LIGHT NOVEL
LIGHT NOVEL
How about a cool-on-the-outside beauty who just can’t be honest about how much she likes you?
She’s dead set on playing it cool—even though she’s clearly aware of the hero—yet she blushes far too easily, gets all prickly out of jealousy, and so on. This is an isekai romantic comedy where you get to adore a “tsundere” beauty while enjoying all the banter and back-and-forth!
What’s more, she’s the strongest, a genius—and precisely because of that, despite being a princess, she’s a lonely outcast shunned even by the nobility.
So the king (her father) is at his wits’ end over how to handle her, and finally blurts out, “Why don’t you go and see a bit of the outside world?”
To which the princess replies, cool as ever, “So this is banishment from the royal family, then. It’s been an honor serving you.”
And so…
That very princess crosses paths with the hero—a mere commoner (and a banished one at that)…
No sooner have they met than they head out to a tavern, only for the princess to drink herself under the table on half a mug. When the hero tends to her back at the inn, she jumps to the conclusion that “some strange man has had his way with me!”
He somehow manages to set the misunderstanding straight—only for the princess’s silver tongue to twist things around until, for some reason, the hero is the one apologizing. All he’d done was look after her out of kindness.
And yet the princess keeps tagging along with him anyway, until… they end up spending a night together at a high-class inn?!
And so on, with the hero thrown into utter chaos by the princess’s tsundere ways.
Will the hero manage to make this lonely tsundere princess honest with herself at last?! Please, do give it a read!
— Tisli’s perspective —
“In other words, you mean to banish me from the royal family?”
“No one is saying any such thing!”
“Very well. Then I shall take my leave. Thank you for everything until now.”
“H-hold on, wait just a moment!”
As I turned on my heel, Father called after me in a panic.
I ignored him and started for the door of his study, only to find my way blocked by Father’s attendants.
Having no choice, I turned back and spoke.
“What business have you with me now? I am already a disowned daughter, am I not?”
“As I said—no one is talking about banishment or disowning! How do you arrive at such a conclusion?!”
“To my mind, the matter amounts to the same thing.”
“It does not! All I said was, ‘Go and see a bit of the outside world!'”
“I—first in line to the throne of the Kingdom of Calvan, the sole legitimate daughter of the royal house, and, on top of all that, a super-genius beauty—”
“Hold on, did you just call yourself a super-genius beauty?”
“—S-U-C-H a person as I have no need whatsoever to go and see any outside world. Hence my judgment that this amounts to banishment from the royal family. Am I mistaken?”
“Honestly… that, right there, is exactly what I mean, truly…”
Father heaved a tremendous sigh, and then went on.
“It is true that this kingdom’s present prosperity is thanks to you—everyone acknowledges as much. There is no question that you are a genius in both letters and arms.”
“You are forgetting ‘beauty,’ are you not?”
“I keep telling you… that is not the sort of thing one says of oneself…”
“Humility, when carried too far, becomes mere sarcasm.”
“That is not the matter at hand! In any case—I grant that you are a genius. And that is precisely why.”
“Meaning?”
“Precisely because you are a genius, you have not the slightest grasp of how your subjects feel—nor of the lords and nobility, for that matter.”
“Is that so. Then, farewell.”
“Wait—I said wait!”
Once again I moved to leave, but the doors of the study remained shut. Three attendants still stood there, blocking the double doors.
I could simply have kicked them aside and walked out, but as one now banished from the royal family, I would have no one to shield me afterward. That would make shaking off pursuers rather a chore.
Coolly weighing the matter, I reluctantly turned and faced Father once more.
“What is it, exactly, that you wish to say, Father?”
“All right… I’ll just come right out with it…”
Father, for some reason, looked utterly exhausted. I was the one who ought to be tired, but kind soul that I am, I lent him my ear without a single word of complaint.
“You have no grasp whatsoever of how other people feel. So leave the palace and broaden your horizons a little.”
“And?”
“Huh…?”
At my question, Father suddenly found himself at a loss for words.
With a sigh, I had no choice but to fill in the rest for him.
