I Was Just Having Fun With The Time Limit - Chapter 16

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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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Ron maintained his stoic expression.
“I’ll have to tell Karin to teach you mathematics again.”
“…What?”
“I haven’t seen a number as small as sixteen. Haven’t you still failed to learn that seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen are also far too small? What exactly have you been studying?”
I was furious.
I didn’t want to accept that the largest number remaining for that child was sixteen.
The words “be tired just sixteen times” became a blade that pierced Ron’s chest.
It hurt deeply.
Ron placed his hand on Isabel’s head.
With an unfamiliar touch, he stroked her hair.
“Touching your head makes me tired.”
He knelt on one knee beside Isabel.
“Kneeling makes me tired.”
He gazed into Isabel’s eyes.
“Looking at you makes me tired.”
Already three times exhausted.
Ron lowered the hand he had placed on Isabel’s head.
“Moving my hand makes me tired.”
He took Isabel’s small hand.
“Holding your hand makes me tired.”
Isabel’s hand was very small.
Small like a pebble, yet not as hard as one.
Ron could no longer restrain himself and pulled Isabel toward him.
“Pulling you makes me tired.”
Isabel’s body fell into Ron’s embrace.
“Holding you makes me tired.”
His keen hearing, honed by years of swordsmanship, caught the sound of her heartbeat.
It was still clearly a vigorous pulse.
“Hearing your heartbeat once makes me tired.”
That vigorous pulse would stop in fifteen years.
Then Ron’s world would stop as well.
Such thoughts consumed him.
“Hearing it twice makes me even more tired.”
And he spoke only to himself.
‘I’m tired from thinking about how to make the largest number remaining for you something other than sixteen.’
He spoke aloud.
“I’m tired from spending time with this cruel Princess without sleeping in a comfortable bed.”
“…”
“I’m tired because this moment, which should have been worthless, turned out to be so precious.”
As he spoke, his eyes grew red.
I understood it then.
Even if I could never master Villorian swordplay, this child was undoubtedly the Princess of Villorian, and the one and only daughter of Ron and Serna.
Someone who had never felt affection for a child began to feel it now.
I was learning an entirely new emotion.
“I’m tired from learning something new.”
Isabel, nestled in Ron’s arms, began to sniffle.
His tone was blunt, but the meaning behind it was not.
I could feel Ron’s emotions fully.
In every word Ron spoke, affection for Isabel was abundantly present.
“Whimper!”
Ron wiped Isabel’s tears away with his thumb.
“I’m tired from wiping away the tears of a crybaby Princess.”
This time, he spoke only to himself.
‘I’m tired from holding back my own tears.’
He said it.
“Already sixteen times I’ve been tired. Now do you understand? I would be tired not sixteen, but one hundred sixty, no, one thousand six hundred times.”
Isabel sniffled.
To Ron’s ears, she called out to him in a pitiful voice.
“Father.”
“Speak.”
As if responding to that pitiful voice, Ron gazed at his daughter with limited time left with desperate eyes.
His daughter with limited time opened her mouth.
“It was thirteen times.”
….
Isabel, who had been accepted to a South Korean university through the mathematics essay exam, was quite precise with numbers.
* * *
Outwardly, he had said it thirteen times, and to himself, he had said it twice.
So to Isabel’s ears, thirteen times was correct.
“No. It was sixteen times.”
But by Ron’s count, he had said he was tired fifteen times.
The remaining one time he was about to say soon.
Calculated that way, sixteen times was correct.
“It was definitely thirteen times.”
“No. Sixteen times.”
“I remember it clearly.”
In truth, it didn’t matter to Isabel whether it was thirteen or sixteen times.
She simply loved hearing Ron say it that way.
She wanted to hear it one more time.
‘Say it three more times. Just. I want to hear it more.’
So she spoke.
“It was really thirteen times.”
“I’m telling you, it was sixteen times.”
“…Father is an idiot.”
Ron fell silent at those words.
He never imagined he’d be called an idiot by his own child.
Isabel was startled by her own unguarded remark and laughed nervously to smooth things over.
“Hehe.”
“Don’t laugh.”
“I can’t laugh?”
It hurt so much to see her laughing like that while fully aware of her own impending death.
But he didn’t want to let that pain show.
“You must maintain your dignity and composure.”
“You said yourself that dignity comes and goes like the tide.”
“Now is the time to have it.”
“I don’t want to.”
Ron’s brow furrowed slightly.
First she called him an idiot, and now she openly said she didn’t want to obey.
It was terribly impolite behavior.
‘I should be upset, but I’m not.’
Hearing her call him a “fool” and say “I don’t want to,” he somehow felt closer to his daughter.
A wonderful idea occurred to him.
‘I should send a letter to Biatone.’
