Episode 03

Hubris

When Hubris’ eyes met mine, the awkward smile on his mouth faded. Slowly he put his lips near my ear. And asked,

“....Who are you?”

It pierced me.

My head was spinning. I was almost suspicious that I wasn’t getting enough rest. Should I be honest and get help? Or is it the right answer to pretend not to know?

If Hubris is on my side, no, if I was in the same position as when I met the witch today, I would have confessed my situation without even thinking about it.

But Hubris was on Helena’s side, which meant he would soon become my enemy. Can I give my biggest knife to a man who will one day be my enemy? The answer is ‘no’. I wanted to die. For it to be clean and painless.

When I think about the fact that I’m not actually Eris, things will get troublesome if I’m also caught by people who don’t like me.

Since it is a country with advanced magical engineering, I may be tortured as a living experiment to see how other souls can enter the body, or they would treat me as a crazy person, imprison me in a remote estate, and watch until I grow old and die,

Even if Hubris continued, later, if he spoke to the Crown Prince, there would be no need to see the result. The Crown Prince was even more, not a person who would look after me.

“Isn’t it strange that you, a priest, want to know about an unmarried noble woman?”

“...What I’m talking about is not your identity”

“Not my identity?”

I insisted. I should have answered right away, but it was too late to regret. However, a person with a loud voice wins this kind of fight,

He looked up and looked away, perhaps because he had never met such a woman. In addition, people’s eyes slowly gathered.

As a substitute, Eris is quite a celebrity as the fiancée of the Crown Prince. So it was suspicious to chat with a man.

“..I can’t tell you.”

“You’ve been interrogating me in a terrible manner, and you’re hiding the reason.”

“It’s not interrogating! How can I be an interrogator in the body of a priest?”

I brought my face close to Hubris, who looked up in surprise. In fact, it was almost half a gamble, because it could lead to a rumor of a prostitute seducing a high priest. Still, I was confident that I would win this gamble.

In the novel, Hubris was terribly indecisive and conscious of others, and was the only coward who could not even confess to Helena, and it took all that he had

And according to the description in the novel, unlike Helena, Eris looks scary.

“I feel that I am being interrogated. If I grope the priest’s chest right now, is it not assault because a woman touched it?”

“..It must have been my misunderstanding. I apologize for the slip of the tongue.”

“I accept it.”

I don’t think I can buy dessert today. I left the shop because I wanted to, leaving an embarrassed Hubris. It was difficult to find evidence that I was not Eris after trying to be next to him for no reason.

The eyes of other people were also a concern. This store was a place where many nobles and servants of nobles came and went,

Even now, Eris’s reputation is not very good, so everyone is probably talking about having a good story. People’s eyes didn’t really matter. It’s not really my body, and I’m going to die anyway.

However, I thought a lot on my way back by carriage. Wouldn’t it be better to ask now if it was Hubris who would love Helena later anyway?

The witch said there might be a way to go back without dying. And if you know that, you have to go to the temple.

The temple is not easily accessible to the public. Aristocrats were only able to enter them after rigorous procedures and thorough screening.

In the novel, even Helena, the heroine, was not able to step in because of her low status.

However, in Helena’s case, one of the male protagonists, Hubris, was the High Priest. Therefore it wasn’t a big problem..

I should have caught Hubris and asked him what he saw in Eris, if I was a stranger and had a way to go back to the world. It was better if I could go back alive.

I am not afraid to die, but the pain I inflicted on my body to die was vividly memorable. It would hurt terribly.

Nevertheless, I tried because I thought everything would be over when I opened my eyes again. But instead, when I woke up in the same world, it was even more painful.

“Uh..”

I lost a good opportunity because I was seized with fear. When I realized so, there was a groan of grief. It’s already a missed opportunity, so I have to pray for another chance.

To find out the next opportunity, I need to know the contents of the original, but it was hard to remember, though the general storyline was there, I read the novel as if one was passing by briefly,

Moreover, the majority of the descriptions were focused on Helena, and it was hard to guess because there was no incident without Helena.

Since we had tea together a week ago, I think it’s still the beginning of the novel.. If I knew this would happen, I should have read it more seriously.

“We’re here. My lady.”

“Thank you.”

“Oh, there will be a knight swearing ceremony soon. Will you not pick up personal knights this

year?”

“Ah..”

While holding the knight’s hand and descending the carriage, a question suddenly occurred to me. Was there such a purpose for me?