“In other words, the conclusion is the same: I am to leave this palace. Am I correct?”
“W-well… yes, but…”
“Hence, ‘Thank you for everything until now,’ as I said.”
“But the way you phrase it makes it sound as though you’ll never come back—”
“Indeed—I have no intention of ever returning. I am, after all, disowned and banished from the royal family.”
“H-hey… you’re not, by any chance… angry?”
“Whatever do you mean? Do you imagine that I would lose my temper over a trifle—being called a tactless, insensitive, clueless girl with not a shred of delicacy who can’t read the room?”
“You’re angry—you are definitely angry! And I never went that far!”
“And so, Father. Thank you for everything you have done for me. I doubt we shall meet again, but I wish you the best of health.”
With that I turned on my heel for the third time and fixed the attendants blocking my way with a piercing glare.
My patience does not extend to a third time, I’m afraid. As I let that unspoken threat fill the air, the attendants paled and stepped aside to clear my path.
“H-hey! Wait, I said!”
From behind me, Father—no, the King who was once my Father—called out, but I made up my mind to ignore him entirely and walked out of the study.
And so, on this very day, I—who as the First Princess of the Kingdom of Calvan had toiled tirelessly for the sake of my country—was, most unjustly, banished from the royal family.
Now then—what shall I do with myself?
Personally speaking, I have private funds I could not exhaust in a lifetime, so there is no need to rush into work.
Perhaps I shall treat this as a vacation for a while, and tour about various places, taking in the sights—
—or so I had been thinking at that point in time.
Little did I dream that, soon after this, I would end up storming back into the very palace I had been banished from—much less that I would find myself caught up in an all-out brawl with every last one of the incompetent lords and nobility. Even I, a super-genius beauty, had not foreseen any such thing.
And all because of a single man—worthless, mediocre, painfully plain—the very fellow who had also been driven out of this very same palace!
— Alde’s perspective —
“Huh? What did you just say?”
“Didn’t catch that? I said you’re banished—or, plainly put, fired.”
“Wh-what…?!”
I’d been summoned to the back gate of the royal castle, only to find myself surrounded by a handful of my senior castle guards.
And the very first thing they hit me with was: you’re banished—or, plainly put, fired.
These guys had been giving me a hard time on a daily basis, but this castle job was something I’d worked my tail off for—piling effort upon effort—and finally landed. There was no way I was gonna let myself get banished because of my seniors’ selfish whims.
Back home in my village, I’ve got parents who get sick easy, a hungry little sister, and a lovable pup. If I lose this job here, I won’t be able to send any money home to my family anymore.
“W-why?! I sure as heck don’t remember pulling any kind of stunt that’d get me banished!”
For one thing, these guys weren’t supposed to have the authority to banish me in the first place. So I tried to push back—but one of them, Rigor, just smirked and held out a document.
“Th-that’s…!”
It was an official discharge order. And right there in black and white: “Alde Rama is hereby banished.” In other words, my banishment was already a done deal.
“W-why?! On what grounds, exactly, am I being banished?!”
Still wearing that same smug grin, Rigor came back at me.
“There’s no ‘why’ to it. A lowly commoner like you setting foot in this sacred castle in the first place—that, right there, was the mistake.”
Rigor and the other seniors here were nobles, every last one of them. That’s why they couldn’t stomach the idea of doing the same job as a commoner like me. It was the same reason they’d been harassing me, over and over again.
But—by a decree of Her Highness the princess, who’s hailed as a once-in-an-age genius, the job of Royal Guard had become one you could land on the strength of your skills, no matter your station. That’s exactly why I’d worked myself to the bone, studying and training like my life depended on it, until I finally passed the Royal Guard Examination.
So I tried fighting back.
“Saying it’s a mistake for me to be here amounts to saying Her Highness herself was wrong, doesn’t it?!”
“Huh? The heck are you babbling on about?”
“Taking on capable commoners—that was Her Highness’s own decision! If you’re calling that a mistake, that’s worth a charge of lèse-majesté!”
“Heh heh heh… what kind of an idiot are you?”
