The Escape of Layla

"Excuse me, sir."

In the early summer of the 15-year-old, after a good and sunny day I finished my sight of the monastery with my fiancé, His Royal Highness Prince Lewis, I crept through the door of a room with a royal castle. After this, we are going to have tea with His Highness.

My date with His Highness, generally once a month, was still very calm today.

On a date day, I usually even seem to enjoy my depressing self esteem. On my 15th birthday, I put on hair decorations mimicking anemone flowers and put on a lot more temper and makeup than usual.

Your Highness may not have noticed, but nevertheless, just walking next to your Highness is something that I felt like my chest was pounding with wonder.

Though I was the only one who thought so, and His Highness seemed bored without changing his expression.

But that, too, is not the story that started now.Six years after I got engaged when I was nine, Your Highness has been so much in this condition that I've gotten used to it.

For Your Highness, I'm sure this day with me can't help but be annoying once a month. Your busy Highness, so if fine dust is enough to meet me without interest, no wonder you want to rest your body slowly.

Still, Your Highness will never break his promise to meet with me. They also escort me properly in situations where I need to. No matter how interested I am personally, this engagement is like a pact between the royal family and the Duke of Ashbury's family, so the wise lord never imitates it to go unharmed.

As a nobleman, I may say so, but the seriousness of His Highness, honesty, I liked it.

Above all, His Highness's presence, even though indifferent to me, does not unreasonably condemn me, was even fresh to me.

Yes, from me, his neighbor was much more comfortable than spending time with his parents and sister.

From the side, Born as the eldest daughter of the Duke of Ashbury family in the kingdom of Altair, I may look like a happy girl living a life of no liberty.

In fact, I have lived to this day benefiting from it, so I am not willing to deny it altogether, but I was not at all happy in spiritual terms.

My parents are drowning one of my younger sisters, Rose, than I am. Rose, with empty eyes in her platinum hair, is such a beautiful girl of the world that she contends for one or two in the kingdom, and she is also very adorable in standing and behaving. She was such a gorgeous sister that just being on the spot would make the room much brighter.

By contrast, I was a plain young lady with your father's similar flax hair and eyes. No matter how much I was praised for being beautiful by friends and people I meet in the social world, I knew full well that it didn't end up at the feet of the gorgeous Rose.

Maybe it's natural for your father and mother to drown Rose in some ways. If Rose were a child who would study a little more seriously, I'm sure she would have recommended Rose, not me, to His Royal Highness Prince Wang's fiancée. That should have been a better future for them.

"Lady Leila."

As the servant who serves at the royal castle guides him, he walks to the reception for his rendezvous with His Royal Highness, and a maid who seems to have prepared tea rushes in. I've seen him face to face several times, he was a maid I knew.

"Tea is ready. His Royal Highness is already here..."

Ahead of the maid sending a glimpse like she was in trouble, there was a silver-haired young man sitting on the couch. Enough to judge just what you look like later. Undisputed, it was His Royal Highness Prince Lewis.

"... Was it also a problem?

If it's true, I was going to have tea with that leg that came back to Royal Castle with His Highness, but it seems that His Highness has done me a little errand, and it's up to me to walk through the Royal Castle garden and kill time before I come to this designated room.

Maybe it was a big rush to do the errands and stuff. I'm sorry that I can't have tea with Your Highness, but I wasn't willing to stay long if I seemed to get in the way.

"No… rather than a problem, Your Highness seems to be off…"

"Your Highness?

Sometimes that's unusual. I can't believe His Highness, who rarely shows gaps in public, falls asleep on the couch.

"What do you want to do? I will tell His Highness from me if you wish to return."

To the inquiry of the maid, I see once again the hindsight of His Highness, slightly disturbing his head. The light inserting through the large window was so beautiful with the unique softness of the afternoon sun.

When I saw the silver hair shining in the sunlight and accidentally loosened my cheeks, I finally mouthed the answer.

"Right, then -"

Slowly sip down a cup of tea with only one squared sugar in it. I accidentally closed my eyelids to a pleasant hint of tea through my nose and tasted a moment of bliss.

Slowly open your eyes again and the afternoon sun will pop in as you begin to lean.

It was me sitting on the right edge of the couch, but at the left edge, with my elbow on my elbow, there was a sire who could have a good night's sleep. There's about a distance between us, and as a fiancée, it's approximate.

The maid who brought me tea carefully refrains from doing so in the corner of the room. She was the only one watching me for a quiet tea party that only sounded like I was putting a teacup down.

When I said I would have tea, the maid tried to wake His Highness, but gently stopped. In addition to being a busy person from time to time, you must be extra tired today because you and I went out to the city. It wasn't sneaky to force you to wake up.

