Series: The Princess’s Guard is the Assassin Aiming for Her Life
“Good evening, young lady.” The beautiful woman I didn’t know spoke in a husky voice.
Because I just woke up from a nightmare, I was struggling to understand the situation. But no matter how much I struggled, I couldn’t figure it out.
“Umm…?”
“It really helps that you’re alone. Could it be that you were waiting for that kid?”
I lost my voice at her words.
“Ah, it’s just as I thought. Hmm, I see, I see.”
“…Excuse me, who are you?”
“Aw, shoot, I forgot to introduce myself. I can’t tell you my name but I can tell you this; I’m that kid’s master.”
Master.
She must be the one who taught him how to change his form with magic.
My eyes widened even more when she added, “In his current life, that is.”
“…No way…”
“So he already told you that much, huh? I see. The reason that kid has been running around without contacting me was because of you after all. Well, he could just be avoiding me on purpose.”
“Contacting you?”
Master smiled broadly at my question. “He had to go undercover to get close to his target for this job. It’d be hard to get information from the outside in his position. That’s why I gather crucial information from the outside for that kid during his jobs. Since I’m also in the brokerage business, I can tell my clients what they want to hear. Because sometimes the condition behind the job changes, and we need to be the first to know.”
It seemed like Al was able to get a lot of his information thanks to his master. Although I had no idea exactly when he contacted her.
“Al isn’t coming.”
“I know. That kid seems really busy right now.”
“……”
“C’mon, don’t make that face! I’m sure he’ll come again. That kid has never failed a job before.”
Was I supposed to smile in relief from those words? All I could do was bite my lip.
“…The heck? I thought you were gonna say some passionate words like, ‘I don’t care if he kills me as long as I can see him again.’”
“I can’t just say things like that so easily.”
“I thought this was going to be some tragic love story between an assassin and his target, but I guess it doesn’t work like that in reality…”
“I don’t mean between assassin and target, I mean…”
I choked back the words. Somehow I couldn’t help arguing with this person.
Master raised her eyebrows after seeing my reaction. “Hmm. From that reaction, it seems like you know that kid’s troubling habit. Well, I can’t blame you there. I’m sure he’s held a knife to you several times when he could no longer endure it.”
“…Only twice.”
Not including our first meeting.
“Hmm? Only twice in the three weeks you were together? Maybe he’s actually not that interested in you.”
I threw a pillow before my thoughts could even catch up. But she easily dodged, as if she foresaw it happening.
“I guess you really are passionate after all.”
“Shut up.”
“Never.”
Al always shut up when I said that…
“Do you know about that kid’s lovers from way back when?”
“…I don’t.”
“I see, so he didn’t talk about that. You seem to have proper sensibilities after all, young lady. He probably thought you would distance yourself if you knew.”
“I heard that he killed his lovers. He told me so when he was starting to like me a little.”
Master turned to look outside the window, narrowing her eyes. “Hmm. I see. I suppose he felt that he shouldn’t talk about it. I swear, that kid is way too pure.”
“Pure…?”
When I tried to think of a pure-hearted Al, I started to feel disturbed and called it quits. Well, it’s not that I thought he was impure, but it’s just, pure didn’t really seem to describe him either…
“Do you want to know?”
“Eh?”
“Why he killed his lovers?” Master asked, but she started speaking before I could answer. “It seems like that kid was born a farmer’s son in a small village in his past life. His first lover was the village mayor’s daughter. He said he didn’t remember her name or what she looked like, so I don’t know her name either.”
The mayor’s daughter was a beautiful girl. Although that kid laughed, saying that if you ventured outside of the small village, there were plenty more beautiful girls.
She was about five years older than him, and he had been attracted to her for a while.
Because that kid’s parents died when he was young, the mayor raised him as his own, but instead of seeing that girl as his older sister, he saw her as a woman.
