The Villainous Princess Wants to Live in a Gingerbread House - Chapter 43

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The Villainess Princess Wants to Live in a Pastry Shop
Chapter 43

‘I’d believed it would take a bit more time before I could bake pastries again…….’
The handwriting was large and uneven because she’d written it when much younger. But even the recipes for pastries that had faded from memory were set down here with remarkable clarity. Before she was born as the daughter of Yuriye and Irina, baking pastries had been her dream.
It meant she’d desperately wanted it, and it also meant she’d never achieved it. To realize her dream, though she couldn’t afford formal education, she’d gorged herself on books and videos. Back then, she’d felt bitter that watching alone was useless without actually making anything——but now.
‘This is enough for me now. I don’t want for anything else.’
Asha, who’d been tumbling across the bed clutching an old notebook and linen pajamas, suddenly went still. Though it seemed there was something more she did want after all…….
‘Once I get the Panna Cotta Chocolate recipe and some chocolate profits, I could make Frasty powder and sell it, and with that money I could build a bigger house and live with Mom and Dad, right?’
Asha broke into a wide grin at the thought.

* * *

Pibi, who’d been wandering through the Imperial Palace as she pleased, returned in the dead of night when everyone nearby was asleep.

Pibi grabbed a fistful of Asha’s hair just as she was about to doze off. Asha rubbed her eyes and sat up.
“What is it, Pibi……. If you’re back, go to sleep already.”
Asha grumbled since she’d been sleeping peacefully in the pajamas her parents had sent her, only to be forcibly awakened.

But Pibi ignored her and pointed toward a space beyond the bedroom. That was where her dressing room was.
“The wardrobe?”
Asha stopped rubbing her eyes and flinched. A horror film she’d seen in her past life suddenly came to mind.
You mustn’t open wardrobe doors, and you mustn’t peek under the bed. You mustn’t pull out a chair halfway, lift the covers, peek through narrow gaps——none of it.
As those thoughts came back to her, goosebumps erupted across her skin and sleep fled entirely.

“N-no!”

“You scared me with that talk!”

You’re just a lemon-flavored macaron, after all——Pibi plucked at her hair in response to Asha’s retort.

“If you want it opened so badly, you open it! You managed fine with the cage door!”

Asha opened her mouth in protest but ultimately scrambled out of bed.
Following Pibi’s lead in the middle of the night, Asha began exploring her bedroom, passing through the dressing room and opening another door. It was a small storage room barely attached to her chamber, sparse except for a few random items. And on the inner wall sat another door with a lock on it.

“……This was in my room?”

“But there’s a lock on it. I don’t even know what key opens it!”
Asha spoke in hushed urgency toward Pibi, who was stubbornly insisting the door be opened right now. Pibi fluttered her wings and pointed to one side. A crude key hung right beside the lock.

“Why would you leave the lock and key together?!”

“There’s a limit to stupidity…….”
She wanted to cry out that this made no sense, but Pibi’s pestering left her no choice. With trembling hands, Asha inserted the key into the lock. The scrape of metal on metal made her spine tingle, though the bird paid no attention, only badgering her further.
Click!
The lock sprang open with a soft sound, but Asha found herself utterly unable to muster the courage to open the door. In the end, she retrieved a ribbon sash from the corner of the dressing room.
Half-tearful, Asha tied the ribbon to the wardrobe handle, then positioned herself as far away as possible and pulled.
Her fist pressed against her mouth to stifle the scream building in her throat.
Creak— screeeeech…….
‘Aaaaah! Ahhhhh! Aaaaaahhh! Aaaaaaahhh!’
Nothing had actually happened yet, but Asha had screamed a hundred times over in her head.
“……Ahhh…… huh?”
Her silent scream trailed off into confused silence, replaced by a question mark. Pibi flew up and perched on the crown of her head, tilting in bewilderment.

“……Ibven?”
Asha blinked, bewildered. Where she had thought a closet stood, there was instead a cramped space stuffed with a bed and a washstand. Sitting on a small bed in a room far too narrow to deserve that name was a boy—Ibven, jerked awake by her opening the door.
“I-Ibven? What are you… what are you doing here?”
Asha realized in a single breath that she’d phrased the question all wrong. Ibven had climbed down from the bed at once and dropped to his knees before her. At the sound of impact, she started and hurried to help him up.
“No, wait—that’s not what I meant. This is… this is your room?”
A converted storage closet attached to the dressing room—surely not? While Asha turned this over in her mind, Ibven nodded.
“Yes. The attendants told me this was my quarters.”
His face was blank, and there was still no trace of any emotional current in his expression—no way to tell what he was thinking.

‘A Noctis Elf?’

‘Ibven is a Noctis Elf?!’
Asha gaped, looking back and forth between Ibven and Pibi—both of whom seemed to glow faintly blue even in the darkness.

‘The Emperor gave him to me! Wait, Ibven is a Noctis Elf? Really?’
After a while of each speaking only to herself, Asha decided to defer to Pibi’s account first. This willful spirit seemed unlikely to listen to her at all.
‘But are the Elves not supposed to leave the Northern Land? Why? Oh, you said they were coming here to negotiate a Peace Agreement this time….’