Side Story: The Yearning After the Kiss

The day the Thorn Princess showed up in Trisphede, Reggie evolved. He grew into a magic-wielding prince.

At first, I had to wonder why this was happening. I’d become a spellcaster to protect Reggie; it was demoralizing to know that I’d pushed him onto such a dangerous path despite my efforts. However, it was while we were traveling to Eirlain that I finally came to terms with his decision.

From then on, I began accompanying him to his training sessions.

“Not good enough! You’ve gotta send it farther!” Master Horace demanded. Reggie silently followed his instructions.

Whether he planned to channel his lightning through his sword or not, Master Horace had suggested that practicing unleashing it from his own hands would make him better at wielding his magic. It produced less output than when he used a sword, and the sound wouldn’t travel too far, so it was a much more convenient way to train.

Still, it seemed that controlling the lightning with his bare hands was much harder without the help of a sword. Every other attempt, the charge would fizzle out not far from his fingers.

The majority of magic needed to be supplemented with imagination. For someone like me, who remembered many different writers’ renderings of magic in manga and video games, it was easy to envision. However, it was much more difficult for people who had grown up in this world.

There weren’t that many religious paintings or storybook illustrations to reference. If someone needed to imagine a bunch of different forms for their magic to take, it would take a lot of artistic creativity to think those up on the spot.

And so, I was doing my best to convey my ideas to Reggie in words. Reggie, meanwhile, was slowly but surely working down the list of Master Horace’s assignments.

As I watched him practice, I considered that Reggie was probably always like this when he was studying. He was diligent and persistent—a genius who backed up his natural talents with hard work.

He almost never complained. No matter how many times his surprisingly spartan teacher made him do something over, he never showed signs of weariness.

Master Horace didn’t seem to like that. “Tch. Considering you’re out here trying to take my daughter away from me, can’t you have the good grace to lose to her dad at least once?” he grumbled under his breath. He then said, loud enough for Reggie to hear from his spot a little ways away, “That’s it for today, little prince. If you don’t get some rest, you won’t make it through your next training session!”

It was only moments later that Master Horace started to kick up a fuss, pleading with me, “Hey, that dog is back again! Tell your knight to get me out of here, little disciple.”

“Alright, alright.”

When I spotted Lila plodding through the woods toward us, I handed Master Horace off to Cain and told him to return to our army lines.

Ever since yesterday, Lila had gotten in the habit of stopping by whenever Reggie’s training was nearing its end. I had initially assumed it was the magic drawing her in, but seeing as Reynard and Sara never showed up, it seemed possible there was a different reason behind it. Each time it happened, Master Horace would throw a fit and demand to be carried off by Cain or one of the other knights.

Once I’d seen him off, Reggie and I stopped for a break, sitting side by side against a nearby fallen tree.

The royal guard never knew where Reggie’s spells might go flying next, so they were keeping ample distance. I could tell that they were taking care not to stare at us too much.

Seeing as Reggie was a prince and all, he wasn’t allowed to go off on his own, and his surroundings always had to be tightly guarded; there would always have to be someone watching us. More recently, however, I was getting the sense that his guard was willing to look the other way more and more frequently. They made sure the rest of the knights looked elsewhere as often as possible, too. Was it because of something Reggie had said to them, perhaps?

My curiosity had been piqued, but I set that aside to examine the flow of Reggie’s mana.

“Can I touch your shoulder?”

“Of course.”

I placed a hand on his shoulder. I couldn’t feel the heat of his body from over his cape, but his mana was a different story. Thanks to the path the Thorn Princess had forged, the flow wasn’t as turbulent as it could have been, but it had clearly been triggered into motion. I used my own mana to even it out.

After some time, Reggie eventually said, “I’m fine now. It never feels much different from the exhaustion of a good workout, but once you patch me up like this, it makes it clear that it’s all my mana’s doing. Whenever you touch me, I can feel the heat draining from my body.”

“I’m glad I can be of some help, at least.”

If I didn’t have a part to play in supplying him with mana, I wouldn’t be able to do anything but watch him practice. It was a relief to have there be something I could actually do.

Reggie, however, responded with a conflicted smile. “You needn’t concern yourself with that. I’m doing this because I love you.”

My heart leapt in my chest. It was only just the other day that he’d professed his love for me. So much had happened on the heels of that that it was almost soothing to hear him say it again. Of course, my own misgivings meant that I was still withholding my answer. Thus, while it made me happy to hear it, deep down, part of me felt that it was wrong to delight in it so.

Reggie didn’t care about that, of course. Still, I felt guilty keeping him waiting like this.

While I got caught up in my thoughts, Lila came by my side.

“What’s up, Lila?” I asked.

