Chapter 72

I’d made up half of that, but I was also half-sincerely curious. What our Haniel had grown up eating, and since I’d heard about the Emperor’s nanny last time, I wanted to ask about this, too.

“If everyone eats like this every day….”

“……how starved do you have to be to ask…”

“Pardon?”

However, I didn’t think as far as to consider how this man would understand it.

As Rashid looked at me with complicated eyes, as if he was seeing an orphan eat meat for the first time in her life, I laughed awkwardly and shook my head.

“That’s not it. I was just curious about the Palace, if everyone…..”

“If you’re so curious, then follow me.”

“……”

Oh no. I just might be being pitied by a tyrant.

Instead of the meat in my hands, I swallowed my solemn heart down.

But even as I did so, if he really did feel that way towards me, that in itself was a very incredible feat.

If he was the tyrant from the novel, I would’ve thought he would respond with ‘If you’re that curious, I’ll make you into meat.’

I’d been feeling this since he fished out Haniel, but from time to time, this man had a tendency to not live up to the reader’s expectations enough to be called a tyrant.

‘And who’s pitying whom now?’

When I know you’re here doing this because you lost your precious sister.

This wasn’t something the woman who took that very sister should be thinking, but technically speaking, this man and I both had unfortunate lives. He had seven younger siblings in a row under him, his parents both passed away, and from there, not only did he lose his youngest sibling, but at the end, he dies by the sword of his sister’s husband material.

“….what’s with that hungry look?”

“Noo it’s nothing. I just wanted to tell you that this meat is so very good….”

“We do eat food like this enough to be sick and tired of it. Though I don’t put much meaning into food.”

Though he’d been responding especially sensitively to the look in my eyes, he fortunately answered my previous question as if he’d been thinking about it. He most likely couldn’t even consider that he could be on the receiving end of pity.

“And as for my siblings, as they all were born and grew up in the palace, they’ll be similar, too.”

“….”

“No, maybe not for one of them?”

At his quiet words to himself, my ears perked up. Anyone would be able to tell that that was about our Haniel.

“Who might you be speaking of, perhaps one of your siblings…?”

“Well, I’m sure the nanny takes good care of that child, so.”

“……”

Oi, know your facts before you speak!

The hand holding my knife began shaking with strain. I had no idea if this man knew or not the truth of how that very nanny didn’t ever give a proper snack to that young and powerless princess.

No, seeing his indifferent expression, he definitely didn’t know.

“Duchess Tonze was recommended personally by the High Duchess, after all. And they say she has lots of experience raising children.”

“B-but if a nanny is still necessary, the child must have been very young.”

“…..two years old? No, is it four?”

“…..”

Oooh.

I quickly reined in my expression after staring at him with a face clouded with fury and shock.

You didn’t even guess three years old after two– why would you skip over to four.

As indifferent as he may be, how could he?

***

The steak that had melted in my mouth now tasted flat, like I couldn’t tell what it tasted like.

“No. The Queen Mother died soon after childbirth, so the child must be around three years old.”

“……Yeees. I see.”

Congratulations on being in the margin of error, at the very least.

Unable to do anything about my frustration, I gulped down water.

Wasn’t this, in a way, even more incredible than being a tyrant?

This was beyond just being realistic siblings, this was on the level of being out-of-this-planet alien siblings.

“Anyway, whatever the child ate, it was probably abundantly. Since I told them to do as the child wants.”

“Th-then Your Majesty has never personally gone to….”

“If I went, she’d cry.”

“…..”