The Villainous Princess Wants to Live in a Gingerbread House - Chapter 15

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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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The Villainess Crown Princess Wants to Live in a Confectionery
Chapter 15

But an hour after the first knock, another hour after supper, and now when it was nearly time for bed, Aleksei still gave no answer.
She’d even tried the door that connected directly to the adjacent room—a shortcut to hell, as far as she was concerned, which she’d rather avoid—but the neighboring chamber remained silent.
‘What? Is the next room not Aleksei’s after all?’
By this point, it was a reasonable suspicion. Anastasia stood between the door connecting her room to Aleksei’s, her lip jutting out. Then.
Click.
“Oh!”
“Is something the matter… Your Highness Anastasia?”
The door she’d been waiting for finally opened!
But…
Anastasia blinked up at the tall man before her. It wasn’t Aleksei who’d opened the door—it was a stranger she’d never seen before.
“Who… are you?”
“Ah, I am Kiril, a knight of the escort guard to His Highness Aleksei. Might I inquire what brings Your Highness here?”
So the adjacent room belonged to someone other than Aleksei after all. Anastasia pressed a hand to her chest, fingering the Scone she held in her other hand.
“I wanted to see Aleksei…”
“Ah… His Highness Aleksei is occupied with studies at the moment. If you have a message, I would be happy to relay it for you.”
Anastasia’s mouth fell open. She wished she could believe this was a lie—that he was simply avoiding her—but something about the escort knight’s tone told her it was the truth.
If he was genuinely studying, it would be wrong to summon him, and besides, it was probably for the best. She wasn’t quite ready to face that cool, smiling countenance again.
“I don’t have anything in particular to say… I just wanted to share these with him.”
Anastasia withdrew two wrapped Scones and held them out to Kiril.
“Since he’s studying, I don’t want to bother him… Give one to him, and eat the other yourself.”
“Yes, I am grateful for Your Highness’s kindness.”
Kiril bowed respectfully and closed the door. Anastasia stood before it for a moment, then looked down at the carpeted floor and tapped it with the tips of her toes. Finally, she turned away.

Aleksei, a thin cardigan draped over his shirt, sat at a desk deep within his room, absorbed in a book. Kiril approached and set a small wrapped Scone before him.
“…?”
“I heard a presence at the adjacent door some moments ago and went to check. It was Her Highness Anastasia. When I told her you were studying, she asked me to deliver only this.”
“…Anastasia?”
Aleksei looked up, startled by the unexpected name.
Anastasia.
The girl with peach-pink hair and eyes the color of young spring shoots. Though said to be ten years old, she had a small frame that made her look no more than seven at first glance. Aleksei felt genuinely bewildered by this gift from his cousin.
“…”
“…”
“…Just… one?”
Aleksei picked up the Scone by the string wound around its wrapping. In his hand, it looked like a small biscuit, perhaps half the size of his palm.
“What… what will you do with it, sir?”
“…”
There was reason for Aleksei’s confusion. For a Crown Prince to receive a gift that appeared so plain and thoughtless was tantamount to an insult.
And Aleksei had never been insulted in such a manner before. Everything that came to him as a ‘gift’ was elaborately wrapped, expensive, and precious. No one would dare give him something inadequate, for fear of incurring the wrath of the future Emperor.
And now, before his eyes, there lay.
Two Scones.
Wrapped in slightly crumpled paper and tied with rough twine.
“…Now… I’ll eat it now.”
Kiril seemed somewhat surprised by Aleksei’s decision to eat it, but he nodded obediently nonetheless. He then called for an attendant to bring tea and withdrew a Silver Needle from the drawer—an instrument that could detect poison.
Poison had no effect on the Emperor and the Crown Prince, who held contracts with the Spirit King, but there was no shortage of foolish challengers. Filtering out such insolent factions was part of Kiril’s duty as a guard. While Kiril prepared the refreshments, Aleksei stared at the Scone, resting his chin in his hand.
The Silver Needle slid smoothly into the Scone and withdrew without any discoloration.
‘…That girl is utterly impossible to fathom.’
Aleksei tapped the table lightly with his fingertips, thinking. Since his own Spirit Ceremony with Papnir, the fire Spirit King, several Spirit Ceremonies had been held for his relatives. Yet in every single one, Aleksei’s expectations had been dashed.
The hope that he might meet new family members to live alongside in the palace. That is to say, though he had many relatives, most of them regarded him with the same wary gaze.
Fear, envy, jealousy, longing, flattery, hatred…
Sometimes Aleksei wanted to ask them: What do you have to be jealous of? You have both your parents, you live with your families. Why do you hate me so? I’ve taken nothing that belonged to you.
Why do you all look at me with such contempt?
I am just the same as you…
But he was never given the chance to speak, and his expectations crumbled again and again and again. So before this Spirit Ceremony even took place, Aleksei had cast away every thought and hope he’d held. Yet now, when he’d stopped hoping entirely, something had appeared.
Among his cousins, there was one who stood apart from everyone he had known until now.
Small and young Anastasia would shift through a different expression each time he saw her, lost in thoughts only she could fathom.
At first she’d spotted him and gasped, eyes wide as saucers; then she’d floundered like a kitten facing a puddle, uncertain what to do; and lately she wore the expression of someone bearing all the world’s worries on her shoulders.
“I hear she came looking for you four times today alone.”
“……Anastasia? For me?”
“Yes.”
Why?
Aleksei asked himself, though he already knew the answer. It was sitting right there on the plate. She’d made all those trips to the empty room just to deliver this single scone.
‘Truly…… I cannot fathom it.’
He understood that young Anastasia wasn’t trying to flatter him or win his favor. Not because she was merely a girl of ten, but because he’d spent a lifetime observing such people, and he knew how to tell the difference between those who calculated and those who didn’t.
‘Besides, even if it were flattery, over something so trivial?’
What the girl had given him was hardly the currency of ambition. Even in the ancient kingdom of Otrop a thousand years past, there would have been no one naive enough to think they could win a Crown Prince’s favor with a rough piece of scone.
“……Where did she say she got this pastry?”
“I did not ask, but I shall find out.”
“There’s no need for that.”
Aleksei shook his head and broke the scone in half, placing it in his mouth.
“……!”
The moment he began to chew, the savory richness of cheese, the butter’s warmth, and the umami of bacon seized his tongue. The ingredients suggested something deeply oiled, yet by the time he’d finished the whole scone, the aftertaste was clean and his belly felt contentedly full.
Aleksei’s eyes slowly closed. It was as if warmth were returning to his hands and feet, which had grown slightly cold from the fatigue of study and training. His small cousin’s unpretentious gift was not ‘merely this,’ he was beginning to understand, slow and deliberate as falling snow.

