Monster Princess

Chapter 4

Translated by Schwarzel
Edited by Schwarzel

Monster Princess

Episode 4

‘Oh, I should have just taken a break in my room. I shouldn’t have come.’

I regretted it a little bit.

I wondered if I suddenly became sensitive that’s not suitable with the usual me because of my strange dream, or if my heart became weak from being sick that I had wanted to see my mother now.

I thought that the confusion that is still with me would go away after I talk to my mother just like when I was a child.

That’s why I came to the empress palace, but it seems like I was wrong.

“Sister!”

At that time, I heard a clear call from behind me.

I twisted my lips inadvertently.

That voice, needless to say, belonged to Millium.

I guess he saw me standing in front of the garden’s entrance a while ago.

“Prince, run slowly.”

As it was a child’s small stride, he would no longer be able to follow me if I ignored him and hurried to go out.

However, as soon as I heard the voice of Countess McNoah, Millium’s nanny, I stopped the thought.

I stopped walking and looked back.

“Sister Bella!”

Then, Millium running with a bright face was reflected in the view.

He staggered and ran right in front of me, he soon grabbed my leg and hung down.

Perhaps he touched the ground while making a flower wreath in the garden, so my skirt quickly became covered with dirt.

I wriggled my eyebrows looking down at the dirty skirt.

“Millium.”

However, I quickly smiled at Millium, skillfully hiding my irritation.

“I’m greeting the first princess.”

“I’m greeting the third prince.”

His maids who followed Millium greeted me and my maids did the same to him.

“Sister, you just came in here, right?”

With golden hair and red eyes, Milliam looked like a baby angel.

‘Of course. Except for the color of your eyes, you and I look alike a lot.’

So I’ve always been valuing Millium’s appearance.

“Why didn’t you say hello to me and just leave?”

But as soon as Millium asked me as if he had become a master that needs to receive a greeting, my patience quickly ran out.

I originally didn’t like children very much, and I especially couldn’t like the child in front of me.

My voice is much less sincere than before.

“I had a sudden headache and I was going to go back and rest today.”

“Really? Shall I say ‘ho’? Mommy said everything would be okay if I said ‘ho’.”

Oh, my god, what a stupid thing to say.

He had an angel-like pretty face and a smug expression. The condescending tone of the kid’s subject was quite a good match. I hate to say this, but it felt like I was seeing myself as a child.

“I’ll say ‘ho’ to you! I don’t usually do it to anyone, but sister Bella is especially pretty!”

The word “pretty” itself could have been a child’s compliment, but the unique arrogant tone and expression scratched my nerves.

Maybe my mother’s view of education is so consistent.

“Now, lower your head, quickly!”

Still, it is ridiculous to take such a serious reaction against a child.

However, my patience was tested once again as soon as Millium grabbed my hair with his dirty hands.

Perhaps because it was his mother and nanny that raised him, Milliam tended to be like a little tyrant. Hell, he’s already five years old, so he’s old enough to know that.

As soon as I let my guard down, a homophobia-like thing crept up my spine.

I must have expressed my feelings for a moment without realizing it. At the moment of our eyes meeting each other’s, Millium shuddered and his mouth curled.

I saw it and put a smile on my face again.

“Millium.”

When I laughed with a soft voice, Millium opened his mouth differently than before.

“I feel better now that you’re worried like this. Thank you for caring about your sister.”

“Uh, yeah!”

“But it’s rude to pull on hair so hard. Besides, it hurts. So why don’t you let go?”

Then Millium quickly let go of my hair.

Of course, I opened my mouth as soon as I realized that he must have heard it as something like a scolding.

“It’s because my sister didn’t listen to me! Because you didn’t bow your head quickly.”

“Yeah, I hear you. Good boy.”

I stroked Millium’s head like a dog’s.

There was no sincerity in my voice and gesture, but Millium showed a childlike appearance and smiled when he had opened his eyes.

“Is your mother still in the garden?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then be careful and go back.”

I smiled and said goodbye and turned around without any delay.

When Millium made a puzzled look as he didn’t realize I didn’t give him a greeting and that I was teasing him, our distance became wider.

As expected, a child is a nuisance.

I don’t even know how to deal with them.

“Marina, handkerchief.”

“Yes.”

As soon as I turned the corner, I reached out to Marina.

Then Marina handed me a handkerchief as if she had waited.

I got it and wiped my hair that Millium had just touched. There was no dirt, but I still felt dirty.

