Thwack!
Renrae dodged another armored fist before striking the bandit straight in the throat, causing the full-grown man to choke on his own slobber and collapse heavily into the dirt. Renrae barely paused before he was slipping a vicious knife cut and nimbly sidestepping a corpse on the ground that had barely begun cooling from the start of the fight. The bandit in front of him promptly tripped over said corpse when he tried to run after Renrae, and Renrae barely held back an exasperated sigh at the rookie mistake before he was knocking the man out cold.
Why couldn’t these have been the guys Renrae was up against when he’d last been in his original body?
Well, Renrae had lots of things he could find to insult Siknae’s stupidly flawless body, but at least he had one thing going for him—Siknae kept himself fit. That was perfect, because Renrae was using his body to fight this group of bandits head-on, and the results had been disappointingly trouble-free so far.
Renrae swiped a hand across his sweat-soaked face, before flipping his long, silver hair out of his face to glance up at the random passerby quietly observing at the edge of the treeline—
Renrae froze. A beat passed, before his heart painfully screeched and started beating against his ribs as if desperate to escape his chest. Renrae whipped his head back, sure that his eyes were playing tricks on him, but sadly, they were not.
What—what—?! Please tell me I’m hallucinating, please!!
“I—you—” Renrae stuttered, his topaz eyes staring in a panic at the figure languidly leaning against the side of a tree trunk as glittering slate-grey eyes watched him in turn.
W-Where were his guards? Why is he by himself? I-I am hallucinating, right? Should I run away? Oh dragons, I’m so dead—
“That was a rather splendid performance,” the other boy remarked, his glacier tones freezing the blood in Renrae’s veins. “I would’ve thought it was staged, except that I’ve seen quite a few tussles like yours before, so I can distinguish between what’s real and what’s not.”
Holy carps, he’s so cool…
Renrae intelligently responded to his dream man in just one word. “Uhh…”
The dark-haired teen suddenly straightened himself from his relaxed posture in one fluid movement, like a tiger flexing its limbs.
Renrae gulped and took an involuntary step backwards, nearly tripping over the same corpse that had been the last guy’s demise. How ironic.
Contrary to Renrae’s conflicting expectations, Crown Prince Kaikoi didn’t move closer to him. Instead, he scrutinized him with a keen eye from afar, before coldly opening his mouth again.
“You. What’s your name.”
………Huh?
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Renrae blinked, before remembering that he was dressed in a commoner’s garb. His other clothes had gone missing within half a day of leaving his residence (he wasn’t too used to toting around extra clothes and having to protect his belongings), and he’d quickly gathered all that good grime and soot that gutter children had on after a few days trekking through the towns on foot because he’d been too wary of other people to hitch a ride after finally remembering his new identity. Thankfully, the capital wasn’t too far from Siknae’s residence, so Renrae had figured he’d be able to make it.
Rbk, tf kjr kbcvfglcu lo atja tjvc’a yffc atf wbra ygjlcifrr lvfj tf’r tjv ab ybba.
Yg, wjsyf la’r ygliiljca yfmjerf Bbl’aaf vbfrc’a rffw ab gfmbuclhf tlw jr Vlxcjf…?
C oglulv nblmf rbecvfv bea ja atja wbwfca. “Gb sbe cba tjnf j cjwf? Yg mjc’a sbe rqfjx?”
Ah. I hesitated for too long.
Renrae forced a smile onto his face and used the curtain of matted silver hair in front of his face to hide his expression. Actually, at this point, Siknae’s glossy strands of silver hair had turned into something more multi-colored, like a dish towel fished out from the bottom of a marsh. Heh, so that was even better.
“I—I’m known as…”
Drat, what was he supposed to say?! How could he lie to the prince?! He’d get beheaded!!
No, wait…Siknae would get beheaded, and he’d be totally fine…
Orc’s arse. There’s no guarantee that I’ll return to my original body if this body dies. I can’t act reckless like usual…
Renrae had been lost in thought, so he was unaware of the moment Koi’tte actually moved, but the prince moved fast. It took him less than one second to span the gap of a hundred meters separating the two of them, and even then, Renrae only became aware of the prince’s presence when it was way too late.
As in, when he found himself staring straight into the prince’s dreamy, brooding eyes.
Oh wow. I…
Renrae suddenly raised a hand, and the prince lashed out in that instant. Renrae instinctively dodged the blow that headed straight for his neck, though it was such a close thing that he felt like the prince’s iron-like fingers nearly tore half of his hair straight from his head. The only reason why he’d been able to react so fast to the prince’s insanely swift attacks was because he’d lived an entire life dodging such blows, and Siknae’s body also happened to be very agile.
Renrae honestly wasn’t too sure why the prince had suddenly attacked him. Renrae was just going to slap himself, but he didn’t know the prince would react so strongly to him hurting himself.
Aww, maybe the prince was secretly sweeter than Renrae had previously thought! Was this a new side Renrae was discovering about his darling because he finally had the confidence of being in Siknae’s body!
