The Lady is a Stalker

At her words, Damien took the letter from her and read it again slowly.

She added with a confident expression to him who was reading the letter with a stern expression.

“I’m not good at writing, so it took me two days to write it.”

“…”

He read the letter with a serious expression once again and handed it to her with a sigh.

“Do you want to read it yourself? I really don’t know why you wrote this as a resignation letter.”

“…”

She thought it was a little annoying, but there was a possibility that the letter might look different. She took the letter, cleared her throat loudly, and began to read the letter she had written all night.

“Hello. I’ve been thinking about it for a few days and I don’t know how to express my feelings, so I’m writing this letter. I’m too embarrassed to tell you in words, so I thought the best way to express my feelings would be a letter…”

When Damian saw her reading the letter in a deadpan, mechanical tone, he looked bored. As she was reading the letter she herself wrote, enraptured, he suddenly stopped her with a wave of his hand.

“Wait for a sec.”

She was in the middle of her concentration when she was suddenly interrupted, so she looked at him with a slight frown.

“Why did you use those words?”

“What?”

“No, I’m embarrassed to say it in words? What are your feelings? Why did you use those words?” 

“I think it would be really awkward to say in person that I’m quitting. I am not a good partner either because I look hateful. No matter how much I decide to resign, the relationship between military and government does not disappear as long as Your Majesty is a member of the royal family. It means that I hesitated as much as possible to maintain the relationship.”

“…For now, just continue.”

He looked a little skeptical but seemed to understand what she said. She wondered why he stopped talking, but she immediately read the next sentence.

“I didn’t know how to convey my feelings all night long, so I stayed up all night thinking about you. I don’t know how many days I hesitated before even picking up the pen. I don’t think I’ll be able to convey all of my feelings through a letter like this. I hope you can understand my sincerity.”

“Wait a moment!”

“What else? This is an important part, so please don’t keep interrupting me.”

Why did he keep interrupting her? When she scolded him with a dissatisfied expression, he looked at her with a shocked expression.

“What did you mean by that?”

“It’s hard to say that you’re suddenly quitting work, so it means that I thought hard every night about how to end things in the most peaceful way. Did I say something I couldn’t do?”

“First, please listen to everything until the end and then judge.”

Damian looked at me with an expression of complete disbelief. Leaving him alone, who seemed a little dazed, she read the remaining sentences to finish the letter.

“…Although it ended up like this, I actually think of Your Highness as a very good person. Thank you for always trusting me and protecting me. I pretended not to, but I’ve always had good feelings for Your Highness… Why again?”

He didn’t stop her this time, but she had no choice but to stop reading because she felt their eyes staring at her. Damien said to her with a dumbfounded expression.

“It’s a confession of love.”

What on earth was this person misunderstanding? She opened her mouth to argue.

“I’m not a pervert, and there’s no way I could feel love for a fourteen-year-old. I’m not an adolescent who’s crazy about relationships, and you don’t think love is the only ‘good feeling,’ right?”

“…You and he are only two years apart from each other?”

“Anyway. And I like older people better than younger people.”

…He looked like he wanted to say more, but he seemed to be holding it in. She handed the read letter back to Damian and said,

“Well, what’s important about the content? What’s important is that this is a resignation letter.”

“…”

He accepted the resignation letter and didn’t even think about it, just looking down at it with a strange expression on his face. She handed out her resignation letter again, as if telling him to accept it quickly because her arm was sore.

The second-in-command, who was just looking at the paper she held out, shook his head.

“Sorry. I can’t accept this.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s not something I can decide on my own in the first place, and it’s beyond my authority. Besides, if you aren’t there when His Highness returns, won’t he think you left because I was harassing you?”

“…”

She barely managed to keep her mind from fading away. Yesterday was the deadline.

‘Damn…’

* * *

After that, she had really busy days.

It was only after the crown prince left that she realized his empty place. She could see how much work he had done on his own. There must be a lot of things to do as the crown prince besides Distian’s work, but handling this schedule alone made me wonder if he was even human.

