This Villainess Wants a Divorce!

Chapter 8

Stones that glowed subtly were embedded in the underground passageway. Wow, are these magic stones? I had never seen this many magic stones before. I was excited.

“Hurry up.”

“Oh. Yeah!”

Caesar sharply reprimanded me when I got distracted by the magic stones. I heard a sigh in front of me—he sounded like he regretted bringing me.

My fascination soon passed. The cramped passageway could hardly fit one adult man, and it was harder than I thought to walk such a long distance. I felt like I could become claustrophobic.

Just when I was fearing I might suffocate, the exit appeared. A rope ladder dangled from the door above us.

“It’s heavy. I’ll go up first to open the door. Follow me after.”

“Okay!”

I was overjoyed since I would soon be outside. Caesar gripped the rope ladder with one hand and used the other hand to push against the stone ceiling.

Wow, that looks so heavy, but he can push it with one hand!

I climbed up the ladder behind Caesar. It was dark when we got out, but that was because we were inside the base of a tree trunk. Obviously, there were a lot of bugs, and right in front of my face, a six-legged friend greeted me with a flick of its antennae.

I screamed and leaped out. “Aaaah!”

There was nothing more I hated in this world than many-legged creatures. I felt goosebumps run up my back.

As I basically tumbled out, Caesar followed behind me in a leisurely manner.

“What’re you doing?”

“T-the bugs.”

“Well. I’m glad it sounds like you won’t want to come with me again. Follow. We need to go down the mountain.”

At the mention of a mountain, I feared we would have to walk a long way again, but thankfully, it was more like a hill than a mountain. A neighborhood appeared halfway down. It was just past lunchtime, and the village was bustling with life.

“Wow,” I said.

“What’s so impressive?”

“It’s just... I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Even if I was from an impoverished family, Carnelia Easter was still a noble daughter. Visiting a commoner neighborhood had obviously been forbidden. But that was also partially my fault—the shock of being dropped into a storybook world had made me uninterested in exploring.

The village setting reminded me of what I had seen in RPG games, and it made me realize that I really was inside a fantasy novel. My eyes grew wide as we left the residential area and entered the business district.

“Look, there’s a blacksmith!” I exclaimed.

“Have you never seen a blacksmith before?”

“Of course I haven’t!”

Merchants hawking goods in their stalls were a common sight in my past life, but I had truly never seen a blacksmith before. The blacksmith struck a piece of metal with a hammer. His arm muscles rippled.

I’ve only ever seen that in RPG games or movies! I stared agog at the blacksmith.

Suddenly, Caesar grabbed my hand. It was the first time he had initiated touch with me. When he saw my look of surprise, he quickly uttered an excuse.

“I only grabbed onto you because you’re not following me. You keep looking around! What if you get lost here? Do you want to become an orphan in the middle of this market?”

“Oh, sorry.”

Caesar grumbled, but he walked slowly to let me enjoy the sights. Oh, the personality of a protagonist...

The street merchants sold strange foods that I had never seen before. They even grilled twitching bugs. Barf. I turned away hastily.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“The mercenary guild’s building.”

“Oh, to your teachers?”

“Well... I wouldn’t call them my teachers.”

“Wow. I want to meet them too.”

In the story, Caesar learned useful battle skills like swordsmanship from the mercenaries he befriended at a young age. My heart skipped a beat when I imagined I would get to meet these storybook characters. I wanted to talk to them.

“I’m warning you, though—you’d better not say you’re my wife or any nonsense like that.”

“But it’s not nonsense,” I argued. “It’s the truth.”

“J-just don’t!”

His concern was sensible, considering the mercenaries didn’t know Caesar was a prince yet. It would be ridiculous if a twelve-year-old child who was neither a noble nor an imperial family member already had a wife.

In the story, Caesar’s identity was revealed to them after he was pushed onto the battlefield and happened to bump into the mercenaries who were a part of the war. So, for now, I needed to keep quiet for the sake of the novel’s plot.

I obediently scurried after Caesar. Then, something caught my eye.

“Huh?”

Tornado potatoes! What kind of fantasy world has tornado potatoes? I never knew I would see them here—definitely not in this world. Do they have a potato-cutting machine in this world? Or do they cut it like this by hand?

