CHAPTER 189
“Why can’t you answer? I’m asking who’s prettier.”
“……Was it a contest of who’s prettier?”
Only after the obsessive question came once more did Eve come to her senses.
‘This won’t do! I need to make her chew the World Tree tea leaves—anything—quickly!’
Eve took a deep breath and made a decision.
“Roji.”
Eve grabbed Rosenitte by the shoulders, faced her head-on, and said,
“Where in the world is there anyone prettier than you, Roji? You’re a beauty so stunning the whole country could fall.”
“The country falls?”
“It means ‘a beauty that topples a nation.’”
At the side, Eve saw Mikael flinch in reaction.
She pretended not to notice.
‘Mikael, I’m sorry!’
There was no helping it.
In her heart, she wanted to shout at Rosenitte, ‘As if it would be you?’
But if she did, it felt like it would push Rosenitte into awakening as the Belladonna of the Empire.
She didn’t want to see that.
“Really?”
Getting the answer she wanted, Rosenitte became docile.
The sudden temperature shift almost caught Eve off guard, but she kept her composure.
“Of course. Naturally.”
She decided to press the advantage and become more proactive.
With the back of her hand, Eve stroked Rosenitte’s cheek and spoke as if she were the gentlest sister in the world.
“Oh dear, your skin is in bad shape. It’s clearly because you’re lacking nutrition, so it would be best to eat first.”
At Eve’s glance, Sylvestian brought the meal that had been on the table.
It was the same soup Eve had eaten this morning.
Eve even placed the spoon into Rosenitte’s hand herself.
“Hurry and eat.”
“Y-yeah.”
Seeing Rosenitte obedient like that made Eve’s mood turn strange again.
And while she sank into that uneasy feeling, Rosenitte began to complain about the food.
“Sis, this tastes weird. The soup is bitter.”
“Don’t spit it out—eat it. It’s good for your… no, your skin.”
It was because Eve had mixed in a whole lot of World Tree tea leaves.
She made Rosenitte gulp down the green soup to the last drop.
Then, as dessert, she even brewed tea and made her drink it, prescribing a high-concentration purification treatment.
“Now, let’s sleep.”
“I don’t want to sle—”
“Sleep!”
Without mercy, Eve put her to sleep with magic.
Only if Rosenitte slept could everyone be happy.
That way, Eve wouldn’t have to deal with any more scenes, and Rosenitte wouldn’t make as much of a spectacle either.
‘As expected, the best help she can be is sleeping.’
Leaving the sleeping Rosenitte behind, Eve stepped outside the tent.
As she panted with exhaustion, leaning on Mikael for support, Sylvestian lowered his head and offered thanks.
A wistful light flickered in Eve’s eyes as she looked at him.
“Sir Millard.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“You must have it hard.”
With his face slightly flushed, Sylvestian spoke as if apologizing.
“She is not normally like this. It seems she treated you without restraint because you are Her Highness the 7th Imperial Princess.”
“Yeah… right…”
Eve answered without soul, then leaned on Mikael as if relying on him and returned to her tent.
After dealing with a pretty yet mentally unsound—so to speak, beautifully crazy—disaster, she was exhausted.
Both body and mind were worn out, and Eve wanted to rest quickly.
When they reached the tent, Peony greeted Eve with a face full of shock.
“Your Highness, what in the world—! Where did you get a monster’s bodily fluids on you?”
“It’s not a monster. It’s Roji’s bodily fluids.”
“Ghk? Ah—anyway, you should change your clothes first.”
Eve took off the clothes smeared with Rosenitte’s tears and snot and washed up quickly.
When Peony went out to deal with the laundry, only Eve and Mikael remained inside the tent.
Feeling like she’d used up all of her day’s stamina, Eve headed straight for the bed.
“Are you going to rest?”
“Yeah. I’m tired.”
A slight fever had risen, so her eyelids were a bit hot; she covered them with her arm.
Lying there with her eyes closed, various thoughts seeped into her mind.
Eve recalled Rosenitte from her previous life.
The kind of Rosenitte who believed she was the center of the world, who had to monopolize everyone’s attention and love, who wouldn’t hesitate to humiliate others to win her father’s affection—
and who, toward Eve especially, could never bear to lose.
Even just up to here, she was an obnoxious younger sister Eve could never be close with.
And then, blinded by obsessive love, she’d even made a show of granting favor to her half-sister—only to feed her poison.
It wasn’t worth reconsidering.
Hadn’t even the small handful of lingering affection Eve had held cooled cold and died, leaving her to regress?
That dreadful sense of betrayal still remained in Eve’s heart as a deep scar.
It wasn’t as if Eve had never considered removing Rosenitte at all.
Eve was a regressor, and she had pushed her grand purpose through by actively using information from her previous life.
Threats that obstructed gaining the throne ought to be eliminated—
and typically, threats to life were considered the greatest threats of all.
Therefore, preemptively removing Rosenitte—who might become the Belladonna of the Empire—could be framed not merely as emotional revenge but as a decision for the greater good.
