“It’s been a while, Prince Cecil. Welcome, and thank you for coming.”
“It has indeed been a while, Miss Bertia. Thank you for inviting me.”
Today marked Miss Bertia’s tenth birthday.
A party was scheduled, gathering only her family and very close acquaintances. As her fiancé, I had taken it upon myself to escort her and thus arrived at the Noches residence a bit earlier than the start of the party.
The maid who was always with Miss Bertia came to greet us and escorted Zeno and me to the drawing room. Miss Bertia was already prepared, sitting on the sofa, waiting. Unusually for me, I had been so busy that it had been three months since our last meeting.
Seeing Miss Bertia after such a long time… She seemed somewhat haggard.
“What’s wrong? Are you feeling unwell?”
She was dressed in a subdued golden dress that seemed too mature for a ten-year-old girl. The color resembled the hue of my hair often likened to milk tea.
Miss Bertia, despite her elegant attire, had a gloomy expression and exuded an air of fatigue. Yet her eyes were sharp and gleaming, glaring at me with a resentful look.
“Your Highness, this is cruel!!”
“Hm?”
Her words of reproach took me by surprise.
After all, I was the crown prince. Such impertinent remarks would typically turn the adults around us pale with shock… but her maids, accustomed to such scenes, did not even twitch an eyebrow as they prepared the tea.
The little black fox curled up on Miss Bertia’s lap, slowly swaying its tail from side to side.
I took a seat on the sofa opposite her.
Tilting my head, I asked, “Miss Bertia, did I do something to cause that lovely face of yours to distort so?”
She screamed, “Enough! Enough! Enough!” and began slamming a cushion with both hands onto the sofa. It was a very clear and harmless way to vent her frustrations… although it seemed to be quite an annoyance for the little black fox.
I waited for her passion to subside and sipped my tea. She calmed down after just about thirty seconds.
Clearing her throat, she said, “My apologies.” Then she awkwardly put the cushion to its original spot and turned back to face me.
“But, Your Highness, you are also at fault. I have kept to our agreement not to speak of my past life to anyone but you. So, the matter of my mother, which I shared before, can only be discussed with you! Yet, we haven’t met for three months!! And today is my tenth birthday, no less! My mother would have passed away by now in the original timeline! I wrote you so many letters, but you always just replied with ‘It’s okay,’ and ‘I don’t know what to do…’”
Eventually, she began to cry softly. Even I was slightly panicked by this. I carefully set my tea cup back on the table, moved to sit next to her, and gently placed my hand on her back. Although it might seem a bit intimate for an unmarried man and woman, we were betrothed, so it should be acceptable. More importantly, comforting her was my priority now.
I signaled with my eyes for Zeno and Bertia’s maids to leave the room. The maids hesitated briefly, but, reading the situation, they moved to the adjacent servants’ waiting room. Since it was improper to leave an unmarried couple alone in a room, they left the door open, but it was private enough for us to talk comfortably.
“Miss Bertia, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were feeling so overwhelmed. I truly thought everything was fine; that’s why I wrote as much in my letters. Perhaps my words were insufficient. I’ve been quite busy with damage control, devising uses for by-products, and covering up certain things. Also, preparing your birthday present took more time than I anticipated…”
The issues she raised in her letters were ones I had already resolved, so I had no choice but to reply, “It’s okay.” But… given her current state, it seemed I’d caused her significant worry.
Even though I reassured her that everything was okay, there had been several occasions where this same behavior had inadvertently caused others anxiety.
Although I could see a future where everything was okay, others did not have the same vision, which seemed to cause these misunderstandings.
I, who always had a clear understanding of the situation, tended to omit explanations, perhaps too often. I assumed that if one were to combine the pieces of information available, it would be easy to understand… but it appeared that wasn’t always the case with everyone.
This seems to be a bad habit of mine.
I need to be more careful.
“What do you mean, ‘It’s okay’?! I tried to save as many people as possible by changing the scenario and gathered as much Ruona Grass as I could. But the amount is still far from enough! And many of the herbs could not be preserved properly and are unusable… On the other hand, the disease isn’t spreading as expected, and my mother, who was supposed to have passed away by now, is still perfectly healthy. I just don’t know what’s what anymore… I don’t know what to do!!” Miss Bertia pleaded while tears overflowed.