I even wiped my hands that touched Millium and returned the handkerchief I was holding to Marina.

“Get ready for a bath as soon as we get back.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Throw away the handkerchief.”

“Yes.”

Marina said nothing even though I was cold to my brother.

The same was true of the maids behind me. In the first place, I didn’t pick properties that would talk behind my back.

(tl/n: “properties” here is actually translated as ‘things’, but that would be too much since our princess Bella is not that evil to treat people as ‘things’. So ‘properties’ kinda fits better, at least for me.)

I felt chills when I remembered what happened.

Millium came after me as I was leaving the garden. At that time, his mother was with him. So my mother would know that Millium was coming after me.

But my mother didn’t come to see me with Millium.

It was too clear what that meant.

‘…It’s not funny to get hurt.’

Obviously, until five years ago, my mother and I were the best mother and daughter in the world.

My mother loved me, her only daughter, very much, and I had nothing to fear in the face of that unwavering affection. It was after I was diagnosed to have ‘a wizard’s fever’ that my mother stopped paying attention to me.

My fatal weakness that others don’t know. The reason why the future me that I saw in my dream has come to touch forbidden magic.

I walked out of the empress’ palace and clenched my fist painfully.

* * *

As I said before, the fever I’m frequently suffering now is not normal.

It’s a symptom of cracking the core of the heart that holds mana because it can’t handle the powerful mana in the body, and there’s no cure at this time.

So I had to suffer from a severe fever that seemed to burn my entire body from time to time, and sometimes I had seizures with terrible pain, like digging my chest into an awl.

After suffering from such an untreatable fever, I would lose all my mana one day, like water pouring out of a broken jar.

And that’s the day I’ll die.

There’s no creature in the world that can live without mana.

Of course, I had a very strong mana, so it won’t happen today or tomorrow, but no one could predict how long my mana would last.

It was the only and deadly tragedy of my perfect life.

So, my mother immediately made a second child without wasting a moment after the imperial wizards and lawmakers diagnosed me with the ‘wizard’s fever’.

That’s how Millium was born.

And she began to pour her affection for me into her second child, Millium.

Fortunately, Millium was born with mana not as good as I have.

So I guess she doesn’t need a daughter who’s defective anymore.

I’ve been the only one who has turned a blind eye to that fact.

“Marina… I guess I’ve been living the world so naively all this time.”

Marina, who was cleaning the teacup on the table, answered firmly as she muttered with remorse for her life.

“Don’t insult innocent people, Princess.”

The depression that was gently raising in my head went away.

Hey…

Aren’t you being too cold in front of the first princess?

“Well, that’s enough. Give me scissors.”

“Scissors? Where are you going to use it?”

Marina looked puzzled at my sudden words.

“I just, I want to cut something.”

As it has been, Marina brought me scissors without asking me twice.

Of course, I looked at myself with a mixture of still-questioning and a bit of anxiety.

I stood in front of the mirror with what she gave me.

“Why were you so proud of yourself every time I looked in the mirror?”

Long golden hair that reached my waist and blue eyes resembling a clear summer sky gave life to the cold face.

The dress, which emphasizes the loveliness of a young girl, is decorated with lace and ribbons, making the person in the mirror look like a pretty doll.

Living as an imperial princess, she was treasured and even the tip of her fingers are sparkling.

I already know it, but the girl in the mirror was surprisingly similar to my mother. Compared to my mother’s childhood portraits, I looked much more similar to her.

I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

I’ve heard so many people say I look like my mother.

In particular, the thin, long golden hair, like silk threads, sometimes made people misunderstand my mother and me when they saw our backs from afar.

I think I was quite proud of that because I liked my mother so much.

I, who admired the noble blood of the royal family more than anything else, had no dissatisfaction with the appearance that did not resemble the emperor.

Perhaps because of the change in my mind, the girl in the mirror, who seemed unfamiliar today, smirked.

Although I am an evil woman in the future, the truth is, I’m still a child craving attention.

But now I know.

‘No matter how hard I try, she will never love me again.’

I grabbed the scissors that Marina brought me.

With the other hand, I grabbed the hair that was once my pride together.

“P, Princess?”

Marina called me worriedly.

But it was extremely rare for me to reverse what I had already decided on.

Snip!

Soon, the silky golden hair was badly cut off and fell to the floor.

“……Kyaaaaaaaaaah!”