How the Prince Makes Friends Chapter 24

While Nihil was lost in thought, trying to figure out where the writing had originated, the history teacher interrupted him.

“That is an ancient language believed to have been used before five hundred years ago.”

“…An ancient language?”

The teacher adjusted his large, round glasses and continued. His cyan eyes, similar in color to his hair, sparkled as they reflected the light.

“We believe it belonged to a kingdom that once existed in part of the Kingdom of Harpense but has since fallen. The system was thrown into disarray after the Heavenly Demon War, so the exact location of that kingdom is unknown. However, the map currently recognized as the world’s first map was discovered in the Forest of Winds, to the west. Oh, the Forest of Winds is right next to my family’s marquisate! It’s a truly beautiful place. Why don’t we go on a picnic together sometime?”

“Cut the nonse—”

“…A picnic?”

Nihil had been about to tell him to stop talking nonsense and continue his explanation, but he fell silent when he saw Rianus’s eyes light up at the word picnic.

Marquess Francesca smiled warmly at Nihil before continuing.

“Ah, but there are rumors that ghosts haunt that forest! That’s why it’s also called the Forest of Ghosts. Even members of my family have been injured there several times, so we rarely visit anymore. Still, it’s a beautiful place, so you should at least admire it from a distance!”

At the mention of the Forest of Ghosts, Rianus’s expression visibly drooped. They couldn’t go on a picnic somewhere like that.

Seeing Rianus’s disappointment, Nihil decided he should take the child on a picnic sometime. Somewhere without ghosts.

“Haha! Anyway, nowadays, the map distinguishes each country with borders so that their territories can be identified. But when the first world map was discovered, it apparently had no borders at all. It looked more like a simple drawing of the land itself. As for those notes, we believe they were written by the mapmaker in the language used in the country of his origin, but…”

Nihil tilted his head slightly as he listened. Even after hearing the explanation, the writing still seemed entirely unrelated to what the teacher was describing. Frowning faintly, he tried to remember where he had seen the characters before, but the memory remained just out of reach.

“Yes, but strangely enough, this language has never been discovered anywhere else. As a result, it remains undeciphered and is still printed symbolically on every map.”

“…So it wasn’t graffiti.”

“Hm? I don’t scribble in my books.”

“That’s what I found strange. But there are too many contradictions in your explanation.”

“Huh?”

The cyan eyes behind the large, round glasses widened until they were almost as round as the lenses themselves.

Then, apparently overcome by curiosity, the teacher approached Nihil with gleaming eyes, crouched down, and rested his chin on the desk.

Faced with someone standing far too close for comfort, Nihil leaned his upper body back slightly and continued explaining.

“This probably isn’t a language used by any kingdom. It doesn’t matter what country the person who drew the map actually came from. Your premise is already wrong. Even if a kingdom fell, it would be impossible for its language to disappear without a trace, leaving behind only a few sentences on a map. It’s more likely that this language was rarely used even back then, or that it was a cipher intended to keep information secret. Or…”

“…Or?”

“Perhaps it was a language passed down only among certain people.”

Even as he explained, Nihil found the situation strange.

He already knew this language.

If it had been a cipher or a language passed down exclusively among a particular group, there should have been no reason for him to know it.

And yet, no matter how hard he thought about it, he had never seen this writing system before. He had only heard it.

…Where on earth…?

Nihil silently repeated the characters in his mind, tapping the pen he had been holding idly against the desk.

“Th-then, those particular people…”

“Ah. I remember.”

“What?”

The marquess, who had been about to ask who those particular people might be, sprang to his feet when he heard Nihil say he remembered something.

However, Nihil hesitated. Should he reveal what he had remembered, or keep it to himself? It wasn’t information he could casually share with just anyone.

When Nihil remained silent, the sitting room fell quiet for a long while.

Rianus called out to him softly from beside him, but Nihil continued pondering as though he hadn’t heard.

Eventually, the marquess, who had been pacing restlessly around Nihil, ran out of patience. He grabbed Nihil by the shoulders and shook him, pulling him out of his reverie.

“What did you remember? Please tell me!”

“No.”

“How can you say that?!”

Realizing that if he went home like this, he would spend the entire night wide awake until his next history lesson, Marquess Francesca slammed his hand against the desk.

Nihil no longer responded to the marquess’s words. He simply lowered his eyes.

But Marquess Francesca, who was utterly devoted to the study of languages, proved far more persistent than Nihil had expected. Nihil assumed that if he kept refusing, the man would eventually give up.

However, he soon had to reconsider.

This guy’s nickname was definitely Crazy.

 

***

 

“Please tell me!”

The young marquess, who was quietly known among the students as the Crazy Professor, was certainly living up to his nickname.

It had already been an hour.

Watching the young marquess continue throwing a tantrum instead of teaching the lesson he was supposed to, Nihil was so dumbfounded that he couldn’t even find the words to respond. In fact, the lesson had ended quite some time ago.

Rianus, initially flustered by the marquess’s unfamiliar behavior, had eventually settled into the role of spectator, munching on the cookies the marquess had given him as a gift from his youngest brother.

Just then, a brown cookie that pretended to taste like chocolate entered Nihil’s mouth.

When Rianus had reached for one of the completely burnt cookies, Nihil had snatched it from his hand and eaten it instead. Rianus had mistaken this for a sign that Nihil liked them, so he had been personally feeding him the burnt cookies ever since.

