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~Chapter 18~
Her vision was dark. Even though it was midday, this place was dim and murky, making it hard to distinguish the surroundings. Still crouched, Eugene cautiously tried to stand up, groping around.
Her hand caught on something. About the size of a pebble, it was soft enough to squish in when pressed with a hand.
‘What’s this?’
Trying to figure it out by touch, she poked and prodded it.
‘Oh.’
The more she handled it, the more light seeped out from the unidentified rock-like object.
‘Like a hand warmer.’
On a whim, Eugene even shook the rock.
Hmm. Not much change, surprisingly. It seemed poking and prodding was the way to go.
‘Let’s see.’
Working it more vigorously to increase the light’s intensity, Eugene held the glowing pebble and shone it around here and there.
“Eeek!”
It was unfortunate that her hand then brushed against a cobweb draped somewhere, but having roughly illuminated her surroundings, Eugene could tell this was a passageway leading somewhere.
Eugene looked back. The door she had fallen through had already rotated back, pretending to be an ordinary bookshelf, so all she could see was a wall with faint cracks.
First, she pushed against it with all her might, but the already closed door didn’t budge an inch.
‘Maybe there’s a mechanism somewhere?’
Holding onto a faint hope, she searched all around, but there was no protruding mechanism or recessed hole of any kind.
In the end, she pressed, touched, and even kicked various spots hoping something would catch, but the solid gray wall showed no sign of opening.
‘Oh, dear.’
Finally, exhausted, Eugene plopped back down on the floor.
“Cough, cough!”
It seemed no one had been here for a long time; the floor was dirty and hadn’t been cleaned. Sitting down stirred up a cloud of dust.
Eugene grabbed her suddenly rough throat, coughing and trying to spit out the dust she had inhaled.
“Ow.”
Having always been in the clean, pleasant palace, she wasn’t used to being in a dusty pit like this after so long.
“Cough, ah… It’s been a while since I breathed in fine dust like this.”
Still, this was openly large dust, so it probably was similarly harmful. Trying to distract herself from the impending darkness of her thoughts, Eugene had some silly reflections.
Sitting on the floor, fiddling with the glowing rock, she thought.
‘For now, I’ll wait. Someone might notice I’m missing…’
If they notice? Will they come find me?
‘Right. I’m the prince’s pet.’
At least the people who took care of her meals would look, right? Since they were responsible for managing His Highness’s belongings on his behalf, they’d probably look out of a sense of duty.
Someone will come. Eugene tried to comfort herself like that, but negative thoughts kept surfacing.
‘But does anyone even know about this place?’
It clearly looked like a secret passage hidden within the Imperial Palace. It didn’t seem like the servants would know about it. Probably only direct imperial family members knew of its existence.
*Thud.*
Stretching out her stiff legs forward, a small piece of rock at her feet rolled away with a clatter. Eugene unintentionally imagined the appearance of the passage ahead.
‘There aren’t… skeletons or anything like that, right? People who came in, couldn’t get out, and dried up…’
A thought she would normally laugh off felt too realistic in this situation, sending a chill down Eugene’s spine.
‘Ah, no way.’
Eugene resolved to think positively. Some other plausible story… That skeleton wasn’t someone who mistakenly entered the imperial family’s secret passage, couldn’t get out, and starved to death. There could be some other hopeful scenario…
‘Anyway, no.’
Unable to conjure any particularly positive imagination, Eugene decided to just stop thinking. Trying not to think of anything, she quietly let time pass.
Thinking that maybe sleeping would make time go faster, she tried to sleep, but having slept so much lately both night and day, sleep wouldn’t come. It was worse because she had taken a long nap before reading earlier.
In the end, Eugene gave up on passing time with sleep and just stared blankly into space.
‘I think there was a competition ranking these kinds of blank stares… This isn’t easy either. Ah, the smell of dust. There was that buttery-smelling bread as a snack earlier. I should have eaten more.’
