Refuse Harem
Translator: Tsukii
Editor: Prius
Read at Watashi wa Sugoi Desu!
Chapter 068 – The Young Lady Named Sophie Linier – The Meeting and Despair of Ferio Rex II
While Ferio went out for a change of pace, he looked out from the carriage and saw a little girl staring at the river.
“What is that girl doing?”
Judging from her appearance, she seemed to be an aristocratic young lady.
There was a not-so-large mansion built in the immediate vicinity, but it was still new and well-built.
“Perhaps she is the daughter of the Linier house? There doesn’t seem to be any maid accompanying her, so what is she doing there alone?”
“Linier house?”
“Although it is a house of a baron, Edgar Linier is well known for his talent as a merchant.”
“Fu~hn…”
Ferio wasn’t particularly interested in the girl’s family pedigree and just stared silently at her. Then the girl suddenly fell into the river. He saw the girl was fluttering her young limbs.
“Oi, isn’t that girl drowning?!”
“That river is supposed to be shallow though…”
“Stop the carriage!”
“Ferio-sama.”
The escort called Ferio’s name, trying to stop him.
However, Ferio ignored him and had the coachman stop his carriage, shaking off the escort’s voice and going outside.
The river was really shallow. Although Ferio wondered how the girl could drown there to begin with, he proceeded to rescue the girl.
“Oi, are you okay?!”
He lifted the girl’s body and spoke to her. The young lady opened her eyes slightly.
The moment Ferio saw her moist green eyes, he couldn’t help but take a breath.
Although the girl was young, she was still very pretty.
Ferio doubted for a moment that the girl was merely pretending to drown in the river and suspected she was a person sent to endanger him. His escort probably stopped him with such a thought in mind.
However, when he looked at the girl closely, seeing her gasping for breath, she didn’t seem to be acting.
“Are you conscious?! I’ll call people of your family—“
Seeing the girl’s consciousness dim, Ferio screamed at the girl who couldn’t move.
Then from her dark green eyes, droplets of water, which Ferio couldn’t tell whether it was river water or tears, flowed down her cheek.
“Ten…ma…”
The girl who called an unknown name smiled as if she received the happiness of the world and reached out her hand. But before Ferio caught it, the hand fell and she fainted.
And then, said girl was bedridden for a few days.
What was this encounter?
It felt as if the encounter was fated to be.
The girl who drowned in a shallow river. Ferio thought she would be a quiet and mellow girl.
However, once the girl, “Sophie Linier,” recovered, Ferio found out she was hardly a girl who would drown in a shallow river.
When he said one word, she replied with ten; when he presented her with a thing that he thought she would be happy to receive, she displayed a weird expression instead.
When he asked where she wanted to go, the first thing she said was a market. Moreover, she bought various things at the market and cooked with what she bought the next day.
No, as expected, this is just…
Ferio glanced at the escort, asking whether it was okay for him to eat it.
It was that escort who incessantly told him not to eat food that wasn’t poison-tasted.
However, there was no way Ferio could ask the escort to do poison testing right in front of the girl.
Ferio resolved he would just obediently get lectured later, but then he saw the escort beside him was already eating it, all while describing a detailed impression of the food.
Ferio suddenly got interested in the food as he heard the explanation, and he proceeded to eat it.
“It’s tasty…”
When did he last eat a hot meal?
All dishes served for Ferio were cold beside soup. Even the soup wasn’t served warm due to the poison-testing process. The dishes that Sophie made were warm and very tasty, much more than the dishes made by the top chefs of the royal palace.
How is it? Isn’t it tasty! The girl stared at them with a confident expression.
That was the first time that Ferio thought that the girl named Sophie Linier was a different creature than a normal aristocratic young lady.
◆◇◆◇◆
From then on, he often visited Sophie.
Ferio was aware his escort was wary of Sophie.
When he asked about it directly,
“Isn’t it weirder to not be suspicious of her?”
He laughed as he said that.
The scary part about this escort was he always sported the same smile regardless of the situation.
However, his remark was indeed correct.
She used ingredients they had never seen before, yet she used them as if she was always familiar with them from the beginning and managed to produce a delicious tasting dish despite never eating it before. She also produced snacks that were never depicted in any books yet lied that she learned them from a book. Nothing was more suspicious than that.
Even so, the escort who was always nosy about every little thing never told Ferio not to meet her.
Regardless of how suspicious they were, they couldn’t feel any kind of malice or calculation from the girl named Sophie Linier.
She boasted that she wanted to make sugar accessible for commoner families, and to achieve that, she asked for help from orphans as her first step.
Ferio couldn’t understand why an aristocratic young lady put such importance on people.
Ferio doubted for a moment that the girl might not be an assassin to endanger him but instead an agent sent by the queen. Perhaps the queen thought that by placing a girl with wonderful qualities nearby, it would make Ferio reflect on himself, who wasn’t growing properly as the next king.
However, Ferio immediately denied such a thought.
Sophie didn’t seem to be tainted by the color of the royal palace.
Sophie always shone in the color known as “Sophie Linier.”
It was so dazzling that Ferio was unable to look straight at Sophie.
He couldn’t help but compare himself.
There was Ferio, who, despite having everything within his grasp, had nothing that belonged to him, and he was powerless to make what was in his hands his personal belongings.
And then there was Sophie, who was free like a bird that wasn’t trapped by everything. This made Ferio look at the cage he was in and envied Sophie as he sighed every day.
It made Ferio suddenly think.
If there wasn’t a royal family or aristocrats, wouldn’t he be able to be together with her forever? If they were in a world that wasn’t influenced by status or pedigree, then…
Ferio often had such thoughts.
However, such thoughts were denied by his beloved girl.
She invalidated his view using an argument that he hardly believed actually came from a young girl, which made Ferio depressed. But then Ferio realized. Sophie didn’t just try to live freely. She was always looking for something she could do, then made her move and tried to achieve it.
The girl with a strong heart and spirit to not lose was dazzling to him, which made Ferio want to cry for some reason.
And at that moment, his heart was decided.
—I will become the king.
He wanted to be a king who thought of his people and nation more than anyone.
He wanted to be stronger than anyone else.
He carved his vow into his heart so that someday the world he wished for would come true.
The day he parted with the girl, he abandoned his weakness.
He decided to live his best so the girl wouldn’t laugh at him.
He was sure the girl would keep the promise she made with him.
He wanted to be able to meet her proudly when that moment came.
If he could meet her again even once before he died, he was sure he could accept his end happily.
However, the thoughts he quietly made in his heart turned into something he didn’t expect because of the plan enacted by his own fiancée.
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