Target (1)
“Making an old man like me do such grueling physical labor. How heartless.”
“Weren’t you the one who said you were still in your prime?”
“Prime? Does that mean you can work me to the bone? A young person with such a rigid way of thinking already—I'm worried for this country's future. Truly worried.”
Sage gritted his teeth as he dug into the earth with his shovel.
He paused while planting seedlings in the dirt and whipped his head toward me.
“This is elder abuse, you know!”
“Didn’t you call it employment fraud before?”
“It’s both! Both!”
“Is that so?”
I shrugged at Sage, who was shouting from the shade.
“Strictly speaking, it’s not employment fraud. Now, impersonating a job… that might be different.”
I was the one who fell for employment fraud.
Sage’s eyebrows shot up dramatically.
“Oh ho? Listen to you talk. Birds of a feather, I suppose. That one’s got quite the temper too.”
Even as he grumbled, he tended the garden with more diligence than usual.
“Grandpa, what’s this?”
“Hey! You little shit-puppy! Don’t touch that! It’s poisonous!”
“Hmm? What’s poisonous? Can you eat it?”
Sage scooped up Emilia, who had been squatting beside him.
He snatched the tiny seedling from her hand and tossed it to the ground.
“Hey! What kind of nanny are you, leaving the child unsupervised like this? You should be holding her or carrying her on your back!”
“Unsupervised? I’ve been watching her the entire time.”
And it wasn’t as if I wanted to let Emilia run wild like this.
But the princess herself threw a tantrum, insisting she wanted to play next to this cranky old man. What was I supposed to do?
“Her Highness seems to like you more than me, so I had no choice but to step back and leave her in your care.”
“What? Hah, that’s ridiculous.”
Sage let out a dry laugh before finally hoisting Emilia onto his back.
“Honestly, people who don’t even know how to look after children volunteering to do so… tsk tsk. Listen here, you little shit-puppy. I’ll carry you, so stop picking up random things and putting them in your mouth. Got it?”
“Mmm, Ria likes Cloud Grandpa!”
“…Sigh. What kind of hardship is this in my old age? My back is going to give out. It’s bending already.”
Supporting Emilia’s bottom with one hand, Sage began organizing the scattered seedlings with the other.
“Edwin’s lesson begins in thirty minutes, so please finish up by then.”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it! You don’t even do any work and all you do is nag!”
I watched the grumbling Sage for a moment before tilting my head up to gaze at the sky.
It had already been four days since we returned from Luxen Village.
On the surface, our days looked as monotonous as ever, but quite a lot had happened in that short time.
The most surprising thing was that the Adamanth King sent someone.
Just yesterday, the King of Adamanth and his knight order, who had been visiting the Ventrum Empire, finally departed.
And two days before that.
The Adamanth King had sent a messenger to the Third Prince’s Palace.
His name was Oliver, wasn’t it?
I recalled the face of the rather awkward-looking knight.
He had shown up out of nowhere, smiled sheepishly, and apologized for the sudden visit.
“I heard His Highness the Third Prince was ill for a couple of days. Is he feeling better now?”
What did it matter to him whether a foreign prince was sick or not?
Especially since it wasn’t even the First or Second Prince, but the Third Prince—who couldn’t even participate in the succession struggle.
“His Majesty the King regrets that he couldn’t come visit in person and asked me to convey his apologies.”
Along with his lord’s message of regret, Oliver handed over a large box as a get-well gift before disappearing.
The contents of the box were, surprisingly, a bow and arrows.
I thought a country famous for its knights would send a sword.
I never expected a bow and arrows as a gift.
Or maybe he knew and chose them on purpose?
Edwin had never learned swordsmanship.
Perhaps the King of Adamanth had known that and deliberately sent the bow and arrows.
Though if you asked whether Edwin had learned archery, the answer was no to that as well.
What a strange man.
I remembered those golden eyes that had smiled at me while carrying the familiar scent of soap.
He felt less like a king and more like a king of mercenaries.
I shook off thoughts of the Adamanth King and turned my head.
Hmm, interesting. Has it increased?
The number of gazes I felt beyond the wall had grown from one to several.
One is the original. Where did the others come from?
Ideally, I wanted to grab them right now and interrogate who sent them, but that would be difficult.
Right now, I was not the assassination squad leader—I was the prince’s nanny.
They haven’t caused any real trouble yet, so I’ll just keep an eye on them for now.
Frowning, I rose from my seat.
“Thirty minutes have passed!”
