By Zephyria 
Jade, looking at me, who was beyond dumbfounded and utterly speechless, didn’t stop there and shouted again.
“Kyle! Aegis! Is currently! Changing clothes!”
“……”
Jade, who had been shouting like a madman, saw my brow furrow and said defensively.
“Ah, the people of the castle said they prefer to call the prince by his name rather than his title… I apologize if you were offended.”
It wasn’t that they preferred it, but it was a hundred times better than being called “prince.” I quietly looked at Jade and said, “Do whatever you’re comfortable with.”
“Yes, thank you, Kyle!”
Jade shouted loudly once more at my words.
At first, I was just dumbfounded, but these excessive actions made me suspicious. What on earth is she doing?
Just then, the tightly closed door opened, and Aegis came out, looking slightly disheveled. A Servant who looked to be in her fifties was with him.
“Why is it like this…”
The moment Aegis weakly opened his mouth and stepped out of the door, he stumbled as if he had tripped. Instinctively, I reached out to help, but the Servant grabbed Aegis’s forearm first.
“Are you alright?”
When Aegis stood up straight, the Servant released his forearm, which she had been holding tightly. It all happened very quickly, but there were one or two strange things about it.
It seemed that the problem wasn’t just with this guard.
I decided to talk to Asella about this issue, and first, I recalled the purpose of my visit here.
“Come in.”
I said briefly and went inside, and Aegis followed me in without a word. The door closed as we entered the room.
I was about to turn around and ask Aegis what on earth was going on, but I lost my words at the sight before me.
“……”
The room was a complete mess. The chair was overturned, and things like paper, pens, and ink were scattered haphazardly. I bent down slightly and picked up a crumpled ball of paper.
What was written on it… No, is it a drawing? I was carefully examining the unidentified hieroglyphs when Aegis suddenly grabbed my shoulder roughly and forcibly turned me around.
“Give it back!”
Then, in an instant, he snatched the paper away.
“What is that?”
“Mind your own business!”
“Why are you yelling?”
“Why are you touching it without permission? Is this yours?”
He seemed to have no strength just a moment ago, but I must have been mistaken. It was better that he was shouting like that than having no strength at all, but that wasn’t the important thing right now.
“I have something to say, so sit down.”
“No. I’m going to stand here, so hurry up and say what you have to say and leave.”
I righted the overturned chair and sat down. Several sheets of paper with the same word written repeatedly were scattered on the table.
“Why? We haven’t seen each other in a while, so tell me what you’ve been up to.”
I pretended to look at other things and quickly scanned the papers, afraid that Aegis would go on a rampage again.
Tree, ice, sky, flower garden, desk, apple, oasis, eagle, blanket, chocolate… Unrelated words were simply written crookedly on the paper.
“What have you been up to? Nothing special happened, right?”
At first glance, Aegis looked angry, but he was anxious. The paper he had snatched from me a moment ago was crumpled in her hand.
“What does it matter to you what I’ve been up to?”
“Are you feeling alright?”
“Yes!”
“……”
Why is his answer so energetic…? I sighed and got to the point.
“We decided to learn, remember?”
“I only agreed to learn etiquette, I never said I would do anything else.”
His tone is strange again. I thought he had stopped doing that for a while.
While I was silent for a moment, Aegis began to pick up the papers from the floor one by one. As I rested my chin on my hand and quietly watched him cleaning up, I felt a strange sense of incongruity.
“Greeting isn’t the only thing that’s etiquette.”
Aegis, who was bending down to pick up the paper, frowned and glared at me. On the paper in his hand, not a word, but a sentence was written.
“Once upon a time, in a faraway eastern country, there lived a beautiful princess.”
“……”
It was like the introduction to a children’s fairy tale. Perhaps because my gaze lingered on the sentence for a little too long because it was so out of the blue, Aegis noticed that I was looking and shouted as he hugged the papers he had picked up.
“Don’t look!”
“I didn’t look.”
I could hear him panting all the way over here. I thought he was going to run out of breath, so I simply turned my gaze out the window and decided to wait a little until Aegis had cleaned up all the papers.
After a long time, it seemed that the cleanup was roughly finished, and Aegis sat down across from me, breathing heavily.
“You can just pretend to do it.”
It seemed that the Sealing Magic wasn’t a lie, as Aegis looked quite exhausted.
