It had been a few weeks since Ichiro went to help with the war against Kalusia, and after lina received his first ssage talking about lesser demons, she felt worried every day.
She knew that Ichiro was downplaying the situation so that she wouldn’t worry, which ant that the battle was worse than she would have expected.
lina knew Ichiro like the back of her hand. Even though they had only spent a little over one year together, she always felt like she knew everything about him.
At one point, she began having the sa nightmares that she used to have before eting Ichiro. Dreams where she found herself in another body, in another world, sharing mories with a man with the sa na.
The princess always knew that her dreams had aning to them, but she could never rember their most important details as her mind would get quite foggy after waking up from such dreams.
Yuki and Eve, her roommates, started to get worried for her after seeing her depressed attitude.
They had been sharing the room for so ti now, and even when lina was frustrated or angry about her classes, she still had an enthusiastic and energetic aura emanating from her.
However, after the war with Kalusia started, she had been more llow and absent-minded.
Every night, lina would sit outside on the balcony of their room and listen to Ichiro’s music box before going to bed, as if it soothed her worries for so ti.
Her two roommates knew about the war and about Ichiro’s participation in it since lina vented with them when it happened, but they had no way of raising her spirits.
"I can’t bear seeing her like that..." said Yuki to Eve as they both stared at lina, who was standing outside on the balcony listening to Ichiro’s music box.
"Well, what can we do? I would be worried too if I was in her position..." the elf princess replied.
"I know. I’m not saying I don’t understand her. I just don’t like seeing her like that..." said Yuki.
The two roommates kept discussing with each other, thinking of different ways to raise lina’s spirits, not knowing that one of Luca’s lackeys had been eavesdropping on them once again.
The dark-haired eavesdropper was a boy nad Marco, who was the son of a duke in the nation of Vista and close friends with Luca.
His father had tasked him with becoming good friends with Luca as it would benefit him in the future when he beca the ruler of Vista, so the boy always bent over backward for any of Luca’s requests.
After the green-haired boy showed his interest in Princess lina, Marco thought it would be a good idea to find out more about her and help his friend et his future wife.
Luca shared his room with Marco and another boy from Vista called Enzo, who was the son of the ruler’s advisor and right-hand man and was the most llow out of the three.
When Marco ca into the room, he began divulging what he had overheard in the princesses’ room, saying that he had heard that lina was feeling depressed about the man Ichiro going to war.
Luca had asked his friend Enzo to look into Ichiro, which proved to be an easy task since plenty of people at the Sephyr Kingdom knew about him.
Enzo had spoken to the people at the adventurers guild and found out that Ichiro had achieved the rank of adamantite adventurer along with the princess, which surprised Luca as he was only silver-ranked.
He said that so people called him the "princess’ companion," others called him a "saint," and had even heard a rumor of soone saying that he believed that Ichiro was a demi-god.
*Pffft* Luca scoffed. "A demi-god? He probably only got adamantite rank thanks to the princess’ powerful magic..." he replied, trying to cope with the information.
Enzo kept elaborating calmly, explaining that he had looked at the records at the adventurers guild that talked about how Ichiro had helped dispatch a Kraken, a mithril basilisk, a wyvern, among other S-ranked monsters.
Luca was perplexed. If the information was real, then there was no way that he could compete for lina’s love against a monster like that.
However, Marco gave him the news about Ichiro being stuck at the war against Kalusia with the Droman Empire and Aridonia, so Luca got more hopeful about his chances with lina.
"If she is feeling sad, maybe I should give her a gift..." Luca pondered out loud before shooting a look at Enzo.
"Can you find out what she likes?" the green-haired prince asked his friend, who nodded and left the room.
__________
The following day, lina was walking to class through one of the academy gardens and saw a beautiful girl with long, straight, light-blue hair sitting alone on a bench with a dejected expression.
Not being able to ignore her, lina approached her and spoke softly, asking if she was okay.
The girl raised her gaze, letting the princess get a better look at her violet eyes, and opened her eyes with amazent.
"Wow, your eyes are pretty..." lina muttered, but the girl seed too shy to take the complint and turned her head embarrassed.
"Ah, sorry! I didn’t an to sound rude..." the princess continued, waving her hands.
The girl introduced herself as "Keiko," the 5th princess of Lotus.
Lotus was a small nation next to Kyotora that shared lots of its customs and values, and the girl had been sent to the academy as she demonstrated that she had a good aptitude for magic.
However, the girl had been feeling out of place at the academy, feeling like so classes were too easy and others too hard.
lina felt sothing similar, explaining that she had been trying to cope with the classes as she found them incredibly boring and outdated, making Keiko laugh.
The two girls decided to skip their class and hung out on the bench for so ti, sharing their knowledge of magic and monsters.
Keiko was a silver-ranked adventurer in her country, so he showed her admiration for lina being adamantite at such a young age, but the silver-haired princess gave all the credit to Ichiro, saying that she wouldn’t even have signed up if it wasn’t for him.
As the two girls kept leisurely talking, Luca spotted them from afar and asked Enzo to retrieve the gift he had gotten for lina, giving him a small box with a ribbon on top.
It was a box of chocolates that he had gotten from a new popular shop in town, saying that people were in line just to get a single ration.
The green-haired prince walked confidently towards the two girls and stopped before them, holding the gift in a sowhat arrogant manner.
"Hi there, ladies. I noticed a cute pair of won like you could use sothing sweet..." he said, making lina and Keiko stop their conversation and turn to look at Luca with a bit of confusion.
"Here you go..." He continued, giving lina the box of chocolates.
lina stared at the box briefly and smiled. "Ah, it’s End Town chocolate!" she exclaid, taking the gift and showing it to Keiko.
"This is what I was telling you about. After Ichiro and I made different sweets with these, we both got the Chocolatier title!" lina continued, completely ignoring Luca as she showed Keiko the box.
Realizing that Luca was still standing there waiting for them, lina said a quick "thanks," grabbed Keiko by the arm, and pulled her to her room so they could share the chocolate.
Marco approached Luca from behind, who stood in the sa spot as his body trembled.
"I suppose it went well. I saw her smiling all the way from back there..." Marco comnted before noticing Luca was showing his teeth with anger and frustration.
’Maybe not...’ the dark-haired boy thought as a small drop of sweat ca down his temple.
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