The Reincarnated Princess Contemplates

“Please pardon the wait.”

For ten seconds, I stared at the teacup he’d placed before me, completely frozen. I’d been holding my breath, but I released it now, forcing words of gratitude past my lips.

“Thank you.”

An amber-colored liquid had been poured to fill seventy percent of the fine-quality teacup, which was porcelain with an inlaid gold rim. The tea’s color looked normal enough... At the moment, there was no vile peril lurking anywhere visible.

After taking a large, deep breath, I reached out. My hands trembled considerably, and the teacup gave a rattling noise when I grabbed its handle. I drew my nose over the cup and checked the smell.

I had no composure to spare on acting elegant and enjoying the fragrance. The aim of my action was to collect olfactory information in order to detect danger. It served the additional purpose of functioning like a ritual to strengthen my resolve.

I sucked the air in and gasped. My eyes widened to their greatest extent, and I stared at the (supposed) tea.

It smells like...what black tea should...!!!

Although that should’ve been plainly obvious, the discovery shocked me to my core. No foul odor had tickled my nostrils. Instead, I was treated to a fresh and fruity fragrance. Based on the distinctive muscatel aroma, he’d likely utilized high-grade second-flush leaves, and it smelled identical to Darjeeling tea.

Though he might’ve used the same leaves last time, there’d been no muscatel in the scent profile, let alone in the taste. The liquid had been completely odorless, so there was no way I could’ve definitively recognized the particular type of tea he’d used.

Actually, I wouldn’t have been proud of myself if I had correctly discerned the variety, or if I’d realized that it’d been made from the most sought-after summer-picked leaves. Quite the contrary—drawing that conclusion from the toxic waste he’d served me, which had tasted criminal despite its lack of odor, would’ve been sacrilege to the world of tea.

“Hey, Klaus,” I called out in a daze to my personal guard, who was standing a little distance away.

“Yes, Lady Rosemary?”

“It definitely was you who brewed this, right?” I asked, thinking that perhaps he’d realized that his flair for housework was abysmal, and he’d passed the job off to one of the maids.

Klaus, however, nodded his affirmation. “I did... Is there anything wrong with it?”

His easygoing good looks became clouded with apprehension.

Why do you pick this moment to be modest? I don’t think that’s fair. You’re making it harder to admit that the absence of a problem is what’s beginning to scare me.

“No, there isn’t,” I said. “I just thought it smelled nice.”

Yep. It did smell nice. Which is, if anything, why I’m frightened.

Klaus’s eyes lit up cheerfully when I voiced my compliment. A blush appeared on the youthful curves of his cheekbones, and he smiled from ear to ear.

“Truthfully,” he admitted, “I’ve been practicing in secret. I wanted to be able to brew the delicious tea you love.”

“R-Right...”

Just what is this guy’s goal in life?

I found myself staring into the distance.

Uh-oh, no good. This is probably supposed to be a touching moment. This should be the scene where I’m struck by his devotion, and say, “You’ve done all of that for me?”

What I must not do is cringe with all my might, all while questioning the purpose of a personal guard learning how to make tea. And, Rose, this is not the scene where I weep while reflecting on the plight of the head maid who had to suffer being Klaus’s instructor.

Wait, actually. If he’s been shown how, then... Could this tea actually be—wonder of all wonders—bona fide black tea?

A dash of hope took root in my heart as I gazed down at the rippling surface of the tea.

This might be okay. I took a big gulp of air and readied myself. For five seconds, I held my breath.

Then, I brought the amber-colored liquid to my lips.

My eyes flew wide open, and a large boom might as well have been drawn behind me, like in a manga.

A deep bitterness, an astringency, and also a sourness, prickly on my tongue, spread throughout my mouth. This was washed away a moment later by the arrival of a gooey saccharine taste. My grip on consciousness began to slip as a parade of flavors trampled through my mouth with enough vigor to annihilate my sense of taste.

Nothing’s changed!!! I demand to see the person who got their hopes up thinking that this tea might be okay! Argh, that’s me!!!

Talk about a trap—luring me in with a nice color and smell, then hitting me with that horrendous taste. I feel like I was convinced to let my guard down, only to take a big old knife in the back. This is so awful that I’d be better off treating it the same way I’d handle a scentless, tasteless poison.

I gripped harder with my fingers and reangled the cup upward, as my hands had started shaking so fiercely that I’d almost dropped it. I swigged the liquid into my mouth all at once. Unsure of whether I could bear to pick the cup back up again if I were to put it down, I swallowed every last drop, tears forming in my eyes, and disobeyed the call from my survival instincts to spit it back out.

“Th-Thank you...very much.” With labored breathing, I returned the emptied cup to its saucer.

Downing a cup of tea in one gulp wasn’t at all princess-y, but I had no regrets. My heart was overflowing with a sense of achievement.

Though my stomach was groaning and I was feeling bloated, I knew that the sensation would pass with time. At least, I expected it would... Probably. Nobody feels bloated after a cup of tea... That can’t happen.

“Just so I know, Klaus... Did you put anything in this tea?” I asked. The blood had drained from my face and I languidly pivoted my head toward my personal guard.

