I Was Hired by the Black-Minded Prince for My Life's Ransom - Chapter 48

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 48. Setting the Record Straight
It was only after a considerable span of time that the Second Prince released Yurian.
The Dismissal Order came down the moment he heard the Brown-haired Maid’s whispered words.
……
Under ordinary circumstances, he would have noticed something amiss, but today that eluded him.
No matter what occupied his thoughts, they always circled back to Vanillin.
Yurian lowered his gaze.
‘That’s not what I meant — but that sounds too much like an excuse.’
Round and round it went, and here he was again, consumed by thoughts of her.
He was tired of retracing how it had come to this.
Only her dejected expression haunted him, endless and inescapable.
— Disappointed… is that what I am?
The memory of her wavering eyes soured his mood all over again.
When he opened the door, would Vanillin be melancholy?
Or would she greet him as though nothing had happened?
Creak.
Yurian pulled open the door.
And hurried his eyes across the room inside.
The chamber lay silent.
The neatly folded bedding remained undisturbed, and the table with its single Yellow Rose stood exactly as before.
In other words — there was no sense of a living presence in the room.
“Vanillin.”
He called her name softly.
The girl who would normally have come scurrying out at the sound was nowhere to be found.
Despite his explicit order for her to remain in the room.
‘She’s run away.’
Absurdly, that was his first thought.
Had she finally grown so weary of him that she’d fled?
But he quickly realized that wasn’t the case.
Scrawled across the napkin on the table was a carelessly written note.
「Your Highness.
They said you were looking for me urgently… Could this be a scam or a kidnapping?
I probably shouldn’t go, but what if something’s actually wrong? I’m worried.
After all, you’re my person too….
I hope it really is you calling for me.
If this is a kidnapping, please come rescue me.
Actually, you don’t have to. I’ll try to escape on my own.
I’m heading out now.
-Vanillin-」
“Damn it.”
He grasped the situation at once.
The Second Prince’s inexplicable distaste for him, the way he’d pointlessly monopolized his time, the foolish grin the Brown-haired Maid had worn as she whispered — it all made sense now.
He’d never been the target.
They’d simply needed time to kidnap Vanillin.
“On the pretense that Your Highness was summoning her.”
The paper crumpled in his grip.
Vanillin sometimes seemed scatterbrained, but fundamentally she was quick-witted and sharp.
She would have recognized the trap.
And yet she’d gone anyway.
— Don’t come out until I call for you.
That single command weighed on his heart.
“Ha.”
It was fortunate he’d had her sign the Sacred Contract.
Yurian smiled beautifully as he pinpointed Vanillin’s location.
The Capital’s outskirts — a villa the Second Prince had acquired years ago.
A place where endless debauchery unfolded.
“Predictable, wouldn’t you say, brother.”
Rationally, it was madness for him to set foot there.
The moment it became known that he — called a Saint — had entered such a place, every reputation he’d painstakingly built would crumble.
The path to the throne would grow equally distant.
Is Vanillin worth that much?
‘…No. Not at all.’
Yurian shook his head without hesitation.
Objectively, politically—neither angle favored her.
Vanillin simply didn’t carry that weight.
Their bond was nothing but a forced contract to begin with.
‘Then why.’
Click.
Yurian closed the carriage door.
He turned to the coachman with a smile.
“Take me to the address written here, if you would.”
Why was he seized with this restless urgency, as though he wouldn’t survive another moment without her standing before him?
Yurian posed the unanswerable question to himself, his expression blooming into that beautiful smile.
“As quickly as possible. I’m in rather a hurry right now.”
* * *
“…And so, this is the gift I’ve prepared for you, Your Highness.”
Ta-da.
I gestured proudly with both hands toward the secret passage.
A set of pale gray stone stairs descending into the depths below.
I’d pulled the lever, and the bookshelf had slid left to reveal the corridor beyond, plunging downward into darkness so complete it seemed to swallow light itself.
The bottom was lost to shadow.
I’d felt heavy-hearted all morning after disappointing him earlier—surely this would make amends, at least a little.
…….
But Yurian looked at it and said nothing.
He only frowned as though troubled.
“Vanillin.”
“You don’t like it?”
