Back in the present, Kurumi-san had regained consciousness.
“About this whole thing… Um, sorry, everyone.” She bowed her head, ill at ease. “I caused a big fuss, especially for Kusuri…”
“Kusuri didn’t think it was a fuss one bit.” Kusuri-senpai smiled brightly. “It’s nice to help a cute kouhai in need!”
Kurumi-san bowed again at her senpai, slightly flustered. “Thanks, Kusuri. I was able to help them because of you.”
“Oh, Kusuri is also happy you agreed to an experiment so cheerfully, aye!”
Kurumi side-eyed her. “You should’ve kept that one to yourself.”
As an addendum, we later heard that Rentaro-kun was able to keep his lucidity in the dreamworld through sheer force of will.
“I could never forget reality when you’re all in it!” he declared.
Yes, that was so very much like him…
An Excerpt from Circlet Love Story:
“The End of the Journey”
When at last we reached our journey’s end at the royal capital where it had all begun, I heard rumors of a rampant plague. There were people slumped over at our destination, having collapsed at various junctures. Some in a particularly wretched state were even leaking urine, the poor souls.
“No…it can’t be! Darling! Darliiiiiiiiiiing!”
“Tch. Is this all my life amounted to? No, I can’t believe it… I don’t wanna die…”
On the road, I saw a tearful woman gripping the hand of a man who seemed to be on death’s door.
The princess ran over. “O Guardian Beast, please lend me your power!” She held her right hand over the man. The crest on the back of her hand shone brightly, enveloping the man.
The princess had honed this power through the many trials we had encountered on our journey. It was unclear to me, however, whether she was capable of curing the plague or not.
“P-please!” cried the woman. “Please do something to help him! He’s my husband!”
“I…I want to heal this person! I want to heal him with all my might!” The light on her hand intensified as the princess grimaced and screamed in agony. “O, that I may restore him!”
Perhaps her earnest wish was granted, for the man’s pallor began to visibly improve.
“What the…?” The man opened and closed his fist, an absolutely dumbfounded expression on his face. “Am I healed?! The central hospital said there was no hope!” He jumped up to his feet.
“The central hospital… Are many others like you there?” asked the princess.
“Y-yeah. Only the serious patients, but even that’s too many for them to handle…”
“I see. Thank you very much.”
With that information on hand, the princess thanked the still-bewildered man and walked off briskly.
Three days passed after the princess had begun healing people at the hospital.
“Princess, is it not time to rest yourself? There are others who can nurse the ailing in your stead.”
Though I worried for the princess, who worked tirelessly day and night, she shook her head. She had an ironclad will. “Please support me so that I do not fall.”
“As you command,” I said, placing my hands on the princess’s back.
“Tee hee! Just that was enough to fill me with endless strength.”
“I am undeserving of such praise!”
“I have always been useless as a princess, nothing more than an accessory. But today I finally can be of help to my people.”
I believe that the distance between myself and the princess had closed considerably throughout the course of our journey. Yet there were some thoughts that we both knew we could never voice. Upon returning to her home kingdom, our relationship could not continue in its current form.
“I was unable to achieve anything while I was captive in the court. It was because of this journey, because of the challenges I overcame, that I am who I am now… Frail of heart though I was, I was able to face those trials because you were at my side. Thank you, truly.”
“I ought to be the one thanking you. I am ever so happy to be your knight.”
“Listen, please. There is something I want to tell you. I—”
The princess had only just started speaking when the door to the hospital room violently flung open.
“Your Highness, your crime has not disappeared. You will accompany us immediately.”
It was the knight brigade. We had, of course, investigated the princess’s predicament in full before entering the country. Despite that, she’d chosen to return out of deep concern for her people. She displayed no indication of relenting.
“Healing the sick takes priority right now. I will leave of my own volition when every patient has been restored to health,” she said, quiet yet firm.
The knights flinched. The frail princess they knew from the castle had transformed into an almost entirely different person. Her proud, dignified conduct was the highest proof of the purity of her conscience.
“My princess will not run or hide. I ask that you respect her wishes, for the moment,” I said, inserting myself between the princess and the knights.
