The Protagonist's Party is Too Diligent

"You're the only person in the world who works a princess to the bone like this, Master."

"If you think about it, every emperor has worked you to the bone as well. They did, and they still are, aren't they?"

"...Alice doesn’t."

"Oh?"

It was the dead of night.

Winter hadn’t fully ended, and the air was still chilly, but we hadn't lit any lamps.

Even a small light source could be seen from a great distance at night. The military rations from my old world were designed to be prepared without fire precisely to prevent starving soldiers from revealing their position and getting their entire unit wiped out.

At least it wasn’t full winter anymore. And this region was relatively southern, so it wasn’t freezing to the point of death.

Just enough to be annoying.

And, of course, I was the one dragged into the Sword Saint’s plan of hunting down suspected enemies before they could act.

Claire and Leo had wanted to help, but they were still members of other noble houses.

If they had °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° officially joined the Grace Family’s knights, they might have been able to assist us naturally, but they were still inexperienced children with much to learn.

They had helped resolve major incidents before, but those were exceptions, not the rule.

Alice was occupied with succession matters.

Since the emperor had never formally prepared her to take the throne, Alice was starting from scratch.

And since she had decided to finish her education at the academy, every moment outside of school had to be dedicated to preparing for her future role.

Most others were already tied up with their own family matters.

Even Jake and Lottie seemed to be preparing for marriage. They hadn’t explicitly mentioned it, but the context surrounding them made it clear enough.

And as much as I needed help in dealing with former cathedral knights, I couldn’t bring Sophia, a former cathedral knight herself.

So in the end, the only one with time and unwavering loyalty to Alice was me.

The Sword Saint must have known this when he made the suggestion.

Now, the two of us sat side by side, watching the enemy camp.

They were supposedly a group of bandits that had recently appeared in this territory.

But "bandits" was a stretch.

This was a relatively flat region, yet the locals seemed to call anything resembling a hill a "mountain."

By their standards, even this small hill we were sitting on was probably considered a mountain.

"And you still claim this isn't making you work?"

"Master, I’m only out here because of you."

I continued speaking while peering through my binoculars, observing the flickering lights between the scattered trees on the opposite hill.

"But in the end, wasn't it the crown princess who asked you? If I recall, when I first suggested it, you looked like you’d just swallowed something rotten. If Alice had told you that you didn’t have to do it, you might have still gone, but you would have at least hesitated."

"...And how can you be so sure?"

"There are people whose emotions are written all over their faces. And recently, I’ve been dealing with someone who tries way too hard to hide their expressions—so in contrast, reading you is much easier."

Obviously, he was talking about me.

I still made an effort to keep my emotions in check.

Not in the sense of forcing myself into a blank expression, but rather refining my reactions to be more composed.

But apparently, even within that refined expression, there were still degrees of looking like I’d eaten something unpleasant.

"But didn’t you just say it yourself? That I would have gone eventually, regardless?"

"There’s a big difference between doing something of your own will and doing it because someone asked you to. Even if the outcome is the same, the feeling is different."

"And what exactly do you mean by that?"

"Think of it like this—let’s say you know you need to clean your room. But for now, you’re putting it off because you’re feeling lazy."

"......."

"And then, someone comes along and tells you to clean it. How would that make you feel?"

"Alice never pressured me, though."

"Not yet. But people tend to repeat urgent requests. And if you hear the same thing over and over, eventually, it becomes annoying to listen to."

"Are you saying Alice will be like that too?"

"I don’t know."

I finally lowered the binoculars and turned to look at the Sword Saint.

Apparently, he had already been looking at me for a while.

He clearly didn’t expect the camp to suddenly disappear, so he wasn’t keeping his eyes on it.

"You’re saying all this without certainty?"

"There are very few things in this world one can be truly certain of. We know a dropped egg will crack when it hits the ground, but people’s thoughts? Those are never ‘certain.’"

"......."

"So even the ‘certainty’ you have about Alice—"

"—isn’t certainty at all. If you think otherwise, that’s just your own assumption."

I had nothing to say to that.

And yet, for some reason, I wanted to refute him.

I racked my brain, searching for the right words, but before I could find them, he spoke first.

