Chapter 4
Translator: wuttisyun
“Oh my God. You had a nightmare?”
“Then, shall we go to the Temple tomorrow with Tess to pick up some medicine? They say the medicine could make you fall asleep without any dreams.”
“No, it’s fine. Thank you, Hannah.”
After walking for a bit, we stopped in front of a room on the second floor. Hannah hesitated for a bit before grabbing my hand to ask if I was really alright. She seemed to be uncomfortable with the fact that a princess was cleaning.
“No matter how much we were going to clean, you don’t really need to help, Your Highness…”
“No. I’m going to do it.”
I claimed bravely, wiping the thought of the God who had just left me here from my head. How could I miss the big clean-up of Terena Palace. It only came once a year. Hannah opened the door with a sigh as she looked at me donning a casual dress.
‘The hinges must have been rusting.’
The door creaked open creepily. I peeked inside the room to take a look. I had been given a child’s body so my legs were really short. I didn’t have many maids and I couldn’t walk very far so I played around in the many rooms in this palace. Even so, this was the first time I had ever been to this room.
The room looked a little spooky because of the thick curtains.
“It’s a little cold here.”
“Right?”
Through the gaps between the curtains, sunlight pierced through and flooded the Alslai floor with light, revealing the dust covering the place.
“This room hadn’t been used for a long time.”
Hannah strode ahead and drew the thick curtains, saying she was getting goosebumps from this place. Unexpectedly, the room that was now lit by a blinding light was quite clean. Someone must have cleaned it from time to time.
“It’s very clean here. I guess this place has been cleaned all along.”
“Ah. Your Highness has never seen this place, right? This was the room Levitina stayed in.”
“Levitina…?”
“Her real name was Auresia.”
Ah. I let out a short exclamation.
‘That’s the name of my birth mother.’
I had forgotten it since the name she was more known for was different from her real name.
Consort Auresia. She was the Emperor’s 8th consort who left this place without turning back. She was my birth mother. As soon as I was born, she left me in the hands of the maids and the nanny without a hug goodbye.
I looked around the abandoned room. This Princess may look spoiled but this 13 year old lacked much needed love. Nothing she truly desired came to her. Not all parents loved their children unconditionally.
The room may have been spacious. But since it had been abandoned, it looked a little gloomy. Of course, all the important items have already been taken, so the space it left behind left a huge impact on the room.
Compared to mine, I could tell that this room was only decorated with simple decorations. Somehow, I thought the room didn’t suit my beautiful birth mother.
“Your Highness, I’ll mop the floor, so could you tidy up the bookshelf?”
“The bookshelf?”
“Yes. The books here belong to Auresia and I’m not allowed to touch them.”
Hannah selected an easier task to be given to me.
“That’ll be fun!”
She told me to tidy up the bookshelf but honestly, there’s nothing much to be tidied. The bookshelf looked as clean as ever. The books looked as good as new.
‘The bookshelf looks to be cleaner than the mopped floor.’
Looking at it, I could only let out a noise of surprise. But I understood where Hannah was coming from. Who would give their master work to do? So, since I had a conscience, I took out a book and cleared my throat. Hannah, who had been anxiously glancing at me several times now, finally left, saying she needed to go find a mop.
“… Wasn’t she too careful? I’m pretty sure I’m a good kid.”
The maids were sometimes so overprotective to the point of being annoying. They get ready to be ordered around whenever I drink tea. And whenever I wanted to go on walks, they would follow me around as a group. Sure, I’ve burned my tongue drinking tea and fallen into the pond trying to look at the silk carp up close before but, everybody makes mistakes, right?
When I was in fourth grade, I remember forgetting my uniform badge during the second semester and I had cried profusely. Even after working as an intern for 3 years, I still stuttered whenever making calls. But for one to be truly human, they must first make countless mistakes, right? Well, making these kinds of mistakes was only part of my growth as a human being.
“Hmm. Shall we read some books?”
The bookshelf that had been decorated with flowers and was loaded with books on flowers of numerous shapes and sizes. It was very telling what their owner liked. I traced the spine of each one with my fingertips.
“ ‘The Flower of the Empire’, ‘The Festival of Flower Showers and Liarty’s Flower’, ‘The Tears of Kshas’, ‘Don’t Capture that Knight’, what are all these? Are these novels?”