All of Renrae’s dopey musings were cut prematurely short, however, when the prince didn’t pause his attacks. Renrae was forced to sidestep a vicious punch aimed straight at his solar plexus, before a backhand nearly skinned all the flesh from his temple.
Holy carps, my sweetheart—
“—Koi’tte, you’re so amazing!”
The prince’s leg, in the middle of executing a devastating ax kick that would’ve taken off an arm if it had landed, halted for the barest of moments, but it was enough for Renrae to slip the attack that he might not have been able to dodge otherwise. Renrae’s body—no, Siknae’s body—might’ve been really fit, but he did just fight a whole group of bandits, and he actually hadn’t eaten all day. The prince, for better or worse, fought like some kind of hot-damn assassin with no openings or weaknesses, and given another minute or two, Renrae probably would’ve been defeated, if only by sheer exhaustion alone.
But anyway…
“Why did you stop?”
Renrae tilted his head in confusion, momentarily forgetting that the prince had been out to kill him.
To be fair, said prince was now standing in front of him silently, hands clenched by his side but posture otherwise relaxed. Koi’tte didn’t look like he was going to attack him again, so Renrae was understandably confused.
Renrae could’ve been reading Koi’tte’s face wrong, but he looked like he was now gritting his teeth. Renrae couldn’t help but appreciate the way Koi’tte’s gorgeous lengths of midnight-dark hair was swept away from his forehead into a braided ponytail, so that his cold eyes resembling thunderclouds sweeping across a raging ocean could sparkle in the noonday sun.
Renrae really liked Koi’tte’s eyes the most. He loved the way they sparkled when the sun’s beams hit the obsidian-dark irises just right, and he loved how Koi’tte’s unfathomable emotions would occasionally flash within those depths. Koi’tte’s eyes were like the edge of a blade, so sharp and perceptive, but also like the edge of a shadowed lagoon, withholding a treasure-load of memories that sometimes made Koi’tte’s eyes soften minutely like a pancake sizzling in the pan—
“Pffft.”
Renrae froze. His golden eyes widened at the sound of Koi’tte huffing out a light breath, one armored hand help up to his mouth in contemplation as his eyes—those eyes—sparkled for the briefest of seconds with something soft flashing within those depths.
I…I’ve never…seen him laugh…
The magical moment was over all too soon.
“You’re a real nutcase,” Koi’tte said coldly, his face back to its ice-like state, as if he hadn’t been laughing at all a second ago and as if he wasn’t a prince who had probably never said something as inelegant as “nutcase” to describe someone’s mental state.
The insult came out of nowhere, so Renrae found that he had no way to respond.
“Umm, t-thank you, Y-Your Highness?”
Koi’tte’s emotionless face didn’t change, but his tone was a little lighter than it was before. Less like a thick slab of ice and maybe like a thin ice sheet.
“Why don’t you just call me what you’ve been calling me?”
Renrae blinked, half-smile frozen on his face. “…Huh?”
A flicker of something flashed across Koi’tte’s unreadable face. “You don’t remember?”
Wait. What am I supposed to be remembering, exactly? Is he talking about that time when we were kids? But I’m pretty sure he never even saw me…
Before Renrae could agonize himself into a tortured knot of emotions, Koi’tte suddenly reached out to snag his threadbare collar. Renrae didn’t have time to react before Koi’tte was lifting him half off his feet to bring him up to his eye-level. Renrae barely had time to be thankful for the greasy mess that was the mop of hair on his head covering up half his features before Koi’tte’s cold voice cut him straight to the core.
“I’ll kill you if you ever call me that again, got it?”
The threat was spoken without a single curl of Koi’tte’s lips. His face was flawless, impeccable and expressionless, like a smooth slate that had been wiped clean of imperfections. Renrae couldn’t read him at all, and he couldn’t read anything from his emotionless tone of voice. Koi’tte sounded like he was just commenting about the weather, but he also just threatened murder in easily digestible words.
It was, to be honest, a really really cool moment that Renrae intended to totally record in his mind and go over it again and again in his sleep.
The first time Koi’tte ever spoke so passionately to me! He had no emotion on his face, but his words were full of fire! This is priceless!
“S-Sure,” Renrae agreed without thinking, his eyes fixated dreamily on Koi’tte’s and his mouth slightly slack. He didn’t even realize he’d started drooling a little, and thankfully for him, it didn’t appear as if Koi’tte had noticed either.
Koi’tte hesitated for a moment, seemingly deliberating over something, before a slight noise from within the woods caused Koi’tte to drop Renrae like a sack of potatoes.
