Among commoners, opposite-sex romances were the norm. But here in the royal capital…we’d become the minority!
And as for the soldiers from commoner backgrounds…those lowborn soldiers, who had little experience resisting the allure of man-on-man action, would invariably, after enough time working at the castle… Well, most of them became very comfortable with (if not insistent on) doing it with men!
Because of this, our fellow lowborn comrades who had been stationed in the capital for some time would give us coy looks as if to say, You boys are bound to join us one day… Naturally, there was no such thing as lady soldiers in Esfia. All the soldiers were men!
The horror… The unbearable horror.
My body would not stop shaking. While it’s inappropriate for me to say so, I understood how Prince Alexis felt. Though our stations in life, and everything else about us, could not be more different, we did have one thing in common: We only had eyes for women.
Prince Alexis’s disdain for men was clear. It would be more accurate to say that he considered any man who had romantic feelings for him to be scum.
However, he had no problem with men per se, so long as they had no romantic ulterior motives. That was the reason why Prince Alexis had chosen us to be his sparring partners—he sensed not one ounce of lust for him in us.
I’d stared off into the distance without realizing it.
Now that I think about it…there used to be more of us common-born new recruits under Prince Alexis’s wing.
But the prince found them out sooner or later. One left us, then two…until the only ones left under his command were myself and my colleague.
And where did the dropouts go, you may ask? To the other world, of course. They fell for other men, had their first times, and became gay lovers.
Of course, I was still friends with them. But I felt a distance between us now. If anything, I felt a closer kinship to Prince Alexis.
“This is Prince Alexis we’re talking about here, the guy who learned how to swordfight from an early age because sickos kept going after him. To think that the poor guy had to protect his chastity even though he’s a guy himself—the royal court really is a terrifying place…” I trailed off and punctuated my thought with a sigh of despair.
When I was his age, I’d wander alone through the woods by my village without a second thought.
“Hey, do you think the story’s true? You know, about how Alexis cut off a guy’s you-know-what because he was going after him, then he fed it to a dog?”
Just hearing my companion say those words made me squeeze my thighs together.
“I heard that Prince Alexis hasn’t been pursued since, so maybe it’s true?”
I guess that meant the bastards stopped trying to have their way with him by force. I don’t care who you are or who you want—consent is an absolute requirement.
“I wonder if the rumors about Princess Octavia finding out what happened, exploding into a fiery rage, and using her authority to socially assassinate the pedo-bastards are also true… I heard some of them begged her to just kill them instead.”
This information from my companion was news to me.
“That would be a befitting end to the pedo-bastards… But would Princess Octavia really—?”
“Just look at that. What a wholesome sight…,” my companion interjected.
I followed his gaze and found Princess Octavia and Prince Alexis patting each other’s heads. An innocent tender moment between brother and sister, beautiful boy and beautiful girl.
As someone who’d only caught glimpses of her from afar, I had no idea what Princess Octavia’s true nature was. The only information I had was rumors I’d heard.
To be sure, when she was younger, she was widely considered a child prodigy, surpassing even the likes of Prince Sirius in intellect. But the older she grew, the dimmer her light became. Almost as if she learned firsthand the dangers of exposing one’s true abilities.
Fundamentally, the impression her outward appearance gave did not betray expectations. She was a mild-mannered princess.
However, at times, she would act in very unpredictable ways. Like, for example…choosing the Emissary of Ongarne as her personal bodyguard.
For a start, ever since I got my post at the castle, the princess’s bodyguards changed like the wind. Everyone either moved away or transferred amicably. I never heard about any of her former bodyguards being murdered or anything like that.
However… Why did they get replaced so rapidly? Was there perhaps some secret reason that was hidden beneath the surface?
One thing was clear—ever since the Emissary of Ongarne was assigned as her bodyguard, the game of musical chairs had suddenly stopped.
And the Emissary of Ongarne—the man who I still remember clearly stepping over a mound of corpses on the battlefield, smiling eerily, his face stained in blood—was now tamed.
It was almost as if the Emissary of Ongarne was born to be the princess’s bodyguard.
And such a one-sided relationship was not sustainable. Wasn’t it only possible if the princess wished for his service, and the Emissary of Ongarne accepted?
Octavia—Esfia’s first princess. She avoided interacting with everyone in her family except Prince Alexis as much as possible, and it was said that she disapproved of Prince Sirius’s romance with Lord Sil.
Behind those gentle eyes…she was hungry for the throne. There were whispers of her intentions from a good portion of the castle. And if this were true, that would make the Emissary of Ongarne her first chess move… Her declaration of war.
And when open conflict broke out, there was a 90 percent chance that Prince Alexis would side with Princess Octavia…
It would be Prince Sirius versus Princess Octavia and Prince Alexis. And who would win? From my vantage point…I couldn’t be sure.
Maybe Prince Sirius would crush them. There didn’t seem to be any way Prince Sirius could lose…but there was a part of me that couldn’t fully believe this.
“—!”
A threat suddenly entered my field of vision. There was a sword…flying straight at Princess Octavia.
She wouldn’t be mortally wounded, but she still might be hurt. That’s what I could judge from the sword’s trajectory.
But the sword…was struck down. By the Emissary of Ongarne.