How the Prince Makes Friends Chapter 3

“Will he hate me?”

“Didn’t our carriage run him over? I genuinely thought he was dead. Even if that child were a saint, he wouldn’t like someone who nearly killed him.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

The prince drooped dejectedly. But I need to make a friend. What am I supposed to do?

“Before that… I never expected you to confess so suddenly. For a moment, I was horrified because I thought you’d fallen in love with that child.”

“I was so determined to make a friend… It was also my first time asking someone to be my friend directly, so I got nervous…”

Evan shook his head and continued.

“To begin with, he’s a wandering orphan. In other words, he’s a beggar, a commoner of the lowest status. He’s not someone who can become friends with Your Highness.”

The prince nodded. Evan wasn’t wrong.

I’m a prince, and he’s a beggar, so it makes sense that we can’t be friends.

“But I was the one who asked him to be my friend first. So if he says he wants to be friends with me, then I have to let him.”

“Pardon…?”

“He shouldn’t be allowed to ask to be friends with me, but I asked him first, so…”

“You didn’t even confess properly. Besides, he already rejected you.”

“No, he didn’t.”

The prince was adamant.

I wasn’t rejected.

Surely, the child hadn’t rejected him.

He had lost too much blood and had only just regained consciousness. He was probably still dazed and confused.

Besides, the prince hadn’t even introduced himself properly.

When people first met, they were supposed to introduce themselves to each other. The prince had failed to do that, and that was the problem.

Even if he was a powerless prince, he was still a prince!

The child simply didn’t know who he was. Once the prince introduced himself as royalty, the child would surely feel honored and beg to be allowed to become his friend.

“He’s only acting that way because I confessed so badly and startled him. I just need to introduce myself properly first.”

“But Your Highness, we can’t bring a commoner into the palace as your playmate.”

“Then what should I do?”

“The best we can offer him is a position as a servant, no matter how kindly we treat him.”

“But he’s too young to work as a servant, and they won’t accept him without a letter of introduction anyway. Besides, I want him to be my friend, not my servant. And what if he doesn’t want to be a servant?”

“He certainly seems like the type who would refuse to work as one. In that case, all we can do is give him compensation money and send him away again.”

“What?”

“We have no choice. He won’t be allowed into the palace in the first place. We can’t exactly lock him up and raise him in secret as though he were some animal. Just give him a generous sum of money and send him on his way.”

“But…!”

But he was hit by my carriage! He nearly died!

The prince had asked the child to be his friend, then hit him again and knocked him unconscious. He had brought him along in the carriage without permission, and now he was supposed to throw him out again?

The child might not have understood that the prince had meant to ask him to be friends rather than date him, but regardless, the prince had acted entirely on his own whims. He couldn’t just send the child away on another whim.

Yes. This is a matter of royal pride!

“Absolutely not!”

“Why not?”

“He doesn’t have a home, clothes, or food! It’s still cold outside, and bad people might steal his money! What if he dies again shortly after finally surviving?”

Strictly speaking, it made no sense to say the child might die again, since he had never actually died in the first place. Nevertheless, the prince insisted firmly.

This isn’t because I want to be friends with him. It’s a matter of royal pride!

“They say you shouldn’t take in a small animal if you can’t take responsibility for it!”

“Which is exactly why you shouldn’t take one carelessly in the first place. We should send him away.”

“But we’ve already taken him in and brought him here in the carriage. That means we have to take responsibility for him.”

Evan sighed.

The child in the carriage might not even want to be friends with his master, but their little kitten of a prince seemed to have taken a liking to him.

Still, the child had spoken informally to a prince whose noble status was obvious from head to toe, and he had even been rude about it. He certainly didn’t seem to have a pleasant temperament.

It would be a disaster if they brought that wildcat back with them only for their tenderhearted little kitten to get hurt.

“He might have been destined to freeze to death in this late-spring cold anyway. Even if he hadn’t been hit by the carriage today, he might have starved to death, died of hunger while wandering about, or been beaten to death for stealing food. Your Highness doesn’t need to take responsibility for him. Besides, wasn’t it largely his own fault for running out in front of the carriage?”

“But, but…”

The little kitten seemed unwilling to give up the thing he had picked up. He fidgeted restlessly, repeating “but” over and over while muttering, “It’s dangerous outside.”

“Your Highness, judging by my instincts as a knight, that child may have had a miserable life, but he doesn’t seem like someone who will die easily. And he’s rather pretty, so if he wants to, he shouldn’t have much trouble finding work.”

Though perhaps he wanders outside because he doesn’t want to work.

“If he’s pretty, he can find work easily?”

The prince tilted his head.

If being pretty makes it easy to get a job, then surely this child will find work right away. Everyone would want to take him in.

“People like pretty things, don’t they? Well… a brothel, for example…”

“What?”

Evan deliberately muttered the last part so quietly that it was barely audible. But the prince’s keen hearing picked it up, and he recoiled in shock.

“That’s awful!”

The prince jumped to his feet, opened the window facing the driver’s bench, and repeatedly smacked the knight’s back. Of course, the only thing that hurt was the prince’s own palm, not Evan’s back.

