Chapter 10: A Good Friend.
After almost twelve hours in her home, Rose returned to his lands on the Badlands continent. Being a demigod, he considered that he could afford to spend the entire night working on the blueprints for the town's defenses.
However, just before he could start his task, someone knocked at the door. Knowing that Mr. Han was not in the castle at the moment, he assumed it must be Mina. Honestly, he didn't expect her to speak to him again after he had been incredibly rude and had destroyed what, in his understanding, was a simple fairy tale to put small children to sleep.
Still doubtful, he approached to open the door, and upon doing so, confirmed it was Mina. Her violet eyes were still charged with that strange mixture of resentment and hope. After all, he represented a dilemma for her: he was the man who had saved her life and restored her faith in human goodness, but he was also the one who had completely destroyed her most innocent illusions.
"I knocked several times and you didn't answer. I thought you had died," the young woman blurted out, trying to sound indifferent, although the struggle she was having in her head at that moment didn't allow her to completely conceal it.
"If that happened, my father would probably destroy this continent," Rose commented dryly.
As much as he loved him, his father had his flaws; one of them was being an excessively overprotective 'helicopter parent.' It took Uncle Zef almost a year to convince him that Rose was ready for this mission.
"Anyway, if you decide to stay, you'll find out... Father provided me with a means to come and go to Parnam. I went to resupply my necessities and arm myself to the teeth," Rose explained. He knew this was a win-win situation: if she stayed, he wouldn't say anything, and if she left and spoke, at best, the thieves would be scared enough of the empire's power to avoid Sedena.
Mina could only let out a slight growl at the situation. After all, the idea that he had spent the entire day there was particularly painful, especially because she refused to admit that she had been looking for him several times in the empire she had longed to see with her own eyes since she was a child. However, at the same time, this fueled a reluctant hope in her.
Before she could utter another word, her stomach rumbled again. After all, her only meal had been the rice he himself had given her the day before. Since then, she had been watching him... Actually, she didn't know why, she just needed to make sure he was alright.
\\\[He already has that hero worship complex and the damsel in distress one\\\] Desmos commented with a metaphorical smile. In that aspect, she reminded him a lot of one of Qin's wives, albeit less intense and without the ability to cause hurricanes with her crying.
Choosing to ignore the comment, Rose merely watched as the young woman blushed violently. He hadn't expected the young woman to drop her defenses so quickly, but considering what Desmos had said, it was clear that she desperately wished to believe he was the "prince charming" from her childhood stories, the one who had come to save the kingdom from the impending doom hovering over the continent.
"Do you want to eat?" he asked kindly, and Mina nodded in response.
Rose led the young woman to the dining room without the need for words. After making her wait a few minutes, he returned from the kitchen with a bowl of white rice and shredded chicken breast pieces. Although chicken wasn't his favorite meat, as it spoiled quickly without refrigeration (only surpassed by fish), Rose knew it was the softest and most suitable meat for the young woman's delicate stomach condition.
"Try not to overdo it; your stomach must be the size of a walnut right now," Rose commented as he placed the bowl in front of her.
Mina just looked at the rice. She slightly sniffed the strange brown chunks that gave off a very pleasant smell. Nevertheless, she soon took the spoon Rose offered her and tried a spoonful.
"It's bland," Mina complained.
"The other option was that you'd vomit until you died if I put salt on it," Rose replied, rolling his eyes. Seriously, that place didn't have nutritional doctors.
\\\[I'm going to ignore that you just were completely classist\\\] —Desmos intervened, hitting his best friend on the head again.
"Yesterday's rice was good," Mina murmured, timidly taking a second spoonful.
Rose sat down quietly in the chair across from her. "It wasn't. It was your first meal in weeks, as far as I can see, and your mind made it taste like heaven," he explained. Honestly, it was like dealing with a little girl, only fully developed and dressed in an outfit that left little to the imagination.
Feeling like a child scolded by her father and with no further complaints, Mina continued eating slowly under Rose's attentive gaze. He did not take his eyes off the purple-haired young woman at any moment. Despite complaining half the time that the food tasted like nothing, Mina ended up eating the entire plate.
"Are you full?" Rose asked calmly, hoping she was, or at least had the decency not to ask for more. Not because he didn't want to give her more food, but because... well, he didn't want her to get sick.
"Very," Mina said, nodding. Before being captured by the slavers, she would have eaten a lot. However, now she felt that with just that small bowl, her stomach would burst if she ate a single bite more.
"Do you have anywhere to go?" Rose asked, looking at the young woman who had remained silent after his last question.
"What?" Mina asked in turn.
"I asked if you have anywhere to go," the young prince repeated. After all, in only twenty days she wouldn't regain the strength she had lost, and if she left, she would probably end up in a ditch. "You could stay here and be an official citizen of the empire," he kindly offered.
Mina, incredulous, asked:
"Are you serious?"
"Why wouldn't I be?" Rose replied with his usual calm.
"But... but I only know how to kill and steal," Mina said, thoughtfully. For her, it was almost impossible that the Empire, a place where peace was palpable and children laughed and played in endless green meadows, would need a thief and murderer like her.
"Hmph," was all the young prince said before Desmos, once again, hit him on the head and whispered to him not to be insensitive at that moment.
"How strong are you?" he asked, more out of curiosity than anything else. As he had pointed out many times, although he was empathetic, consoling people didn't come very easily to him.
"I could fight twenty people like you at the same time," Mina said seriously. Although Rose was taller than her, the spear had already hit him on the head three times from what she had seen. Since she didn't know the spear had a conscience of its own, she assumed Rose was a bit clumsy.
"I'm going to assume you mean someone of my height and build," Rose said dryly as he watched the young woman. She, in reality, was not aware of the true power residing within her being, a power that continued to grow day by day due to the insane amount of tormented souls inhabiting these lands.
Mina simply held his gaze without expressing what she really felt; after all, she wouldn't tell him that she thought he was weak.
"So, are you staying?" Rose insisted. "Don't worry, I won't force you to do anything you don't want to."
Although he would probably ask her to kill some thieves and help him train the militia, but little else.
Mina's violet eyes met the silver gaze of the prince in front of her once more. After a silence, she lowered her head and spoke softly: "If you feed me, I'll stay, but you can't stop me from leaving if I wish."
[Great, your mother will have a fit when she finds out about this,] Desmos commented dryly. In essence, the girl was, after all, a kind of stray dog that swore to protect the life of the human who offered her food.
Rose could only nod, acknowledging that, in fact, it was something his mother wouldn't like.
End of Chapter