What Happens When The Second Male Lead Powers Up [EN]: Chapter 13

#013 Little Guest (3)

The differences are as follows.

My room in the Juliette Palace feels like a central library on a university campus.

The fact that I have to study indoors while the cherry blossoms are starting to bloom outside, and that the servants, including Benjamin and Ganael, often come and go, creating background noise, are similar points.

On the other hand, the confessional in the Imperial Palace Temple feels like a premium study room that Eunseo [likely a friend or acquaintance] used to frequent until last year.

It’s narrow and dim, but the chairs are comfortable, and there are partitions.

It’s similar in that the only noises are my breathing and the sound of my clothes rustling, which makes me incredibly sleepy.

Why isn’t this brat coming? Is today a bust?

“‘Adjusting the flow of Ether [a magical energy source] is a simple yet tricky act. The easiest training method is to first freely change the size of the circle…’ It’s that again.”

I read the textbook I brought from my room aloud to fight off the drowsiness.

These days, I sometimes get confused about whether I’m in a romance fantasy or a school drama.

Because, apart from the recently added confession duty, all I do in the Imperial Palace is sleep, eat, and study.

Of course, I don’t hate it.

It’s a hundred or a thousand times better to live a thin, quiet life like a luxurious NEET [Not in Education, Employment, or Training] than to get caught up in a romance that’s not in my destiny and die.

And then I’ll be able to go home.

I looked down at the floor.

I could see my circle [referring to the Ether circle], spread out wide and sticking out of the confessional.

I was reminded of the Cardinal’s appearance on the first day of tutoring, when he pressured me by freely increasing and decreasing the size of his sanctuary.

Let’s try it. I have nothing else to do while waiting anyway.

I took a deep breath in and out.

I focused my mind, imagined closing the Ether faucet about halfway, and relaxed.

-Tssskkk…

The sanctuary, like a conscious being, hesitated slightly before slowly shrinking.

As the diameter of the light source decreased, the confessional, which had been brightly lit without shadows, became dim as if a mood lamp had been turned on.

“It works.”

I succeeded easily again. I tilted my head.

When it comes to handling Ether, I felt that everything I intended went quite smoothly.

It was the same when dealing with the assassin twins, and it was the same when the confession went well.

Are other priests like this too?

Yesterday, I heard from Benjamin that the only priests stationed in the Imperial Palace were me and Cardinal Boutier.

Even so, I’m the only one who has been officially appointed, and the Cardinal is staying as the Emperor’s partner.

Then the only priest I can talk to is the Cardinal, but she was called a genius of the century, so she didn’t seem like a suitable comparison.

Well, it’s good to be good at something.

There was no reason to interpret it negatively, so I maintained a positive attitude.

I was starting to get hungry, so I closed the book and opened the picnic basket that Benjamin had packed for me.

Some people might scold me for setting up a home in the confessional if they saw this, but I can’t help it because I’m the type of person who loses focus when I’m hungry.

“You put it in here.”

The antipyretic [fever-reducing] and digestive medicine that I had asked Ganael for yesterday was in one side of the basket.

I didn’t know what was in the round medicine bottle, so I opened the lid and smelled it.

It had a pungent herbal scent. It seemed like something to apply to scratches.

There’s food, two bottles of tea, and medicine.

For hours, not even an ant has visited the confessional, let alone a child.

I thought I’d wait just 30 more minutes since it’s almost dinner time, and then withdraw today.

“Wow, this is crazy.”

In the meantime, the calisson [a traditional French candy] I bit into was so delicious. I blurted out the words without hesitation.

The snack tastes like fruit. Does it contain melon?

Taking a sip of ginkgo leaf tea here, the bittersweet aftertaste of the tea balances the sweetness, which is fantastic.

Alternating between the snack and the tea, my gaze suddenly turned to the string on the left side of the confessional.

It was still the same as it was when the boy threw the dagger the day before yesterday, with the end cut off.

I stopped snacking and turned my eyes to the right.

I could see the wooden window with a hole in the corner, pierced by the knife.

Only then did I feel a sense of incongruity.

Why didn’t Elizabeth say anything about the confessional being in this state?

Could it be that she doesn’t know yet?

But it was hard to believe that they hadn’t searched the area after the prince collapsed.

They might have thought he fainted due to health or divine power issues, but wasn’t it a situation where they didn’t know what might have happened to someone who was alone?

There was no way that Elizabeth, the commander of the vicinity guard, hadn’t looked around.

Could it be that she knew but was covering it up?

I stiffened my body, startled by my own thoughts.

She pretended not to know that there were knife marks in the confessional? Why?

-Knock knock

I was startled once again by the surprise knock.

It wasn’t a sound from the next compartment, but a sound of knocking on the door where I was.

“Excuse me, is anyone in there?”

A strange woman’s voice was heard. I hesitated for a moment about what to do, then opened the door.

The woman outside the door appeared to be in her mid to late thirties.

When she met my eyes, she was startled and bowed her sturdy figure as much as possible.

“Oh my, I’m meeting such a precious person. I, I never thought that the Prince would really be here…”

“It’s okay. But how did you know I was inside…?”

I clearly hung up a sign saying ‘Priest is absent’ when I came in.

“Well, I saw this on the floor…”

I lowered my head, following her finger.

The circle, which I had shrunk as much as possible a little while ago, had grown so much that it was overflowing out of the confessional.

The calisson was so delicious that I couldn’t control it…

“Ah, that’s right. Yes. I’m receiving confessions. Have you had your meal?”

I was embarrassed and blurted out whatever came to mind.

*

“I am honored, Your Highness. To give someone like me imperial food… I, I will regard it as Holy Communion.”

What was Holy Communion again?

There was a sacrament where food was given to believers, so it seemed to be related to that.

