Slow Prison Life

Noblewoman Snipes Dinner

Prince Elliott was walking down the corridor when he noticed a young man leaving through the woodlands in the backyard towards the inner gate. There were a number of such men traveling in this way, but by chance he noticed that this man’s apparel wasn’t something a courtier would be wearing.

“Oi, isn’t that strange over there? I can’t see him being a servant of the royal palace.”

Sykes glanced over at the man after the Prince said something.

“That is……..it appears to be a staff member from the cafeteria downtown.”

“Why would such a person be inside the castle?”

Sykes’s murmurs brought out a surprised voice from George and made Elliott want to laugh at Sykes’s strange opinion, but there was ‘something’ that prevented him from doing so.

“What…….? What is, something strange……….Uoh!?”

With a little thought, that ‘something’ about the man struck Elliott, and he began running.

“Go to the dungeon!”

“Eh? What’s going on Your Highness!”

Shouted after by the two men hurriedly following after him, Elliott pointed towards the iron door that had come in view.

“Think about the direction that the man came from! Rachel is absolutely involved in this!”

“Ah!”

♠

The three men were breathless after running all the way to the dungeon, and what they saw before them……..

“……..Even if you stare, I’m not giving you any?”

Having just clapped her hands and done her prayer before a meal, there was Rachel with a knife and fork in hand and a piping hot meal with steam rising off it in front of her.

There were a number of elaborate dishes before her that obviously couldn’t have been made inside a dungeon. They all looked freshly made, and the room was filled with a delicious fragrance.

“Y, you…….what is this!?”

While the Prince was raising a hellish cry, Rachel was looking down at her table.

“Nothing really……….Your Highness, have you never tried this before? It’s kidney pie, herb baked pigeon, and pumpkin potage with mint jelly. It is a very ordinary lunch.”

“I’m not asking about your menu! You, why do you have a meal from outside!?”

Rachel had begun eating without worrying about what the Prince was saying, and after gulping down the last bit of pigeon meat, she opened her mouth.

“Is there a problem?”

“Of course there’s a problem! I made an order that you weren’t to be fed while you’re in here!”

“Ah, was that when Sykes had grabbed your waist and was pushing your butt up the stairs?”

“Gu……….”

Wiping her mouth with a napkin, Rachel lightly tilted her glass and drank her wine.

“Surely, you definitely said that I should be starved and nobody was to give me any meals.”

“That’s right!”

“But, doesn’t that not apply to this time?”

“……………Eh?”

Rachel picked up her knife, and she began cutting out a slice from her crispy kidney pie.

“You certainly said that nobody was to feed the prisoner, but you never said I couldn’t order food myself.”

“Wha………..!? Stu, don’t be stupid! I’ve never heard of a prisoner taking an order from outside!”

“A prisoner should not have food delivered to the prison, in what section of the law is that stated?”

“I, I don’t know such a thing! But it’s common sense…………!”

“His Highness who arbitrarily abandoned an engagement settled by the King due to a suspicious argument and shady evidence, is that whose mouth the phrase ‘common sense’ is coming out of?”

“…………..”

“If you’re talking about general common sense, then how would you describe imprisoning someone and then not giving them and meals?”

“Ku……..you’re attitude right now, you know I could prosecute you right now for your disrespect and have you executed right!?”

“In that case, you should put me in prison until you move me to the execution stand.”

“Kuuuuuuuuuu………..”

With the Prince unable to say anything else, Rachel continued to elegantly finish her meal.

♠

“Hmmmm, I’ve been forbidden from delivery.”

The Prince had ordered that no couriers deliver food to the prison. Any delivery would be stopped at the entrance.

As Rachel loved to find the loopholes in laws, she found post-legislation like this to be unfair………..well, anyway.

“Even so, His Highness is missing the point like usual. A foolish child who does nothing at all………rather than banning deliveries, normally the first thing that should be done is inquire on how I communicated my order outside in the first place.”