As she stared at the knight with a quaint face, the knight smiled and said,

“If you don’t want to, you don’t have to take the oath, but it is more convenient for both the knight and the noble to have a personal knight. The numbers are strictly limited, but you can also enable them for private use.”

I was a little bit overwhelmed by that, but still, I shook my head. It is a life that will soon die anyway. If you try to increase the number of people around you, it is obvious that it will only cause discomfort.

At my refusal, the knight responded as if he had expected it, but with a little regret,

“My apologies, there are a lot of people who want to be the lady’s escort.”

“....My?”

“Of course. Isn’t it the romance of a knight to give one’s life to a beautiful lady?”

“It is truly selfish and uselessly romantic.”

Are you saying that if it’s not beautiful, it’s not worth your life? No, in the first place, I felt reluctant to carry the weight of other people’s lives, like a burden.

Why are you trying to sacrifice yourself? Men’s way of thinking, in the past and now, couldn’t be understood. I tried to step through the door and looked around the knight.

“Someone may love that romance, but not me. So let the knight sacrifice his life to her.”

I don’t intend to be someone’s romance, nor to carry it on my back.

The morning was bright and I’m still Eris. I thought about it carefully, and came to the conclusion that it would be better to be pre-emptive and tell Hubris before the relationship gets worse.

If you ask him to keep it a secret, he’s not going to go around bragging about it at the lady’s request.

I was thinking about putting in an application in the temple, but the process was so complicated and I was worried that the contents would leak out.

Which means I’m supposed to run into Hubris again, most likely by chance....

In the novel, Hubris usually appeared in the palace and yesterday’s dessert shop. Fortunately, they can both be visited frequently if I want to.

Hubris didn’t like sweet things much, but he secretly enjoyed the expensive desert because it was considered a luxury to some extent here.

After Helena, he no longer hid his taste because she cheered that eating sweets was not bad. It was Hubris, who was too tied to his life as a priest, which led to a surge in his favor for Helena,

I didn’t want to take away Helena’s love event, but I thought it would be better if I met him at the dessert shop. It was difficult to talk at the palace for no other reason than to step on a landmine called “The Crown Prince”.

In addition, if Eris was misunderstood as seducing Hubris for no reason, she might have suffered from a tantrum for three days.

“My Lady, you must get ready. His Majesty has sent us a message asking us to enter the palace.”

“....His Majesty?”

“Yes, you have to be prepared, so you can’t keep him waiting.”

Simpler decorations were made at a faster pace than usual. Everyone must have been embarrassed by the sudden royal command, and all the women in the mansion were mobilized. I had motion sickness when fifteen hands shook me around.

When I entered the Imperial Palace after a great deal of trouble, the attendant took me straight to the Emperor’s office.

“Your Majesty, Lady Miséran, the eldest daughter of the Marquis of Miséran and the fiancée of His Highness Crown Prince, is waiting for you to see her.”

“Let her in.”

Taking a breath, then wearing a smile of hospitality with the edges of my mouth, I slowly stepped through the door opened by the attendant. The light pouring over the large window was reflected in the white marble and gold frame.

As the Emperor was sitting with the window against his back, he was illuminated by the light and looked more dignified. The Emperor, who had nice white hair and beard, said in a friendly voice.

“A glorious afternoon, Your Majesty.”

“I’m sorry I called you in a hurry. Wasn’t it uncomfortable to come?”

“A call from His Majesty is not uncomfortable. It is always a pleasure.”

“You too have come to know how to say good things pleasing to the ears. No other thing, I called because there was something I wanted to discuss about your coming-of-age ceremony.”

The people treated 21-year-olds, whose physical and mental growth was complete, as adults. This is because they were not eager to treat children who have yet grown into adulthood by sending them to production sites and wars like other countries.

Eris is the youngest character in the novel, so everyone probably became adults last year. By the way, the Emperor’s words had just given me a sense of where the story is,

“It’s unprecedented, but I’d like to have a coming-of-age ceremony at the Imperial Palace. Do you have a place in mind?”

Even if it bounces, it will be according to the Emperor’s will. I shook my head coolly because didn’t want to argue with the Emperor.

The reason why the Emperor wanted to hold a coming-of-age ceremony at the Imperial Palace is because of the rumor that the Crown Prince cares about Helena, a commoner, and looks down on me.. because this fact is widely known in the country.

This was a disgrace to Marquis Miséran, one of the centers of the aristocracy and one of the Empire’s top powers.