The Princeliest Prince of All - Chapter 28
If it’s a choice between marriage or execution, of course, it’s marriage.
Even if she meekly agreed to it, did she have to give away the money she earned by fondling the prince’s privates to someone else?
Sera now had a sense of resignation.
Unlike the bold curses she had shouted earlier, she now hung her head and mumbled, which Leonard watched silently.
After a long moment, Leonard finally spoke.
“There’s… a lot of dust here.”
Is that what’s important right now?
It was such an unexpected comment that Sera slowly lifted her head.
Leonard’s hair was still slightly damp and disheveled, and his attire was casual. He must have hurried to clean up and come here.
With a complex expression, Leonard swiped his fingers across the table, then removed his gloves.
Taking a deep breath as if to compose himself, Leonard continued.
“…If you don’t want to get married, you don’t have to. Just don’t leav—”
“No. I will. I want to. I want to get married.”
Once again, Sera cut Leonard off mid-sentence.
What’s the point of staying here if not married? Should she just keep giving handjobs to the prince until he’s well enough to touch any woman?
Sera hung her head again, staring at the floor.
Even though she said she wanted to get married, there was a cold wind blowing from the high wall she had built around herself.
Leonard sighed deeply again.
“I feel like I’ve done something wrong… but I don’t know what. Can’t you just tell me…?”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Sera….”
Leonard placed his gloves on the dusty table and stood up.
Sera was sitting on the messy bed, the sheets of which hadn’t been washed in who knows how long.
Leonard slowly approached the bed where Sera sat.
“Since you seem angry, I’ll just say it. If there’s something you don’t like, curse at me like before. Throw sh-t at me if you want.”
“I don’t want to touch sh-t either.”
Leonard let out a deflating laugh and sat down in front of Sera.
Their eyes met, Sera’s stubbornly fixed on the floor, and Leonard’s golden eyes were as bright as ever but held a slightly darker hue.
Leonard gently tucked a stray lock of hair behind Sera’s ear.
“To me, it’s the same. Manure or someone else’s hand, it’s equally dirty and I don’t want to touch it.”
Leonard took Sera’s hand, which was resting on the bed, and held it gently.
Tenderly caressing her hand, he spoke of how he found other people’s hands as dirty as manure.
Was he taunting her to thrown hands?
Sera wondered if she should start cursing him out now since he had given her permission.
“You’re the same. I still wonder if you’ve cleaned yourself properly, if you’ve washed your clothes.”
“Are you trying to pick a fight?”
That sharp retort sounded more like Sera. Leonard very slowly lowered his head onto her lap.
When she had poured dirty water over him, he had nearly fainted.
He had commanded a flustered maid to fetch Evan.
Evan had calmly instructed the attendants to prepare a bath and led Leonard to his bedroom.
As he peeled off his filthy, dripping clothes, Sera’s face had floated into his mind.
Her fierce gaze, her venomous voice… and her eyes welling with tears.
Instead of scrubbing himself endlessly as he usually did, Leonard had only poured a bucket of clean water over his head and quickly put on new clothes.
He had been terrified that Sera would disappear in the meantime.
“It’s not because you’re clean that I can touch you.”
Sera’s skirt, having traveled all over the palace, smelled of various things.
Floral scents, the smell of grass, the sweet aroma of desserts, and the scent of the earth.
And faintly underneath it all, the scent of Sera herself.
The fastest way to the annex was through the back door, and Leonard saw the feathers of chickens being plucked and bags of sugar set on the ground outside the kitchen.
Running almost frantically down the dirt path, he reached the worn and dirty annex.
The cleanliness of the prince’s palace had only been on the surface, forced by Leonard.
Dusty hallways, the maid’s rooms with yellowing walls.
Places where Leonard hesitated even to breathe.
Leonard wrapped his arms around Sera’s waist, his face buried in her lap.
“I want to live where you live, even if it’s a pigsty. Even if it makes me feel like vomiting, fainting, or dying, I want to be with you.”
Because I like you, because I love you, there was no miraculous transformation that made everything about you pleasant to me.
To Leonard, Sera was still dirty and wrought with contamination.
But she was a beloved part of him that he didn’t want to let go of.
“You’re the only person like that to me, the only one I can touch. So curse at me, hit me all you want… just don’t go far away.”
Leonard’s confession was humble compared to promises of power and wealth.
He revealed the messy truth he had tried to hide.
Sera’s unmoving hand encircled the back of Leonard’s head.
Is she going to throw me off?
Contrary to Leonard’s fear, Sera gently embraced his still-damp golden hair.
“You’re not much cleaner than others, Your Highness.”
“I know….”
Leonard replied weakly.
He had always acted as if he were clean while treating others as filth, but he wasn’t blind to the truth.
Knowing it in his mind, yet having his body reject it drove him mad.
Sera thought Leonard, clinging to her so dejectedly, was quite cute.
If she told him now that his head still smelled like a rag, he might cry.
“Is it really so hard to just say you like me?”
“I like you… I do. Please don’t leave me.”
Sera hugged Leonard tightly, so tightly he could barely breathe.
As he said, no one else would take him if she left him, so what could she do?
She had to take responsibility.
“I like you too.”
Leonard shuddered at her small whisper and hugged her tightly, as if to never let her go.
Thus, a very dirty, messy, and smelly couple was born.
If this life itself was a gift to Sera, then Sera was the gift to Leonard, who had once been destined to be lonely forever.
It had been five years since Sera came to this world.
The prince, who had only lived in clean water, had come into the world, and Sera had finally become someone who belonged here.
