In the three days since we signed the contract, Stale spent nearly every moment at my side, the perfect doting brother. Since he was originally a commoner, he still had quite a lot of reading, writing, and etiquette to learn, which had to be exhausting all of a sudden. But despite that, whenever he had free time he’d rush to my side with a smile if I called his name. We did just about everything together, from reading to meandering through the castle gardens.
I wanted to help teach Stale too, if I could. My own education was thorough, of course, but I felt bad taking up even more of his time for tutoring. Plus, I didn’t want to burden him with the memories of his mother. Whenever we were together, I tried to avoid the topic of mothers altogether. I really just wanted to do whatever I could to help him, but I had no idea how to accomplish that.
“Hey, Stale, let’s play tag together. I’ll race you to the garden!”
I took off at a dash, trying to outrun the melancholy weighing me down when I thought about his plight.
“Ah, wait a minute, Pride! That’s not fair!” Stale called after me.
I was pretty fast, but when he wasn’t holding back, Stale was always faster, probably from playing tag with other kids, an activity I rarely got to enjoy.
But after only a short way, I glanced behind me and couldn’t find Stale anywhere. I slowed, looking around in confusion.
“Stale?!”
Then I spotted him sprawled out on the ground and rushed back to his side to help him sit up. He was flushed red and gasping for breath, but he seemed okay otherwise. Still, something was obviously wrong.
“Somebody, help!” I cried. “Stale’s hurt!”
Guards rushed over while I called Stale’s name over and over, but he merely mumbled and slurred incoherently. Jack scooped the boy into his arms and rushed him back to the castle. I hurried to follow, Lotte and the other maids fast on my heels.
Stale had caught a cold.
Fortunately, it was nothing major, probably just fatigue, but I wondered if he’d been hiding it all day while overexerting himself for my sake. How had I failed to notice anything was even wrong until he collapsed right there before me?
With Mother and Father busy with their work, only Uncle Vest, the seneschal, could come to check on Stale. It was the first time he ever met Stale, yet he looked at him so kindly, perhaps because they had the same position, the same lot in life. Uncle Vest swiped his blue hair out of his eyes and straightened, marching toward where I waited outside the sickroom. He was dressed impeccably, as always, yet he crouched down to meet me on my level.
“I’m sure he was tired after leaving his mother to come live at a faraway castle,” Uncle Vest said, reaching out to stroke my hair. “I remember that feeling well. But don’t worry, he’ll get better once he spends a few days resting.”
Uncle Vest, only in his late twenties—two years younger than Mother—and dressed like a handsome gentleman, was truly a wonderful man. I almost wished he’d been a love interest in the game… Well, no, the game didn’t actually start for another ten years or so.
“I won’t forbid it outright, but you shouldn’t go into his room. You could catch his cold, and we definitely don’t want that,” he said.
He left me with those words and a concerned smile before returning to Mother.
Only after he left did I realize how dark the castle had gotten. The sun hung low in a sky rapidly deepening to blue and purple. In all the commotion, I’d completely lost track of time.
I asked the guard to tell Lotte to come get me when dinner was ready, then returned to Stale’s sickroom. He slept peacefully, perhaps thanks to the medicine the doctor gave him. His face wasn’t so pale anymore either. I sighed as I sat beside the bed, watching his face, relieved but still alert. This was really the love interest Stale that I knew. He had the exact same beautiful face as he did in the game.
I took out my handkerchief and dabbed at the sweat on his brow, trying not to wake him. Stale tensed, eyebrows knotting together as though he was in pain or having a nightmare. In fact, it looked exactly like one of the cutscenes featuring the older Stale that I remembered from the game. He was unconscious and groaning in his sleep as Tiara nursed him back to health… Oh…
I gasped as the scene came back to me. In it, Stale, ten years from now, had a nightmare about his past. Then, as now, he suffered from some sort of cold. Pride snuck into the sleeping boy’s room.
“Hmph. My slave sure has some nerve, catching a cold without my permission,” she said as she stared down at Stale, just as I was doing now.
“Have you no shame, being the commoner son of some commoner woman? You know, I wonder…if I ordered you to run laps around the garden until you dropped dead, would you do it?” Pride laughed as she wiped his brow with her handkerchief.
“Hey, you’ll go back to normal, right? Your life belongs to me, you know. Hurry up and get better so I can play with you again, got it? My adorable little slave.”
Stale gasped for breath, even in his sleep. He muttered to himself, but I couldn’t remember what he said to himself in that scene. All I knew was that it sent Pride into a fit of laughter.
“Ah ha ha ha! Such a pathetic man. You’re just like a little baby. You shameful, embarrassing, ugly little toy. You’re my slave, you baby. No one needs someone like you. Mother and Father, if they were still alive, even Uncle Vest—none of them need you at all. Your own mother probably wouldn’t even have any use for you. All you ever do is make trouble for everyone.”
She continued to whisper into Stale’s ear while he was lost in his nightmare.
“But because I pity you, I’ll do you the favor of needing you. You’re my slave, right? So we’ll be together forever and ever and ever…”
In the game, that was when Stale awakened and for the first time revealed a bit of his painful past to Tiara, who had been taking care of him while he was ill.