Most of the books were novels or books related to the Festival of Flower Showers which was a famous festival in this Empire. As I was looking through the encyclopedia I found from the bottom shelf, I suddenly felt something strange.
‘What’s this?’
I scanned the shelf with my fingertips from the first book to the last. Then, I picked out one of the books. As I flipped through the pages, nothing seemed to be amiss.
‘Then, what was it…?”
It wasn’t until I placed the book back into the shelf did I feel an overwhelming sense of dread. In the middle of the shelf, something had been wedged between two books, making its surrounding books bulge outwards.
“Oh, look what I found?”
Yes, this was a fantasy world. This kind of event should be a given. In a hurry, I took out the books surrounding the item before holding my breath. I took out the item to identify it.
“A diary?”
The small book was even smaller than the size of my 2 palms combined. On its cover ‘Paredae’s Top Secret Diary’ was written in the Imperial Language. This made it quite easy to determine what the book was.
Was this written by my ‘Mother’? I mean, this was her bookshelf, so most probably. Why was she hiding it? Who would want to see it? But in the end, I decided to choose the underhanded way of doing things and chose to hide it for now.
“Was it… an exchange diary?”
The novels that the maids read would always contain some knight falling in love with a lady who had a much higher social status. But they continued to fall in love through an exchange diary.
I walked past the haughty looking woman in the portrait. It wasn’t easy to communicate through an exchange diary. Diaries are originally meant to be quite secretive. Moreover, our servants wouldn’t be able to easily touch their master’s belongings. In other words, even if she didn’t hide the diary, the servants wouldn’t dare touch it.
‘Maybe because it was a matter of life and death.’
If not, why would she want to hide her diary? Could there be a good enough reason for why she needed to hide it while my birth mother was here? In this mysterious and secretive atmosphere, I opened the book. Pulling back the old leather that was used as the cover, I read the first page. And then…
“… The heck. There’s nothing here.”
Disappointed, I tilted my head and looked at my hands.
The diary was completely empty. Judging from how clean the parchment was, it was safe to assume that the book was new. But from the old leather covering the book and its worn-out edges, it was more plausible for it to have been used before.
‘I don’t think it’s because it had been preserved though.’
Maybe, there’s actually a hidden secret in here? Just like in movies, the writing could appear on the paper by bringing it close to fire or by shining a special light on it. I tried it out with the fire Hannah had lit in the old fireplace but no matter what I did, nothing appeared.
“… Sigh. This is not easy.”
Well, since this world was based on magic, approaching this problem with science would be quite difficult. Afterward, I poked a few holes in the paper but nothing happened.
“Did I make a mistake?”
I was all excited by myself but in the end, it could’ve all been for naught. Maybe she forgot to take it with her when she left. But why? I couldn’t just let this issue go. A strange feeling aroused in me as I tried to find out the contents of the diary. It was like something in the book was whispering to me.
“Anyways, this could possibly be important to Auresia.”
I didn’t know my birth mother that well. Actually, I don’t think my birth mother knows what I actually looked like since she had not come by to see me once after giving birth to me. My birth mother who was painted in the portrait looked nothing like me. Even if I were to pass her by, I wouldn’t recognise her.
But I knew her name. That could be used as a bridge for both of us to recognise and communicate with each other.
‘Of course, I was only talking about the ‘Auresia’ in the novel.’
The woman actually had many names. She was the woman who would whisper into the Emperor’s ears with that snake-like tongue of hers. She was a witch. A concubine and the one who helped the next Emperor sit on the throne. The next Emperor was a side character who would become a tyrant in the future. He was the craziest man in the novel. And this dangerous man was teamed up with the most cunning woman. He was either crazily like or heavily disliked by readers because he was such a strong villain character in the novel. You could tell just by looking at his face.
He could make people tremble with just a glance and collapse with just a smirk. He would tower over the corpses beneath his feet, holding a severed head in his hands. I’m sure out of the many times he caused trouble in the novel, the woman was behind his actions at least 5 times. She was that powerful of a woman in the novel.
The maids and my nanny remained hush about this but the fact is that I had been abandoned.
She made her attitude towards me clear by never seeing me, not even once. She considered me as something completely unrelated to her. Knowing her true character from the book, I knew that she could throw her children aside easily.
Out of the countless names she had and the memories I had of her, one thing remains true.
Auresia was a heartless woman.
But, why did that kind of woman leave behind a secret diary?
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