“I’m simply considering what to say.”
The long exhale he released seemed weighted with exhaustion.
His gaze traced over me from head to foot.
“Your hair is a mess, there are rope marks on your wrists—”
“That’s….”
“And your clothes are covered in soot.”
“Ah.”
That was inevitable, after I’d used Matches to burn through the ropes to escape.
As for my hair being disheveled—did it tangle when they dragged me in?
I awkwardly averted his gaze and ran my fingers through my hair as though that might help.
Trivial things, yet somehow I felt caught showing him something too intimate.
“You look like a vagrant, grinning away without a care—I find I’m not in the mood for it.”
“A vagrant?”
“Or shall we say a wild animal instead.”
“Ugh.”
That’s worse.
I pushed out my lower lip.
A vagrant and a wild animal—was that any way to speak to a person?
But when he said it with that luminous smile, the words blurred between compliment and insult, and I couldn’t even manage to be angry.
He sighed.
“I came prepared to be discovered, and all you do is boast about finding a secret passage.”
“You don’t like it?”
“No. Which is why I can’t even be angry.”
Then what was all that just now, if not anger?
That was somehow even more surprising to me.
I smiled awkwardly.
Either way, that had to mean he was pleased, didn’t it?
“It’s a decent gift, isn’t it?”
“I suppose.”
“At least it’s not disappointing, is it?”
I spoke with a bright smile, and for some reason, he fell silent.
His eyes deepened; he sighed and brushed back his hair in frustration.
After a moment gazing out the window, he turned his eyes back to me.
Then he spoke.
“Were you hurt?”
“I’m sorry?”
“By what I said—that I was disappointed. Did that wound you?”
“I….”
I blinked.
Why was he asking something like that all of a sudden?
He couldn’t possibly be genuinely curious whether I was hurt.
My fingers fidgeted against each other.
‘If he’s asking whether I was hurt… that would be a lie to say no.’
But if he’s asking whether I was wounded—
“That’s not it.”
My brows drew down slightly.
“I was just sorry.”
I looked up at him, my eyes wavering a little.
“Sorry?”
“You don’t place your hopes in people easily, Your Highness.”
After all, disappointment only exists where expectation does.
In truth, Yurian never spoke of being disappointed in anyone.
Yet he had said that to me, which meant
that he—who trusts neither people nor love—had given me even the smallest measure of his confidence.
“I felt as though I had failed to repay your trust. That’s why I wanted to make up for it, every moment since.”
“Confidence, you say. Did I do that?”
“You still are.”
I nodded and continued.
“You never once wondered whether I might have been bought by the Second Prince.”
……
“That’s why you came to save me, isn’t it?”
As I spoke, I understood it myself.
I had always believed that if the opportunity arose, Yurian would kill me.
So this time too, I was certain he would never come for me.
But I was wrong.
He truly regarded me as his own.
Perhaps it was only because of the non-betrayal clauses written in that contract… yet even so.
“Your Highness placed your confidence in me.”
Even if only a grain of it.
It was something infinitely precious and rare.
All the more so because he trusted no parent, no sibling, no one.
“That’s why I don’t want to disappoint you.”
……
At my firm reply, he said nothing.
He seemed to be turning something over in his mind, or perhaps retracing the depths of his own heart.
Rarely, he let his smile fade, his eyes dropping slightly.
Whoosh—
The window he had left open when entering now let the wind slip through, stirring his platinum hair into disarray.
Beauty so arresting it made one forget the circumstances.
I found myself staring at him, my thoughts scattering.
His full lips parted slowly.
“I was not disappointed.”
Custard-cream eyes, fixed steadily upon me.
I could not move within their gaze, trapped as though in amber, and could only blink.
“What?”
“It was a slip of the tongue.”
He took a step toward me.
“I didn’t know what to say all this time, but thanks to you, it’s become clear.”
A cool, honeyed fragrance drifted through the space between us.
It was dangerous. For reasons I couldn’t name.
When I stepped back, he followed, closing the distance once more.
“I asked you if you were angry before coming here.”
“Yes….”
“I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t disappointed either. I just—”
His face, stripped of its usual ease, grew serious as he spoke as though confessing something.
“I was worried about you, Vanillin.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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