“Yeah, I heard you!”
At my words, Sage threw off his gloves in irritation.
I took Emilia from him as he hurried past me and saw him off.
Another day at the Third Prince’s Palace was passing by quickly.
Thud.
Sage closed the Imperial language grammar and writing textbook with a loud snap.
It was a simple textbook that other princes would have graduated from by age five or six, but not Edwin.
The previous tutor hadn’t been particularly enthusiastic, and Edwin himself had shown little motivation to learn. That was how things had ended up this way.
Yet in just one week as his teacher, Sage had managed to make the prince absorb years’ worth of stagnant Imperial grammar.
It was a feat worthy of his reputation as a great sage.
“Edwin, what do you want to become?”
At his teacher’s question, Edwin lifted his head.
The small hand holding the quill pen froze in place.
“…What I want to become?”
It was a question he had never heard in his entire life.
Edwin’s eyes filled with bewilderment.
“Why do you look like that?”
“…I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I’ve never thought about it before.”
Even though it was an incredibly simple question, the young prince couldn’t answer easily.
The answer Edwin eventually gave after long deliberation was not very satisfying from his teacher’s perspective.
“You’ve never thought about it? Why?”
“Emma—that is, my previous nanny—wanted me to go to the Holy Kingdom right after my coming-of-age ceremony. She said becoming a priest would be better for me than staying here…”
This time, Sage’s eyes clouded with surprise.
He wasn’t unaware of what kind of position the Third Prince Edwin held in the imperial palace.
Rachel had given him a heads-up beforehand, and just by observing the attitudes and glances of the external servants who came and went from the prince’s palace, he could roughly tell how things worked.
I understand why, but still…
The moment the Crown Prince was decided, it was imperial custom for the other princes to either inherit a noble title from their mother’s family or disappear without a trace.
So for the Third Prince, who had neither maternal relatives nor backing, the only way to survive was to abandon his status and wealth and become a priest in the Holy Kingdom.
Still, I expected him to say he wanted to become emperor, or a grand duke, or at the very least a knight.
No matter how much of a pushover he seemed, I thought being born a prince would give him at least that much spirit.
Hmm. This isn’t very fun.
Teaching a student without any goals was neither enjoyable nor rewarding.
Sage pondered for a moment before speaking.
“Is that what you want too?”
He picked up the holy scripture that had been sitting on the corner of the desk.
“If you become a priest in the Holy Kingdom, you must abandon both your status and your name. You can’t make friends or lovers. Family is out of the question. Do you want that kind of life?”
The path of a saint is noble and lonely.
That was why few people managed to walk it to the end.
Besides, even after his coming-of-age ceremony, Edwin was still just a boy of barely ten years.
To tell a boy who hadn’t even lived half his life to walk the path of a saint without question…
It was undeniably harsh.
“You’ll be alone until the day you die. Do you still want to become a priest?”
It wasn’t a threat—just the plain truth—yet the prince’s face turned deathly pale.
“N-no, I don’t want that.”
Sage burst into laughter at Edwin’s immediate reply.
“Good. Don’t underestimate the priesthood. It’s not a job just anyone can do.”
At his teacher’s words, Edwin muttered glumly.
“…Then what can I do?”
It was such an innocent question that Sage rested his chin on his hand and replied.
“That depends on how you think about it. You can be born a beggar and live like a rich man, or be born rich and end up a beggar. That’s life.”
Depends on how you think about it.
Edwin frowned at his teacher’s words.
Does just thinking about something make it come true?
Unwanted memories suddenly surfaced in his mind.
A father who always turned away from him. Brothers who seemed desperate to torment him.
His nanny Emma, whom he had desperately wanted to save but ultimately couldn’t.
Though it had only been twelve years, not once had his life ever gone the way he thought it would.
And yet he says life depends on how you think about it?
A surge of resentment and anger rose in his chest, but Edwin quickly calmed himself.
Because for the first time, something had happened exactly as he had wished.
“Rachel!”
He had called her name, hoping she would appear before him—and like magic, she had.
Her back as she single-handedly brought down that massive monster had looked larger than anyone else’s.
Edwin hesitated for a long time before finally speaking.
“Still… I have thought about what kind of person I want to become.”
At the prince’s words, Sage raised an eyebrow in surprise.
“Oh? What kind of person?”
“The strongest person in the world. Someone who can help others.”
Yes. Just like my nanny.
Edwin answered in a surprisingly confident voice.
His clear blue eyes shone brighter than they ever had before.