Nihil made no effort to correct the misunderstanding. Believing that his friend loved chocolate cookies, Rianus picked out every brown cookie and generously offered them all to Nihil.

The taste of burnt charcoal lingered in his mouth, but Nihil chewed the cookies Rianus fed him without batting an eye.

“Teacher. This is outright dereliction of duty. You can’t spend all your time fooling around here while working diligently only when teaching the First Prince.”

“I won’t teach another lesson until you tell me!”

“You’ll get fired at this rate.”

“I don’t care if I get fired! Just tell me!”

It was ridiculous to see a marquess behaving like this in front of a commoner child, but Francesca didn’t seem to care in the slightest.

Despite all his efforts, Nihil still refused to tell him anything.

The man seemed so obsessed with research that he probably wouldn’t pose a threat to Rianus. Still, the marquess was far too fixated on the matter and appeared to be hiding something.

Until Nihil knew what that secret was, he couldn’t trust the marquess.

“Teacher.”

“Yes! Will you tell me now?”

“I’m the one who should be telling you to share something. Come back when you’re ready to prepare yourself.”

“……”

Marquess Francesca fell silent for a moment. It wasn’t because he didn’t understand what Nihil meant, but because Nihil had seen through the fact that he was hiding something.

Another cookie found its way into Nihil’s mouth.

He felt as though he had eaten quite a lot already, yet the brown cookies seemed to be multiplying. There were far more than he had expected.

The dry, crumbly cookies were beginning to make his throat feel parched. Still, if he didn’t eat them, the remaining cookies might end up in Rianus’s mouth.

Noticing that Nihil was eating more and more slowly, Rianus called for a maid to bring them some tea.

Rianus was incredibly innocent, yet, strangely enough, he was quite sensitive to even the slightest changes in Nihil’s condition.

“Th-then, if I tell you my circumstances, will His Highness’s friend tell me something in return?”

Marquess Francesca finally spoke, hesitantly.

“I’ll hear you out and decide.”

“How is that fair?!”

“You’re the one who stands to lose something, not me.”

“That’s cruel!”

The marquess muttered about how merciless and cruel Nihil was, circling the sitting room again and again.

After about three laps, he suddenly approached Nihil, plopped down on the floor beside him, and let out a deep sigh.

The maid entering with the tea was horrified at the sight, but Rianus quickly dismissed her before things could turn into a bigger commotion.

In truth, Nihil had something to gain from this arrangement, too. The position of marquess would undoubtedly be quite useful.

Although the marquess preferred political neutrality, Rianus seemed to like him quite a bit. If Nihil could use this language as bait to bring Francesca over to Rianus’s side, the man would surely prove helpful.

But completely unaware of Nihil’s intentions, the marquess hung his head, looking utterly dejected.

Seeing him like that, Rianus poured tea into his cup.

“Carus, I don’t really know what’s going on, but calm down and have some tea.”

“Oh! In that case, I’ll have milk tea, please! With about five sugar cubes!”

At that, Nihil discreetly grimaced. Five sugar cubes? Just imagining it made his stomach turn.

Rianus, who put seven sugar cubes into his own milk tea, seemed delighted to have found someone with similar tastes. He cheerfully dropped the cubes into his cup one after another.

“What about you, Neil?”

“…Plain black tea is fine for me.”

Black tea trickled into Nihil’s cup.

His throat had been parched from the steady supply of cookies Rianus kept feeding him, so the moment the tea had been poured, Nihil lifted the cup and gulped it down without waiting.

“Neil, you know something about this ancient language, don’t you?”

“Only superficially. To begin with, it isn’t even an ancient language.”

At Rianus’s words, Marquess Francesca subtly raised his head and watched them. He was pretending not to pay attention, but he was listening intently, hoping to glean even the tiniest bit of information.

He sat on the floor, sipping milk tea in a ridiculous pose, but no one paid him any attention.

“Then, Neil, that ancient language…”

Rianus cautiously began, watching Nihil’s expression.

There had to be a reason his friend wasn’t sharing what he knew, but Rianus still wanted to help Carus, even if only a little.

However, Nihil wasn’t someone who could fail to notice his intentions.

“Rian, do you like that teacher?”

“H-huh? Y-yes…”

Caught off guard by the blunt question, Rianus blushed and darted his eyes around before timidly nodding.

The marquess beamed at hearing that Rianus liked him, but when he noticed Nihil watching him, he quickly shut his mouth.

Watching him, Nihil let out a deep sigh before speaking.

“That language mustn’t be allowed to circulate freely. That’s why there was no information about it left behind.”

“But it’s printed on every map and distributed everywhere…”

“The sentences written on the maps are just recipes for cooking. Even those are nothing more than phonetic transcriptions.”

“Those are recipes?!”

The marquess, who had been listening intently from the floor, sprang to his feet in shock.

There was just one thing he had overlooked: he was still holding his teacup.

“……!”

The tea sloshed violently from the sudden movement, splashing upward before making a valiant descent.

Splash!

Carus belatedly reached out, but the fifth sugar-cube aircraft, unable to make an emergency landing, ultimately met its end upon crashing into the perpetual snow.

“……”

“……”

A heavy silence settled over the sitting room.

Rianus’s eyes darted around before he cautiously spoke.

“Neil, are you okay…?”

“……”

Tap.

The remains of Sugar Cube No. 5, which had barely been clinging to Nihil’s long, white eyelashes, fell with a tiny tap when he blinked.