They headed out shopping together. He did tentatively have the princess carry the basket, but she had been weak to begin with, so she wasn’t able to carry that much. Seeing her walk around with just two or three fruits in a basket that could carry a whole load of vegetables made him suspect maybe she was doing it as a joke.
When they came back from shopping, whatever the princess was thinking, she stood with him in the kitchen and tried to help him with cooking. With a kitchen knife in hand, she tried to peel the skin off a vegetable. He was quite nervous about her handling of the knife, however, so he immediately took it away from her.
“Just wait quietly. It’s creepy when you try to help,” Anima said, but he was privately glad.
Part of his dream was to “marry a normal woman.” It wasn’t as if he was looking at this girl in that way, but he did think, if he had a wife, maybe it would be like this… Although considering how incompetent this princess was, maybe his dream of having children was closer to coming true than his dream of having a wife.
Just a little, just a very little bit, he was starting to enjoy himself.
However, the princess doing such things was not out of a brand-new desire to be kind. In her own way, she felt guilty toward the old royal family. Anima shouldn’t actually have been living this way.
Three days had passed by. The princess had regained quite a bit of her energy.
“Thank you very much for these past three days.”
She was trying to leave Anima’s house. It seemed she had no strong feelings about that. In fact, it seemed like she was trying to leave as soon as possible… Anima felt a prickle in his heart.
It had only been three days of taking care of her. But the time had given him a modest piece of mind. The truth was, he’d already felt that the very first night the princess had come.
It wasn’t that she had done anything for him—but just her being there had made him feel at ease. Having abandoned his birth, his past, and his name, living without a single relative, it had been the first time he’d felt reassured.
As she was about to leave, Anima said to the princess, “If you’re ever in trouble…you can come again.”
He knew he was offering her too much support when they had only known each other for three days.
But they had been together for three days. Maybe she wasn’t a friend, but she was no longer a stranger.
The princess did not say she would come again.
“I won’t come to this house again.”
“I…I see. But if we ever meet again—”
“…That reminds me, I forgot to tell you my name.”
“At this point, you don’t have to…”
“Listen, my name is Brunhild.”
Time stopped for him.
Brunhild.
That was the name Anima most did not want to be involved with—
—since the downfall of his clan had begun with involvement with a woman named Brunhild.
Brunhild knew that, too.
That was why her self-introduction was her farewell.
“I don’t think I want to see a lowborn scum like yourself ever again,” she spat coldly, and then she left.
Once Brunhild was out of sight, anger slowly began to well up in him. “Talking like that to me…”
He didn’t appreciate the last thing she had said to him—
—that she never wanted to see him again.
Anima understood—
—she hadn’t wanted to destroy his dream of living a normal life.
“Lowborn scum…? She’s such a terrible liar…”
But he had no choice but to accept the offer made to him—because his dream was to have a normal life.
Anima decided to forget about Brunhild and live on as a humble knight.