"That’s why you shouldn’t just keep taking things one-sidedly."

"I don’t know how long you two have been opening up to each other, but if a relationship like that lasts too long, it becomes habitual."

"And once it becomes habit, if one side ever refuses or pulls away, cracks start to form."

The Sword Saint turned back toward the distant hill.

"Make time to talk things out properly. Even if it’s something unpleasant, it’s better to voice it when it happens than to let it build up and explode later."

"If something bothers you, say why. Tell each other how you’d prefer things to be handled in the future."

"That’ll help maintain your relationship."

This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.

"If this were just about a monarch and their loyal subject, I wouldn’t bother saying this. But you two aren’t just that—you’re sisters."

"......."

I stared at him for a long moment before finally speaking.

"No, seriously. How does someone who actually understands something this important just live in seclusion in the mountains!?"

"Keep your voice down. Sound carries far at night, just like light does."

Of course, when it came to moments like this, his hands always moved faster than his words.

*

But the Sword Saint had been right.

Subduing former cathedral knights who had turned to banditry was something we could do.

After all, it wasn’t just the two of us—several knights from the train were also with us.

That didn’t mean I wanted to spend my entire break doing this.

Honestly, I was exhausted.

Not because of Alice’s attitude or anything like that, but because incidents kept happening one after another without a break.

And if I really thought about it, I had been killing people since I was a child.

It had piled up and piled up, and now... if someone told me I was experiencing burnout, I wouldn’t even be surprised.

I didn’t want to be in extreme cold or extreme heat.

If possible, I didn’t want to go anywhere at all.

I just wanted to stay in my room.

In my past life, I had been an otaku, after all.

Home was the best place to be.

I knew Alice was struggling.

She had an overwhelming workload, with an endless list of things to learn and memorize.

Even if she planned to reduce the emperor’s role, there was still too much.

But even knowing that—

I still didn’t want to do this.

"......."

Alice froze, staring blankly at me with a teacup in her hand.

"That’s all I have to say."

"...Huh."

Tilting her head slightly, Alice placed the teacup down.

"So... you don’t want to work?"

"Yes."

"But you’re still going to?"

"That’s right."

"Why?"

"Because even if I don’t want to, I want to help you."

"So if you ever ask me for something, I just want you to understand that it’s not always something I’ll be doing willingly."

"Ah, um... thanks?"

Alice's face turned a faint shade of red as she replied.

"......."

"......."

Then she shut her mouth completely.

The silence dragged on long enough that it started to feel suffocating, so I finally broke it.

"Your turn."

"...Oh, right."

Alice blinked, then nodded absently as she gathered her thoughts.

"Um... I want you to change how you address me."

"How I address you?"

"Yeah. Instead of ‘you’ or ‘Your Highness’ or ‘Crown Princess’... just call me by my name. We’re sisters, aren’t we?"

"......."

I fell silent for a moment, considering her words.

"Understood."

At least she hadn’t asked me to call her sister.

"And also, stop using formal speech."

"What?"

"It makes it feel like there’s distance between us. You already spoke casually to me before, didn’t you?"

"When?"

"That time, when you said ‘It’s okay.’ I didn’t hear it clearly because you were far away, but I saw your lips move."

At first, Alice had seemed unsure about what to say, but as she continued, she started talking faster—as if she was remembering things one by one.

"......."

I thought about it for a moment, then nodded.

Yeah.

Speaking formally to Alice had been part of the persona I had built.

"But switching to casual speech immediately might be difficult. Changing how I address you is one thing, but this has been a habit for years. I’ll work on changing it gradually."

"Okay."

"Anything else?"

Alice hesitated briefly before responding.

"Yeah, actually... there’s more—"

Her requests continued for quite some time.

Even though we had known each other for years,

The time we had spent not knowing each other was much longer.

It had only been a little over a year since we had started opening up to each other.

Now I understood why the Sword Saint had said those things.

If all of this had been left to build up, it would have exploded eventually.

Not that we would never fight, of course.

Siblings were meant to argue.

But even if we did fight—at the very least,

We needed to make sure we could reconcile.

Understanding what the other person liked and hated, setting clear boundaries, and being honest with each other—

That alone would keep us from adding even bigger problems on top of the ones we already had.