I vaguely remembered exactly what it meant, what was given, and when.

I need to study this properly too.

“There’s also tea.”

I handed the woman three or four calissons and poured ginkgo leaf tea into a small cup that Ganael had prepared.

I handed the cup through the gap in the broken wooden window, and she hurriedly accepted it.

I could see her fingertips trembling.

“I, I am honored, I will never forget this for the rest of my life. Oh my goodness…”

“Please, enjoy.”

I didn’t bring it just to eat alone anyway.

I waited for the confession to begin, listening to the woman slowly biting into the snack.

Soon, she moistened her lips with the tea and began to speak.

“Ahem, the last, the last confession was 10… no, 12 years ago.”

“Yes, please speak.”

“I work as a mountain keeper with my husband on the mountain behind the Imperial Palace. Thanks to His Majesty the Emperor, the work is not strenuous. We sometimes catch and eliminate dangerous wild animals if we see them, check if there are any diseases among the trees, and report anything suspicious to the guards, and so on.”

“The mountain behind the Imperial Palace, are you talking about the mountain behind the Juliette Palace?”

“Yes, yes.”

I thought of the mountain behind my room, beyond the training grounds.

When I first saw it, I only thought, ‘There’s a mountain here, so there must be a lot of mosquitoes in the summer,’ but I didn’t know it was a place with even a mountain keeper.

“But recently, beasts that appeared to be magical creatures appeared, and my husband and I scared them away.”

“Magical creatures?”

My surprised voice suddenly grew louder.

This isn’t near Bukhansan [a mountain near Seoul known for hiking], do I have to worry about wild animal appearances now?

“It’s not a very rare occurrence. Since it’s a small mountain extending from a large mountain range, some of them occasionally come along that ridge. There is a strong barrier around the Imperial Palace, so dangerous ones can’t come, and only rabbit-sized ones that don’t get caught in the barrier appear every now and then.”

“Heo…”

A sigh of relief came out on its own.

It’s unfair to die getting involved in someone else’s romance, but it would be even more of a bolt from the blue to be bitten to death by a wild boar while taking a walk.

“Anyway, that kind of thing happened… These little ones ran away and reappeared, and kept reappearing. I don’t know if they weren’t eaten by other animals, but I was worried about them constantly lingering around… So a few days ago, we lit a fire to chase them away.”

I had read about it in a book.

Magical creatures have various abilities, but they are afraid of water and fire, so if you use that point appropriately, you can easily hunt them.

“After that, I forgot about it because I didn’t see them. But today, while talking to the carpenters in the Imperial Palace… I heard that they might be divine beasts.”

“Divine beasts?”

A passage that was written as if it came as a bonus in books related to magical creatures came to mind.

‘Since ancient times, when a divine beast appears, a person with divine power leads it to a divine object.’ I think it was something like that.

There were no illustrations to refer to the appearance of the divine beast, so I thought it was just an oral legend.

“Yes, since the prince of the Divine Nation came, the servants of the Juliette Palace have only been having good dreams every day, and if it’s a divine beast, wouldn’t it come to gain that kind of energy?”

“Haha…”

My cheeks flushed at the news that the dream story didn’t stop at the first verse and spread to every corner of the Imperial Palace.

I shouldn’t have let the servants get away with flattering me because they were young.

Early education is important for this reason.

“I, I also don’t dream and sleep soundly, or have good dreams, since the prince came. I’ve been living as a mountain keeper for 20 years, but it’s the first time I’ve seen a magical creature like that. It especially follows people, so I wonder if it’s really a divine beast…”

The woman, Agnes’s, voice gradually became smaller.

“So I came to ask for forgiveness. The sin of tormenting a divine beast is serious, Maxim said. My husband said it wouldn’t be.”

Maxim? Isn’t that the name of the carpenter who made my sign?

[Well, um. First of all, you did well to not harm the small animals and let them go. The Lord must have seen it as beautiful.]

“Thank you, Your Highness.”

[Even if it is a divine beast, there was nothing else the mountain keeper couple could have done. Divine beasts cannot be tamed unless they are by someone with divine power. So…]

I ran out of repertoire when I suddenly tried to make up words.

Quitting the sub-male lead and living as a professional wasn’t easy either.

[I will forgive you. I know that you did it for the safety of the Imperial Palace. If this happens again in the future, please be sure to inform the Imperial Guard first. You can also convey my words to Elizabeth, the commander of the vicinity guard. This is my atonement.]

Agnes repeatedly muttered thank you to my words.

In the bright light, she seemed to be crying a little.

*

I waited in the confessional for 4 hours, but the brat who threw a knife at me at first sight and even stole my Ether didn’t even show his face.

Today, my first and last guest was Agnes.

“There are many books about magical creatures.”

So now I was standing in front of the table in my pajamas.

I had returned to my room, ate dinner with Benjamin and Ganael, took a shower, and was now looking through new books.

It seemed like I was going to have a long-term battle with the kid, so it was better to focus on my studies as usual when I was resting.

“There are hardly any books about divine beasts.”

Is it really like an animal from a legend?

If that were the case, Agnes would feel more comfortable.

-Flap, flap

The curtains fluttered. The pages of the book rustled in the wind.

Ganael used to come every evening to lock up, but for some reason, the balcony door was wide open today.

“I must have forgotten.”

I moved directly to the balcony, closed the door, and drew the curtains. But it wasn’t cold.

There were many quite chilly days in Korea even in spring, but it had been warm here since March.

“Your servant did his job.”

…What?

“Having that much Ether, yet you’re incredibly dull.”

At the clear voice, I slowly turned around. I felt like my body was creaking.

A small body filled my vision.

Hair as black as ink even when receiving light, and eyes of amethyst that became clearer with light.

That damn brat was standing in the middle of my room.