That is the normal line of reasoning. Elliott, the child who is unable to take that extra step.

Even so………

“As I thought freshly made meals really are delicious…….I’d also like to eat some fresh meat………”

Rachel thought about the earlier lunch she had delivered to her.

“No, I won’t be able to go back to canned food without doing something to cushion the blow.”

Although it was impossible to call it a luxury meal, the stimulus was quite strong after not having a cooked meal in so long. She just wanted to taste a little more………

A flash.

“………that’s it. The basics of living a slow life is living a life of gathering. Right?”

Rachel looked towards the the long, narrow window that was set up for ventilation.

♠

An elderly and a middle-aged man wearing gorgeous clothes were taking a walk through a rough backyard that could not be said to have been well maintained.

“However Elliott is also trouble…….something like this is only possible because His Majesty is absent for such an extended period of time.”

“Although the King delegated affairs to others, the Prince caused this past incident almost immediately after he left in order to avoid judgement.”

The King’s uncle and royal consultant Archduke Vivaldi and the Prime Minister Marquis August were consulting each other about the current issues plaguing them in a place where no one else could hear………or they were just grumbling out their complaints to each other.

Prime Minister August looked around him.

“However Archduke. You’ve taken us to a strange place in our walk.”

This backyard area could be described as desolate, not a space like a landscaped garden that nobility would normally want to see.

The Archduke was a fat and jolly old man, and looking as if he had just pulled off a clever bit of mischief, he threw back his neck and laughed.

“Nahahahah. Here here, this is a different taste from a normal beautifully maintained garden.”

The Archduke used his fingers to pull back some unwanted elongated weeds, and he quietly peeked through to the other side.

“Please look Prime Minister. In this natural garden, you’ll find more wild birds than in some public garden…….there, recently my favorite has been the large duck you can see on the bank of the pond over there.”

The Prime Minister also hid himself inside the grass and was impressed by what he saw looking in.

“Hoh…….he really is quite big. It’s coat is also quite beautiful.”

“Mmm. I’ve recently started secretly calling him Enrique, and……..”

The Archduke started going into an explanation about his favorite bird.

*SCHLICK!*

“GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!”

“What!?”

The two men noticed something fly through the air before them, and “Enrique”temporary name released a loud cry before stalling and falling to the ground. The surrounding birds all flew into a panic, raising a loud outcry of caws and quacks as they rose up into the air, while the two men noticed something rolling along the side of the open pond……….

*Slide*

*Slide*

The dying and convulsing “Enrique” was, slowly moving in a direction by a will that was obviously not his own.

If you were to look closely you could see the tip of an arrow sticking out of Enrique’s punctured chest, and somebody was pulling a thin string tied to the end of the arrowhead.

The Archduke and Prime Minister chased after the string that continued to silently move, and they arrived at an old stone wall of a nearby building. It was difficult to see, but there was a horizontal slit about ten centimeters off the ground that made a wide open hole, and the two people arrived too late as “Enrique’s” body was pulled inside.

“………..”

The two people silently looked at each other as a young woman’s harsh voice echoed outside of the hole.

“Uwa, this thing is huge! Good, very good, this is something worth eating!”

Somehow able to guess the person’s identity from their voice, the Prime Minister squatted down and cried out.

“Excuse me, is it okay? What in the world are you doing?”

“Eh? Me?”

After giving a slightly confused reply at being asked, the girl went ahead and explained to them exactly what she was doing.

♠

Elliott and his aides were walking down the corridor when from the other direction his Great Uncle Vivaldi came running up like a child. The Prime Minister was pursuing him from behind calling out to him.

“Hm?”

Elliott and the others didn’t understand what was going on, so they just stood there and stared as the Archduke came running down the hall while crying and grabbed Elliott by his collar.

“Elliott, you bastardddddddd!”

“Eh, me? What did I do!?”

“You…….because of you…….”

“What!? Great Uncle, I, what is it that I have done!?”

It would be easy to peel off such an intemperant old man, but the King and Queen are absent right now, and it would be unwise to treat those at the top roughly while the King’s duties have been delegated to others. Neither Sykes nor George could touch the King’s uncle, so they both looked towards the Prince’s face to find out what they should do.

“Uwaaaa……….Because of you, Enrique is………Enrique is……….”

“Eh, Enri……….who!?”

“Rachel has eaten Enrique!”

“Racheeeeeeeeeeeeeeel!!!”

♠

Elliott and the others rushed to the dungeon where the prison guard was sitting at the prison entrance looking at a loss.

The prison guard quickly rose to his feet upon seeing the Prince’s group, but from his side you could see smoke rising up.

“Oiii, what in the world is that!?”

“That is……..”

The prison guard looked back at the open doorway spewing out smoke with a miserable face.

“The Lady is playing with a bonfire.”

“Bonfire!? In a dungeon!?”

“Because she was regulating the power of the fire, it seems like there’s no danger of the area becoming oxygen deficient……….”

“I don’t care about such a thing! A bonfire in a jail, what is she thinking!?”

The prison guard scratched his head.

“Because she had gotten her hands on some fresh duck meat, she said she was going to have a barbecue.”

“That bastarddddddddd!”

The smoke inside the dungeon clung to the ceiling, making its way up the stairs and out the door, so the underground space itself was surprisingly not smoky.

Inside the restored cobblestone prison, Rachel had made a small fire using some of her broken down empty boxes as firewood. An iron plate was placed on top of the flames where some meat was sizzling as it cooked. Sykes couldn’t understand the situation, but the smell made his stomach grumble nonetheless.

Elliott ignored the atmosphere, thinking up several tsukkomis, before thrusting his finger towards Rachel as she continued to seriously turn over the meat.

“Rachel! Don’t have a bonfire and barbecue in a dungeon!”

Rachel didn’t look up at the Prince, focusing entirely on the grilled meat in front of her, and instead gave him a short reply.

“There is no such rule.”

“Of course!? Where in the world is there a prison that allows an idiot to play with a campfire!?”

Elliott screamed while stomping his foot on the ground while Rachel gave him a short sideways glance before continuing to stare at her meat and estimated the amount of time before it would be done.

“Indeed……….that would be on a case-by-case basis. If they were hungry without any food, wouldn’t it be allowed?”

“I never heard about there being such a thing even in the old days of this country.”

“Well, since the first step of that earlier story would involve the rare happenstance of the prisoner having a bow.”

“In other words only you, only you could imitate this………..!”

Elliott spoke with a terribly disgusting face.

“You, you told my Great Uncle you had to catch your own food since I wasn’t giving you any meals.”

“Yes, I certainly said such a thing.”

Rachel looked happy picking up the salted duck, and Elliott jabbed his finger at her once again.

“Well, then so long as you quit acting so selfishly, you shall receive your meals!”

Maximum concessions!

Elliott could only slowly follow along with this wicked woman’s way of thinking, but he didn’t have the patience………and his Great Uncle messily crying and shouting, in order to prevent that heartbreaking scene from reoccurring, he would need to cease his starvation tactics.

Rachel was vexating………but for now it was best to give her what she wanted. However, her self-indulgence now had created a mess, and when the King returned, Elliott would be able to accuse her of all her crimes.

Rachel had been making fun of him all this time, and Elliott was starting to think that even the death penalty wasn’t going to be good enough. Those thoughts, they were born from not knowing that Rachel hadn’t yet gotten serious.

At first she was just taking a break to relieve her stressed nerves, but in such a way, Rachel had decided to cause as much damage here as she possibly could. To the Prince’s nerves that is.

She was already isolated anyway. Even if this guy was remaining quiet, at best he’d probably just throw in some old bread later on.

Towards Prince Elliott who thought he was making such a generous offer, Rachel slowly turned around while eating the delicious food she had made for herself.

“I do not want any food from Your Highness………I don’t know what could be in it, so I don’t need it.”