But she hadn’t done it, because of a very human, common-sense line of judgment.
‘Punishing something that hasn’t happened yet based only on possibility isn’t right.’
She intended to keep a close eye on Rosenitte and take action only if signs appeared that things were heading the same way as the previous life.
If so, then she should have welcomed Rosenitte trying to take a different path than the previous life, like she was now.
Yet, for some reason, Eve felt more flustered than glad.
“Roji is strange…”
Rosenitte from the previous life—who laughed viciously while feeding poison—and Rosenitte from this life—who poured out tears and snot without any guard—kept overlapping.
Eve could no longer tell how she should look at Rosenitte, or what attitude she should take toward her.
Right now, dealing with Rosenitte felt far harder than dealing with Brigitte.
‘I’m tired.’
With a worry that had no answer, the fever rose a little more.
It felt like her head was refusing to think.
“Ah?”
Around then, there was a touch that gently lifted the arm covering her eyelids and lowered it onto the sheet.
It was Mikael.
“Put it down comfortably.”
“Hm?”
Mikael sat on the bed and began massaging Eve’s tense arm and shoulder muscles.
The massage was gentle, yet subtly thrilling.
The healing effect was excellent.
Her mood quickly improved, and her body grew drowsy and heavy in a pleasant way.
“Mm… mmhh,,,,,,, ”
“Is it good?”
“Yeah… it’s good…”
It was while she was sinking into a state where she felt she might fall asleep just like this.
She felt the sheet of the bed sink down—thump.
When she opened her hazy eyes and looked ahead, Mikael’s shadow was already cast over her body.
“Mikael…?”
His violet eyes were deep.
Just by climbing over her and looking down in silence, the atmosphere flipped.
Though it was sudden, Eve couldn’t help but look up at his face, half spellbound.
“Eve.”
“Hm?”
At the voice—like someone playing an instrument—Eve responded by blinking slowly.
Then Mikael, pouring out a full force of seductive atmosphere, said:
“Me, or the 8th Imperial Princess?”
The drowsiness vanished in an instant.
“Why can’t you answer?”
Even the question was the same.
It seemed he’d learned something bad from Rosenitte in the meantime.
“Ah… even you, Mikael…”
“This is a serious problem. It hasn’t even been a full day since you called me a ‘beauty that topples a nation,’ so how can you do this?
There cannot be two ‘beauties that topple a nation’ within the same empire, so I want you to make it clear.”
“No, obviously it’s you, Mikael.”
“Really?”
“I told you before. Mikael is so attractive my dream of being a wise ruler is in danger.”
“Hoo… It’s a relief that my dream of being favored by you seems intact.”
Only then did Mikael seem relieved, the tension leaving his expression and gaze.
The air that had been harmful to Eve’s heart finally loosened a little.
As if apologizing for the mischievous question, Mikael scattered quick, pecking kisses all over Eve’s face—smack, smack.
Eve laughed because it tickled, and she stroked his black hair.
The feel of the strands winding around her fingers was so soft it was almost addictive.
It was while Eve spent a long time being kissed by Mikael and stroking his hair—passing time in healing and recovery—
that Mikael looked at Eve’s face, which had gone a bit vacant again, and spoke.
“You look like you have a lot on your mind, Eve.”
“Mm. Because of Roji.”
“Yeah, she did look… troub— no, unsettled.”
“B-but isn’t it better than last life?”
The moment she answered reflexively, Eve realized she’d sounded as if she were defending Rosenitte.
‘Ah… I covered for Roji!’
While Eve was swept into inner confusion, Mikael quietly lowered his gaze.
He, too, had things to think about.
For Mikael as well, aside from Rosenitte clinging to Eve, now was far better.
The previous life’s entanglement of passion had been so extreme that sealing it away was a hundred times more beneficial.
‘Ah.’
Come to think of it, something important related to the previous life came to mind.
“Um, Eve.”
“Hm?”
“There’s something I’ve wanted to tell you for a while.”
“What is it?”
Uncharacteristically, Mikael hesitated for a long time before finally forcing out the words stuck in his throat.
“Th-that… the baby.”
“The baby? Ah…”
It was obvious what he meant.
In the previous life, Mikael—who had thrown away both body and heart—had been, even if falsely, Rosenitte’s knight and lover.
They’d reached the highest stage typical lovers reached, and there had been a result.
‘You said you couldn’t remember everything! And yet you remember that?!’
Without warning, Eve was forced to face an uncomfortable, sensitive topic.
It was also something she’d been quietly avoiding ever since she’d started to like Mikael, so Eve flinched hard.
Even that small reaction stirred great anxiety in Mikael.
“Eve!”
It seemed Mikael feared that now, at this late point, Eve might hate him and run away.
As if clinging, he grabbed her hand with both of his—tight.
And while cursing his trash-like self from the previous life in a thousand different ways, he confessed to Eve.
“That child isn’t mine!”