“Ah, look, Miss Bertia, please don’t cry so much. It really is okay.”
“It’s not okay at all!!”
“It is okay. The epidemic did occur, just as you said.” I paused, finding the words. “But because you gave us the information ahead of time, we were able to avoid serious cases and deaths. We used the information you provided to identify the disease and create a medicine for it. We could predict when and where the disease would break out, so we isolated the patients right when it started spreading and treated them immediately.”
“So, the disease did spread… You made medicine, isolated the patients, and treated them? That doesn’t sound okay at all… Wait, medicine? Isolation at the onset? Treatment?” Miss Bertia looked bewildered.
“Yes, that’s right. So, the epidemic has been contained, and the likelihood of your mother contracting it is low now. Ah, here’s the medicine. I brought it just in case something happens.” Saying this, I placed a small bottle in her hands.
“Medicine? Wait, what? I’m a bit lost here…”
“That’s why I’ve been saying it’s okay. With this, there won’t be an epidemic, nor will your mother pass away.”
Her eyes wide with tears overflowing, Miss Bertia cried out in astonishment, “What? Whaaaaat?!”
“Hold on, Your Highness! What do you mean? Please explain!” She grabbed my shoulders, shaking me back and forth in a mix of surprise and urgency.
This was the first time I’d been treated quite like this. It was dizzying and, frankly, not the most pleasant experience.
“Let’s calm down first, shall we?” I said, grabbing her wrists, and I smiled to make her stop.
“How can I remain calm?! Please explain quickly!”
As she pressed me with the intensity of her remark, I sighed internally and began to explain everything.
After hearing about the epidemic from Miss Bertia, I asked my father for permission to use the greenhouse and obtained seeds for Ruona Grass. It was a challenge, given its notoriously difficult cultivation.
I started by reading books on the growth conditions, characteristics, and cultivation methods of Ruona Grass to gather basic information. Then, thinking, Maybe this might work better, I made some adjustments… and surprisingly, it flourished.
Since the cultivation was almost effortlessly successful, I decided to try making the medicine next. I asked my father to hire professors of pharmacology and medicine, and while attending their classes, I scoured the royal library for relevant books.
To improve the accuracy of our predictions, I had Miss Bertia share everything she knew: the course of her mother’s illness, the characteristics of the disease, and more. The epidemic turned out to be an evolved form of an existing disease.
It seemed that Bertia had only asked for advice on “what to do,” not expecting me to launch into such comprehensive action. I had to consider various factors—the symptoms of the disease she described, historical patterns of similar epidemics, and this year’s climate—to deduce which specific contagious disease we were dealing with. Assuming it was a new strain evolved from known diseases, I recognized Ruona Grass was essential and set out to experiment with creating medication.
The limited conditions simplified the task, allowing me to arrive at a conclusion without much effort. However, the true validity of my solution could only be confirmed in the event of an outbreak.
Up until that point, everything had proceeded smoothly, but this was all based on the major premise of taking Bertia’s recount as absolute truth. My actions were driven by curiosity, and I approached the situation with the mindset that even if it proved unhelpful, it was still worth the attempt. Nevertheless, if we were to genuinely prepare for an epidemic, it would be crucial to involve the adult authorities. Given that I couldn’t discuss Bertia’s knowledge of her past life, I had limited material to persuade them, and any rationale I could present would be too weak.
In response, I crafted a scenario to fabricate a coincidence: I expressed a “spontaneous” interest in a particular disease and invited a doctor who specialized in it to the palace as my mentor. We engaged in discussions about the disease, “coincidentally” exploring the possibility of it mutating into a new form and devising potential responses to such a scenario. Concurrently, I took up an intense interest in cultivating Ruona Grass, discussing its potential benefits and applications with fervor. This script was meticulously followed to ensure everything unfolded as planned, relying on the expertise of the physician, who was an authority on the disease that might cause the feared epidemic.
Due to my position as the crown prince, the doctor listened to me with great interest and offered various opinions. However, the process did not progress as smoothly as I had hoped. Guiding him to connect the treatment methods with the application of Ruona Grass, assuming the outbreak of a new contagious disease, proved unexpectedly challenging. The difficulty of subtly directing someone toward a particular line of thought without their awareness became frustratingly evident to me. Why can’t he see something so simple? I often wondered, feeling restless.