Volume 4 Snippet 3.2 (1/2)

Volume 4 Snippet 3.2

２．One Day in Farlane’s Royal House

「Oh, Brother？」

「I see you were in your room.」

「Yes. I didn’t have any plans to go out today.」

One night, Layotte showed up at Aearis’s room, to which she responded with a puzzled look.

「Did you perhaps miss out on food again？」

「Yeah. Various affairs took longer than expected at my destination.」

He had not eaten.

It actually wasn’t all that rare for Layotte to visit Aearis’s room. One reason was that he had changed his interaction with Aearis, no longer keeping her at a distance due to her position worsening, but there was another reason, that being…

「What will you be eating？」

「Well, if it’s fine to use donburi, then I guess I’ll make it pioneer bird bone soup for today.」

Layotte had come to get some of Aearis’s instant ramen she was secretly storing. In fact, the only royal in this castle who was in a position to directly receive instant ramen and store it was Aearis. Elena simply couldn’t get permission to go to town too often, and the king and Layotte weren’t in the position where they could just store food in their rooms.

The king barely had some spare liquor that he could hide without anyone making a fuss about it, and Layotte only had packed food for times of emergency. Avin, who was about to marry in, and Mark, who was likely to become the next prime minister, were both in a similar situation, not able to carry around much personal belongings.

Aearis was an exception because of her slightly independent status as both a royal and a priestess, her ability (given by Alfemina) to detect danger in food or drink, and having her own charisma in a different sense than Layotte. She certainly had some leeway.

Incidentally, Layotte did not have all of Aearis’s tendencies memorized. Other than when she was acting as priestess or princess and had to leave the country, Aearis generally went to Azuma Workshop or the underground resort, and this was always after getting permission from the parties concerned, but Layotte was too busy to remember every little report and wasn’t clear on much other than her official business trips.

「I have some good eggs here, so shall I put a few in？」

「Yes please.」

「Then I shall prepare them, so please wait inside.」

Led by Aearis, Layotte walked over to the carpet-covered corner of the room that had a low dining table.

「Layotte, did you also forget to eat？」

「You too, Father……?」

Ripping off the meat udon label, the king was also in the room about to eat. Taking off his shoes, Layotte walked onto the carpet and sat before the low table as he spoke to the king.

「It is true that those worthless petitions have decreased since that incident……」

「But now there has been a sharp increase in discussions that eat up our time……」

Ever sine Katarina’s rebellion, the number of corrupted nobles had sharply dropped. However, that resulted in a shortage of human resources, and the chaos in the upper echelons was still continuing. Even so, this was not hindering the lives of regular citizens in the slightest, so you could say that the people who avoided the purge were quite exceptional.

Then again, there were many things that became possible without the restrictions previously imposed, and the established laws with all their precautions were beginning to really show.

「Brother, thank you for waiting.」