They Say an Age Gap Like This Doesn’t Even Need Matching - Chapter 6

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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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“I heard that the handmaidens and attendants have a separate place to eat.”
Elhart gently rubbed the corner of my raised eyebrow with his fingertip as he spoke.
“You want me to go eat something delicious alone?”
“I wish you would.”
With a voice so pleasant and soothing words like that, anyone would want to grant his every wish.
‘But I can’t let this slide.’
I quickly averted my gaze from him.
“I’ll bring something better. Real food worth eating.”
It seemed he’d been receiving this kind of treatment all along.
“How you’re treated is how I’m treated, and that is, in turn, how Bardia is treated.”
“…?”
He might think the logic was a bit of a stretch, but it wasn’t wrong.
Who am I, after all?
The first commander of the Bardia Knight Order, possessing countless treasures bestowed by the founding king.
From today on, I will eat proper food together with the prince I’ve decided to protect.
“I’ll be back.”
He urgently grabbed my arm as I tried to leave the room.
“Don’t push yourself. I’m really fine with this as it is.”
There’s an attitude that only those who have been broken again and again possess—those who no longer expect anything.
I caught a glimpse of that same indifference in Elhart.
And yet….
“Thank you, Ser. For taking my side.”
Why did I feel that familiar steadiness?
Someone who doesn’t rely on others or hope for a reversal of circumstances, yet doesn’t despair or give up either.
Someone who endures all manner of unreasonableness and laughs it off, waiting for the chance that will come.
“…Yeah.”
I decided to handle this matter in a more aggressive way.
First, I’d pour this foul-smelling garbage down the throat of whoever brought it.
***
‘Damn it, how much longer do I have to endure this treatment?’
Osman ground his teeth as he exited the Exiled Prince of Bardia’s Pavilion.
He found himself in an utterly unreasonable situation.
Simply because his mother was Bardian, he had to look after a hostage like some common servant.
‘I am a proper citizen of the Cradian Empire.’
Like most attendants employed at the Imperial Palace, he came from a noble family.
Though he was merely the third son of a baron’s house with not a single connection to his name.
Being lumped together with the Exiled Prince of Bardia—whose subjugation was imminent—was utterly absurd.
Tampering with the meals that had been properly provided was part of his venting.
The Exiled Prince, once called the Guardian of Bardia and a major obstacle in the Cradian Empire’s conquest campaigns, showed no signs of weakening despite eating only a single bowl of wretched gruel a day. His reputation seemed well-earned.
Every time he entered the chamber with a bowl of gruel, it felt as though he were stepping into a tiger’s den—a chilling sensation each time.
That feeling was truly unbearable.
‘I wish he’d just die already.’
Burdened with a task everyone shunned, Osman had grown to despise the Exiled Prince.
‘I simply cannot fathom why they keep him alive.’
Death would be the path best for everyone.
Especially for himself—the prince needed to disappear from the Imperial Palace as soon as possible.
‘I suppose I must take matters into my own hands.’
He had mixed a toxic herb into the gruel that induced vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. The prince would suffer miserably throughout the day.
As long as he kept silent, there would be no way to obtain an antidote.
‘Let’s see if he can endure even this.’
The thought of that dignified face contorting in agony as he clutched his belly brought a slight lift to his mood.
Osman’s day, which had seemed to be progressing reasonably well, took an ominous turn when he was summoned by the Chief Steward.
‘Why would Barik call for me…?’
Beside the notoriously ill-tempered Chief Steward stood a woman he had never seen before.
‘A new maidservant, perhaps.’
The moment his gaze shifted toward her, Osman found himself holding his breath without realizing it.
Her hair, tied up for ease of movement, was a silver hue rarely seen among common folk.
Her skin was so pallid, as though she had not seen sunlight for an eternity, that it gleamed with an almost crystalline coldness.
Despite wearing a plain maidservant’s uniform with no adornments, all the light around her seemed to converge upon her.
