Flirting With the Villain’s Dad

Chapter 9

I looked at the emperor with my face half covered by the handkerchief so he could just see my eyes.

Now that I’d recovered, his flustered expression from earlier had disappeared. The languid look in his eyes returned.

“Uh…” I hesitated, unable to answer. Sensitive to mana? What did that mean? “I don’t know anything about that…”

“You don’t?” The emperor quirked a brow. I curled up in surprise.

His eyes went from looking as relaxed as a cat in the sun to something sharp. It was only a split second, but the change embedded itself in my brain. He truly was an emperor. He was the master of Bellecourt, the eastern powerhouse of Rhyger.

I shook my head. “Nothing like this has ever happened before.”

Of course, I had only been Yerenika for the past eight months. I had no idea if Yerenika was secretly suffering some kind of disease. But nothing had happened for the last eight months…

“Rolf, what happened here?” the emperor turned to someone and asked. I followed his line of sight and jumped in shock to see the old man who had touched my forehead earlier.

The pain had gotten worse after he touched me. I was sure of it! Instinctively, I narrowed my eyes.

The old man, Rolf, waved his hands at being on the receiving end of my glare and defended himself. “Nothing at all. Someone more sensitive to mana than the average person could certainly show this kind of reaction.”

“Is it possible for someone to be unaware of this kind of sensitivity?”

“If they grew up without being exposed to mana, perhaps…” Rolf snuck a glance at me.

I growled. What? What!

“Then why did her condition suddenly improve?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know… If I was to give Her Highness a more detailed examination, perhaps I could find out, but seeing as it would be difficult for me to make any contact…”

Rolf bowed his head, flustered. It seemed that the old man used magic.

That struck me. Sure, Brigitte Wants to Be Happy was set in a fantasy world full of mana—the mysterious force of nature itself—but Livovny had a shortage of mages, and the land itself wasn’t exactly overflowing with mana ore, so I just hadn’t known.

The emperor sighed. “Regardless… This means it will be difficult to use another magic circle. Since we’ve crossed the border, we ride out on our mounts from here.”

“Yes, Sire.”

The amaranthine eyes turned to me again. “Ah. You seemed… unused to horses as well. Tsk.”

I repressed my hiccups and shook my head. “I can ride.”

“For someone who can ride horses, you seemed quite terrified.”

“W-well, I can’t ride one alone, but…” I buried my face in the handkerchief and snuck a glance at him. I felt like the biggest inconvenience. Suddenly getting sick, not being able to ride a horse…

Wait, why do I have to worry about whether I’m inconveniencing my kidnapper in the middle of my kidnapping anyway?

“Then the princess rides with me,” the emperor announced, providing a solution like it wasn’t a huge deal.

This is all because he’s too nice. He’s too nice to be a kidnapper. Did Theresia get this kind of friendly treatment in the original plot…?

I searched hard through my memories.

“Theresia sat blankly in a rickety cart. They had crossed the border in the blink of an eye after passing through a magic circle. As soon as they had crossed the border, the emperor of Bellecourt had shoved her into a prison cart. It was better treatment for an expectant mother than riding a horse, but there was no comfort to be found for the victim of a kidnapping.”

I tilted my head in confusion. It was hard to tell just from that passage.

The previous emperor of Bellecourt had about as much of a role in Brigitte Wants to Be Happy as Yerenika had. There was no way his personality would have made an appearance.

“If we ride straight through, we should arrive the day after tomorrow. Get up.”

But the man who would become the villain Dekalb’s father could be a kinder and more considerate person than I expected.

I gave the outstretched hand a blank stare. Considering how Dekalb's obsessions showed every sign of stemming from extreme emotional deprivation, I expected his father to be frigid, but it didn’t seem that way.

For now, anyway.

“Thank you…”

I forced my hand to move and take his. I didn’t know how, but this hand had saved me from that hellish agony I’d felt earlier. And now, the firm, steady hand helped me to my feet.

My legs buckled a little, but I was able to stand on my own two feet for the first time in a while. And for the first time, I stood face-to-face with the emperor of Bellecourt. Of course, he was so tall that I had to tilt my head pretty far back.

After some hesitation, I mustered the nerve to open my mouth. “You don’t have any plans to return me to Livovny, do you?”

He didn’t answer, but his intentions were clear on his stunningly beautiful face. No matter how kind or considerate he seemed, he was still the man who had held Theresia captive for ten years.

I shouldn’t have gotten kidnapped, I sobbed in my head.

The emperor, on seeing my face crumble, slowly replied, “I will if the negotiations with Livovny go smoothly.”

