TRFDTV ~ 28

Chapter – 28

After parting ways with the twins, Asilia walked toward the garden assigned to her in the Eastern Palace.

Maybe it was just her imagination, but the farther she went, the more deserted and unkempt the surroundings seemed.

Surely it was just her imagination.

After walking for a while, Asilia stopped, scanning her surroundings.

“This is the Mist Garden,” said the palace attendant who had guided her there. He bowed mechanically and immediately turned to leave, but Asilia stopped him.

“Wait a moment.”

“Yes, my lady?”

“This is part of the Imperial Palace, right?”

“Yes, it is. The East Wing, to be precise.”

“Then why is it so poorly maintained? There’s moss on the gate—look! And those walls… are those ivy vines? That’s a bit beyond ‘quaint,’ don’t you think?”

“Yes.”

The curt reply left Asilia speechless for a moment. She was about to press him further when the attendant bowed deeply.

“I’m afraid I cannot say more than that, my lady.”

She could have argued—asked why, in the middle of the Imperial Palace, she was being led to a moss-covered iron gate—but she held her tongue.

“This is the key to the garden. It is palace property, so please handle it with care.”

When Asilia accepted the key in silence, the attendant vanished almost immediately.

Left alone, she turned the old, faded key over in her hand.

“It’s just… a key.”

Her voice came out flat with disbelief. Then she looked ahead at the structure that was supposedly the “door.”

“It looks like it needs some kind of spell just to open it… I hope the back door doesn’t look like this too.”

Still muttering, she slid the key into the lock—and to her surprise, it turned smoothly with a soft click.

The iron gate, covered in moss and rust, swung open with ease. Asilia stepped through and let out a long breath.

“Haa…”

Before her eyes stretched a scene so green, so overwhelmingly lush, that she could only stare.

“Restore the ruined garden.”

“So that’s what they meant, huh?”

Ruined didn’t even begin to cover it.

Actually… perhaps the opposite was more accurate.

“More like overrun.”

She was talking to herself again, but she barely noticed.

The “garden” she was meant to restore was a wild tangle of trees whose branches had intertwined into one massive body, choked with weeds and creeping vines so dense they turned the very air green—almost black.

“What… is this?”

A hollow laugh slipped from her lips.

Then she froze. Something brushed against her ankle.

A petal—far too large to be normal.

It looked like a flower she knew, and yet it was impossible for such a bloom to grow this big.

She crouched down and brushed the soft petal with her fingertips—then glanced up as the light dimmed.

Not because of a passing cloud, but because the massive trees above swayed in the wind, blotting out the sun.

“This isn’t a garden. It’s a jungle.”

As if agreeing with her, frogs croaked and birds chattered from somewhere unseen.

Asilia felt a mixture of awe and exasperation.

She had no idea where to begin.

Still, she decided to walk. She had to see how far this “garden” extended before she could think of what to do—if she was even going to do anything at all.

“I mean… do I even have to do anything?”

After all, this whole contest was to select the Crown Princess. Did she really need to lift a finger?

Pushing through the foliage, she spotted something massive ahead—a stone structure of some kind.

“Looks… like a place to sit.”

Glancing around to gauge her location, Asilia shook her head and decided to rest for a moment.

“No cushion though, huh.”

She brushed aside the small, flat flowers covering the seat and sat down, tilting her head back to look at the sky—

Only to freeze at a voice she recognized and despised all at once.

“So we meet again. The power of coincidence truly is remarkable.”

That voice. Of course.

The speaker was none other than the one person she never wanted to see again—the Crown Prince.

Asilia’s face twisted instinctively the moment their eyes met.

The Prince, however, smiled even more brightly, spreading his arms wide as though greeting an old friend.

“Welcome to my mother’s garden, Lady—Lady? Wait!”

But Asilia had already risen to her feet and was walking away before he could finish.

“Lady Bolsheik! Stop—stop right there! That’s an order!”

The title snapped like a whip.

