Jiang Jiu did not wake in the dragon’s nest this time.

She woke on a bed in the tower.

But the moment she opened her eyes, her clear surface thoughts were sealed away. What remained was only her pure, true self... yet not only that. There was also the essence of a soul twisted to fit the story background of this Witch's Night.

A tiny bit of trashy-woman flavor, with her innocence and kindness turned up even more. That was how this new personality was built.

The little princess was born.

But this little princess was not the same little princess as before. For now, she seemed to have lost the power to control plants and to pour life into others.

Now, she was only a frail, powerless little girl in her teens.

Life in the tower was always boring. Usually, the only things she could do to ease the loneliness and pass the time were reading, and playing chess against herself... though come to think of it, why was there even a chess set in the tower?

From the very beginning, the tower had never been designed with any way for people to come up or go down. So from start to finish, the only one who would ever stay inside it was the little princess herself.

If that was the case, then why had the king prepared a chess set?

The little princess tilted her head and frowned as she thought.

To her, her past life had been nothing but the endless repetition of one dull day after another. Very little was worth remembering—unless, on some day, she happened to look down from the tower and see something especially interesting happening in the palace below.

So with that in mind, she quickly found the most likely source of the chess set.

She thought of the boy who had brought her meals a few years ago.

She and that boy had exchanged letters by note for a long time. Then she invited him up in the hanging basket, and that was how they came to know each other. As for the chess set in the room... he had probably brought it for her on one of those visits.

Thinking about it now, it really was rather nostalgic. She just didn't know where that boy had gone now, or how he was doing.

The little princess sat blankly at the dressing table, propping up her cheek as she daydreamed.

Then, at that moment, she heard the bell tied to the rope of the tower’s hanging basket ring.

Someone had probably come to deliver food, right?

Thinking that, she walked over to the bell and gently tugged the rope, giving it a little shake to show she had heard.

Then the person below shook the rope too.

Three long, two short. Two long, one short. Two short, one long.

Anyone else might have been completely unable to make sense of that nearly scrambled rhythm, but the little princess could easily read the code from the sound of the bell.

Back then, the boy who brought her meals had one day said he was going to sea. She hadn't wanted him to go, but she hadn't selfishly tried to keep him. Instead, she wished him luck, and the two of them pinky-swore a promise—if one day he came back, he would ring out that code, and then she would know it was him.

So... had that boy from before come back?

The little princess carefully shook the rope according to their old promise, and once again got a response.

It was him!

The little princess brightened at once and shook the rope to signal for him to come up.

The boy from back then no longer needed to sit in the hanging basket and rely on the little princess in the tower to pull him up. He used one of the blessings granted to him by the Lady of the Lake, and easily climbed the rope into the tower.

It had already been many years since they last met. The little princess still looked just as she had when they parted, with almost no change at all. But the boy seemed like a completely different person.

His originally black hair had turned a brilliant gold. He had become much more handsome. His once thin and small body had somehow grown tall and strong. Even his every movement carried the elegant air of someone who had received a fine education.

The boy no longer looked like a servant responsible for bringing the little princess her meals.

Now, he looked more like a prince—the prince from the prophecy, the one from a foreign land.

He seemed a little nervous. Maybe he was afraid the little princess wouldn't recognize him. So he scratched his head and, just like the first time they had met long ago, greeted her with a trace of awkward restraint:

“Long time no see.”

He had once thought he had already adapted to being a prince, and could deal with anyone with practiced ease... even those beautiful girls who offered themselves to him.

The storms at sea, the struggles in foreign lands, and the trials of the Lady of the Lake—over the past years, he had gone through too much, and gained too much experience and insight. That heavy past had been like an anvil and a forging hammer, slowly shaping him from the naive little boy he once was into the prince he was now.

Back then, he used to wonder whether a fake like him could really replace the prince from the prophecy.

Now, he felt that he was that prince from the prophecy.

Because even that prince from the prophecy had probably never worked as hard as he had.

Iron and fire, blood and tears. He had sacrificed so much before he could finally transform into what he was now.

He was the little princess’s servant, and also the little princess’s prince.

After going through so much, he had thought he would be able to face the little princess calmly. But now, for some reason, he didn't dare meet her eyes. He even became awkward and worried in a way that was rare for him.

The prince was afraid the little princess wouldn't recognize him.

But he had worried too much.

After seeing what he looked like now, the little princess only froze for a moment. Then she reacted and smiled.

“Long time no see... you've changed so much.”

There was a slight trace of nostalgia in the girl's eyes, but even more than that, there was sympathy and tenderness. She stepped toward the prince, raised her hand, and gently touched the scar on the boy’s forehead, one whose mark was now barely visible.