Then, suddenly, the woman’s gaze turned toward him.
“….”
As her clear, sky-blue eyes assessed him as though making a judgment, an inexplicable chill ran down his spine.
He was seized by the terrifying sensation that his hidden, sordid nature would be exposed in an instant.
Suddenly unsettled, Osman hastily averted his gaze from the woman and looked toward the Chief Steward.
“You called for me, Chief Steward?”
“Yes, Osman. There’s something I need to confirm with you.”
“Yes, please speak.”
“Is it true that meals have not been properly provided to our guest at the Separate Palace?”
Osman was startled inwardly, but he answered without betraying any sign of it.
“I’m not sure what you mean. Did the hostage say something like that? Are you suggesting I mistreated her?”
In any case, there was no one in the Imperial Palace of the Cradion Empire who would take the hostage’s side.
Without even a single attendant or maid sent to assist me, wasn’t it I who was suffering through this ordeal?
“Honestly, it’s quite unfortunate. She doesn’t appreciate the grace the Empire has shown her, and instead falls into paranoid delusions, falsely accusing me.”
Osman poured out words of genuine grievance, not fabrication.
“Regardless of who told you what, I have truly done my best.”
“Then what exactly is this bowl of porridge?”
Only then did Osman see the bowl held in the chamberlain’s hands.
“I’m not sure? I wouldn’t know. Perhaps it’s a dog’s food bowl from the palace?”
The contents barely visible were clearly the poisoned porridge I had brought to the hostage this morning, yet Osman answered brazenly.
Whoever discovered it, if I denied it, how could they prove the truth?
“Did a dog perhaps die?”
In any case, there was no one here to hold me accountable for my wrongdoings.
It wouldn’t change anything even if the hostage died.
The comparison of the hostage to a dog was quite convincing, and I was quietly chuckling to myself at the thought—
The woman who had been watching Osman quietly smiled.
“…!”
What I felt in that instant was, surprisingly, terror.
‘Wh…? Wh-what…?’
Would this be the consequence of lying or insulting the divine before a statue in a temple?
A chilling sensation pierced through my very core, my heart sank, and cold sweat began to pour down.
‘Something… something is terribly wrong….’
I couldn’t move a single finger. I couldn’t even blink.
If I moved carelessly, it felt as though some immense presence would crush me instantly.
“…Osman, am I not asking you a question right now?”
The chamberlain seemed to be saying something to me, but I couldn’t hear it at all.
Right now, I had to vomit out all the filth inside me.
If I didn’t, it was as though someone was screaming in my head that I had no right to live.
“Osman!”
That pressure squeezed my throat, and I felt as though I were suffocating.
‘If I don’t speak, I’ll die. I’ll die. I’ll die cursed most miserably in this world, die, die, die…!’
It was a moment when my reason was paralyzed by terrible fear.
“I-I’ve made a mistake!”
Finally, Osman prostrated myself flat on the ground.
“I, I tried to harm the hostage. Dissatisfied with the duties entrusted to me, I tampered with her meals. Today, I even added poison that causes stomach pain….”
Even as I confessed everything from my own mouth, something I could have denied to the end, I didn’t understand what was wrong.
Without time to comprehend, I begged and begged.
“I hoped she would suffer and die miserably, so I, I dared to….”
In the heavy silence, only Osman’s murmuring continued.
“….”
Without concealing a single truth, I extracted every last confession—what possessed me to commit such acts, what profane intentions lurked within my heart.
When the confession finally concluded, someone placed a bowl of gruel before me with a dull thud.
Osman lifted the bowl as though it were holy water absolving him of his sins, and gulped it down ravenously.
A nauseating stench numbed his nostrils, and chunks of spoiled matter clung viscously to his throat.
“Gag!”
The retching surged not from poison, but from the revulsion of swallowing inedible filth.
“You must drink every last drop.”
A soft voice pierced my ears.
“Lick the bowl clean down to the bottom.”

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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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