An order from the Crown Prince himself—defiance could easily be branded as treason.

“Ignore the prince if you must, but not his commands.”

Remembering Ludwig’s warning, Asilia clicked her tongue.

“Tch. So the monkey does learn.”

She turned back toward the prince, her expression a mask of forced civility.

“My apologies. I thought I was seeing things.”

“Oh? So you think of me often enough to hallucinate me, then—”

“I simply didn’t expect His Highness, the Crown Prince, to appear in such a remote place at such a leisurely hour.”

Her sharp retort sliced through his nonsense cleanly.

A normal person would’ve laughed awkwardly and backed off.

But this was no ordinary man. This was the Crown Prince—the protagonist of this world and its greatest nuisance.

“I’m not here for leisure. I made time to see you.”

Stalker, she thought.

The word hovered at the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed it. Did this world even have that word?

Frowning deeply as she searched for an equivalent, she was interrupted by his next line.

“I don’t know why you keep avoiding me, but I’m very interested in you. So we’ll be seeing each other often.”

Right. Thinking rationally around him was pointless.

If he insisted on doing whatever he pleased, then so would she.

Asilia lowered her eyes, lips sealed.

You talk. I won’t listen.

Her blatant indifference didn’t anger the Prince. In fact, his expression softened, the guardedness behind his smile easing just a little.

When the mysterious “Lady Bolsheik” had suddenly appeared at the Grand Duke’s estate, he’d assumed she was a fraud—some opportunist using his elder brother’s power to climb the ladder by pretending to be the last surviving bloodline of the sleeping Bolsheik family.

But now… perhaps he’d been wrong.

If she truly sought power, she would’ve welcomed his attention instead of flinching from it.

And if ambition were her goal, she’d know that being favored by the Crown Prince carried far more weight than currying favor with a mere duchess.

Not that he was ready to admit she was a suitable bride for his brother, of course.

“I seem to have gone on a bit,” he said with a smile.

“A bit too much,” she replied flatly.

“Haha, that’s what I like about you, Lady—you never bother with pointless niceties.”

“Forgive me, Your Highness, but you did command me to stop.”

Meaning: Spare me the small talk and get to the point.

At that, the air around the Prince grew strangely wistful.

“I don’t know why this garden was entrusted to you. But whatever the reason…”

He trailed off, gazing around the overgrown landscape with eyes full of memory.

“This place was dear to the Empress.”

He didn’t say take care of it, but the implication hung heavy in the air.

Asilia said nothing. She hadn’t wanted to do this in the first place—and now that he’d added sentimental weight to it, she wanted to do it even less.

Unaware of her thoughts, the Prince nodded to himself, satisfied.

“That’s all I wanted to say. You may go.”

Without a word, Asilia turned and left.

She didn’t want to spend another second in his presence.

* * *

While Asilia was grimacing at her unexpected encounter with the Crown Prince, the Lemaire twins were making their way toward the garden they’d been assigned on the palace’s outskirts—when they, too, met someone unexpected.

“My lady?”

“Oh my, it’s been a while.”

The young lady greeted them with an overly polished smile and passed by.

The twins exchanged puzzled looks, watching her retreating back.

“She was engaged, wasn’t she?”

“Her wedding date was already set.”

Indeed, that young noblewoman had held an engagement ceremony with a certain earl’s son only months ago. The fiancé had even boasted publicly that the wedding date had been fixed.

“They seemed to get along well, too.”

“Guess that was just politics.”

“She didn’t even show up at the party last time.”

“Maybe she couldn’t afford to miss her ‘second chance.’”

Come to think of it, she wasn’t the only one—several other engaged ladies had entered the Crown Princess selection as well.

In noble society, engagements and marriages were little more than transactions between families.

Love was a luxury.

And if love did happen to bloom between the betrothed, all the better.

But more often than not, noble sons and daughters were bound to complete strangers, sealing lifelong deals for the sake of duty.

Naturally, the cost of breaking such a deal—of annulment—was staggering.