Chapter 2: The

Unlucky Prince

Alexis Radoll is the First Prince of this country who lived

a blessed, easy life anyone would envy up until one year ago. With his dark

brown eyes, tall height, and limber hands and legs, he was handsome enough that

any woman would let out a soft breath in desire at the sight of him. He was

also talented as royalty – he aggressively threw himself into

his studies of subjects he needed to know in order to ascend the throne.

He was earnest, hardworking, and easy to get along with. He would

treat people equally in good faith while remaining as dignified as you would expect royalty to be. He was an ideal prince – loved by the people, held dear by his retainers.

Everyone dreamed of him ascending the throne and talked about how the future of

the kingdom was secure.

… Up until one year ago.

Now, for some reason or another, his stable life had made a

180 and was filled with bad luck. No, “filled with bad luck” is putting it

too lightly. “Rife with bad luck” would be more like it. After all, it’s just

that horrible.

Running a mysterious fever or getting mysterious injuries

became an everyday occurrence. When he tries to sleep, something or someone

always gets in the way and he ends up unable to rest. It’s taking Alexis

everything he has just to get through each day – no matter how talented he is,

it’s natural that his concentration would waver and he would start making

mistakes.

To make things worse, terrible rumours began to spread –

about how he’s using the country’s funds for his personal use, how he’s taking

bribes to unfairly promote his subordinates, and so on. The people and his

retainers began to flip their view of him. Even though they’re ridiculous

rumours with no shred of truth to them, everyone unanimously believes them for

some reason.

Eventually, people started saying that he got some random woman

pregnant and so he has a b.a.s.t.a.r.d child – and even that he was keeping his

fiancée’s mouth shut about this through violence.

Why, the rumours grew so out of proportion it’s as if they managed

to escape the atmosphere and call over their friends from Planet Bad Luck.  

If it had just been one or two things, Monette would’ve

probably just said “Serves you right.” But hearing this much made even Monette

do nothing but knit her brows in her helmet.

“You have no leads on where these rumours may be coming from?”

“Yes, not one.”

“That story about a b.a.s.t.a.r.d child – could it be because you

frequented the red-light district or had some kind of thoughtless love affair

in the past?”

“I’ve never done anything like that, absolutely not even

once. If you were talking about how I can make women fall for me just by making

eye contact it would be a different story, but I have no experience with everything you mentioned.”

“I see, you’re pure then,” shoots Monette, sugar-coating the

fact that he’s a virgin, “Do you have any other ideas then?”

“So then…” someone cuts in.

Monette turns her attention towards the new voice. It’s the

man who came in with Alexis. He’s taller than Alexis and is st.u.r.dily built. He’s

blond-haired and has a severe expression. His sharp green eyes give him an

intimidating air. From his casual-looking clothing and sword at his hip, he’s

probably Alexis’ bodyguard.

“Who are you?” Monette asks him bluntly after staring at him

for a bit.

It can’t be helped if she’s a teensy tiny bit rude. They’re

the ones that forced themselves in her home – she has no responsibility to be

nice to them. Really, they’re all being rather ill-mannered with each other.

“Percival. Percival Galette. I work as the prince’s

bodyguard.”

“Mr. Percival. I see. Very well, continue.”

“The way you talk really gets on my nerves.”

“Oh, I’m so very sorry. I’m just a little irritated because I’m

being forced to welcome some ill-mannered visitors without any advance notice.”

“Says the lump of iron.”

Percival glares intently at Monette. Monette glares right

back.

Of course, Monette’s face is hidden by her helmet, and her

helmet is made so even if she can see others, they can’t see her eyes. Glaring

is quite literally useless. She’s a lump of iron, just like he says.

After the st.u.r.dy man and the lump of iron glare at each

other for a while, Alexis, reaching the end of his patience, sighs and tries to

stop them.

“Haven’t you had enough…?”

Then his chair collapses.

It collapsed rather dramatically, making a very loud noise

as it crashed down.

“Prince Alexis?!”

“Milord, are you alright?!”