Does she want me to pet her? I wondered, but she declined to acknowledge my question, instead nudging the two of us from behind.

I got to my feet alongside Reggie, still clueless as to what she was after, and Lila sprawled herself out over the tree, prodding us with her snout and tail to urge us to lean against her.

“Okay, I’m lost.”

“Well, if she’s offering, we may as well lie back against her,” Reggie suggested with a laugh. He threw an arm around my shoulders and pulled me close, sitting me back down on the ground with his cape spread out underneath us.

While I was busy panicking over this turn of events, Lila curled herself around the two of us—which served to push me even closer up against Reggie. After shooting me a soft gaze that made her look oddly like she was smiling, she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

Her little foxy sleeping face is a sight for sore eyes, and it’s cute to see her “smiling,” but hold on just a second... What the heck is going on?!

Despite my confusion, I was hesitant to shake a slumbering animal awake.

As I sat there fretting over what to do, Reggie said, “Oh good, now I can blame everything on Lila. I’ll be milking that excuse for all it’s worth.”

He then placed a light kiss on my forehead.

“Uh, Reggie?”

Groul and the rest of the knights were still watching. When he saw me starting to panic, Reggie bumped his forehead against mine and said, “I’m well aware how easily embarrassed you are. I promise I won’t go any further than that in public. But even if you’re reluctant to give me an answer, I’d prefer it to be clear that you aren’t averse to me.”

Of course I wasn’t averse to him. I loved him.

He was willing to wait for me while I dragged my feet about coming out and saying it. In return, I granted his desire to nestle up like a pair of lovers, holding still in his embrace. Sandwiched in both Reggie’s and Lila’s body heat, I felt perfectly warm and cozy.

Besides, I did want to be close to Reggie. If it weren’t for all the people watching us, I’d love having the chance to cuddle like this. It was hard for me to come out and say that, so I was glad that Reggie had asked for it himself.

Since Reggie was a prince, though we did a lot of things as a pair, we rarely got the chance to be alone together. There were times when that had been a little hard on me; whenever I felt scared, I couldn’t just reach out and hold his hand if there were too many people around.

Now that he’d said that he loved me, I could feel myself wanting to rely on him more and more. I’d made it this far on my own. One big squeeze for Master Horace, and I’d always pulled myself together enough to stand on my own two feet. Why was I letting this happen now?

Had falling in love made me weak? Feeling pathetic, I hung my head low.

That was when Reggie suddenly asked, “By the way, Kiara, did you ever court anyone in your previous life?”

“Huh?! Of course not! I was only fourteen!”

“Oh, is that right? But if I recall, that’s the same age you were when you met me. Are you going to tell me that you didn’t feel the slightest inkling of affection for me at the time?”

When I looked up at his face, I saw him staring back at me with a cheeky grin. Was he that confident I’d felt at least a little something for him while we were staying in Évrard?

He wasn’t wrong, of course, but I wasn’t about to admit that. I couldn’t imagine anything more embarrassing! Considering I’d assumed it was a one-sided crush of mine for so long, it would take a lot of courage to put it into words.

As my eyes darted from left to right in a panic, Reggie cornered me further. “Hmm, perhaps I slipped up somewhere, then. Remember how right after we first met, I demanded that you either hand over what you were hiding on your person or show me what was under your skirt? I did have the option to strip you myself, but I would have felt terribly guilty, so I opted to give you the chance to disarm yourself willingly. Did you resent me for that?”

“What?! I mean, well... I knew what your aim was there. I wasn’t upset with you!”

As a matter of fact, I’d thought it was pretty kind and respectful of him not to tear off my clothes while I was out cold. It hardly would have been uncalled for, given the situation.

“Was there something else that bothered you, then? You do forgive me for keeping mum about my true identity, don’t you? I realized quickly enough that you would make for a poor liar, but I did need to exercise some caution.”

“I’ve never had a problem with you, then or now! You were willing to trust me almost immediately, too.”

“Oh? So you liked me?” he murmured into my ear.

I whined, “I didn’t dislike you.”

Reggie giggled, appearing satisfied with that answer. His reaction stoked the fires of rebellion inside of me, and I threw his question back at him in a desperate bid to get the upper hand.

“What about you, Reggie?”

“I think I loved you from the very start,” came Reggie’s smooth reply, not a trace of embarrassment to be found. “You piqued my interest from the moment I found you in our carriage. Once you’d tumbled out of the bed, I was so interested to see what you were going to pull next that I couldn’t take my eyes off of you. And when I found out that you shared so many of my own sentiments, I found it comfortable to be around you.”