* * *

‘It seems to be working.’
It had been a week of giving Aleksei scones every evening. Asha stood outside his door with today’s scone in hand, smiling inwardly with quiet satisfaction.

‘Don’t you think Alyosha’s wariness has melted a little? I mean…… it’s strange to say he’s come to like me, but he’s at least stopped hating the sight of me so much?’

The same pastry had shown spectacular results when she’d given it to Dmitri, who’d been beside himself with loathing for her. Of course, she hadn’t expected quite such dramatic results this time. But kinship bloomed from conversation, so she’d be grateful if they could at least understand one another.
In truth, Asha had reconciled herself to the possibility that Aleksei might simply have thrown the scone away.
‘A cousin with claim to the throne, offering me pastry out of the blue…….’
Anyone would be suspicious! That’s right! So if Alyosha had refused to eat it, I could have understood that!
Asha had been quietly telling herself, ‘Then I’ll have to think of another approach.’
But the next day when she saw Aleksei, the glacial wall surrounding him was noticeably paler in hue.
He’d eaten it for certain!
Asha felt she could blow trumpets and set off fireworks, juggle three balls, ride a unicycle while playing an elephant whistle—she was that delighted. For the next week, she threw herself into baking fresh scones daily, sending them through Kiril.
‘Good. I’ll keep showing him how my only real interest is in baking, enough to ease his suspicion. And later, when Alyosha’s girlfriend or fiancée shows up, I’ll support their bond with all my might. Then that should do it, shouldn’t it?’
Truthfully, this was all Asha could manage for now.

‘Hm?’

At Pibi’s cryptic words, Asha tilted her head, about to knock on Aleksei’s door, when the door swung open before her hand could move.
“Ah—?”
“Anastasia.”
“Ah…… Alyosha.”
Asha stood frozen, mouth agape, looking up at him. The one who’d opened the door was Aleksei, his lips curved in a gentle smile.
“I was just about to knock.”
After spending ten years acting childish, she’d thought her petulant tone was perfected—yet standing before Aleksei, whether from nervousness or some other cause, her voice came out even more childlike.
“I had a feeling you’d come, so I opened the door.”
Asha swallowed hard, suddenly tense. Until now she’d always passed the pastries through Kiril in the late afternoon. This was the first time Aleksei had opened the door and come out himself.

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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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