<CHAPTER 6>
A Question He Had Never Considered
After having his condition checked once more by Penril, Rexfail took a painkiller and allowed himself a short sleep.
For some reason, the sleep that had tormented him for the past two years came easily to him here.
When he opened his eyes, it was already midday.
At the sound of water from outside, Rexfail turned his head and looked out the window.
The small, dark-haired woman was doing something he could not understand.
She drew water from the well, poured it into a basin holding dishes, then emptied the basin, repeating the process over and over again.
Why she kept feeling around the dishes inside the basin with her fingertips as she did so was something Rexfail pondered for quite a while.
“What is she doing?”
Fortunately, his guard knight had the answer to his curiosity.
Penril responded to the question that had slipped out unconsciously.
“It seems she is trying to wash the dishes.”
“Wash the dishes?”
When Rexfail looked at him with a puzzled expression, Penril briefly explained the act of cleaning used dishes so they could be used again.
Rexfail replied with an ambiguous look.
“A matter I have never considered.”
It was different from cleaning or laundering clothes.
The Imperial Palace kitchen was completely separate, and what happened inside it never reached the Crown Prince.
So it was not strange that he knew nothing about washing dishes.
Rexfail touched his lips and sank into thought for a moment.
Even as he did so, the woman continued dipping the plates into the water and taking them out again endlessly.
“How long does washing dishes usually take? Is it normal for it to take that long to clean a single plate?”
When he asked, Penril answered.
“No, it is not. It appears there is grease on them, yet she is trying to rinse it off with only water, so…”
Penril rarely showed frustration, but this time it was clear on his face.
Without paying attention to his knight’s feelings, the man who had been focused on the woman suddenly asked,
“Would washing dishes be unfamiliar even to commoners?”
“Pardon? Of course not. Unless they hire someone, they would handle it themselves. A child born into a farming household would learn it as soon as they begin to move.”
At those words, Rexfail slowly rubbed his lower jaw with his fingertips.
“Is that so.”
With deeply contemplative eyes, he fixed his darkened gaze on the woman.
Penril, unable to grasp his lord’s intent, remained silent and waited for him to move.
After a span of time that felt both long and short, his lord slowly opened his mouth.
Unlike his usual self, he hesitated.
“The Crown Princess.”
Penril doubted his ears.
It had been a very long time since the late Crown Princess had been mentioned from Rexfail’s lips.
Ever since people had begun sending women who resembled her to fill the vacant seat, anyone who dared speak her name had been dealt with long ago.
“I apologize. I do not understand what Your Highness is asking.”
Normally, he would have understood before Rexfail even finished speaking.
But how could he possibly fathom his lord’s intent when the topic had shifted from washing dishes to the Crown Princess so abruptly?
Penril honestly confessed that he did not know what his lord meant.
Rexfail’s steady gaze lingered on him before returning to the woman.
“Would she have washed dishes as well?”
Answering this question itself was not difficult.
But discerning the intention beneath it was another matter entirely.
Penril glanced at his lord blankly, then, only after meeting his eyes, managed to speak.
“Pardon? Y-Yes… It is very likely that Her Highness the Crown Princess did not know much about washing dishes either. I have heard she was raised to be Crown Princess from childhood.”
A typical noble lady might have frequented the kitchen to inherit secret recipes to permit her future chef to use.
However, Evelyn Dame Embrio had been designated as Crown Princess from birth.
From the moment she learned her letters, she would have studied theology and the art of kingship.
She would have learned to read the world with the same eyes as her husband.
There may have been differences, but the world she knew would not have been very different from the one Rexfail knew.
As his thoughts progressed, Rexfail grew increasingly certain.
Evelyn Dame Embrio would have been far removed from washing dishes, perhaps never connected to it at all.
Just like that woman who seemed to be attempting it for the first time.
‘Evelyn.’
Rexfail’s lips trembled.
The name he had thought would never leave his mouth again pushed up from his throat, struggling to escape.
But.
It is an excessive thought.
Though he felt a strange sense of familiarity, Rexfail tried to maintain his composure.
It is a coincidence. The fact that that woman knows her habits… No, even thinking she knows them may be my mistake. I was ill and my mind was clouded. I cannot be certain of everything I saw then.
He quietly admonished himself.
He tried hard to redirect the path of his thoughts.
But his thoughts gathered there naturally, like iron drawn to a magnet, like raindrops falling to the ground and forming a puddle.
In the end, Rexfail could not pretend not to see the vast puddle at his feet and stepped into it.
A single suspicion began to fill his mind.
That the small, dark-haired woman might be Evelyn Dame Embrio.
A preposterous thought he could not believe even as it formed.
“…Have I gone mad?”
As he muttered, Penril startled and lifted his head without permission to check his lord’s face.
He appeared normal.
There was no cold sweat, nor did he seem to have lost his reason in agitation.
On the contrary, Crown Prince Rexfail’s eyes looked cold and deeply contemplative.
Yet the glint of madness within those shining eyes sent an involuntary chill through Penril’s senses and filled him with fear.
“Your Highness?”
Though he knew his master disliked being addressed without cause, he spoke anyway.
Otherwise, it felt as though his lord might be swept away by something before his eyes, or willingly sink into some abyss himself.
***
Waiting was something she was used to.
So Evelyn waited.
For Rexfail to leave.
Just when is he going to go…!
But Rexfail neither left nor approached, instead spending his time quietly in Simila’s room.
With the window overlooking the backyard left open, he sat in a chair placed before it and cast a persistent gaze whenever she stepped outside.
Why is he staring like that…
The following gaze felt burdensome.
And it irritated her.
All the more so because she could not fail to understand the emotion laid bare within that gaze.
A look that seemed to hold her back.
Eyes that appeared to have something to say.
An unfamiliar, softened expression.
There was no way she could misunderstand what all of it meant.
What is so special about this woman!
Evelyn frowned at her reflection in the water she had drawn with effort from the well.
Unfamiliar jet-black hair.
Black eyes that sparkled like pebbles.
Healthy, elastic skin.
Unlike her own former self, whose colors had been pale as though rinsed in water, these features were vivid.
Is it this that he fell for!
She should have been pleased that it was her body that had earned Rexfail’s favor, yet she could not feel joy.
There had been a time when she thought she would accept being loved even if she had to become someone else.
But now that she truly stood in that position, it was nothing short of miserable and dreadful.
The more certain she became of the favor in his gaze, the more depressed she felt.
How was she to interpret such deep interest directed at a woman he had just met?
As long as it was not me, was that enough for you?
The petulant question nearly burst from her throat before she barely swallowed it down.
Evelyn did not wish to feel any more miserable.
The Evelyn who had fallen into an unrequited love in her past life and chosen one-sided sacrifice was dead.
So in this life, could she not live for herself at least once?
To do that!
She had to become independent from Rexfail.
She needed a complete emotional severance.
Evelyn glared defiantly toward the window.
In the bright daylight, she could not clearly see the man’s face inside the shaded house.
But simply knowing he was there made her chest ache.
Her heart pounded and the sounds around her grew distant.
This is serious.
Evelyn squeezed her eyes shut.
She wished that just as closing her eyes blocked her sight, she could cut away her heart as well.
Not this time.
Carving that firm resolve into her mind, Evelyn forced her reluctant steps forward and moved out of Rexfail’s line of sight.
