The Duke’s Daughter Is Hated

Chapter 36

Life on the frontier of Seanno Barsheikh ②

Translated by KaiesV
Edited by KaiesV

My days as a lowly knight are unimaginable from my days as a prince. I felt the awesomeness of the commoners in having to do everything by myself.

On a knight’s salary alone, it is hard to eat out every day. But to be honest, I could hardly cook at all, so at first I ate out all the time. Along the way, I managed to start cooking, though only grilling meat or something like that, just to see what I could do. I realized how great the cooks in the royal castle were.

I felt ashamed to realize that I had been narrow-minded when I spent my time as a prince. My world was infinitely small, and I wasn’t willing to see anything but my own small world. That’s why, I wasn’t even going to look at my sister-in-law’s view of Ottilie Shefinko, except to say.

If I looked outside, even a little bit, if I didn’t believe everything my sister-in-law said—— I would have stayed on as a prince.

I guess I never really know what life is going to be like. My current situation is self-inflicted, but that’s what I thought.

「——Hey, you.」

As a lowly knight, I just spend my time. In the midst of it all, a man spoke to me. The guy smirked and looked down at me. I didn’t like the way he looked at me.

I had a bad feeling about this and tried to walk away, ignoring the man. But the man stood in front of me.

「I heard that you are a former prince from the Royal Capital? Maybe you’re in a remote place like this after he fucked with a Duke’s daughter? You got what you deserved.」

He seems to have a good grasp of my situation. It’s not strange because there’s no one here that doesn’t know what I have done.

And the guy was in action before I could say anything.

It was only after my body was lifted into the air and hit the wall that I realized I had been kicked as hard as I could. The blow of a strong man with a strong body easily sent my body flying.

Even though I have been training my body as a lowly knight, I had been living comfortably as a prince, and those who had been living as a knight all their lives would say that I had not been trained at all.

This man wanted to get rid of his melancholy. He assaults my fallen body. The pain paralyzes my senses.

——The man kicks and punches me, stating that I ruined the life of one lady, Ottilie Shefinko, and that I deserved this kind of gloom and doom.

In the end, I don’t think the reason was important. I just know that this guy is beating me up out of melancholy, or out of a desire to hit someone as hard as he can.

I am popular around here, but no one wants to help me. Maybe this is a natural consequence of what I have done.

I’d have tuned it out too if I had a partner in front of me who did that kind of thing and people around me shunned him. And I would have scoffed at it, saying that I deserved to be beaten. I would be passed off like that because that’s what people around them say and because it’s easier. It is the same as the aristocrats who were influenced by and sympathized with Ottilie Shefinko as a “villainess” by me and my sister-in-law.

It was only natural that people around me and my sister-in-law would agree with what I said, especially if someone with power said it. I did not understand such a natural thing.

In other words, what he was doing to me now is a deserved retaliation for what I have done.

I start to feel faint.

In the midst of all this, I heard a voice saying,「Stop!」Don’t tell me you’re trying to stop me from getting beat up? That’s the kind of thinking I do. But my eyes are about to close. My body throbs with pain. I can’t stay conscious.

——And just like that I lost consciousness.

When I next woke up, I saw an unknown ceiling. I was surprised to realize that I was lying in a strange place.

I wondered if someone had carried me out of consciousness.

It was a bleak room. The room was so full of life that I had no idea whose house it was. I didn’t think anyone would take me home.

As I looked around, the door to the room opened.

Then a slender man appeared. His hair was brown. A man with no particular features looks at me and asks if「I’m okay.」

I nodded my head and the man smiled.

「That’s good. I had the doctor look at it, and he said if you just stay quiet for a week or so, you should be fine.」

「…You brought me here?」

「Yeah. Because I saw you, as expected.」

The man said this as if it were nothing.

He was not scoffing at the idea that I should be beaten up. It’s not that they don’t want to be involved with someone like me and they don’t respect me.

This man—— Cody, and that is how I met him.