I wish I could go home then, but I wanted to spend some time next to His Highness just to get a cup of tea. This is totally my endeavor.

I will gently send my gaze to His Highness with his lid closed. Naturally, I've never seen His Highness's sleeping face, etc.

I don't know if it's because of his face so neat that he even feels cold, or because he knows his character, but His Highness looks like he doesn't have a gap even when he's asleep.

Normally I was afraid and didn't notice because I rarely stared directly into His Highness's eyes, but even my eyelashes are the same silver color as my hair. Its face, very similar to that of a worldly beauty and the famous queen, was so beautiful that it sighed even when she was asleep.

Normally, you wouldn't be allowed to sit next to your sleeping highness. Perhaps it is a privilege for me to see His Highness's sleeping face in this way because I am his fiancée.

I intend to return when it is time for a pick-up from the Duke's house, but until then I wanted to see His Highness's face even unilaterally. I just got home early, and I'm just going to see your mother and father drowning Rose.

Your Highness is special to me, whether it's cold or dust free of interest in me. I was wholeheartedly fond of His Highness, even without the fever of love that scorched me.

On top of being too shy to name a friend, I have to say that I feel somewhere more uncomfortable than being in a relationship with my fiancée, but I'm not lying about how I admire Your Highness.

I should say that I am happy because I have been able to know this warmth in a relationship I have circled in a political marriage. I'm sure I want more than that.

"Yes, I'm sorry..."

Watching the swinging tea in the teacup gives me a kind of weak grin. I wonder if the rest of the tea is like the other half.

"I wonder how happy I am to be loved..."

My parents' love is exclusive to Rose, and I don't even know if His Highness's heart has the feverish emotion that it's love in the first place.

It is obvious that I am not His Highness's least, and although I intend to accept that at all, unless you ask me if there is any emptiness at all. I sit in the corner of my heart whenever I pretend not to look at it but the emptiness I am not loved.

Seeing Rose drowned so painlessly in her eyes from her parents, or spoken in enthusiastic words by her lords, can even lead to the illusion that beloved and not so human beings are born determined.

Naturally I was the latter, and I had a hunch I was going to hang out with this emptiness, possibly all the way to my death.

I didn't think that was just a bad thing, but I was certain it was a factor that sometimes delayed my thoughts.

Take a small breath and, once again, stare at His Highness's sleeping face.

He is the future of this country, a special man. Think of what he's holding, it's not enough to take my thoughts.

Even if I can't be his best, if I can't get his love, let's go with him as my fiancée. Your Highness won't ask for my help, but that's all I can do. We just have to do the best we can.

Watching the side of His Highness sleeping evokes a variety of emotions. It's not just a comforting emotion, but it's still my rule to live next to this one.

"... what dreams are you having, Your Highness"

With a whispering little voice, he speaks to His Highness with his eyelids closed. I guess my voice hasn't arrived, naturally, because it doesn't even move tingly.

I don't think I can have a casual relationship with him that talks about the content of my dreams. That's the good thing about dreams again.

But if you only wish for one thing -.

"... may one day I appear in His Highness's dreams"

Even in dreams I forget. Still, in the corner of His Highness's heart, how good it would be to have my place. To his heart like a quiet surface of water, just enough to drop a drop of water, so to my presence, if he rocks my mind.

If I were to say it would come true, that was all I felt, enough. Even if I didn't have to be loved, I felt like I could do it as a duke and a princess and a queen just because you recognized my existence.

To call it my first love, it's a pretty awkward emotion. But will this pale thought that is sprouting also one day turn into love if time goes on?

Again, I'll take a look at His Highness's face. I can see your face so seriously, it may be as good as it is later or earlier.

—— Your side of sleeping is so beautiful, I'm sure, because I admire you.

I immediately scratch off confessional words that don't even seem to float in the back of my brain.

I drank the rest of the tea that had cooled down and gently placed the teacup. If I checked the clock, it was almost time to pick me up.

I always feel heavy at this moment when I go home to the Duke, but I have no choice. As I slowly rose off the couch, I thanked His Highness softly for sleeping.

"It's been a great day. Thank you, Your Highness."

Finish all the greetings you know you won't reach and look out to the maid who keeps you in the corner of the room. I showed her such a bare gesture that she would guide me right away.

Having been taken by a maid but trying to leave the room behind, I looked behind His Highness only one last time.

I haven't spent that long, but the light I plug through the window is starting to mix with the color of the sunset. Her Royal Highness's silver hair gleamed in the evening light.

May that silver and deep pale one day become a symbol of my love.

I prayed with no one, as I expected from the pale thoughts that were sprouting, and it was only this time that I disappeared from His Highness's presence.