“If that is what you insist, then…very well.”
To my surprise, the knight who had spoken pulled back without a fight and bowed deeply to the princess.
“You saved my mother when she was in critical condition. She had already given up. The miracles you created at this hospital were her sole support… I am grateful, from the bottom of my heart.”
It warmed me to see that the princess’s actions—so filled with her love—could indeed reach the hearts of her people.
Two months passed in the blink of an eye. At last, all the patients were cured. The medical authorities finished creating medicine and antibodies, which would hopefully serve to suppress the plague in future.
“Your Highness! You are a saint!” The head of the hospital and their staff wept with gratitude. “You are the saint who saved this country!”
“I am unworthy of such praise,” the princess declared.
Jubilant voices celebrating the goddess’s ascension festival could also be heard outside. It was the princess’s power that had restored the people’s cheer.
“My apologies… I feel slightly dizzy…”
No doubt the princess was utterly spent. When she collapsed, I gently caught her in my arms. At that moment—
“Well done, my sister. Before, you were useless, and now you are praised as a saint. Are you proud of yourself?”
The door opened to reveal the second-eldest prince of our fair nation, along with the knight brigade.
“However,” he went on, “it is undeniably true that you have administered healing through some means or other. Tell me. How did you cure the incurable?”
“The guardian beast I met on my travels gifted me with the power of healing,” the princess said.
“Oh, a guardian beast, you say? Lies will only serve to further embarrass you.” The prince chuckled with utmost contempt. “Instead of such idle nonsense, let us speak of a more plausible tale. Having obtained the seed of a plague, you spread it around the capital knowing you alone held the cure. Then, you swoop in to play the hero and bask in the people’s adulation.”
It was the most preposterous false accusation, yet this was a country where crows would be painted white if the authorities insisted that it be so. The conversation was thrust in a disturbing direction.
“My dear sister has falsified her benevolent deeds! Apprehend her at once, my good fellows!”
Supposing that I had best chart an escape route, even if it meant cutting down all the knights, I gripped the hilt of my sword. Before violence could break out, however, a familiar voice rang out, loud and clear.
“Cease this immediately! It is you who deserves to be taken away, Prince!”
It was the elderly knight. Upon arriving at the capital, he had quickly concealed himself, awaiting this very moment.
“Huh? What foolishness are you spouting? Apprehend this blasphemer too!”
“Then what do you say to this?”
“What is that document? My word?! Impossible! How could that exist, and out in the open too?!” The prince had inadvertently let his feelings slip.
“This letter documents your scheme to conspire with the nobility of the Empire and subvert the state. I have read through it countless times, and there is no mistaking it. In your ambition to slay your father and older brother and assume the throne, you used your sister to your own ends. ’Tis quite the verbose letter, I must say.”
“No, it wasn’t me! These are lies! My sister was actually trying to sabotage me!”
“Will you swear that to an interrogator? Take the prince to the castle, men.”
“Yessir!” the knights barked in unison.
“Do not touch me! I am a prince of this nation! There will be consequences!” When nobody responded to him, he began to shout louder. “This must be some kind of mistake! How can this be the end for me?! Impossible! Ridiculous! Arrrrrrrggghhhhhhh!”
“He is already incoherent, I see,” the elderly knight murmured as the prince’s voice receded in the distance.
“I’m surprised,” the princess remarked. “To think that my brother was such a sly fellow. If I may speak frankly, I never expected that any evidence would surface.”
“Regrettably, I was only able to investigate the matter in our own country. I owe these people my gratitude,” said the elderly knight, pointing to the beastmaster.
She was a knight from the neighboring nation. We had parted ways with her shortly before returning home, at which point she switched places with our knight brigade.
“Hey, it’s been a while,” she said. “A source told me that I’d score big if I looked into the empire’s nobles.”
“Pullin’ one over on the security was laughably easy,” the bandit added.
“Compared to an endless corridor of traps, it was a piece of cake,” his henchman chimed in.
When we decided to return to our kingdom, they had vanished while I was unawares. I assumed it was because they were wanted criminals, but in truth, they’d worked with the beastmaster, operating behind the scenes in the Empire.