Far from being shaken by my argument, Rigor came right back at me.
“Nobody here’s badmouthing Her Highness, all right? I’m saying that you, personally, don’t belong in this place—and that’s because you’re useless.”
“Just now—you said ‘lowly commoner,’ didn’t you?!”
“Hm? Did I, now?”
Rigor gave an exaggerated shrug, then slid his gaze over to the others around him.
“Nope, didn’t hear a thing.”
“Yeah, I didn’t catch any of that either.”
“Bet that idiot over there’s just imagining things.”
“More like—the one badmouthing Her Highness here is that guy, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Just now he was saying Her Highness’s policy was a mistake.”
…Gh! There’s no reasoning with these guys!
No matter how long I stayed here butting heads with them, it wouldn’t get me anywhere. The moment the official notice was issued, my loss was already locked in.
How they’d managed to get the paperwork issued, I had no idea… but I’d bet anything they cooked up a pile of lies to get their superiors to sign off on it.
All the while, Rigor and his crew kept smirking as they spoke.
“So then, Alde—what’s it gonna be? You’re not a Royal Guard or anything else around here anymore, so if you keep hanging around, we’ll have no choice but to arrest you. Got it?”
“…………!”
If Her Highness—the one everyone called a once-in-a-generation genius—happened to be here in person, things would have taken a completely different turn. But there was zero chance of that happening. Grunts like me, Rigor and the rest included, had never so much as laid eyes on Her Highness.
This kingdom’s princess in particular was famous for almost never appearing in public. Well, sure—when you’re running an entire kingdom at just sixteen, getting your face out there would probably make assassinations and the like a serious risk in no time.
At any rate, that was that.
I was desperate enough to be clinging to a fantasy as absurd as the princess herself swooping in to save me.
But I couldn’t find a thread to pull on, not even one. All I could do was clench my fists tight.
“F-fine… all right…”
If I refused to back down here, Rigor and his crew really would haul me off in cuffs. Losing the job and getting hit with trumped-up charges on top of that—at that point, worrying about sending money home wouldn’t even be on the table.
“Thanks… for everything up to now…!”
With that, I turned my back on Rigor and the others. From behind me, I could hear them cackling.
Years of grinding away at my studies out in the countryside, all so I could finally make it into the Royal Guard… but with an official discharge order in hand, there was nothing I could do. Years of effort, all gone up in smoke. Trembling with frustration, I left the back gate of the royal castle behind me.
“Are you sure you’re really content with this?”
Then, all of a sudden, a voice came at me from the side.
The area around the castle’s back gate stretched out into a vast garden…
And the owner of that voice was hidden behind the trees growing in the garden.
— Alde’s perspective —
“H-hey, you! How the heck did you even get in here…?!”
We were outside the castle walls, sure, but this was still a garden under royal castle jurisdiction. Not the kind of place outsiders are supposed to just wander into.
So while I was flustered, I also couldn’t let the seniors who were still cackling notice her. I dropped my voice and spoke to the girl.
“Keep to the trees and slip out of the garden, so those Royal Guards don’t spot you…!”
Rigor and his crew should still have their eyes on me, so they wouldn’t notice her.
“Understood.”
After the girl said that, I made a point of walking off in the opposite direction.
And then—
—once the seniors’ jeering had faded out behind me, and I’d passed through the back garden and was nearing the main road, the girl from before popped out from behind a tree.
Looked like she’d managed to slip past Rigor and the others without being spotted. I let out a breath of relief.
“Whew… seriously, though. You shouldn’t go barging into the royal castle’s back garden without permission.”
“You’re no longer a Royal Guard, are you? In that case, I see no grounds on which I should be receiving a scolding from you.”
“Ugh… now that you put it that way, I guess you’ve got a point… but still…”
“So—what is your name?”
Caught off guard by the sudden question, I answered, a little flustered. There’s something about how this girl times her words—I just can’t get a read on her…
“Alde Rama. A Royal Guard of the Kingdom of Calvan… well, who used to be one…”
“I see. I am… Tisli Reid. A super-genius beauty.”