I was delighted to see a food from my homeland here. I let go of Caesar’s hand and went closer. I would’ve been happy to eat some, but I was even more thrilled to just see them here.

“Caesar, do you want to eat... Oh!”

But right then...

The crowd was large, but it had been moving in an orderly fashion up until now. Suddenly, it stirred, as if moved by a large wave. Someone next to me jostled my balance, and I was quickly buried underneath that wave.

Soon, I learned the reason for all the commotion.

“Hyah! Out of the way, you lowly things!”

Is it because this is a storybook world? What a cliché line. I hadn’t seen anything yet, but I could guess what was happening.

A lavishly dressed nobleman on horseback cut through the middle of the market. If anyone got crushed by that giant horse, they would die in vain with only a few coins as compensation. Luckily, I was at the edge of the road, so I didn’t need to worry about being trampled to death. The nobleman disappeared after making quite a fuss.

There was, however, a problem.

“I only grabbed onto you because you’re not following me. You keep looking around! What if you get lost here? Do you want to become an orphan in the middle of this market?”

Caesar’s nagging seemed to ring in my ears. Oh crap. I only let go of his hand for a moment. How was I supposed to expect this to happen?

Caesar was nowhere to be found amidst the large crowd. The mob had probably pushed him in a different direction.

I’m screwed.

I buried my face in my hands.

* * *

This happened every now and then. Caesar had witnessed similar incidents before—some snobby son of some noble family would cut through the middle of the road without a care.

Caesar secured a safe spot off to the side. It would have meant trouble if the noble son had seen him, but he hadn’t, so it didn’t matter. Caesar would have proceeded on his way as usual if it weren’t for the fact that the warmth in his left hand had disappeared.

He gazed at his empty palm and clenched his teeth. “That girl... I told her not to cause trouble.”

He couldn’t help but feel heavily irritated, even though it wasn’t her fault that she’d been swept away by the unexpected situation. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought her with me.

But still...

“I want to leave the palace too.”

“Look, there’s a blacksmith!”

At first, when she said she’d been waiting there for three days, he’d wondered whether those had been the empress’s orders. It made no sense for her ladies-in-waiting to have let her do that, so it would’ve been impossible unless the empress had given special permission.

However, the other possibility was that she had come to him because she actually wanted to explore outside the palace, and Evgenia was simply taking advantage of it. The information the empress had gained from having him followed didn’t seem to have satisfied her. But if he took the girl outside the palace, the empress would learn of everything he had been doing.

Caesar thought the second possibility was more likely. The girl’s miserable face when she’d said it was suffocating inside the palace reminded him of himself. He remembered when she’d moaned that she wanted to go home and when she’d looked for her mom.

He couldn’t imagine how suffocating it would be to remain in the palace all day after growing up freely in the countryside. That was why he thought it might have been nice to let her see what it was like out here, at least once. They just had to avoid doing anything that the empress would hear about.

“Promise you won’t cause trouble.”

He had been confident nothing would happen as long as he was careful. But he’d been wrong to think that.

Caesar sighed deeply. “Haah...”

He looked far and wide, but there was no small head of pink hair to be seen. She had to be quite far off if he couldn’t see a color as conspicuous as pink. Calling her name would be useless. He was in the middle of a busy market.

If she’s sensible, she’ll go find a security guard.

If she told a security guard who she was and asked for protection, she would be able to return to the palace unharmed. She seemed intelligent at least. He doubted she would do something foolish that would lead to her getting hurt.

She promised she wouldn’t be a nuisance. She’ll take care of herself.

And so, Caesar headed for the mercenary guild building as he had originally planned. He had wasted more time than usual because he’d slowed down to match her speed.

Suddenly, Caesar stopped in his tracks. What if she’s just sitting there instead of looking for a guard? What if she gets into some awful trouble before she finds a guard? What if the guard doesn’t believe who she is?

All sorts of bad ideas flooded his mind. The problem was that none of them were entirely unreasonable. The chances of a clueless noble daughter, who had been raised with sophistication, encountering trouble were very high.

Caesar looked back where he had come from—the spot where their hands had broken apart was far away.