After sternly warning Evan never to say such things again, the prince quickly shut the window. The cold wind couldn’t be allowed to affect the injured child.

“…But Your Highness, that’s the life of commoners. If a powerless commoner is pretty, they might be kidnapped and sold. Sometimes even their own parents lead them away to sell them. Or they might catch the eye of some perverted noble who decides to dote on them and make them a personal attendant.”

Though they’d probably be kept like a bird in a cage.

“Why can he be a noble’s attendant but not my playmate? And why does the noble have to be perverted?”

“He can’t become your playmate because there are other members of the royal family living in the palace. As for the perverted noble… that child seems like he has a nasty temper. I doubt he’d agree to become an attendant unless someone kidnapped him and forced him into it.”

“Then just tell him to be my friend!”

“I already told you that’s impossible within the royal palace.”

“I don’t want to be a prince anymore!”

“Your Highness, no matter how much you complain, a commoner still cannot become your playmate.”

Why can’t a commoner?

I just need a friend I can talk to.

Someone I can have a conversation with. That’s all.

His only escort knight, the one person he had, was speaking so firmly without understanding his feelings. The prince grew upset, and tears began to well up in his eyes.

I’m not asking for much. I really only need one true friend.

“I-I don’t want to be royalty anymore. What’s the point of being royalty… when I can’t even choose one friend for myself? The nobles are too busy worrying about the queen and the Duke of Thesaurus. All the children who came to be my playmates ran away in tears, apologizing over and over. And my nursemaid, because of me… she was… poisoned in my place… And today, at the duke’s estate… my older brother… I was fooled again like an idiot. Sob… I just wanted to meet someone I could talk to about swordsmanship… Hic… Waaaaah!”

“Y-Your Highness, are you crying?”

“Waaaaaaah!”

The knight sitting on the driver’s bench was utterly flustered.

His prince had always cried quietly, trying to hide his tears no matter how upset he was. Yet now he was sobbing so loudly that the entire carriage seemed to shake.

He was crying so bitterly that the knight, still holding the reins, could do nothing but keep glancing over his shoulder, unsure what to do.

“And even my escort knight! I’m a prince, but I only have you, Sir Evan! Nobody wants to become the escort knight of the powerless Second Prince with no influential family backing him! My older brother always has two knights accompanying him, but I… I… hic… Waaaaah!”

“Y-Your Highness…!”

In the end, Evan had no choice but to stop the carriage. Only then did he belatedly realize that he was the only person who could comfort the prince.

He had thought that all he needed to do was quietly stand guard while his young master cried in silence.

But that wasn’t the case.

Even if he was a prince, he was still only a seven-year-old child.

Maintaining the dignity of royalty was utterly meaningless here. It wasn’t a matter of whether the child was a commoner or a slave. The prince simply needed someone he could call his own.

The moment Evan climbed down from the driver’s bench and opened the carriage door to comfort his heartbroken little kitten—

Whoosh!

Something flew through the air with a gust of wind and slammed into the prince.

“Your Highness!”

Evan reached out in alarm, but the thing that had struck the prince was none other than the prince’s own cloak.

“You’re noisy.”

A weak, hoarse voice drew their attention.

The prince had been so worried that the child might die of hypothermia after losing so much blood and suffering a dangerous drop in body temperature that he had taken off his own cloak and carefully tucked it around him.

Yet the wildcat he had picked up—the same child who had looked as though he might die at any moment just a little while ago—had woken up and immediately thrown the cloak at their precious prince.

It was the very height of ingratitude and bad manners.

“You ungrateful brat! How dare you do that to His Highness?!”

“What do you mean, ungrateful? You hit me with a carriage, and now you’re talking too much.”

“Hic… hiccup.”

Startled by the cloak that had suddenly landed on him, the little kitten hugged it tightly and peeked out from beneath it, blinking his eyes, which resembled an amber gemstone and an emerald respectively.

He was still sniffling a little, but perhaps because of the shock, he had almost stopped crying.

Seeing this, Evan glared at the ill-mannered wildcat.

He had been the one who was supposed to comfort the prince, but that bratty wildcat had stopped the crying in such a rude manner. Evan felt as though his role had been stolen from him, and it irritated him.

The prince’s two differently colored eyes darted about restlessly.

Perhaps he was embarrassed because the child had caught him crying so bitterly. Or perhaps he remembered that he had hit the child and knocked him unconscious.

He glanced back and forth between the black-opal-eyed child sitting in front of him and his only escort knight, then rolled his eyes nervously as he tried to gauge their reactions.

A brief silence followed. Just as Evan was about to step in and smooth things over, the little kitten couldn’t bear it any longer and gathered his courage to speak again.

“I-I’m a prince.”

“…So?”

“Will you be my friend?”

“No.”

Oh, Your Highness…

Watching that incredibly brief exchange, the prince’s only escort knight let out a groan and buried his face in his palm.

You nasty, heartless brat! Couldn’t you at least pretend to think about it? Did you really have to reject him so bluntly? How dare you turn down such an adorable prince when he asks you to be his friend?!

Their little kitten, who was so inexperienced at making friends, had been rejected twice in a single day.