The spring when the mayor’s daughter became an adult, he held a festival. One large competition took place during that festival. It was a sword fighting competition that the unmarried men of the village could participate in. And the man who won could marry the mayor’s daughter. That was how the mayor’s daughters have been married off for generations.
Of course, that kid participated as well. The oldest you could be to enter was twenty-five, but there was no limit for the youngest. I doubt anyone expected a twelve year old boy to beat everyone.
That kid was pretty normal in his past life. He couldn’t use magic, but he was clever and quicker on his feet than most.
Using the rule that anyone outside of the ring lost, he beat the older, stronger adults one by one. So he won in the end. But that was the beginning of everything…
“___! I won!”
The mayor’s daughter smiled, watching the innocent joy on the boy’s face.
“Congrats.”
Because fiancés couldn’t live under the same roof, the boy moved out of the mayor’s house to live on his own. They spent their days together, sometimes meeting briefly in the flower garden on the outskirts of the village.
They couldn’t get married right away. They needed to wait until the boy became an adult.
“I’m sorry I have to make you wait, ___.”
“It’s okay. I’m looking forward to when you become an adult.”
The boy cherished that kind girl very much. But one day, their happiness came to an end.
The girl told the boy that they couldn’t see each other anymore.
“Please, tell me why!”
The girl just shook her head at his question and they didn’t see each other again.
Whenever he tried to go to the mayor’s house, he was turned away, having been told that she didn’t want to see him.
After a long while, the boy finally saw the mayor’s daughter again. Through the window of a certain house, he could see her facing a young man. That young man was well built, and one of the candidates in the competition. He was also well known for having favored the mayor’s daughter for a long time.
It was just the two of them in that young man’s house.
When the boy saw that, he realized he had been betrayed. It was as he thought; an adult man suited her better.
Soon, the mayor made a declaration. He said that his daughter would marry that young man.
The boy, in his despair, stopped leaving his house. But on the morning of her wedding, the boy couldn’t endure the happy atmosphere of the village and left. He ended up in the flower field he had walked many times before, and found the figure of the mayor’s daughter collapsed on the ground.
“___!?”
“…Oh, you came.”
A knife was stabbed into her chest. The red staining her dress and her shallow breathing told him that she didn’t have long to live.
The girl told the shaking boy what had happened.
That young man had entered her bedroom all those nights ago. He said he had permission from her father, the mayor, to have his way with her. After that happened, she could no longer face the boy. But, she couldn’t accept this marriage, either.
The knife she had shakily stabbed through her chest didn’t penetrate very deep, and although she was bleeding, death was still far. It would be difficult to save her. But if he left her like this, she would surely suffer for a long time.
So the boy grabbed the hilt of the knife.
“…Thank you. I love you.”
It was only at the very end of her life that he received words of love.
The boy left the village. It was likely that they would suspect the boy of killing the mayor’s daughter. He was the one who finally ended her, so he couldn’t deny it.
Either way, he had no regrets about leaving his hometown.
The boy fled to a large, nearby town with only the clothes on his back. He took shelter at the town’s orphanage. No pursuers came from the village. Since it was a small, rural village that cared about appearances, they probably didn’t want word to get out about what happened.
The boy resented the young man and the mayor for driving her into a corner, but he didn’t have the mettle or strength to do anything with that grudge. The sight of her suffering in the end remained strongly in the boy’s head, so he thought about becoming a doctor instead.
When he became an adult, he left the orphanage and started working as an apprentice of the town’s doctor. Unable to make a living on that alone, he also took advantage of his light-footed nature to work as an adventurer, hunting monsters.
He worked hard, even sacrificing his own sleep time.
Then one day, a fashionable woman approached him. With her sweet words and good looks, which seemed to sooth him when he wasn’t busy, he, who had little experience with women, was smitten. They eventually grew to have a good relationship.
But then he witnessed something one night.
The woman wandered off into the darkness of an alley with a man he didn’t know. He couldn’t help but compare that with his first love.