“It feels like you've been through a lot,” the little princess said softly. “You must've... suffered quite a bit, right?”

“You've worked hard.”

“...”

The prince froze. Almost by instinct, he grasped the little princess’s wrist and met her gaze.

The emotions he had kept taut all this time suddenly loosened. Was this what relief felt like?

So he had still been afraid.

After so much time, would the little princess have already forgotten him, or failed to recognize him...? Though he really had changed so much that if she hadn't recognized him, it wouldn't have been her fault.

But after striving for the little princess for so many years, perhaps he had also longed to be acknowledged.

He had longed to be recognized at a glance. Longed to be comforted. Longed to be pitied—and now all those old wishes had suddenly been fulfilled so easily.

Ah, he thought.

Sure enough, liking you is the happiest thing in this world.

The prince smiled.

...

After that came the usual storytelling session.

The little princess poured him some water, then sat obediently on the edge of the bed, holding a cup like a kitten waiting to be fed, and asked what he had gone through out there all these years.

He sat in a chair and told her the story of his past years as he recalled them.

He fought pirates at sea. In a foreign land, he got dragged into a royal conspiracy. In the end, he became a prince, was forced to undergo the Lady of the Lake’s trial, drew the Sword of Virtue, and became the crown prince of a kingdom.

He had originally been quiet and taciturn, but after all these years of tempering, he now had surprisingly good eloquence. He could tell each little story vividly and make it utterly engrossing.

But in truth, he had deliberately erased the most real parts from every story.

For example, when he fought the pirates, he had nearly died from blood loss. After getting dragged into the foreign royal conspiracy, he became the scapegoat and was thrown into a dungeon, where he was interrogated for days until he was nearly mentally broken. And when he finally underwent the Lady of the Lake’s trial, she saw through his true identity, so she raised the difficulty of the trial. He barely survived, nearly failed, and almost ended up becoming the Lady of the Lake’s puppet from then on.

He polished every blood-soaked truth into a fairy tale. That way, no matter what danger he, the protagonist, encountered, he could always escape disaster and survive.

And so, in an offhand tone, he told the little princess that he had become a prince in a foreign land.

The little princess was sincerely happy for him when she heard that. She congratulated him, then hugged a pillow and grew slightly downcast, apologizing to him in guilt.

She said that all these years, she had still been locked in the tower every day. What she saw was almost always the same unchanging sky. So her life wasn't as exciting as his. She had no stories she could share with him.

When the girl said those words, her expression held a heartbreaking loneliness. Even though she quickly tucked away all her negative emotions and smiled again, the boy still noticed the deep sorrow hidden in her eyes.

It shouldn't be like this, the prince thought.

A princess should be happy and blessed. How could she be this sad?

Still, it wouldn't be for much longer.

He lowered his eyes and clenched his fist. The Sword of Virtue hanging at his waist felt as if it had been heated red by his surging emotions, burning through his clothes against his skin like a branding iron.

The little princess should have her freedom.

He had left the palace and come to a foreign land. He had suffered through so much along the way. Wasn't the final purpose of all of it to break open this birdcage imprisoning the little princess?

He would give freedom to the girl he loved.

As for the means to achieve that goal...

Naturally, since everything had begun with a prophecy, then let everything end with a prophecy too.

The little princess was imprisoned in the tower. A greedy dragon heard her cries and stole away the most beautiful gem in this fairy-tale kingdom. Then, the prince who upheld justice would step forward, slay the dragon, and save the little princess.

And then, the princess and the prince would live happily ever after.

The boy who had now become a prince no longer believed in so-called prophecy, but he could make the prophecy come true.

He could collude with the dragon and have it rescue the imprisoned little princess. Then he could go subdue the dragon and let it fake its death. That way, the prophecy would be fulfilled, and the little princess would gain her freedom.

Thinking that, the prince looked at the little princess.

And at that exact moment, the little princess also looked at him. Their eyes met, and the prince smiled without thinking.

He stood up, looked at the girl, and lowered his head respectfully.

“Now that I’ve become a prince, and you are a princess, then when we meet from now on... we probably can't be like we were before.”

The little princess nodded in a dazed, half-understanding way, lightly biting her finger as she thought back for a moment.

Then she looked into the prince’s eyes and held out her hand to him.

“Hello.”

The prince gently supported her hand, dropped to one knee, lowered his eyes, and with a tender expression pressed an air-light kiss to the back of her hand.

“Hello, my princess,”

he said softly.

[To be continued]