He slid his hand away from my shoulder, wrapping it loosely around my neck. He felt so warm.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I wanted nothing more than to keep you by my side all the time—but that wasn’t an option back then, unfortunately.”

Reggie talked about how he had hated having to go home, since he couldn’t very well bring me back to the royal palace with him.

“I didn’t want to bring you to war, either. I didn’t want to see you hurt—physically or emotionally. Still, I knew that without your power... without the power of a spellcaster, we would have to make significant sacrifices to win. Hence, I couldn’t refuse your offer. It wasn’t just that I wanted to respect your will; there was an element of calculation to it, too. Does it bother you to know I was thinking about it that way?”

I shook my head. “I just wanted you to need me. In fact, I’m glad you’re telling me this now.”

I was relieved to know that he’d never thought of me as a burden, nor gotten fed up with my obstinacy. Yet apparently, that more calculated aspect of his decision had been bothering him all this time.

“Do I really deserve your forgiveness on this?” he asked.

“Of course. Really, I’m the one who’s always making trouble for you, or testing your patience.”

“Patience? My patience for what?” he asked curiously.

Maybe I had been too vague there. I rushed to elaborate. “I mean the whole, err... ‘withholding my answer’ thing. I know this has to be a pain for you.”

That was when Reggie suggested, “In that case, why don’t you tell me a secret of yours nobody else knows?”

“A secret?”

“It can be anything you like. An anecdote from your past life, perhaps? Did you really, truly never have a boy you fancied?” he prompted me.

Ugh... It’s so awkward to talk about fancying someone.

“It could be someone from your current life, too.”

From my current life? That one seemed easier to bluff my way out of. If I just named someone I thought of like a father, I was pretty sure he’d accept that answer.

“But if you are interested in someone besides me... well, that won’t do at all. If you told me his name, I’d run off to assassinate him as soon as this war is over.”

“Whoa! Assassinate?!”

Reggie, that’s an alarming thing to say! The look in your eyes is just as terrifying to boot! I know you told me that you were going to be more forthright, but it’s pretty scary when you say everything you’re thinking!

Nope, cut! No way I’m throwing a real, living person under the bus! God, I’m glad I didn’t name Lord Évrard as “the ideal father type.” Alan would have held it against me for the rest of our lives.

“Guess I should go with someone from my past life, huh? Ahaha...” Laughing, I steered the conversation back around. If I stuck to Japan, I wouldn’t have to worry about getting anyone killed no matter what I said.

“So there was someone. What was he like?”

I couldn’t help but wonder why he wanted to know so badly, but given that I’d steered the conversation here myself, I had no choice but to answer.

“As long as a crush counts, I guess you could say that.”

There had been a boy I’d found charming, at the very least. I’d never really thought of him in a romantic light, though.

“I had this cousin who was a lot older than me. He was good at looking after kids, so he would come play with me every once in a while when I was a little girl. He was actually the one who got me into games like the one based on this world.”

Farzia: Kingdom at War—that game was the whole reason I knew that Reggie was destined to die and that Alan would go on to fight his own war. It was the RPG where I died a villainess.

“My cousin was the one who came up with the plot. Somebody else tied all the story threads together and put it into a format that could be distributed to larger audiences, but I heard that he was credited for the original concept. I was still just a kid at the time, so I was amazed when I found out that he had made one of those ‘RPGs’ they sold in the stores.”

Since my cousin was the one who made it, my parents never got mad about me sinking so much time into that particular game. Besides, that cousin had made me promise that I’d spend just as much time studying as I did playing the RPG.

“Do you think, perhaps...?” Reggie’s expression took a turn for the serious, and I nodded in response.

“Thinking back on it, I bet the person who used to live in this world, only to be reincarnated in the world of my past life... was that cousin of mine.”

That would explain why he’d known all the most minute details of the war. He’d claimed that it all just came to him in “a flash of inspiration,” but I figured that the real explanation came down to the memories sleeping deep in his heart being subconsciously awakened.

“Do you remember who he was?”

“Not very clearly, no. There’s a good chance he might be an Évrard soldier or knight. Which means there are way too many candidates to narrow it down.”

If only the story had spent a little more time exploring me or Reggie, there was someone I would have suspected right away. That didn’t seem right, though. If it were Cain, he wouldn’t have known about all the things that happened after I killed him. Thus, I figured it was someone who had survived to see the end of the war alongside Alan.

He did give me similar vibes to Cain, though.

While I was mulling it over, Reggie said, “I must say I’m surprised, Kiara. So you haven’t the least bit of interest in whether I’ve been in a relationship before?”

Though he was the one who had brought it up, he seemed surprised that I hadn’t bothered to ask him the same question. He looked almost like he was pouting a little. Did the thought of being the only jealous one bother him?