He couldn’t help but grin wickedly.
If he wrote to Biatone saying, “Today Isabel called me an idiot. She even said she dislikes me. Isn’t that terribly impolite?” Biatone would surely feel an overwhelming sense of defeat.
* * *
Some time passed.
Isabel suddenly realized that Serna was not present.
“By the way, where is Mother?”
“She left early for a financial meeting with Duke Rosilde.”
“Oh, that’s right….”
Isabel remembered the dream she’d had last night.
“I dreamed that Mother kissed my forehead at dawn. She told me to sleep well and that she loved me.”
It seemed that probably wasn’t a dream at all.
Suddenly, I felt happy.
A life where I possessed everything I never had before was truly a blessing.
“Aren’t you going anywhere today?”
“I am going somewhere.”
Ron rose from his seat.
He abandoned the book he’d been enjoying and walked toward the door.
“Why are you standing there gawking? Come along.”
Ron appeared somewhat irritated, though it was hard to pinpoint exactly why.
He extended his hand with a curt expression.
Yet both Ron, who held out his hand, and Isabel, who gazed upon him, understood perfectly well that he was not truly angry.
“Where are you going?”
“Just take my hand already. This is the sixteenth bothersome thing I’ve done.”
Isabel broke into a radiant smile.
My mood had become so delightful that words tumbled out carelessly.
I still inhabited a five-year-old body, and when my guard dropped, so did my articulation.
I quickly grasped Ron’s hand.
“Thank you so much.”
“What?”
“It’s nothing.”
Ron felt the small hand nestled in his own once more.
It was truly tiny and precious.
“Since today is the day you move to your new quarters, I shall escort you myself.”
Ron’s tone was rather stiff—unfamiliar with such gestures, he sounded even more awkward.
“Father is really going to escort me?”
“Do not make me repeat myself. It is something I despise.”
“But you just said that sixteen times.”
“Answering you has exhausted me seventeen times over.”
He muttered this to himself.
That he would make this seventeen become one hundred seventy.
“I’m so happy.”
Isabel beamed, still holding Ron’s hand.
Ron averted his gaze from her.
“Such an easily delighted child.”
“Oh, that’s right.”
Isabel released Ron’s hand.
Ron felt a sudden, profound sense of loss.
As though something precious that should have been held tightly had vanished, leaving a void in his chest.
Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), Isabel returned quickly.
“I’ve packed the books. Since Father enjoys them.”
“….”
Isabel hugged the books tightly to herself with one arm.
Then she hurried back and grasped Ron’s hand once more.
His hand was positioned so high that she had to stretch her arm up as far as it would reach.
‘Like holding an enormous cloth bundle.’
Ron’s hand enfolded Isabel’s small one.
Ron began to walk slowly.
“Let us go.”
Isabel proceeded toward the Arena Palace under the Emperor’s escort.
It was the first time in Villorian’s five-hundred-year history.
* * *
The administrative director of the Arena Palace was Steward Dailsa.
She was an exceptional swordswoman who had once commanded the Black Whale, one of the strongest sword brigades within the Imperial Palace of Villorian, but had assumed the position of Steward after sustaining a grave injury.
That had been ten years ago.
“Your Majesty. I offer my respects.”
“Dailsa. It has been a long time.”
“Did you escort her personally?”
Dailsa’s gaze turned toward the Princess.
Isabel smiled brightly.
“Hello.”
Isabel bowed deeply at the waist.
“I am Isabel. I am five years old. I am the Princess. It is a pleasure to meet you, Steward Dailsa.”
“You need not bow so deeply to me.”
Steward Dailsa and Emperor Ron were also comrades-in-arms.
Long ago, she had once saved Ron from a dire crisis through her exceptional martial prowess.
Therefore, a deep bond of camaraderie existed between them, and Ron fully respected Dailsa’s authority and position.
Today was no exception.
It amounted to reproaching the Princess before the Emperor, yet because it was the right thing to say, he did not point it out separately.
“Why not?”
“Because I am a Steward, and you are the Princess.”
This was Dailsa’s test, though not quite a test.
In such circumstances, the Princess should warn the Steward with the dignity befitting her station.
‘I have truly entered the Prince’s Palace.’
It had been the Prince’s Palace for five hundred years.
Since I was born five hundred years later, that name should change now as well, but…
In any case, this place is different from before.
I needed to demonstrate the proper bearing of a Princess.
‘I was born as a Princess, after all.’
I resolved to do my best with the life I had been given.
Demonstrating myself as a Princess was part of that.
Isabel tilted her head deliberately while holding Ron’s hand.
“I did not call you Steward. Did you not listen carefully to what I called you?”
Her voice was not accusatory.
Rather, Isabel was smiling brightly.
My first meeting with Steward Dailsa began that way.

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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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