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Chapter 16
“Milady, is it really all right to stay so calm about this?”
Kachina looked startled, clearly reacting to my mother’s scream of What on earth—?!
I, however, told her without any particular panic,
“It’s o-okay… it’s not like some kind of… emergency or anything.”
Come to think of it, this might be rare—Kachina, who is usually unfailingly composed, seems flustered.
“Is that so?”
At my words meant to calm her, Kachina looked at me—at the ‘box’, really—her black eyes peeking out from her dark crimson hair wavering slightly.
I nodded in response—though it might not be visible from outside the box—and answered.
“Yeah. It’s just that… a formal… proposal for an engagement came… from the royal family.”
“Isn’t that more than enough to qualify as an emergency?”
“Is it… really?”
Despite calling it an emergency, Kachina seems to have regained her composure and looks quite calm now, doesn’t she?
“It is.
I already knew about what happened at the coming-of-age ceremony, so I could predict it to some extent, but normally people would be shocked.
To begin with—if you’ll pardon me for saying so—no one who actually knows you would ever imagine there being an opportunity for you to be chosen in the first place.”
“…Well, I suppose… that might be true?”
I don’t really feel it myself, but if Kachina says so, then it must be.
After all, Kachina is the person I trust and rely on the most.
She is also the only one who knows so much about my box magic.
Perhaps sensing me tilting my head in uncertainty, Kachina let out a small sigh.
“By the way, ever since Madam screamed, all I can hear is nonstop running about. What exactly is going on?”
“My mother… can’t believe the engagement proposal… so she’s having everyone read it, to make sure it’s not a dream… I think.”
“I completely understand how she feels.”
Kachina, isn’t that a bit harsh?—I think to myself, but given my own awareness of how much of a shut-in I am, I begrudgingly accept it.
“By the way, Milady.”
“What?”
“How do you actually feel about it?
About Prince Siphon.”
“Hmmm…”
When asked directly, I can’t help but hesitate a little.
“He’s… someone I’d been paying attention to… for a while…”
That part is true.
Ever since the incident with the magic formula, he’s stayed in my memory…
“From a practical standpoint… I thought that if it were him… he might accept me…”
Accept the way I am—someone who says she doesn’t want to leave the box created by magic…
“Did you think so because of those rumors?”
“Yeah, well… that too, I guess.”
Though in truth, I’ve gathered information that goes beyond mere rumors.
A prince who likes interesting things.
Someone who openly declares that, if he’s to get engaged, he wants a partner who can entertain him.
Both are true.
I secretly overheard him say so myself.
“Did you invite him into the box intending from the start to reveal your real face?”
“That question is… fifty percent ‘yes,’ fifty percent ‘no.’”
It is true that I intended to show my real face but lacked the courage to remove the mascot head…
But at the same time, inviting Prince Siphon into the box itself was part of my objective…
You could say that, for both me and the prince, taking that kind of action was the quickest way to deal with the nagging issue of engagement.
Of course, neither of us ever said that out loud, but our intentions happened to align.
That said, Prince Siphon may have been acting purely out of calculation—but as for me… I won’t say that I had no selfish desire at all to meet him, to spend even a little time together with him inside the box.
“So you are… positive about the engagement?”
“Yeah… I guess so.
Like I said earlier… it’s something I’d already been thinking about.”
“I see.”
As Kachina nodded, the frantic footsteps—surely my mother’s—grew closer.
Most likely, just like Ranika, she would fling the door open at full force, face drenched with an excessive amount of tears and looking anything but ladylike—
“Moka-chan!!”
And just as expected, the door to my room burst open.
Her beautiful silver hair was unusually disheveled, her still-unfading beauty damp with sweat, yet her violet eyes alone were fixed straight on me.
