How the Prince Makes Friends – Chapter 43

Author: isuzuuy

Evan followed the two little boys with his eyes, then smiled bitterly and spoke.

“Sir, how much longer do you intend to stay?”

At Evan’s question, which cut through the empty air, the royal escort knight who had been hiding in the shadows slowly revealed himself.

“I think I should return and report to His Majesty first. I did find him quite unusual at first glance, but this is truly beyond anything I expected. I never imagined the matter would be resolved this way.”

“Do you believe what he said?”

“I see no particular reason he would lie, but I will simply report what I saw and heard. The judgment is ultimately my lord’s responsibility. And please, take this.”

The Shadow Knight held something out to Evan and continued.

“It’s a low-grade potion. His Majesty instructed me to give it to you so you could treat that boy’s arm.”

Evan remembered Nihil’s arm, which looked like a tattered rag, and accepted the potion without hesitation before tucking it into his clothes.

“Thank you.”

“Then, if you’ll excuse me.”

The Shadow Knight bowed his head slightly before disappearing again. Feeling his presence vanish in an instant, Evan thought that the knight Nihil had coveted was indeed something else. Oddly enough, he also felt jealous.

Could I earn his recognition, too?

He remembered the Shadow Knights asking Nihil all sorts of questions, such as how skilled they were and who would win in a fight, even though Nihil had claimed he had never learned to use a sword.

It’s a little childish, but maybe I should ask him, too…

The wildcat might look at him with utter contempt, though.

Evan resolved to ask him discreetly that night, once the prince had fallen asleep.

***

As soon as the afternoon violin lesson began, Nihil fulfilled his role as a sack of grain admirably.

When Rianus played a gentle melody, Nihil even dozed off for a brief moment, but he still made an effort to listen attentively as a member of the audience.

Whenever Rianus made a mistake with the pitch or rhythm and grew embarrassed, Nihil pretended not to know anything about music and applauded to lift his spirits. All in all, he passed the time quite productively.

The following finance lesson also included basic arithmetic. Unlike the other subjects, finance was the only class without a permanent instructor. Instead, the teachers were administrative officials from the Finance Department who worked in the main palace.

Whichever official had the lightest workload that day would conduct the lesson. Each time, they seemed to bring along stacks of proposals and budget plans that had actually been submitted for review.

The lessons were surprisingly detailed and practical. First, the students were given budget plans with blank spaces to fill in by calculating the missing figures. Then, they were shown only the opening sections of proposals and asked to infer how and where the budget would be used. They had to consider whether the documents had been approved, whether approved projects had achieved their intended goals or failed, why rejected proposals had been turned down, and how they could be revised.

For a mere seven-year-old, the difficulty was absurdly high. Nihil clicked his tongue inwardly, thinking that being a prince must be an exhausting way to live.

Rianus had no trouble calculating numbers, but he struggled to compare proposals with their budgets and analyze the reasons for failure. To a seven-year-old, the proposals and budgets prepared by the administrative officials looked nothing short of perfect.

The finance instructor handed him a particular proposal and budget plan, assigned him the task of identifying the reasons the project had failed, and then left.

“Haah…”

Rianus let out an unusually deep sigh and slumped over. Watching him, Nihil asked Evan to relay a request to a maid for some simple refreshments.

Rianus glanced once more at the thick report titled Sharton Street Redevelopment and Relief Project Plan, then collapsed over his desk and called out to Nihil.

“Niiil…”

His still-chubby baby cheeks pressed against the desk as he mumbled.

Nihil felt a brief, irresistible urge to poke them, but soon restrained himself and answered indifferently.

“Yeah?”

“What could be wrong with this proposal and budget…? They look perfectly fine to me…”

Rianus drew out the ends of his words, clearly exhausted. Watching him, Nihil finally gave in to temptation and poked his cheek as he spoke.

“Rian.”

“Mmm.”

“Your homework isn’t to find the flaws in the proposal.”

“Huh?”

At Nihil’s matter-of-fact explanation, Rianus cautiously lifted his head.

His cheek, which had been flattened against the desk, peeled away with a soft plop and gradually regained its round shape.

The pale, plump rice cake had turned into a strawberry rice cake.

Nihil glanced at the dough-like cheek, now bearing a faint mark, and continued.

“You’re supposed to find the reasons it failed.”

“…Oh.”

“And a project doesn’t necessarily fail because the proposal itself is flawed.”

“……”

“This is a rather difficult assignment.”

Projects could fail for all sorts of reasons, especially large-scale ones. Sometimes the cause was something tiny and entirely unexpected; other times, it was the combined effect of several different factors.

If the proposal had been for a real project that had already been implemented, Rianus could simply have looked up the records to find out why it failed.

But that would have been an inefficient way to learn and would also have missed the instructor’s intention.

Perhaps Nihil’s words had given him some insight, because Rianus rested his chin in his hand and stared blankly into space, lost in thought.

Seeing this, Nihil took a blank sheet of paper and placed it in front of him.

“……?”