“I have no interest in the history and culture of this uncivilized country.”
“……”
“Don’t tell me what to do, and don’t interfere with me. I warned you.”
“……”
Aegis was speaking coldly, as if he was on edge, just like when we first met. I was too flustered to notice it then, but now that I looked closely, there were one or two strange things about him.
It was as if he was wearing clothes that didn’t fit. It was like he was acting. It was unnatural, but I couldn’t explain it exactly.
Why on earth is he doing this? At first, I just thought he was nervous because he hadn’t been here long, but that didn’t seem to be the case. The Servants who came with him were also a bit strange…
“So you don’t want to do it?”
“Yes. I don’t want to do it.”
Aegis said firmly without the slightest hesitation, but it didn’t sound very sincere. That’s because of the papers he had cleaned up a little while ago, and when I secretly came to see him, Aegis was always reading a book.
Of course, he sometimes threw books, threw pens, or kicked things… Ah, is it really true that he doesn’t want to do it…?
No, anyway, Aegis was making an effort and diligently doing his job in his own way, even though his methods were violent and ignorant.
“Okay, then.”
“What?”
“Don’t do it if you don’t want to. It happens.”
I got up from my seat and picked up a piece of paper that Aegis hadn’t seen. Aegis was startled when he found it and stood up from his seat.
“I used to run away from studying when I was young, too.”
As I waved the paper I had picked up in the air a few times, Aegis reached out his hand toward the paper and shouted.
“It’s mine! Give it back!”
I held the paper high above my head so that Aegis couldn’t take it, and leaned my upper body back.
“But still, don’t do it like tha, ugh!”
“Give it to me!”
“Hey! Wait! Just a moment! It hurts!”
“Give it to me quickly!”
Aegis randomly put his hands on my body and started climbing up, grabbing my clothes and hair like handles. It was as if he was climbing a rock wall. I couldn’t throw him off, so I tried to run away in horror, but eventually failed and was grabbed by the back of the neck.
It was an unbelievable amount of strength for someone who had Sealing Magic cast on them. The moment Aegis grabbed the back of my neck and applied force, my back bent without any chance to resist.
Taking advantage of the gap, Aegis took the paper from my hand, put it in his clothes, and turned his back.
“……”
I couldn’t even think about fixing my messed-up hair and clothes, and just stared blankly at Aegis’s small back. Is he really crazy? What is wrong with him?
“Haa… No, please… Don’t reach out your hand like that…”
“You touched my stuff first!”
“No… Still… Not like that…”
The skin on my neck stung, as if it had been scratched by a fingernail when I was grabbed by the back of the neck. Just in case, I put my hand on it to check, but thankfully, it wasn’t bleeding.
Aegis glanced back at me when I stopped talking. He seemed to think he had gone too far, or maybe he was a little embarrassed that he had shouted like a crazy person earlier, and he had a slightly awkward expression.
Aegis hesitated and turned his body completely toward me. The crumpled ball of paper that he had crumpled up and put in his clothes earlier strongly asserted itself from Aegis’s left chest.
“……”
“……”
I didn’t even feel angry as I quietly looked at his abnormally protruding left chest. I don’t even know what I’m doing right now. Sigh…
“Don’t do it.”
“What?”
“You said you didn’t want to do it. Don’t do it. I won’t send anyone from tomorrow.”
“……”
He clearly said he didn’t want to do it, but he looked noticeably disappointed when I told him not to do it. Just in case, I asked again.
“Or would you like to try to bear with it?”
“…No, it’s okay.”
“Really?”
“……”
This time, he didn’t even answer. What on earth does he want me to do…?
“……”
“……”
A short silence passed. I didn’t have anything more to say, but I felt like Aegis wanted to say something to me, so I stayed there a little longer.
But I couldn’t concentrate because my gaze kept going to his strangely shaped chest. I couldn’t stand it any longer and finally opened my mouth.
“Take that out.”
“What?”
“In your chest… The paper…”
“……”
At my words, Aegis covered his chest with both hands as if to protect it. I suddenly felt like I had become a shameless person.
“I’m not going to take it away.”
“You wouldn’t give it to me even when I asked you to earlier.”
“I was going to give it to you. But you suddenly lunged at me.”
“You raised it above your head so I couldn’t take it.”
He had no words to say when he said that.