The Reincarnated Princess Asks for Advice

I’d embraced Sir Leonhart, giving in to a flood of my emotions and holding on to him as a few minutes passed.

When I came to my senses and processed what was currently happening, I grew so nervous that my whole body froze. Although I’d acted on impulse, I was worried about how forward I had been. My feelings were a mess; half of me wanted to scream at my past self, and the other, bolder half felt that applause was in order.

I shut my eyes to escape the enormous embarrassment, but putting the blinders on visual stimuli only seemed to heighten my other senses. I could feel Sir Leonhart’s strong muscles through the rugged fabric of his knight’s uniform. At our physical points of contact, the feel and heat of his hard arms and chest were conveyed directly to me.

My heart started beating so fast that it hurt, and I felt like I was suffocating. I instinctively took a deep breath, but even the air smelled of Sir Leonhart, and a wave of dizziness overwhelmed my head.

“Your Highness...?”

“Ah?!”

My body jumped after I heard his whisper-quiet voice slide into my ears. I think you’re probably lowering the volume of your voice so as not to startle me, but that plan is backfiring! You’ve done the opposite!!! A murmur from his mellow baritone was nothing short of a weapon, one of mass seduction, and lethal for girls.

To be honest, at this point I was thoroughly overwhelmed. I wasn’t experienced enough to sit back and just enjoy the delight of being embraced by the person I loved.

I wasn’t even sure whether pulling him into a hug without waiting for his assent was acceptable in the first place. In some situations, that could be called groping, and it would be considered a crime. Given my lofty social status, it could even be labeled sexual harassment; however uncomfortable Sir Leonhart might’ve been, he couldn’t just push a princess away.

I knew that I should end the hug and step back, but I’d missed my chance. Cogs whirred round and round in my brain, but only panic ensued, and no good plan for extricating myself came to mind. During all of that, my body temperature shot up and the palms of my hands began to sweat.

Oh God, what if I start to stink of sweat?!

“What’s the matter?” asked Sir Leonhart softly. “Are you perhaps feeling under the weather?”

He rubbed my back gently to soothe me, and at that moment, my distress and anxious nerves swelled past their limit. I leaped backward, and a strange sound came out of my mouth.

“Y-Yas!”

Sir Leonhart watched my eccentric behavior with wide-eyed astonishment.

I have to say, my movement just now was very frog-like. Okay, just kill me now.

Sir Leonhart stared at me with a dumbfounded expression, and I felt so pathetic that I could’ve burst into tears. I could feel the heat steadily creeping onto my face.

Seeing how red I’d become, Sir Leonhart put on a smile. The expression twinkling in his eyes was the one he wore when looking at something delightful, and I couldn’t sense any malice from him. Of course, that did nothing for my embarrassment. I wanted to dig a deep hole and bury myself.

He soon noticed the tears pricking at the corners of my eyes and his smile vanished. “Pardon me,” he said awkwardly, clearing his throat.

“I’m sorry too,” I replied, feigning poise. “I apologize for the trouble I’ve caused. I not only lost my composure, but I also embraced you without your permission. I beg your forgiveness, Sir Orsein.”

I moved to bow my head, but Sir Leonhart stopped me.

“Please don’t say that,” he said. “You’ve caused me no trouble. In fact, it would please me if you would rely on me even more.” His voice was calm and soothing.

“You didn’t find it unpleasant?” Given a fresh bout of courage from his positive feedback, I took the plunge and asked the question that had been on my mind.

“Of course not,” he confirmed with an unhesitant nod, dispelling my concern.

The tension that had turned my body rigid quickly drained away. I let out a sigh and felt relieved that I’d managed to avoid ruining his image of me.

“But...Your Highness?”

“Yes?”

My relief was short-lived. He directed a suggestive glance at me, and my trepidation returned. The expression on my face hardened as I wondered whether he’d found the hug unpleasant after all.

But in stark contrast to me, Sir Leonhart smiled cheerily, with eyes like those of a child up to no good. “Have you stopped calling me Leon?”

“Huh...?”

I heard his words and blinked my eyes several times to process. Simultaneously, I replayed our earlier exchange in my mind. I recalled the events up until this moment, starting from when Chris acted out of consideration and left me alone with Sir Leonhart.

Suddenly, I froze. The color drained from my face.

I have a feeling that when I lost control of my emotions and hugged him, “Sir Leon” might have slipped out of my mouth instead of “Sir Orsein.” Ohh, I’ve gone and done it now!!!

“A-About that... Uh, it was...” I stammered, looking away from him. I broke out in a cold sweat as I desperately fumbled for an excuse.

I could say that I got it wrong? Yeah, but “why?” is gonna be his next question. Maybe I could say that I was being honest about my inner urges? Oh, right, that could work. If I wanna creep him out, that is.

Or maybe, “I always call you by your first name in my mind, so it just slipped out?” Nope, if I go with that excuse, I might as well just say, “I’m in love with you” too.