Passing time with meaningless random thoughts, Eugene felt the space she was blankly staring at somehow grow darker.
“Huh?”
What’s this? Wondering if some kind of fog was emerging from the far end of the passage, she squinted and peered into the distance.
‘Nothing there.’
Releasing the tension in her eyes without any results and going blank again, Eugene, watching her increasingly darkening field of vision, suddenly became aware of her own hand compulsively kneading something.
‘Don’t tell me…!’
Eugene hurriedly stopped her hand and looked into her palm.
“Gasp!”
There, the rock that had been glowing had already lost a significant amount of light and was just turning transparent. Eugene looked down at it with a dismayed expression.
‘It diminishes the more you use it!’
Thinking about it, it seemed obvious that something possessing light or heat energy like this would be consumable.
Why did I thoughtlessly waste it like this? In this dark corner, the only comfort was being able to illuminate wherever I wanted with this rock!
With a desperate hand, Eugene turned the rock, which was losing its light, this way and that. It seemed only about half of it was still emitting light now.
“No way….”
With a helpless expression, Eugene instinctively looked around as if searching for a familiar someone, then shook her head and abruptly stood up from her spot.
‘It’s okay.’
Being careful not to stimulate the rock any further, Eugene held the half-glowing rock out in front of her like a walking stick and started walking.
‘Somewhere… if I get outside, I’ll be able to go back.’
The plush bed and comfortable room she had taken for granted just hours ago felt painfully nostalgic, but she strode forward bravely.
‘If this is a secret passage in the Imperial Palace for the imperial family… it must lead to some safe place somewhere. It’s okay. I can do this!’
Encouraging herself, Eugene quickened her pace to escape this passage before the light completely went out.
Behind her, running forward with a faint light, only quiet silence remained in the dark passage, as if no one had ever been there.
* * *
Head Butler Bartel had worked at the Crown Prince’s Palace for over a decade, but he had never felt a sense of crisis as intense as today.
“So?”
“Yes, Your Highness. They say they are still searching!”
“I believe you said the same thing earlier.”
“W-well, at that time, they were still searching inside the palace. Since no one was found within the palace grounds, they have now spread out to search outside the Imperial Palace.”
Bartel had served Crown Prince Michael since he was very young, but he had never seen him this angry before. His eyes, usually praised as being like the sun, were now coldly ablaze.
“I see… Everyone just repeats the same thing. Have I been keeping parrots in my palace until now?”
*Gulp!*
Whenever the prince’s sharp gaze fell upon them, people felt the backs of their necks go cold and swallowed their screams.
It hadn’t been like this from the start.
Although Eugene didn’t know it yet, contrary to her thoughts that she was still freely let loose since it was far from the start of the confinement in the original game, caretakers under the name of surveillance had already been assigned to her.
Having received reports that his puppy was energetically roaming all over the palace, Michael, worried she might get lost, had long ago given the order to ‘keep a close watch’ and stationed servants.
“Is the puppy’s snack ready?”
“Ah, it’s your turn today? It’ll be done soon. Let me know the location, and I’ll bring it there.”
“She’s in the garden now… If she moves, I’ll relay it again!”
Thanks to this, Eugene always received food supplies just in time, never having to go hungry, and whenever she got tired from playing and fell asleep anywhere, she would later wake up in a warm bed.
It was between those invisible caretakers’ momentary lapse in attention today that the ‘His Highness’s puppy’ disappeared.
“…….”
Upon entering the palace and not seeing his puppy sprawled in her usual spot in the garden, Crown Prince Michael felt a sense of emptiness.
‘Not here today.’
That was the price for having grown accustomed to, and taken deep within himself, the comfort she brought.
His life had been a repetition of only the duties he was born with, from his first cry.
Even if it meant influencing the direction of the Empire, his daily routine of mechanically handling piled-up work had changed after bringing the girl in.
Even if the tasks were repetitive and the days were the same, returning after duties outside the palace and encountering the same presence in that spot felt vastly different from before.