“No, nothing particularly peculiar comes to mind.” Klaus shook his head in response to my question, looking slightly confused.

“Right...” I let out an exhausted sigh, assuming that the tea had been some accumulation of miraculous coincidences brought about by Klaus’s disastrous lack of flair.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, looking like he had something in mind.

“What?” Oh, so something poisonous did get mixed in there?

“I filled it with the loyalty and respect I feel for you, Lady Rosemary,” he whispered with a sentimental grin.

“Please, spare me that.” A vein throbbed on my forehead. I expected that I could be excused for losing my temper. My voice sounded colder than ever before.

So it seems like the toxic substance included in my tea has turned out to be Klaus’s loyalty and respect. I’m getting the idea that this man actually has it in for me.

“Uh, why’re you smiling?” I asked.

For some reason, despite being subjected to my absolute-zero glare, Klaus was grinning happily. His smile was affable, unlike the smug one from a moment ago, and it disarmed me.

“You’re finally back to your usual self,” he said, then pointed to his forehead. “This whole time, you looked like something was troubling you.”

After he pointed that out, my jaw dropped spontaneously.

Now that he mentions it, I was nervous and fidgety before going to my father’s room, and after leaving, I couldn’t think about anything other than the demon lord. Had he acted out of concern, in his own particular way, after seeing me doing nothing but furrowing my eyebrows and looking downcast?

“Sorry for making you worry about me,” I said, putting on a strained smile, and he urged me not to mention it.

“Not at all,” he said. “It was my own choice.”

To be honest, I’m not enthralled by his implication that my default state features ice-cold glares and a blunt attitude...but just this once, I’ll let it slide. And I won’t fret about the fact that his remark should ordinarily be directed at someone who’s started to smile.

“My own choice,” I muttered, repeating his words verbatim, and he looked at me curiously.

“Lady Rosemary?”

“Klaus, could I ask you a question?” I asked.

“Anything.”

“Hypothetically,” I began, “say there was a person who’d suffered a grievous wound. He’s always kept his wound hidden from sight, unable to show anyone for one reason or another. Do you think it’d be wrong to expose that wound against his wishes?”

It was practically guaranteed that Michael, who’d become the demon lord’s avatar in Hidden World, was a magic user. And a rather puissant one at that, I expected, judging from the extent of the demon lord’s powers.

He’d kept it hidden until now though. He’d managed to. Was it truly okay for me to expose his secret?

“I’m not sure,” Klaus replied. “I wouldn’t recommend leaving the wound untreated though, since it could fester and the limb could rot away and fall off.”

“Right,” I said. “But as long as he can treat it himself, he might have a scar, but he could very well go about life without impediment.”

Teo had told me previously that anger was prone to draw out his magical powers, and so he would never remove his restrictive device, even now that his control had improved.

After taking all of his lessons in sorcery, Teo still didn’t have perfect sway over his power. This meant there was no guarantee that Michael wouldn’t lose control of his magic. On the other hand, Michael had made it through the past ten-plus years without anyone getting a whiff of his abilities, so he could’ve already mastered the control.

“It might be impossible to get rid of the scar completely, but the wound shouldn’t worsen, as long as he gives himself treatment and takes the right medicine. Even so, revealing his secret would hurt him. Emotionally, if nothing else. I might think my actions are just, but he might see it as me imposing my own will upon him.”

He’d have the opportunity to learn a lot if he became an apprentice sorcerer, and that would probably prove useful to him someday. I thought that he might rest easier if he had access to magic-restricting devices and people with the same powers as him, like Lutz and Teo.

But this world wasn’t a pleasant place for sorcerers. People would often look at them with morbid curiosity, or show them hatred, fear, and other negative emotions. People would develop sour perceptions of magic users, even when the sorcerer was a person they’d known all their lives. Sorcerers had their movements restricted, and they even faced being targeted by villains.

Should I let it lie, or should I bring it into the open? What’s the right choice as a princess? And which do I want to choose?

“Sorry,” I said, “that was a strange thing to ask.” Whatever the case, the decision was mine to make. Just because I couldn’t handle the burden by myself didn’t give me the right to mix Klaus up in this. “Forget what I said,” I told him, putting on a forced smile.

“I’m not as insightful as you are,” Klaus started, just as I was about to bring the discussion to an end.

“Huh?”

“So I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong,” he continued. “But I do know that my master is far more proactive than her adorable appearance lets on.”

Is that a compliment or an insult? Hard to tell.

After falling silent with an unconvinced expression, I let out a sigh and my face mellowed. “You’re saying that it’s not like me to stall in indecision?”

“Though you may sometimes regret your decision after having progressed down a road, you’re not the sort of person to gaze wistfully at a path you could have traveled.”

That’s about as forceful a way to give someone encouragement as I can think of. It’s better to regret trying something than to regret not trying. Talk about vague advice.

Saying that though, maybe I do feel like a weight’s been lifted from my shoulders.

“Thank you,” I whispered softly.

When I did, the personal guard, whom I’d always found so burdensome and annoying, smiled like an older brother.