The only plans that came to mind were all useless, and my efforts to wriggle my way out of this came up short. I couldn’t find any excuse to gloss over what had happened. Realizing that, I took a deep breath and raised my head back up.

“Would it be all right to call you that?” I asked timidly. There was no way to put the cat back in the bag, so I decided to give voice to my long-held wish.

I mean, it’s not fair that only Chris gets to call him by his first name. I wanna do that too.

I placed a hand on my chest to quell the nervous, rapid beating of my heart and waited for his answer.

Sir Leonhart met my gaze and nodded, smiling.

“Please do.”

“Th-Th-Thank you.”

Way to go, Rose! The nickname “Sir Leon” is mine for the taking!!!

In my mind, I was roaring to the heavens and pumping my fist, but on the outside, I just smiled to keep up at least the appearance of modesty. I couldn’t entirely disguise my inner feelings though; my fists ended up clenched, but I wanted to believe that he probably didn’t notice.

“It’s not something that you need to thank me for.” Sir Leonhart narrowed his eyes kindly and gazed at me.

“Well then.” I cleared my throat. “Sir Leon,” I called his name again. There was a slight anxious tremor in my voice.

A part of me wanted our meandering conversation to last forever, but our time was limited. I had to make the most of the short window I’d been given while Chris was occupying Klaus.

“Will you hear what I have to say?” I asked.

Sir Leonhart’s eyes opened wider in surprise. His smile faded, and he nodded.

“I will.”

The low tone of his voice and the severity of his facial expression imprinted the gravity of the situation on my feelings. I readied myself and began to speak.

“When I was younger,” I started, “I had a dream.”

“A dream?”

The abrupt change of subject took Sir Leonhart by surprise. I nodded in confirmation and continued talking. “The dream wasn’t a shocking one. In fact, it was exceedingly normal. The scenery was familiar, and I knew the people very well. It was an ordinary dream, like a continuation of the waking world. But something didn’t feel right.”

“Didn’t feel right...?” he asked. “In what way?”

“The people in my dream had a resemblance to the people around me in the waking world. That is, I knew how their faces looked, how they acted, and what they wore, so I think they were the same people. However, they seemed a little bit older to me.”

Hearing that, Sir Leonhart gasped. “A premonition,” he whispered, and his voice croaked.

“That’s overstating it,” I replied. “I don’t believe that I have a divine gift or anything. Even so, after the small amount of time I spent in that dream, I felt that it was somehow different to my usual dreams... I couldn’t just write off that feeling or convince myself that I was overthinking.”

I’d decided to explain what I knew, swapping “memories from my past life” with “a special dream.” I did feel guilty about lying, but telling the whole truth would’ve been far too risky.

The fact that I’d reincarnated with the memories of my past life intact was already too crazy to admit. But the possibility that we could be living inside of a video game world was something that needed even more care.

I mean, televisions didn’t even exist in this world, so it didn’t seem likely that I could get someone to understand what a video game was. And even if I could, I didn’t think it would be right to explain in the first place. However much mental fortitude Sir Leonhart had, he’d still undergo shock if he learned that the world in which he lived was an artificial creation.

Besides, I wasn’t absolutely positive that this world and the one from the game Welcome to the Hidden World were the same.

There’s a chance that it’s just a very similar otherworld... I hope.

Either way, this place was my current reality. The people I cared about here weren’t just streams of ones and zeros.

When they’re gone, they’re gone. There’s nowhere in the whole world where I can find a replacement for them. And don’t even talk about saving and loading, because that’s not happening!

I’ll take every measure that I can to keep these people safe.

Besides, opening up about the entire truth isn’t the priority; rather, I need to focus on telling Sir Leonhart all the information I know and preventing the incidents that will occur in the future.

And winning over Sir Leonhart as my cooperator is a priority as well.

After I finished this simple explanation, Sir Leonhart fell silent with a difficult look on his face. I had no means of guessing whether I’d managed to convince him. Moreover, I wasn’t confident about whether I’d conveyed everything properly with my inferior vocabulary.

“Your Highness.” Sir Leonhart spoke after a short period of silence.

“Yes!” My body jumped upon being exposed to his gaze. My overstrung nerves must’ve prompted an overreaction.

“To summarize what you’ve told me, you have knowledge of events which have the potential to occur in the future. This power is not all-encompassing, and it only relates to specific individuals around you at specific times. In addition, there are many parts that are vague and facts that are unknown to you, meaning that you can’t determine the exact dates for a large number of the events taking place. Finally, the future that you’ve seen can sometimes be overwritten as a result of your actions in the present. Am I not mistaken in my interpretation?”

“That’s right,” I answered, my voice terribly feeble.

Hearing it said aloud, I can’t imagine a more unrealistic story.

