Volume 1 - CH 1.2

Five years have passed since then, and now Ashutarte is 10 years old.

Since she was a lowly born in her previous life she never truly learnt how to write or the proper pronunciation for the empire’s language.

And because she did not know basic etiquette and the proper manners for someone from the royal family, she grew up being taught by Roena, the daughter of the Orlando barony.

The black hair which was feared by the people of the Empire seemed like the shining Milky Way.

The eyes fully captured the brilliant gold that reflected the one from stars stuck in the night sky.

Ashutarte had turned into a pretty girl that everyone could recognize.

For the past seven years, Roena has been raising her alone, becoming Ashutarte’s nanny, without receiving any honor or reward.

Roena was to Ashutarte like a mother, and her only friend.

She was the only person who shared love with her, unlike her own family, whom she had not seen once in ten years.

To Ashutarte, who is now 10 years old and even for 25-year-old Roenna, who is well past marriage age.

The seven years they spent together couldn’t have been more special, enough to make them think of each other as special.

And now, once a month, Roena is used to leaving the Empress’ Palace for a full day and go out.

“Princess, I can’t come to the palace today. So, if anything happens, make sure to contact the Main Palace through the correspondence desk. You know how to use it, right?”

Roena knelt on the floor and looked at Ashutarte at eye level.

Then, gently, grabbed her by the shoulders.

Ashutarte responded with a warm smile to the sincere eyes that seemed to be telling her the most secretive story in the world.

“Roena worries too much. She doesn’t have to worry so much about me every month, I’ll be fine.”

“I’m always worried about what to do if someone catches the cute princess.”

“Are you going to come back tomorrow at the first crow? Do you have to come back soon?”

“Okay then, don’t worry too much. I just have a few things to see with the system.”

“…yes….”

“There’s only enough water for you to drink a little bit, so I guess it won’t be enough, but if you need more, you can bring it up by the well at the back.”

Roena expressed her nagging worries and pointed to the back door leading to the well behind her.

“If you want to drink warm water, you can start a fire in the furnace and boil it. You know you have to be extra careful when handling fire, right? And also….”

It was a must for Roena to leave the Empress’s Palace for a day at least once a month.

Ashutarte was well aware that the day’s outing was to raise funds outside the Empress’ Palace to make up for the lack of budget.

Therefore, no matter what Roena said, she just nodded her head up and down like a child who listens well.

After finishing her words, Roena turned her back and left the palace. Not long after that, Ashutarte busily wandered around the silent palace.

No matter how much the palace was falling apart, it was still the palace where the Empress once lived.

As the palace was too large for Ashtarte and Roena to live in alone, so was it too big to be managed by them alone.

“Okay! I’ll finish all the housework before Roena comes back!”

Then Roena would be comfortable too… If she helped her with the housework, Roena would always pat her on the head to say thank you!

Roena didn’t like Ashutarte completing the household chores.

No matter what everyone said, Ashutarte was a princess, so even if she was not treated like that now, she wanted to raise her in a noble way.

However, the ten years they spent together at the Empress’s Palace all by themselves made it impossible for Ashutarte to not do the laundry or the cleaning, although a princess would never have to do so.

I guess it’s because of this that the princess’s hand has become a little rough.

If this could be of help to Roena, then Ashtarte wouldn’t mind becoming even more ruined.

Except for the area Roena usually cleaned, Ashutarte started cleaning the hallway from the second floor, and straightened her back after a long sweep.

She only finished cleaning the hallway, but the sun was already setting.

The orange sunset shone brightly inside the Empress’ Palace.

“I haven’t even had dinner yet…”

Ashutarte wiped her hands and moved the bucket of rags and wet mops to the warehouse, before moving to the kitchen.

And without any hesitation, she went straight to the dining room and swung the door open.

She looked casually at the empty dining room, but soon found something and hurried to pick it up.

The small rye bread on the shelf was small enough to fit in the hands of the young Ashutarte.

It was so hard that if eaten wrongly, she would have to wear dentures at the age of ten.

“It’s rye bread…”

Ashutarte brushed off the surface of the hardened rye bread and returned it to its original place on the shelf.

Ashutarte did not particularly dislike rye bread.

Were it a matter of likes and dislikes, she would actually like it. It was good and easily filled her stomach.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to eat it because it became hard.

Although she may have not liked it, she wasn’t in such an environment where she could disregard the food she didn’t like.

Just like the day she doesn’t want to remember. She was afraid that if she ate this rye bread, she would be unable to open her eyes again this time.

She’s afraid she’ll only leave cold warmth to Roena, who promised to come back to her soon. She was afraid she wouldn’t see her again.

It was simply for that reason that the rye bread was put back in its place.

“I won’t die if I starve for a day, so I can eat with Roena when she comes back, right?

It wasn’t the first time they ran out of food and Ashutarte was by now accustomed to the pain she felt from a stomach ache.

Of course, the cause was starvation.

