Around the time breakfast was done, the princess opened her eyes. “Thank you for yesterday. I was belated in thanking you, despite how you freed me from that prison.”
“You couldn’t thank me then, could you?” She had been coughing up blood. He understood that much.
Anima set out the breakfast on a wooden desk. “Well, eat. I made some stuff that’s good for your health.”
Looking down at the breakfast, the girl got a strained smile. “Th…thank you…”
Everything on the breakfast table was foods she didn’t like. It was a plain meal, mostly beans and vegetables. Only the token dried meat seemed appealing to her.
“I appreciate the sentiment, I suppose… I’m not very hungry.”
When the princess tried to reject the meal, Anima said quietly, “If you don’t eat, you’ll die.”
There was darkness in his words.
He was intimidating in a way only one who had experienced the pain of starvation could be, overwhelming the princess.
“Someone with malnutrition like you has to eat whatever they can. I don’t care if you’re a princess or what—you can’t be picky.”
“Nutrients, hmm…? You say the same thing as my servant.”
That must have reminded her of something.
The princess picked up the wooden spoon and fork and began eating. While she had tears in her eyes and spent a long time at it, she did properly finish the meal.
That was all it was, but Anima saw her in a slightly more positive light.
After spending quite some time to finish the meal, the girl said, “I truly am sorry for making you even cook for me. Thanks to you, my condition has improved. I think I can leave now.”
“Don’t lie. It’s completely obvious that you’re still quite ill.”
Even just her complexion was very pallid. While she had accepted the healing sword from Anima, it had yet to fully take effect. It would immediately lose effect if she let go of it, and she would need a few days to receive its benefits once again.
“But there are people waiting for me. I must go save them.”
“Where are they?”
“At the castle. Two of them.”
“Give up on it.” If it had been something minor, he had felt that as a knight, he would resolve it for her—but it seemed she was involved in a greater incident than he’d imagined. “If they’re imprisoned at the castle, then there’s no saving them now.”
“I can’t give up on them.”
“Is that right? Then do what you want. But I won’t let you leave right away.”
“Why not?”
“Since if you go outside, you’ll just wind up collapsing right away.”
He understood that letting this princess stay for a long time would heighten the risk of getting dragged into trouble. But even so, he said, “You can stay here a little longer. If you push yourself and go out and die…then it would make my saving you pointless.”
The girl’s condition had improved, but that was just compared with the day before. If she walked around outside, she would immediately use up all her strength.
She understood that, too. If she were being honest, she had already gotten some sense that even if she left right now, she wouldn’t be able to save her friends.
So she was glad of Anima’s offer. And it wasn’t only because of her poor health. She was being pursued, so it was very helpful to be able to stay at Anima’s house as a refuge.
“I won’t stay too long.” Gazing at her sword, the girl said, “I will leave here in three days. After that, I should be able to move on my own.”
“All right.”
“So you’ll take care of me for three days. May I ask your name?”
“Anima.”
Hearing that, the princess thought it odd.
She knew that Anima meant nameless in the old language.
The princess waited, assuming he would ask her name in return, but he never did.
Anima’s rule was that he would not do to others what unpleasant things had been done to him.
So began their three days living together.
Anima was used to seeing to the ill. And the princess did as he asked. It seemed she had decided to be obedient, so as to recover as quickly as possible—though she would give him bitter looks during mealtimes only.
But still, the princess would do as he said and would make sure to eat the things she hated.
At night, when going to sleep, the princess in bed would say to Anima on the floor, “I truly am sorry I can’t do anything…but I would be glad if you did not expect me to sleep with you.”
“Why would I expect that from a sick girl? Just go to bed.”
Anima was a boy around that age. He had as much desire as anyone else, and spending the night with a woman would get him excited. If it had been an ordinary woman sleeping over at his house, he certainly wouldn’t have been able to stand it.
But he wasn’t so deviant as to lust after a sick person.
Anima thought that if he could, he would like to have the princess attended to by an actual doctor. But there were no doctors in this country. So he decided he would at least just have her properly eat her meals.
Because of his past, Anima paid much more attention than others to healthy eating. The princess’s health slowly improving may have been thanks to the healthy meals based on his experiential knowledge.
The second day came.
On that day, the princess’s health was not so bad.
As she was slowly walking around the house in attempt to regain her strength, she found the cellar.
There was no deep meaning in her peeking into it.
There were countless books on medicine inside. Books were normally so expensive, a commoner would never have multiple. But medical books were the one exception. With the appearance of the Miracle of Life, any type of medical book had wound up just about worthless. Anima was now of a station where he could acquire the Miracle of Life, but the terror of the disease he had caught when young had traumatized him. He had studied medicine himself in preparation for the time when he would once again be persecuted and become unable to acquire the Miracle of Life.
As she was moving around the books, the princess found it.
It was a single dusty spear.
“…” The princess was dumbfounded, gazing at the spear.
She was probably like that a long time.
So when Anima came over to her, she didn’t even notice. “So this is where you were.”
“…What’s this spear?”
“It’s just a spear.”
“No.” Being of the royal family, the girl knew what this spear really was. “This is not simply a spear. It’s a magic spear, with the power of the spirits. The former bearer of this spear was the best knight in the realm.”
“So you have an eye for these things, Princess.”
The princess realized who Anima really was.
“Why do you not use this spear? You’re leaving it covered in dust? This spear will give you strength. So long as you have it, you don’t have to remain a mere low-ranked knight. Even becoming the knight captain would be no dream.”
“The owner of that spear was killed,” Anima said dispassionately. “That was because he had strength. He died dramatically, in a manner befitting a hero.”
He continued, spitting it out. “It’s a stupid way to die. He talked big about how he would protect the royal family, but in the end, he couldn’t protect anyone. And if you’re talking about stupidity, my family is just as stupid. They’ve been passing this thing on for generations. The idiots believed this spear was sure to protect them. And it never did—they all died except for me.”
The princess quietly listened to Anima’s curses.
“I don’t want to become some fabled hero,” he said. “I don’t aspire to that. I inherited this spear from my father, but I have no attachment to it. I just keep it to sell if I ever really need to eat.”
At this point, Anima realized his voice had become dark and low. His hatred for his relatives and the spear had unconsciously made his words heavier. So he said his next remark lightly, purely as a joke.
“If you’re a princess, then I actually was a prince.”
The princess was unable to reply. She didn’t even laugh scornfully at his joke. Anima took her silence to mean that it wasn’t funny.
“But I don’t care about the nation or the people. My dream is just to be happy in a normal way. As a normal knight, I’ll make a normal living, marry a normal wife, have normal children, get old normally, and die normally. I don’t need a magic spear for that dream.”
The princess did not laugh at the old prince’s normal dream.
“…Then you should let this spear be forgotten with time.”
The third day came.
Anima’s care bore fruit, and the girl had regained a fair amount of energy.
“I’ll accompany you on your errands, as exercise.”
Had she said that on a whim, or was it something else?