He hurried after her, feeling that she was in danger, but bumped into someone before he could enter the alley. It was the man she was just walking with. It looked like he had run out of the alley he just walked into.
He thought it was strange, but turned back to look in the alley to make sure the woman was okay… only to see her collapsed on the ground with a knife in her stomach.
But he couldn’t rush over immediately. Standing next to her was an older man wearing a ragged cloak. He looked nonchalant, as if he was simply an observer of the situation.
“Aww. He beat me to it… What should I do now? I guess I’ll just say I was the one who killed you.”
“Wh… What are you…? Save me…” The woman reached out to the man, who just scratched the back of his head.
“I ain’t savin’ you. You’ve played around too much. Enough to get someone to hire someone like me. That’s why he stabbed you. You’ve messed with at least three people in town, haven’t you? They were all promising men before you came along. Independently financed luxury, what a great way to live!”
Before he could understand what the man was saying, the woman cried out. “Who cares about that…!? Of course they would want to give money to a woman as great as me!”
Her voice should have been muffled, but it reached his ears with disgusting clarity. He had also given her money. He left his money to her, who had promised they would get married after he became independent.
That was when he realized.
His own immaturity, his own shallowness.
The depth of a human’s heart.
The very inner part that wasn’t easy to see, where many people hid their true feelings.
And so he… took a step forward.
Because of his experience hunting prey as an adventurer, he could walk quickly without making a sound. The man seemed to notice, but stayed silent. The woman probably didn’t notice he was there until his hands were around her throat.
The man called out to him as he stood there, looking down at the woman’s dead body.
“Ain’t you one of the guys she strung along? You’re quite skilled.”
“…I’m an apprentice doctor and an adventurer.”
“Ah, so that’s it.” The man scratched his head again. “Come with me. You have this look that makes me think you can’t go back to the way you were living before.”
So then, he left that town.
“…Well, that’s the gist of it.”
“That was… intense.”
“If you ask me, I would say he was just naïve. Well, it’s true that he was quite unlucky. That kid was able to hear the true feelings of his lovers only during their last moments. So that’s why he thinks that only moments before their death would he be able to hear their true feelings.”
“That’s…” My eyebrows knitted together.
“Foolish, right? There are people out there who just say the worst things, or those who don’t say anything at all, or strong-willed fools who spout lies to their final breath. Well, that kid knows that too. But because it’s still possible, he can’t hold down his desire to try. That’s why, the more he cares about someone, the more he wants to share his feelings with them, the more he wants to know if their words and attitude were genuine, the more he pulls a knife on them.”
“……”
“…At least, he did that quite a few times in his past life. I guess he grew out of it, at least, I haven’t seen him do it in this life. That kid doesn’t kill outside of work now. You’ll be the first exception.”
“Don’t say it like that…”
When he said he wanted to kill…
When he said he didn’t want the people he cared about to suffer…
I could finally understand.
Oh, so Al…
“Al… It’s not like he wants to kill people.”
Master sighed as I covered my face.
“That’s probably true. But that kid’s a genius at it.”
“…Even if he’s a genius, it doesn’t mean he has to do it.”
“Indeed. But that kid doesn’t know any other way of living.”
“If he doesn’t know, then he just needs to learn. I would spare no expense to help him.” Before I knew it, I was glaring at her.
Of course, I knew it wouldn’t be so simple. He had already committed many sins, and I didn’t even know if he desired a different way of life.
But… even if I had to force him, I wanted Al to be by my side.
“Haha, you’re surprisingly gutsy. You know I’m an assassin too, right? Don’t you think I might kill you for trying to take my precious disciple away from me?”
“Would you really tell all this to a person you’re planning on killing?”
“Sometimes you have to. Assassinations come with conditions. For example, that kid’s job this time was to kill his target on the very last day of the deadline.”
My eyes widened in surprise.
Merry Bad End Translations 
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