Rianus was startled out of his thoughts by the white sheet suddenly appearing before him. He tilted his head in confusion as Nihil laid it on the desk and explained.

“Rian, I know you’re smart, but the longer you think about something, the easier it is to overlook contradictions. You don’t have to organize everything perfectly. Just make a few notes as you think it through.”

“Oh, thank you!”

Rianus beamed at his friend’s consideration, quickly took out his fountain pen, and began scribbling.

Evan could only marvel at the shameless wildcat who had spent the entire lesson sitting around like a sack of grain, yet now managed to pinpoint the essential issues one by one.

Perhaps Nihil was so intelligent that he simply had no need to study.

As Evan stared at him, thinking this over, their eyes met.

“What are you looking at?”

“……”

Why did I even feed this thing?

Evan reminded himself that, as the adult here, he had to exercise restraint. He fought down the urge to punch the little brat.

Unfazed by Evan’s clenched fist and bulging veins, Nihil picked up the plate of cookies the maid had brought and carefully took the seat beside Rianus, making sure not to disturb him.

Rianus continued organizing his thoughts, occasionally tapping the paper with his fountain pen. Before long, the once-white sheet was filled with a disorderly jumble of words and smudged ink.

Rianus munched on the chocolate cookie in his mouth, swallowed, and continued pondering the problem for a while longer. Then another cookie slipped between his slightly parted lips.

It was an oatmeal cookie.

Startled by the sudden change in flavor and texture, Rianus jerked his head up.

When did I start eating cookies?

Puzzled, he turned toward the source of the cookies. Nihil was chewing one himself, holding another ready for Rianus as he watched him expectantly.

His cheeks bulged unevenly around the cookie as he tilted his head.

“Don’t you like oatmeal?”

Nihil had noticed that Rianus accepted the chocolate cookies without a fuss but reacted as soon as he was given an oatmeal one. He wondered whether Rianus disliked them.

Rianus hurriedly chewed and swallowed the oatmeal cookie before shaking his head.

“No!”

“Making any progress?”

“It’s too vague. I still haven’t found anything substantial.”

“Hmm.”

Seeing that Rianus had been thinking for so long without finding a single clue, Nihil grew curious and picked up the proposal.

Flip, flip.

Seeing Nihil act as though he might actually be able to help, Rianus eagerly placed a cookie in his mouth.

For quite some time, the only sounds in the sitting room were pages turning and cookies crunching.

Tap.

After reviewing the entire proposal, Nihil set down the budget plan.

“Something’s strange.”

“Huh? What? Did you find the problem?”

“No, not exactly. It’s far too polished.”

The budget plan was flawless. It was so complete that the project could have been implemented the very next day without anything missing.

Although this was only Nihil’s first lesson, the proposals and budgets used during the earlier classes had clearly been somewhat lacking.

They looked more like preliminary drafts or revised versions than final documents. While the assignments might have been a little difficult for a seven-year-old, they weren’t impossible to solve.

But this assignment was almost unreasonable from the outset. It asked him to find the reasons for a project’s failure even though the proposal was so polished that it looked as if it had already been reviewed several times.

“Rian, what kind of place is Sharton Street?”

“It was originally formed by refugees who came from foreign countries. It’s changed a lot over time, and apparently there are many fugitives and criminals there now. People of all different races live there, and their cultures are all mixed together. There are also lots of illegal immigrants, and the crime rate is very high.”

“Even after the redevelopment?”

“Huh? No, it hasn’t been redeveloped yet.”

Nihil furrowed his brows and rubbed his lower lip as he absorbed this new information.

Just as I thought. Something didn’t feel right.

If what Rianus said was true, the proposal he had been assigned was probably not an old project that had already been submitted, but one that was currently being prepared.

In that case, the proposal was likely a final draft that had already undergone most of its reviews. The finance instructor had probably assigned it as homework simply to have someone examine the documents from another perspective.

There was no need for Rianus to agonize over the assignment.

However, now that the classes had just been divided into separate groups, this was also a good opportunity to put some distance between Rianus and the First Prince.

Nihil tapped the thick proposal with his fingertips and calmly explained the conclusions he had reached.

“Rian, if that’s the case, this proposal is probably for a project that’s actually being prepared right now. It might be implemented soon. That makes it difficult to find the reasons it failed just by reading this document. They must have reviewed it repeatedly already to make sure it wouldn’t fail in the first place.”

“Then what should I do about my homework?”

“The instructor probably didn’t expect much and assigned it as an extra exercise. But if you want to complete it properly, you should focus on filling in what’s missing rather than revising the proposal itself.”

“Um…”

“Rian, have you ever been to Sharton Street?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Is it far from here?”

“Hmm, about an hour by carriage.”

“Then how about we go on a field trip?”

Nihil recalled the gold coins he had hidden away and decided they could go treasure hunting another time. He got to his feet.

Rianus followed his movements with his eyes, then tilted his head in confusion.

“A field trip? Where?”

“Sharton Street.”

“When?”

“When’s your next class?”