This beauty salon, called Royal Emerald, was decorated like a miniature palace. The air was filled with the scent of expensive essential oils, and even the carpet underfoot was thick enough for half a Slime to sink into.
Kōichi and Kazuma stood to Aqua's left and right, escorting her into the hall like a pair of guardian statues.
The moment Kōichi lightly slapped that thick stack of checks, enough to buy half a street, onto the counter, the manager, a flamboyantly dressed middle-aged woman who had still been sizing them up a moment ago, instantly broke into a smile brighter than a sunflower.
"My, my! This young lady... no, this princess!" The manager covered her mouth dramatically, her shrewd eyes roaming up and down Aqua's figure as she let out a heartfelt gasp of admiration. "This crystal-clear aqua-blue hair, pure as a polar glacier. This delicate skin, as if kissed by a goddess herself. And this... though touched by a hint of arrogance, still so sacred and noble that one can hardly resist dropping to their knees in repentance... Could it be that you are the exiled jewel of the Empire from the rumors?"
Aqua had been pouting because she still couldn't drink champagne right away, but at those words, her small ears twitched slightly, and her whole posture instantly straightened as if she had been pumped full of air.
"Hmph. At least you have some taste." Aqua planted her hands on her hips and raised her chin so high it was practically aimed at the ceiling. The arrogance that had only been an act until now fused perfectly with her natural narcissism in that instant, producing devastating results. "That's right! My beauty is so great it could purify the world itself! This level of grace is nothing more than what remains after I deliberately tone myself down out of consideration for the common people!"
Several senior beauticians gathered around as well, all clicking their tongues in admiration.
"My goodness, this quality of hair doesn't need any hair oil at all. It's like flowing moonlight!"
"Your Highness, please allow us to provide you with our highest-tier Starry Sky treatment. Only the finest gemstone powder is worthy of your face!"
Surrounded by professionals showering her with praise, Aqua was completely floating.
She had already forgotten she was only acting, and she had also forgotten the frantic looks Kōichi and Kazuma were shooting her from behind.
"Ohohohoho! That's right! Praise me more! I permit you to bask in my radiance!" Aqua put one hand on her hip and waved the other with what she clearly thought was elegance. "Manager! Bring me your most expensive, most extravagant, most dazzling services. I want everything that can make me shine like the sun! Don't worry about the cost. My two loyal dog attendants here will be paying for all of it!"
At the side, Kazuma's eye twitched violently. Leaning close to Kōichi's ear, he growled through clenched teeth.
"B-Brother Kōichi... she's completely out of control! Did she just call us loyal dogs? That absolutely slipped out from the bottom of her heart, didn't it?! And that Starry Sky treatment, I saw it on the price list just now. They use actual crushed diamonds to exfoliate your skin! That one package alone is going to cost us five hundred thousand Eris!"
Watching Aqua look like she was about to rise into the sky and stand shoulder to shoulder with the sun, Kōichi felt a powerful sense of foreboding rise in his chest as well.
This wasn't packaging up a princess. This was more like worshipping some money-devouring ancestral idol.
"Calm down, Kazuma." Kōichi took a deep breath, doing his best to maintain the solemn persona of the Empire's Last Sword. "You can't catch a wolf without sacrificing some bait. As long as she can carry this whole I'm the most beautiful woman alive act into the Ruby Salon, then the money won't have been wasted. But..."
Kōichi turned his head and looked at Aqua, who was just about to lie down in a bathtub filled with rose petals and Holy Water, actually just tap water, then shouted loudly,
"Your Highness! Please mind your conduct! As the heir to the Empire, how can you act like some uncultured nouveau riche who's never seen the world, yelling over everything? Keep up that cold, detached air like even if the world ended, you'd only think it was a little noisy!"
Aqua turned back from inside the tub, stuck out her tongue at Kōichi, and replied in an unbearably punchable tone,
"You're so noisy! What I'm doing right now is demonstrating royal closeness to the people! Manager, hurry up and bring me some of that fancy chilled grape juice. And put it in one of those sparkly crystal glasses!"
Watching Aqua get completely carried away, Kōichi and Kazuma collapsed onto the sofa in the waiting area, feeling like their souls were slowly dispersing right along with the numbers on the check.