Since the second-in-command was too strong on his own, the occasional advice he gave her became fixed, and at some point, she was doing something similar to his secretary. Every time she tried to run out because she couldn’t bear the heavy workload, he grabbed her arm like a zombie and said, ‘I’m already dead without you.’ It’s not even a battlefield.

Her conscience was pricked too much to leave him alone like that. Besides, wasn’t he the kind of person who couldn’t sleep properly without her? In any case, resignation seemed impossible until the crown prince returned.

She was mainly responsible for managing the budget and personnel. By hiring a professional to work in the kitchen, she was able to focus solely on work. Thanks to this, Distian seemed to be going well.

“Do you feel sleepy?”

“Huh.”

When she asked Damien, who was sitting at his desk dozing off in the spring sunlight, if he was sleepy, he answered in the affirmative as if he had been waiting for her. She took him, who was half asleep, and laid him down on the cot and covered him with a blanket.

“I’ll wake you up in an hour.” 

Then, when she half-heartedly patted his chest, he started shivering and looked at her with blurry eyes, and immediately fell asleep as if he had been cursed with insomnia. It has already been four years since the crown prince left. She was unintentionally faithful to the Crown Prince’s words to wait and not get married because she was too busy.

She had never been able to date, let alone get married. This was all because of this person in front of her.

Even if someone pinch his cheek out of resentment, he wouldn’t wake up. Normally, if someone tries to touch you while you are sleeping, you will unleash deadly force. It’s strange.

Nobles of this era generally married in their teens. Most of them were arranged marriages and were arranged for the benefit of the family, so they got married at a young age without knowing anything.

In the first place, she had no intention of marrying anyone, but people around her were whispering various stories about her because she did not have a special partner even after turning 20. The most likely theory was that she was unable to marry because she was still obsessed with the crown prince.

People who did not know the truth thought that she was not getting married because she had not yet won the crown prince’s heart. Um, well… she had always heard this, so it’s no big deal. However, no fish was interested in food that had already cooled down. Recently, a new trend had begun to emerge in the social world.

It may sound completely absurd, but rumors were going around that the deputy commander and she were having an affair. Since they were both non-married, they unintentionally stayed together until a late age without getting married, which led to strange rumors. Nonsense! There was surprisingly no pink air between them. Besides, Damian had no interest in human women.

Even when he saw the peerless Seherejad, who was invited to the Gun International Performance and was called the idol of the empire, he said, “Is she pretty?”, so she said nothing.

It did not mean that the eyes were high or low. He had no sense of coccyx at all. Even when he saw something gruesome, he didn’t feel anything strange, and even when he saw something beautiful, he felt indifferent.

It was for the first time that she realized that he was such a strange person after getting closer to him. Anyway, dating someone like that was impossible even for her.

In reality, Damien had no interest in her. It wasn’t until two years after she found out that he finally remembered her name. To him, she was just like an aroma that lulls him to sleep.

The promise she made before parting ways with the crown prince was not revealed to anyone. It wasn’t something she could brag about to others, and she didn’t have anyone close enough to talk about trivial things like that. And the biggest reason of all was that she didn’t believe him when he asked her to wait.

If she waited, what would happen after that? Maybe he wasn’t aware of it, or maybe he didn’t want to admit it, and even if he didn’t express it in words, it seemed like the crown prince liked her a little. However, he did not think that his feelings would remain unchanged even after the crown prince returned from training. Because the crown prince was only fourteen years old at the time, he would naturally forget the promises he made when he was young as time passed.

Moreover, the crown prince had a partner whose fate had already been decided. Even if he had a slight crush on me, the person of the opposite sex who was closest to his young heart for a while, he would eventually fall in love with the Elf Queen at first sight. Perhaps when he returned, he would be ashamed of the promise he made when he was young and would not be able to cover himself with the blanket at night? Or he could completely forget about it.

She wasn’t the kind of person who could fall in love with anyone anyway, and for the same reason she wouldn’t get married.

If she had a purpose, she could marry someone she didn’t love, but there was nothing she desperately wanted to gain by doing so. As a result, it looked like she was waiting for the crown prince, but it had nothing to do with him.

 

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Translator Note: