Pope Louis lamented. Oh, my God, I am the smartest person left in the Holy See.
Ha. What will happen in the world without Ludovico? It's the end of the world, it's the end of the world.
The Pope gave a loud shout.
“Purge is your job!”
Oh, you don't understand this?
Larriesa de Valoa is a witness to the evil deeds committed by Gallico! If you have her in your hands, you can manipulate her to get her testimony!
If any of the Cardinals from the Kingdom of Gallico or your political opponents come forward later, you can threaten them with that testimony! Oh, how frustrating!
However, Cardinal de Mare blinked and looked at Pope Louis after hearing the story.
This wasn't an expression of not understanding. It was a face that had something to say but wasn't saying it.
“...If you have something to say, say it.”
But if you open your mouth here, you are not an old fox, Cardinal de Mare answered calmly.
“There isn’t any.”
“If you have any complaints, just tell me!”
“How could that be?”
Ludovico, whose fever was running high, suddenly became angry.
“You just thought, ‘Shouldn’t my predecessor have finished cleaning up before I take office?’ Am I wrong?”
Cardinal de Mare pursed his lips and answered reluctantly.
“...That’s a classic.”
Pope Louis swore inwardly. Some of the swearing escaped his lips because he had not been able to completely control it.
“You're acting like you're my biological child!”
“A father’s heart is to want to do more for his own children without having to say anything. Hey, let’s not talk like you, a person who doesn’t have children, know how parents feel.”
"What?!"
“It’s not embarrassing if you tried hard, but it didn’t work out...”
“I didn’t try!”
The Pope was furious.
“And by the way, as a priest, I am normal and you are bad!”
“Yes, yes. Of course. As expected, His Holiness the Pope. He is a model for the world of the Precepts and Faith.”
It felt like he was complaining somehow.
"Hey!!"
The Pope decided to change the subject. The longer he talked on this subject, the more he heard nothing but sarcasm.
“And, how many more days can I live with my body like this, and I’m going to beat Philip with my own hands and leave? Can you finish the investigation in three months? Philip is Philip, but we have to deal with the Porto Republic guys too!”
The Republic of Porto was responsible for the supply and logistics of the temple.
The rumor that all of Prince Alfonso's letters were in the hands of the Grand Duchess of Lariesa meant that someone in the Republic of Porto had been recruited by Grand Duke Odes.
Whether it was an individual crime or a group crime involving the governor was something that had to be investigated to find out.
Ludovico wiggled his fingers vulgarly, thinking, "Please, come out, my superiors, let's get to the bottom of it."
But de Mare's expression was still strange. Young fat thing...
“You were just thinking, ‘Aren’t you an expert at arresting people without even investigating them?’”
“...No.”
“What is it that is not true?”
de Mare grumbled bitterly.
“Oh, please believe what people say.”
“There was a delay before you could answer, there was a delay!”
“No way.”
“Cover the sky with your palm. Do you know that it’s in the palm of my hand?”
“It’s a coincidence. A coincidence.”
Ludovico hit de Mare with his shoulder. The little de Mare looked up with an expression of utter injustice.
“Don’t make that face!”
Perhaps this is the face that Ludovico had hoped to see when he was tormenting fe Mare in the past: Blotchy, squinty, slightly platypus-like...
“What is my expression!”
Ludovico burst out laughing. The Pope chuckled, abandoned de Mare, and shuffled forward.
de Mare came running from behind. Even the sound of his footsteps was funny.
Ah, he's satisfied. He should've become friends with that little friend a long time ago. Why, he only has a few days left to live.
“What if you just wander off like that on your own? Are you upset because I teased you and called you a eunuch?”
“...”
The Pope retracted his last thought. Die. Die, de Mare.
***
Sir Manfredi put the letter roughly into a large leather sack and gave it to the Prince.
He collected only Miss Bedelia's letters and took them out, and asked permission to take the rest for himself.
Sir Manfredi, contrary to his usual meddlesome manner, did not even glance at the remaining letters that had nothing to do with him.
If Sir Manfredi had acted as usual, he would have definitely looked into it in advance and given Ariadne a heads up...
“What, Ari? Did you write a letter?”
The letter that Princess Lariesa had stolen was not only from Prince Alfonso.
There were also letters scattered here and there from Ariadne to Alfonso from San Carlo.
It was a collection of letters, mainly sent by Ariadne to Alfonso, excluding only the romantic content.
Lariesa used the letter as a sort of Etruscan textbook, underlining the text in red and rewriting it in her own style.
“Come here, don’t look!”
Ariadne jumped up from her seat and tried to grab the letter. Alfonso chuckled and shrugged his shoulders to avoid her grasp.
Ariadne clutched her head. Before the misunderstanding was resolved, when she told him that she had written him a letter, she wished he had believed her, but not now.
People's hearts are so fickle, she wishes those letters would just evaporate into the sky right now.
Ariadne also had a conscience, so she did not send a letter about Cesare or anything. It was more like a confession than a letter in the first place.
But Alfonso had a keen eye. He might have read something between the lines of the letter she had sent earlier.
And most of all, it was a hit!
A letter that is written alone and receives a reply eventually becomes like a diary.
A piece of writing where you pour out your emotions one by one is not something you would want to read with others later.
But Alfonso, without knowing Ariadne's feelings, rummaged through the bag and picked out Ariadne's letters.
It was easy to sort the letters since he only had to pick up the letters that were not in the same handwriting as the original.
"I heard that you escaped from Gallico and headed to Yesak. What kind of hardships did you go through? But the place you escaped from, Gallico, was a desert battlefield... I'm worried because it won't be easy this time either.
At Palagio Carlo, while preparing your military funds, we suddenly received news of a delay... (omitted)..."
“Stop it!”
“Why, what’s wrong with this? You kept worrying about me.”
The first letter Alfonso got was relatively good, but the next one was a whining letter.
"I miss you so much. Gabriele introduced me to his fiancé last week. They kept holding hands, even though they were mumbling.
Ah, I'm not jealous of Gabriele's fiancé! Don't get me wrong. I just liked the way you two were stuck together. I want to be held in your arms, smell your scent, and feel the same air... (continued)..."
“Stop looking!”
Ariadne lunged again to snatch the letter, but Alfonso easily dodged her attack.
“Give it back!”
“You want it back? If you sent it to me, isn’t it mine?”
Alfonso was also starting to gain experience. He smiled broadly and brushed aside Ariadne’s verbal attacks.
He opened the next letter without flinching, even with Ariadne hanging on his arm and trying to throw him off.
When Ariadne realized that physical capture was impossible, she changed her strategy to an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
She reached into her leather pouch and held Alfonso's letter proudly.
“Can I read it too?”
Alfonso also hesitated for a moment. He must have written all sorts of nonsense there. But his curiosity was stronger than his disdain.
He answered as if he didn't care.
“Read it.”
Oh, so that's what you're going to do. Ariadne grabbed the letter and started reading it out loud to attack his mind.
“The nights in the desert are cold and the enemy is running, but I hold on with the memories of my hometown... Alfonso, you were more of a literary boy than I thought?”
Alfonso's smile, which had been as if nothing had happened, cracked.
Fortunately, before he could see his distorted face, his woman's eyes caught a new prey. She looked at a passage on the parchment.
“Silver crafts captured from Yondugar...”
"Ah."
In the early days of the Crusades, when they had absolutely nothing and even the gold they had was being sold, they captured and took over enemy cities.
“You were going to give it to me?”
Alfonso blushed.
“Uh, no, that’s...”
“Why can’t you answer? Surely you didn’t give it to another woman?”
The Prince was greatly perplexed.
“That can’t be true!”
“But where is it!”
At the time, he thought it was precious, so he kept it carefully to give to Ariadne.
It was a piece of silver that he kept in his bosom and never took out, even though it could have been exchanged for oatmeal bread to feed his men.
But when he returned home, he found San Carlo to be incomparably rich and splendid compared to the small town of Yesak.