In her previous life, there were days when she couldn’t even drink a sip of water for about a week.

So, it wasn’t that difficult to just hold on until Roena came back.

Ashtarte exited the empty dining room and closed the door that would no longer be opened today.

“I don’t have anything to eat, so I’ll have to fill my stomach with water.”

Ashutarte then proudly headed to the back well, with a bucket in her arms to fetch water to fill her stomach.

But it wasn’t long before she stumbled on something and fell to her knees.

THUD!

Ashutarte, who fell quite loudly, fell over with her only bucket of water in her arms, to avoid it being damaged by the impact of the fall.

It was obvious that Roena would be in trouble if the only bucket of water they had failed to function.

Before recognizing the pain she was feeling as she had fallen over, she got up and tried to check the condition of the bucket.

“Huh…?”

It was good to check, but when she saw that the bucket, which was supposed to be rusty and copper-colored, was stained with bright red, she immediately stopped.

Beside that, Ashutarte’s hands holding the bucket and even the worn-out dress she was wearing were dyed red.

“This is…”

The ominously warm liquid soaked in her hands, and the smell of iron stung her nose.

Is this… blood?

“Ugh…!”

For a moment, while she was silently immersed in her thoughts, the groan of a young man in agony could be heard from below her.

Ashutarte only then realized what she had tripped over.

Silver Hair. A silver-haired young man was lying on the floor, clinging to his blood-soaked side, complaining about his pain.

“Argh! Ro-Roena!”

Growing up with Roena because she didn’t have a mother, Ashutarte was more than surprised when she was the one being called “Roena!”

When she saw the young man in a pool of blood, she sat down and fell on her butt.

‘Did he die…?

Ashutarte was startled and got up hastily to examine the young man’s condition.

Soon after her gaze shifted to the side he was holding, and she was shocked to see that blood was still flowing without stopping.

The only medical knowledge she had was the trivial first-aid that she used frequently in her previous life, and that would only be used in everyday life.

She didn’t know how to treat a patient who was bleeding so much.

She was just a girl confined to the palace and who was living a very ordinary life.

Wouldn’t it be more strange to know how to treat a bleeding patient?

“Ugh…”

There wasn’t a lot of time to think.

The moment she heard the young man agonizing in pain, she started to move without properly thinking it through.

“Please wait here for a moment!”

Ashutarte sprinted back to the palace, taking with her all the clean cloths, and headed back to the well.

Although it was a clean cloth, it was only relatively neat, and it was far from the cleanliness that other people often imagined.

In the first place, even the dress she was wearing was more like rags and the opposite from the clothes worn by a princess.

If all of these cloths, which were among the cleanest in the Empress’ Palace, were soaked in blood and dyed red, Roena might have formed foam from her mouth and collapsed.

No, in all probability, Roena would scream and faint.

‘I’m sorry, Roena. I’ll be ready to be scolded when you get back…!’

Ashutarte pressed the young man’s side and covered it with the cloths she brought from the palace.

She remembered being told by someone to stop the bleeding with a clean cloth when the bleeding wouldn’t stop.

‘Where did I hear that? Did I hear it in my previous life? Well, I think Marien said…’

Although not pure white, the fabrics that were close to light apricot gradually lost their colors and became tinted red.

By the time the blood from the side of the young man completely stopped flowing, there was no clean cloth left.

After successfully stopping the bleeding and looking around the weedy garden where the young man laid down exhausted, Ashutarte wanted to take him to the palace.

“Uh-huh. It’s heavy.”

And she failed miserably.

The young man was taller than her and, as if he had passed out, he was asleep, so his body was much heavier.

In short, it was impossible for Ashutarte, who was still young, to take the young man to the palace all on her own.

However, Ashutarte rushed back to the Empress’ Palace, thinking that if left as it is, he might be a cold corpse the next day.

“This and this one. And oh! Let’s take this too!”

Soon after, she took the worn-out blanket she had been sleeping under and the torn carpet on the floor of an empty room she was not using, and returned to the young man.

A cool autumn breeze was blowing at that moment, but it would be chilly at night since he was laying near a well.

Although it was torn, Ashutarte, who covered the young man’s body with a fairly thick carpet, wiped the sweat from her forehead as if satisfied.

“Whoa. Would this be enough?”

Before she knew it, time was passing by early in the evening.

She would’ve never fallen asleep at such a time, but since she had been busy since morning, she was slowly drifting away.

“Just a little…sleep a little bit and wake up…”

Ashutarte couldn’t fight the quietly attacking drowsiness, so she rolled up and laid down next to the young man.

It didn’t take long for Ashutarte to fall into a deep sleep.

***

Here’s the second part of ch1 !! As you can see, I’m following the volume version of this, so the chapters are reaalllyyy long… but well, better for us, as we get more and more content about our lovely Ashutarte and Roena !! Who might be this young man? I think it’s one of the princes, as it was mentioned before that the emperor had silver/white hair…but who knows? As always, thank you for reading until here!