It was still too gentle of a tone to believe it came from the heinous kidnapper who would later become the father of an evil villain.

I felt a strange feeling sweep through me. My Plan B had gone in a completely unexpected direction, but wasn’t this man one of the people I wanted to save? He was to be brutally murdered by his son before the age of forty.

“I swear you will be safe, on Bellecourt’s name.” His languid eyes curved attractively. Then again, you could never go wrong with a hottie’s smile.

But the emotion I was feeling was a bit more multifaceted than that. It was a strange, nostalgic, yet sorrowful emotion. It was an emotion that the only person in the world who knew how his life would end could feel.

That was… well, I guess it was like a kind of responsibility, just like I had felt toward Theresia.

The emperor gave me a laidback smile. “May I ask for your cooperation until then, Princess?”

I stared back at him silently.

“Well, I suppose it can’t be helped if it sounds like a threat.”

He shrugged when I couldn’t give him an answer. But the reason I kept quiet wasn’t because of what he said; it was because a newfound realization had crossed my mind.

I didn’t even know the name of the man I wanted to save. It hadn’t appeared in the novel.

My words slipped out without a filter. “Excuse me, Father.”

“Fa—?”

“What is your name?”

He instantly looked very flustered, but I missed my slip of the tongue when I addressed him once again. Instead, I stared at him with burning determination in my eyes, and he answered reluctantly.

“Euredian.”

“Euredian…?”

“Euredian Louis Soledor de Bellecourt.” The name rolled off his tongue smoothly.

“Euredian,” I repeated his name to myself. I liked how it rolled off my tongue without catching.

I sniffed through my stuffy nose and opened my mouth. It wasn’t intentional, but I sounded stuffy. “You,” sniff, “already seem to know, but my name is Yereninovika Sofya Livovny.”

We would be seeing each other often from now on, so exchanging names was just basic etiquette. I had a strong feeling that this man and I wouldn’t be able to separate for some reason.

Why? Perhaps I’d already known instinctively by then what strange events would unfold next.

“I’m in your care.”

“Mm… The same, Princess.”

I smiled through the tears drying on my face. It failed to cross my mind that it might look a bit like something out of a horror movie.

That was probably why the emperor’s face stiffened awkwardly.

* * *

The Bellecourt guerilla troops moved swiftly. As if he recalled that I’d whined about how much pain I had been in, the emperor removed his plate armor, and thanks to that, I was able to travel comfortably—

Yeah, right!

The emperor spoke in a flustered voice. “Relax a little, Princess. If you keep sitting so stiffly, you’ll hurt your back—”

“Nope! I’m totally fine!” I shouted with a face that was most assuredly not fine.

There was no way I’d be able to travel with this man’s arms around me, even if it was a matter of life or death. Without his plate armor in the way, our bodies were way too close. No, there was basically no distance between us at all.

In other words, as the horse galloped, I could feel every movement in his body.

I felt the firmness of his muscles through the thin black top he wore. As if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, I caught his clean, refreshing scent with every breath I took. Apparently, he didn’t even sweat.

For some reason though, just inhaling the scent made me feel good. It felt energizing. I took a deep breath of the fascinatingly clean and refreshing scent. After doing that a few times, a distressing thought shot through my mind. Had I always been such a maneater?!

My face flushed bright red. I couldn’t believe I was riding a horse pressed right up against a man I wasn’t related to. Then again, considering I’d never dated anyone in my twenty-five years and eight months of life, this was an extremely embarrassing situation for me.

But after almost tipping off of the horse while trying to fan my flushed face, I had no choice but to lean back into his arms, squirming from the embarrassment sweeping through me.

This is so humiliating!

There were too many variables I hadn’t expected.

A few hours later, I was moaning like I was on the verge of death. “Mmph…” I gasped.

My head ached as though it was being crushed in a vice. I felt like my brain was going to burst. My vision swam from the pain. Folding over, I barely managed to reach my hand out.

“How strange,” the emperor mumbled as he took my hand. The moment our hands touched, the headache disappeared.

Panting heavily, I crawled over to him on my knees. Forget humiliation. I thought I would die if I didn’t bury myself in his arms.

“Hngh…”

“Why’s she so sensitive, Rolf?”

Overly kind, the emperor didn’t push me away. He wrapped a firm arm around me, and I caught my breath as he pulled me against his chest. The aftershock of the terrible agony that had enveloped my entire body came in the shape of goosebumps prickling down my back and a tremor quivering in my arms and legs.

At this rate, I might just die before I ever had the chance to rescue the villain’s dad.