Panicked, the two of them run up to Alexis, who’s sitting on the

ground on top of the collapsed chair. He waves them away, saying that he’s okay…

the very next moment, tea spills over his head. His teacup had been knocked

over when the table had tilted thanks to the shock of his chair falling to

pieces.

What a beautiful sequence of events.

“Ooh, combo attack,” murmurs Monette in spite of herself.

“Well, one problem’s been dealt with.”

“More importantly, could you fix the bathroom? Hot water

stopped coming out of the taps after Prince Alexis used it.”

“Don’t worry, it’ll fix itself once we leave.”

“Get out, you pair of pests!”

Ignoring Monette’s angry yells, Percival and Alexis start

talking to each other. At their reaction, Monette doesn’t really feel like

yelling at them anymore.

“Maybe you’re cursed?” Monette says half-ironically, unable

to resist taking one last jab.

She then decides to get the conversation back on topic… but

instead, her eyes widen in her helmet. Alexis and Percival are staring at her.

Though she’s wearing iron armour, it doesn’t feel good to be the centre of

attention. Sweat beads on her forehead. Dark brown eyes and green eyes. Her

heart constricts in pain at their direct gaze – it’s like they’re seeing right

through the armour.

“W – What is it?” Monette asks, voice trembling. But since

her voice echoes in the armour and can’t be heard well, they probably won’t

notice.

“Lady Monette, you just said that Prince Alexis was cursed,

did you not?”

“Y – yes, I did. What of it?”

“Who do you think cursed him?”

“Well, I hadn’t thought that far,” says Monette.

Alexis rises forcefully with a clatter, and with that force,

takes her hand – to be precise, her armoured gauntlet – in his. Monette’s next

words – “I don’t know,” – are swallowed down at Alexis’ actions.

He’s strong… maybe. She unfortunately can’t really tell

through the armour. But his serious expression has strength in it.

“Monette, so you really did hold a grudge!”

“Prince Alexis?”

“I’m so sorry about what I did back then. I’ll do anything

to make it up to you. So please…”

“So please?”

“Please break this curse!” pleads Alexis, his voice almost a

scream.

Monette tilts her head to the side, her armour making a

grinding noise.

Alexis Radoll has this to say.

I hurt Monette in the

past. I hear that she’s cooped up in the old castle, researching the House of

Idira’s ancient magic. I’m sure that she still holds a grudge against me and

cast this curse on me when she saw her chance! That’s what put me in this sorry

state!

Percival Galette has this to say.

Unfortunately I didn’t

witness their first meeting myself, but I can’t deny that milord’s words were cruel.

That’s why I’m sure that Lady Monette cast a curse on Prince Alexis because she

held a grudge against him. I’m the only retainer milord has left after his

reputation fell to tatters. We need to stop Monette before things get any

worse!

Monette Idira has this to say.

You’re completely off

the mark so please hurry up and go home.

Naturally they wouldn’t be able to carry on a decent

conversation in a situation like this. “You cursed me!” - “No I didn’t.” - “Please

forgive me.” - “Please don’t break the chair,”… the conversation continued in

this fas.h.i.+on, and before anyone knew it, the sun had set.

Monette let out a heavy sigh when she was forced to split

half of her weekly food supplies with the two of them for their dinner.

T/N:

One line that was… fun…translating was this:

噂話に尾ビレどころか背ビレ胸ビレまでついて、不運の海をふわふわ泳いで仲間を連れてきたかのようではないか。

Directly translated, it would be something like “The rumours

grew not only casual fins, but also dorsal and pectoral fins – as if it began swimming

in the sea of bad luck and brought along its friends.”

In j.a.panese, the phrase 尾ビレが付く (lit.

growing fins) roughly means to grow even bigger and more fanciful than the truth.

尾ビレis a type of fin, so the author is making a play on

that by saying that the rumours not only grew this type of fin, but also other types of fins, allowing it to swim

in the sea of ‘bad luck’ like a fish.

I chose to translate this as “The rumours grew so out of

proportion it’s as if they managed to escape the atmosphere and call over their

friends from Planet Bad Luck,” because I figured that evoking the imagery that

the rumours grew unbelievably big enough that they could contact their ‘friends’

from a fantastical location was similar enough to the original metaphor.