“Uh… huh…?”
“So, Alde. By the looks of it, you’ve been banished—or, plainly put, fired—from the Royal Guard over some thoroughly unreasonable cause. And you mean to leave it at that?”
“No, I’m not—but they’ve gone and issued an official discharge order. There’s nothing I can do about it…”
“Is that so. How pitiful.”
“Hngh…!”
What is it with this girl—she’s just scraping away at my heart… (tears welling up over here)
I couldn’t come up with a single comeback, but desperate to fight back in some way, I shot a glare at her—at Tisli.
“…?!”
And that was when it hit me.
She had every right to call herself a beauty—Tisli was, no exaggeration, breathtaking.
I’d been too rattled back in the garden earlier to get a good look at her face.
Her smooth, lustrous hair flowed down in gentle waves to about the middle of her back—long, with two braids gathered together behind her head in a half-up style.
Her eyes were large, with prominent double lids, and they had a strong, willful look in them. Her skin was as white as snow, and although she had curves where she ought to, the rest of her was so slender she looked like she might shatter at the slightest touch.
This… no matter how you looked at it, she was no commoner. A commoner girl, working day in and day out, would be more solidly built than this.
If she was nobility, then there’d been no reason for her to scurry out of the back garden in such a hurry—but with that thought, I straightened my collar anyway.
“M-my apologies, Lady Tisli. I had no idea you were a noble…”
“What in the world are you talking about? I am merely a commoner.”
“I mean—your clothes alone are far too fine for that…”
“There are well-dressed commoners, are there not?”
“Well, uh, in that case… only political merchants, I’d say…”
“Indeed—as a matter of fact, I am the daughter of a political merchant.”
I see… so that’s why she was hanging around near the royal castle.
That said, even being from a political merchant family meant she was way above my station. For a commoner like me, born and raised out in the sticks, the slightest slip-up could get me beheaded, easy as that.
A chill ran down my spine at that thought, and then Tisli said:
“So then, Alde. You’ve been unjustly banished. What do you intend to do from here?”
“Wh-what am I supposed to do…?”
This girl really does keep coming back to the ‘banishment’ thing… I’d rather not talk about it right now, you know…
Honestly, it had all happened too suddenly for me to have any clear idea what I should do next.
Maybe that was why I let my real thoughts slip out.
“No choice, I guess… so for today, I figured I’d just drink myself stupid…”
“I see. Escaping from reality, then.”
“Urgh…!!”
Does this girl bear some kind of grudge against me? We’ve only just met, but… (tears welling up over here)
While I was still groaning, Tisli said:
“In that case, allow me to accompany you. Do take me to one of these so-called ‘taverns.'”
“H-huh…?!”
Hit with that out of nowhere, I went wide-eyed despite myself. I tried to put a stop to it in a hurry.
“H-hold on a sec, Lady Tisli. The taverns down in the lower town are no place for a lady such as yourself—”
“Alde. I told you I am a commoner, did I not?”
“B-but…”
“So please, address me in a more relaxed manner.”
“Uh… right…?”
“If you keep being so stiff with me, it will only make us stand out more, you realize?”
“Yeah, true… when you put it like that…”
“So no titles, no formal speech. Oh, and don’t mind my way of speaking—it’s just a personal quirk. It isn’t meant as deference to you, after all.”
“Uh-huh, no kidding…”
I felt the corners of my mouth start to twitch, but I clamped down hard…
While I was wrestling that frustration back down, Tisli went on:
“Now then, do take me to a tavern. I shall treat you to a meal, as a guide fee.”
And so I—completely outmatched—was worn down by this daughter of a political merchant.
If you weren’t this pushy, I suppose you couldn’t make it as a political merchant in the first place… but still…
What had I done to deserve being stuck with someone so far above my station? One wrong move and (literally) my neck was on the line.
Would I make it through this day in one piece? And what kind of situation is “drowning my sorrows while in mortal peril” supposed to be, anyway?
My footsteps just kept getting heavier and heavier…
(Continued in the Kindle edition)
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