armrest of the mahogany chair with his long, firm fingers, slowly spoke.

“However, I have a condition.”

At the unexpected place name that followed from the prince’s lips, Helcot’s expression abruptly stiffened.

“Garen Sobre. Tell him to hand that land over to me.”

“…Garen Sobre, Your Highness?”

Oscar swallowed a laugh at Helcot’s pleasingly rigid reaction and answered.

“Yes, Garen Sobre. More precisely, all legal, military, and administrative authority over it.”

The prince added smoothly,

“Right now.”

Helcot, who had been gazing up at the prince as if in a daze, hesitated for a moment and then went on.

“But Your Highness, Garen Sobre is…!”

The prince’s eyes, of an inscrutable hue, whose thoughts no one could possibly read, curved with amusement.

“I’m sorry, Marquis.”

As though he had never smiled, the prince added with chilling coldness,

“Unless my condition is accepted, I cannot follow His Majesty’s command.”

***

At the entrance to the capital, Manon, Sonya tucked the scarf over her head more carefully.

The mood in Manon, which had turned sharply restless after the crown prince’s shooting, was still gloomy and dark.

Because the hostility toward Osterians was fiercer than ever, Sonya was all the more busy hiding her face.

With bad luck, if she ran into Osterophobes, who loathed and hated Osterians to the extreme, something terrible might befall her.

‘Did you hear? About Marie from the lower village. She was rummaging through a trash bin in town when the Osterophobes got her. Her skirt was soaked all in blood…’

Sonya was recalling the news, too cruel even to speak aloud, that a young Osterian woman had met a terrible fate at the hands of Osterophobes not long ago, and was hunching her thin shoulders, when it happened.

“Extra! The crown prince is dead! The crown prince is dead!”

“Crown Prince Frederick de Leonhardt has passed away!”

As the grim news fluttered and scattered before Sonya, several people began to sob.

Then the newsboys shouted the next, even more shocking news, fiercely and shrilly.

“Extra! Extra! A new crown prince candidate appears!”

“Breaking news! Osana’s new crown prince, Oscar de Dumarque, on the verge of accession!”

At the unexpected, shocking news, the street instantly filled with an uproar.

“Give me a paper, right now! I’ll pay 3 francs, 3 francs!”

“Here’s 5 francs, toss one to me first!”

The fierce shouts of gentlemen trying to seize a newspaper before one another overlapped from every direction.

Suddenly, the face of the new prince, dropped from someone’s hand, fluttered down and landed at Sonya Leblanc’s feet.

[ Prince Oscar de Dumarque: Who Is He? ]

Just as Sonya’s frightened eyes fixed on the prince’s black-and-white photograph,

“Get out of the way!”

In the rough jostling of the crowd, Sonya’s frail body was knocked to the stone pavement.

Oscar de Dumarque.

Sonya traced the new prince’s unfamiliar name with her eyes, then got unsteadily to her feet again.

Unfortunately, Sonya had no spare strength to take an interest in the new prince, who might well decide the rise and fall of the nation.

One misstep and she might be late for work.

If she lost her job at the match factory as well, in times that were already uneasy, the children of Labri might truly all starve to death this time.

At last, pushing through the chaotic, bustling plaza, Sonya arrived at the entrance of the match factory, and at the sight of the female workers whispering here and there, she sensed an ominous feeling for some reason.

And before she could even grasp what that ominous feeling was, a rough fist flew out and struck her squarely in the solar plexus.

“Unlucky wench, I hear you’re an Osterian?”

“F-Factory Manager!”

“Do you have any idea how much I’ve suffered because of the single fact that you’re an Osterian?”

“Ugh, uhh!”

When the factory manager’s merciless hand ripped the scarf from around Sonya’s head, her blotchy hair, shabbily dyed, was exposed.

“You dyed your hair with this sloppy job and had the nerve to fool me?”

Thud.

Astonishingly, ‘that man’s’ face was flung down once more in front of Sonya Leblanc.

[ Prince Oscar de Dumarque, Decision to Return Home Accompanied by Immediate Hardline Measures Against Osterians ]

“W-what is this?”

“What else would it be, damn it! Do you know how much I’ve paid in fines for hiring an Osterian like you? Do you?”

Astonishingly, the new prince, who had seemed to have no connection whatsoever with Sonya Leblanc, who was less than dust, twisted her fate mischievously the very moment he appeared.

Sonya’s eyes trembled wildly as they groped over the absurd new royal law that the new prince was said to have drastically changed.

[ Do not employ workers from Garen Sobre, especially Osterians ]

And the rage of the factory manager, who had been made to pay an unimaginable sum in fines because of this absurd and sudden royal law, came straight back down upon the innocent Sonya.

Flung down by the factory manager’s thick hand without mercy, Sonya begged, practically pleading.

“W-what about my unpaid wages? You have to pay me for the work I’ve done until now! Please!”

“What? Wages? Don’t talk nonsense about wages!”

“Aah!”

But the price of a year of brutal labor, over fourteen hours a day, was not money but beatings and insults.

Through the swirling snowstorm, the factory manager’s venomous curse rang out.

“Get lost! You unlucky Osterian wench! Hmph, ptoo!”

…All of this had happened in barely half a day.