“I guess... I kind of don’t want to hear about it? If you were courting someone, it’d have to be a girl who could wander in and out of the royal palace. I bet she’d be someone really tall and pretty. No way I could measure up.”

Beyond being a spellcaster, I didn’t have any particular talents, nor was I of a particularly high rank. You couldn’t exactly consider me a knockout beauty, either, and I sure wasn’t cute enough to warrant any flattery.

When I confessed that I was too scared to ask, Reggie’s mood seemed to improve. “Don’t worry, Kiara. I’ve never been as interested in anyone as I am in you. Nobody’s ever understood me the way you do, either.”

If he’d just left it at the first comment, I would have been a little dubious. However, the part about understanding him made everything click into place. If we combed the whole world looking for someone else who fit the bill, we could probably find one. However, back when I first met him, we were the only ones who had ever really understood each other. It was easy to believe that the sentiment still lingered between us.

“Okay. I believe you,” I said.

Reggie smiled back at me, truly pleased, and brought his face close to mine.

Hey, wait a second! Your knights are looking!

Or so I’d feared, but Lila lifted her tail to keep our faces hidden. Thanks to her efforts, no one was able to see the moment Reggie pecked me on the cheek... or at least, that’s what I told myself.

◇◇◇

It was later that night. We were camping outside, so I was heading back to my tent with Gina after finishing up dinner.

The moment I was about to step inside, however, I heard whispers from behind the tent. Wondering who it could be, I tiptoed closer to the source of the voices.

There, I saw Lila sitting on her haunches next to Master Horace.

“Keep it up, you mangy mutt! Boy, have I gone soft if I’m wasting my time worrying about this.”

Lila bobbed her head in a nod, which seemed to put Master Horace in a good mood. “Oh, so you do get it! Not bad for a dumb dog. It’s all thanks to you that I can get rid of the pests and let my daughter have some alone time with the man trying to woo her.”

I had to stop myself from crying out in surprise. Master Horace was the one who had sent Lila our way? Sending Cain elsewhere had been part of his plan, too?

“Just as she finally stopped having so many nightmares, she had all those brushes with death and got put through enough hell to make her wish she were dead. Now they’re back in full force. I thought I ought to let her have a little treat. On that note, you’re doing a great job. Make sure to give them more and more chances to talk, you got that?”

Lila nodded once again. I could have sworn she briefly glanced over at me past Master Horace. The reason I couldn’t tell for sure was, most likely, because my vision was blurred with tears.

“I’m tired of hearing all her moaning and teeth-gnashing at night! That’s the only reason I’m bothering with this!”

I rubbed my eyes against my sleeve to keep my cheeks dry, doing my best to hold back sobs.

Oh, Master Horace. I love you so much!

I wanted nothing more in that moment than to run up to him and squeeze him tight, but I didn’t want him to know I’d been eavesdropping, either. I curled my hands into fists to hold myself back.

It had always been so painful to live this life without a family, and once I’d finally found someone I felt I could rely on, it was someone I had no real claim over. Lonely girl that I was, it was because Master Horace had stood by my side that I’d been able to keep trucking along for so long.

Still, given the way I acted like a child always seeking out the warmth of another person, I had to wonder how Master Horace had felt as he watched over me, unable to do so much as hold my hand.

And yet, he had continued to stay by my side and protect me.

I quietly walked away, somehow managing to bite back my tears. I couldn’t let Master Horace see me crying after he’d gone to such lengths to cheer me up. I needed to prove that his efforts had brought a smile to my face.

My face had to look pretty red, though. It would take some time for my eyes to get less puffy; was Master Horace going to be worried about me being gone for so long?

As I stood there fretting, I noticed someone drawing close to me. It was Lila, who had just finished up her conversation with Master Horace. In a eureka moment, I had her blow some snow on a handkerchief for me; I remembered that Gina had used that trick once before to cool my puffy eyelids. With that, my eyes were back to normal in no time.

“Do I look okay?” I asked Lila, and she nodded back. Reassured, I headed back into my tent.

Master Horace was there waiting for me, having the time of his life rolling around on the floor of the tent for reasons unknown. Of course, it didn’t take long for him to get to nagging me.

“How long were you planning to wander around in the dead of night, you naughty girl?”

“I know, I know. But I’m here now, Master Horace.” I flashed him the biggest smile I could muster.

“You’re giving me the creeps,” he responded, but even his snide remarks were enough to bring me joy.

“What can I say? I’m in a really good mood.”

“You’re a weird one.”

Though he kept on talking smack, I never stopped smiling for him until the moment I fell asleep. I wanted him to see just how happy he’d made his daughter.