Naturally, the small silver earrings looked shabby. They were not enough to be given to Ariadne, who had enjoyed everything good in San Carlo.
“I’ll make it new, a good one.”
“No! I want that!”
The pressure was growing. It seemed impossible to let Ariadne read any more of his letters.
Alfonso quickly began reading the third letter in his hand.
“I had so much work yesterday and the day before that I only ate one meal a day. The Black Death has subsided somewhat, but the food shortage is so severe that I was advised to refrain from eating in public. I thought it was reasonable, so I agreed to do so, but... (omission)... I told you to make sure you eat well. You can’t even keep your promise.”
Alfonso was also momentarily shaken by this letter.
It was not only because he felt bad for Ariadne for not being able to eat, but also because he remembered Lariesa's verbal abuse a little while ago.
“Ari. Are you okay?”
He didn't want to upset Ariadne by suddenly asking her heavy questions like, "How are your eating habits these days?" or "Aren't you too obsessive about managing your weight?"
If she answered, "Huh? What?" He was going to just pretend like nothing happened.
But the woman next to him was the most perceptive in the entire Central Continent.
In the first place, there was almost no reason for Alfonso to ask her, 'Are you okay?'
She glanced at the contents of the letter Alfonso was holding and was sure what he was trying to say.
Ariadne was embraced by Alfonso.
"It's okay."
It was a much softer contact than the force with which he had struggled to snatch the letter from her earlier, but Alfonso rolled backwards while intentionally holding her.
“Oh my!”
“Ahaha!”
Ariadne laughed out loud as she rolled around on the sofa, hugged by Alfonso.
Alfonso, after briefly cheering up Ariadne, sat her down on his stomach and kissed her on the forehead.
“I’m sorry you had to hear such abuse because of me.”
“Why is it because of you?”
Ariadne shook her head, her waist held by Alfonso's hands.
“It’s because Lariesa de Valoa is crazy.”
Alfonso said, stroking her lower back with his thick hands.
“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have gotten involved with that woman.”
“I think it’s a tax I have to pay to meet the most handsome man in the Central Continent.”
Ariadne, who was trying to brush it off as a joke, smiled faintly when she saw that Alfonso still had a look of concern on his face.
“I’m really okay. I don’t care if you’re fat or messy.”
She lowered her posture and pressed her upper body against Alfonso.
“That’s the opinion of a crazy person. Listening to it seriously is a waste of time.”
Alfonso lifted Ariadne into his arms and looked into her green eyes.
“You have changed a lot.”
She tilted her head.
"No?"
“That’s so amazing.”
He kissed Ariadne on the lips.
“You’ve grown a lot.”
Ariadne was dumbfounded by Alfonso's words. I have eaten several more loaves of bread than you!
But she couldn't bring herself to say it outright, so she protested as best she could within the bounds of common sense.
“We’re only two years apart!”
“If you have a two-year age gap, you’re really big.”
Ariadne felt like she was going crazy. Yes, the two-year age gap is big! Then, how much more junk food would I have eaten after returning?
But Alfonso argued the case.
“Born in 1907.”
He moved down, his lips brushing the nape of Ariadne's neck.
“Without even knowing what happened in 1905 and 1906.”
Alfonso's lips gradually lowered.
"Ah."
That's true, though.
“You didn’t see the snow that fell in 1905, or the rainbow that was said to have appeared in 1906?”
“Hmm. I don’t think you remember either...”
"Shhh."
Alfonso's upper body rose higher and higher, pressing against her.
He had his torso upright at an absurd angle, and yet he didn't seem to struggle at all. This guy's back muscles were crazy.
“Every time I touch you like this, you make a cute sound.”
“Ah.”
Before she knew it, Alfonso and her positions were reversed. She was below, he was above.
“Are you going to keep denying it like that?”
Alfonso looked down at her with both arms resting on her shoulders. The ridiculous muscles of his chest were visible through the disheveled collar of his shirt.
If you're handsome, you're a big brother. Ariadne surrendered. She whispered softly to Alfonso.
“Hug me.”
Alfonso came over to her with a big smile.
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