Just as Aqua was about to order two beauticians to use little spoons made of pure gold to spread some so-called Aurora Pearl Cream over her shoulders, Kōichi and Kazuma finally reached the end of their patience.
The feeling was like watching your own husky frantically tear apart stack after stack of large banknotes right in front of a bank counter, while you, as the owner, had spent half an hour swinging back and forth between enduring it for the sake of the plan and strangling it on the spot, until finally the string of reason snapped with a sharp crack.
"I've had enough! You damned jinx, cut it out already!!"
With a furious roar, Kōichi turned into a blur and charged into the treatment room, thick with steam and the smell of money.
Kazuma was right behind him. His face, already twisted from the pain of watching their money vanish, looked even more terrifying in the mist, like a vengeful ghost crawling back from hell to collect a debt.
"Huh? K-Kōichi? What are you doing?! I'm in the middle of enjoying my Starry Sky treatment! Let go! That essential oil is really expensive... waaah!!"
Aqua had no time to react before Kōichi grabbed hold of her prized aqua-blue hair, gently enough to avoid tugging her scalp, while Kazuma expertly wrapped his arms around her waist. Working together, the two of them hauled her out of the rose-petal-covered tub like they were dragging out a slaughtered pig.
"Starry Sky my ass! That's crushed diamonds! Crushed diamonds worth enough to buy hundreds of bottles of top-grade bubbly!" Kazuma howled as he dragged her, sounding on the verge of a complete breakdown. "You spendthrift goddess! We came here to package some class, not to let you grind our retirement fund into your skin! Get out here already!"
"Let go of me! You two rude loyal dogs! I'll have you punished! Manager! Manager, help! There are villains here trying to kidnap me!!"
Aqua flailed wildly in midair, her soaking wet silk robe dragging a long trail of water across the carpet. The princess image she had managed to maintain, barely elegant a moment ago, completely collapsed into that of a badly behaved pet being dragged off to take a bath.
The manager and the beauticians were all stunned. Still clutching towels and little gold spoons, they stared in dumbfounded silence as the Empire's Last Sword hauled away their Imperial Jewel with all the grace of a physical abduction.
"What are you all staring at?! Never seen a princess lose her mind before?!" Kōichi turned and shot the manager an especially vicious look, then pulled out a few small bills and threw them onto the table. "That's for the water just now! Cancel the rest. The diamond exfoliation, the Starry Sky treatment, all of it! Our family's princess just remembered she has a restoration meeting to attend, so she doesn't have time to waste here! Move!"
Without giving anyone a chance to respond, Kōichi and Kazuma hoisted up Aqua, who was still struggling wildly and even trying to bite their arms, and charged straight out of the beauty salon.
All the pedestrians on the street saw was two ferocious-looking young men dragging along a water-blue-haired girl who was beautiful as a celestial maiden, yet crying her eyes out while wailing nonstop about her pearl cream, before the three of them vanished around the corner of the shopping district like a storm with sparks and lightning.
Only after they reached a relatively quiet alley did the two of them, panting heavily, finally throw Aqua onto the ground.
"Huff... huff... Brother Kōichi, I-I think my heart's about to stop." Kazuma braced himself against the wall, his face deathly pale. "If we'd been one minute later, that five hundred thousand Eris really would've ended up as dead skin scrubbed off her body... This idiot, you absolutely cannot give her even the tiniest bit of financial independence!"
Aqua sat on the ground with red-rimmed eyes, looking at the two of them with a face full of grievance. She looked exactly like a kitten abandoned by the whole world.
"Ugh... ughhh... you two demons! Scum! Perverts! You clearly said I could be a princess! Since when does a princess get treated this roughly?! I don't care! I want compensation! I want that sparkly Holy Water, and I want those little cakes with gold leaf on them too! Otherwise I'm going to stand right here and scream that you two are perverts illegally imprisoning a goddess!!"
Kōichi looked at this princess who had fully devolved into a kicking, screaming tantrum, and his temples started throbbing.
Class? Admission pass?
Right now, the only thing the two of them wanted was to stuff her into the nearest trash can.