Even I thought that it sounded ridiculous, and I was the one who’d said it. If a friend had told me something like that out of the blue when I was still living in Japan, I doubt that I would’ve been able to believe them right away without difficulty.

But there was no confusion or frustration in Sir Leonhart’s face or voice, which threw me off-balance even more.

He crossed his arms, held a hand to his chin, tilted his head down in thought, and then quietly muttered, “I see. So you were operating by yourself in order to prevent tragedies from befalling those around you. And the reason why you didn’t come to Klaus or to me for help was because you had difficulty deciding how detailed you could afford to be with your explanation. That, and the discrepancies between the future you know...”

“H-Hold on a second!” I interrupted the matter-of-fact flow of speech coming from Sir Leonhart.

His eyes had been shrewdly narrowed, but he opened them wide and glanced at me. “What is it?”

“You believe me?”

I was aware of just how absurd my story was. On top of that, I was a ten-year-old child. I couldn’t have complained if he’d brushed this story off as a little girl’s overactive imagination.

“I believe you,” Sir Leonhart declared without the slightest hesitation, despite all of that.

“Why?” I found myself asking, my voice hoarse. Rather than feeling joy that he’d believed me, my confusion reigned supreme.

Seeing my dazed state, Sir Leonhart lowered his eyebrows for a moment in a troubled look, but then he immediately returned to a serious expression and continued to talk.

“Let’s see... There are several reasons, but foremost among them is the incident from half a year ago. The planned abduction of the two sorcerers Lutz and Teo Eilenberg was a top secret matter, and only a handful of knights in the royal guard were privy to that information. It’s not impossible that the intel could have leaked from one of those knights, but that alone wouldn’t suffice as an explanation. After all, you took action before we did.”

“Huh?”

“You had Klaus investigate Hilde Kremer, didn’t you? We suspected Nicholas as a spy by that point, but we hadn’t yet uncovered the connection to Hilde.”

Oh, right. I’d started off investigating Hilde’s fishy behavior, and that had led me to Nicholas. But Sir Leonhart and the others had gone in the reverse direction—from suspecting Nicholas to scrutinizing Hilde. I could’ve used leaked information to follow the same route as the royal guard’s investigation, but it would’ve been impossible to use that knowledge and start off with Hilde.

“Moreover, you don’t strike me as the sort of person who would lie for no good reason.”

I gasped. Sir Leonhart’s words had pierced deep into my heart. I had lied, but not for no good reason. However noble my justification was though, it wouldn’t change the fact that I was deceiving him.

Pangs of guilt throbbed in my heart. I wanted to give in and apologize there and then, but I bit my lips and held it in. I’d made my choice to press on. There would be no take-backs.

So instead, I smiled and expressed my appreciation. “Thank you very much.” That’s just what I had to do.

Sir Leonhart was quiet for a few seconds and then smiled wryly. There was a warm look in his eyes behind his troubled expression. Perhaps he’d realized that I hadn’t opened up about everything. That it hadn’t all been truthful. Even so, he didn’t try to press me any further, though I sported an awkward smile.

“Your Highness.”

“Yes?”

“If you’ll permit me to ask, I’d like you to tell me—are there any events in the near future which we ought to avoid?”

At the mention of future events, naturally, the demon lord’s revival popped into my head first and foremost. It would be absolutely vital to break that flag if I wanted any chance of living a peaceful life. But it was still too early in the timeline to act on it.

“The trouble is still some way off in the future, but there are steps that we ought to get out of the way now, while we can.”

“In that case,” continued Sir Leonhart, “is there anything that I can assist you with?”

This question was exactly what I’d been hoping to hear.

I steeled my face with a serious expression and nodded deeply. “Yes! Please!” I said emphatically. “But not now. I fear that the explanation would take too long to tell you.”

“I agree,” Sir Leonhart said. “Klaus will return any moment now. ‘Stay’ is not a trick he knows, particularly when you’re involved.” He chuckled.

“I’d like to set aside some proper time for a meeting in the near future,” I told him. “When I do, could I ask that you hear what I have to say?”

“Of course.”

A relieved sigh escaped me, and I relaxed my fists. I’d subconsciously been squeezing them, probably because I’d been bracing myself up to this point.

In the very next moment, there was a knock at the door. The timing was conspicuously impeccable.

The one knocking was the talented yet annoying man whose repertoire of tricks didn’t include “stay.” Klaus—my personal guard—had returned not five seconds after I’d arranged my next meeting with Sir Leonhart.

When I flinched back at his all-too-perfect timing, Sir Leonhart gave a wry smile and whispered quietly, “Don’t worry, he didn’t overhear.”

Sir Leonhart then walked past me toward the door and opened it.

I cast a look beyond the threshold and spotted Klaus there, heaving his shoulders, forehead drenched in sweat.

From the looks of things, Sir Leon’s right, I thought. My worries of Klaus overhearing seem to have been for nothing.

I let out a second, longer sigh.