Koi’tte only spent a second brushing off the dust from his clothes, studiously ignoring the dazed look Renrae was giving him from where he sat in the dirt like a harmless sheep waiting for its shepherd to come take it back home. Koi’tte tightened his arm guards, bent down to pluck something long and thin from Renrae’s head, and then turned on his heel to vanish into the shadows by the edge of the woods. Renrae stared after until he could no longer see him, and then his senses started to come back to him. The first thing he realized was—
“Wait. What did I even call him that got him so mad?”
yamyam has something to say:
Guys, you almost didn’t see me ever again O.O I nearly choked on tofu yesterday and thought I was about to pass out when I couldn’t breathe…my throat really hurt…okay folks, take the lesson from this idiot who decided working on two tasks and chomping down on a mountain of tofu distractedly was a good idea…please take care of yourselves…hahaha I guess I’ve got no room to talk here eeee but anyhoooo, enough of my pathetic spiel – I have another pathetic spiel~ XDD I’m super exhausted this week cuz summer lab work just started and I kinda bit off more than I can chew (what’s new)…I feel like I need, like, ten-thousand hugs…damn you COVID for making me so incurably touch-starved…but y’all’s support have been my salvation. It’s serotonin for my bleeding heart that you guys just accept this crazy story for all its plot holes and self-indulgent tropey-trope-tropes and still stick by me…I’m truly flabbergasted cuz what have I ever done to be lucky enough to deserve such sweet, considerate kindness (٭°̧̧̧ω°̧̧̧٭)
Anyway, I hope you guys are safe, you guys are sleeping enough (plz sleep extra hours for me cuz I’m pushing that responsibility onto you guys XD dw, it’s healthy~~), you guys are eating lots of tasty food for brain-nourishment and the happiness quotient, and you guys are getting enough hugs (either from some non-creepy human, or from a cat, dog, pet, goldfish, etc)~ (づ◡﹏◡)づ
(y’all are totally fine with me skimping on last week’s chapter right?? I’m sure nobody’s going to kill me that what was meant to be last week’s chapter became this week’s and so the merry-go-round turns agaaaain *cough cough*)
is the tofu okay? 🤣 jk, jk, hope you’re staying safe and well too（づ￣3￣）づ❤️
Rae is rocking his new body omfg, if His Royal Highness doesn’t want him, i’d gladly take him as my husband HAHAHA
huge fan of how you’re writing the action scenes btw, i could never o(><；)oo
(˘ ³˘)~♡ plus, I think you’d be excellent at writing them too >>.>>
and yee, I’m replying to your comment backwards pffff – so ahem ahem, I’d like to think the tofu that almost took my life is safe too…safe inside my tummy that is, as was its life dream, I’m sure~
pfffff hahahaha >.> does Rae have his first fan??? whispers should I tell the bean?? He’d be ecstatic to know someone loves his poor insecure heart~
(since you replied backwards, i’ll do the same haha)
OF COURSE! TELL RAE THAT I’M HAPPY TO LOVE HIM~ (ʃƪ ˘ ³˘)❤️
i’m glad the tofu is enjoying its… after… life? …permanent retirement hahaha
noooo, you haven’t seen my action scenes HAHA, there’s a reason why i only write fantasy genres so no punch-punch-swish-something cool-kick-KO but it’s just “explosion + explosion = win” HAHAH so be more confident with ’em! they’re so funnn~!! hehe
so I’ll deliver your regards when Koi isn’t around to pull a jelly and, like, kill you or smth(◔ᴥ◔)Mmm hmm :nod nod: that tofu be having the time of its life, errr, death…
UMMM ok but that sounds even MORE hella cool, you rocking that fantasy genre like a boss!!! I like myself a mean explosion but I can’t write epic fantasy like that so ummmm I rely on authors like YOU to deliver that sweet-sweet stuff to me~~~ (˶☆ω☆) I’m so happy you do think my action scenes are worth this whole “punch-punch-swish-something cool-kick-KO” title UwU imma gonna frame this comment foreeevvverrrrr ｡･ﾟヾ(✦థ ｪ థ)ﾉ｡ﾟ･｡ my happiness and self-esteem be boosted instantaneously just by thy words ( ´ ˘ `)/♡
wahahah, if you need more praises i’m here, just give a holler ☆~(ゝ◡ • )
Ask and you shall receive. You want hugs? You’ll get hugs. You want us to sleep for you? We will sleep. You want us to look after ourselves? We’ll do that. Probably.
But mind you, it comes at a price. And that price is that author has to look after themself too :DThank you for the chapter, Rae is a lovestruck idiot XD
watch me spiral deeper into madnessif my readers aren’t taking excellent care of themselves? Shall I provide you with more snacks?? Hot cocoa?? Fluffy blankets??Life insurance??(O∆O) I’ve never heard a threat made for the good of my well-being sound so ominous before aaah what should I doooo @.@ okkk won’t choke on tofu anymore, I guess~
Rae: has a crush
Rae: hello can I get your number I mean you’re totally out of my league but I’m in a hot bod so maybe give me a chance?
(sorta not-but-yes-canon XD)
Haha, no I am not a blessed angel, nor am I a genie. I am merely a barely functioning reader who also happens to be a professional procrastinator with too much, yet also not enough, time on their hands. Hugs~ author pls help reader replenish braincells too, I am losing them much too fast ;A;
And yes please I would love snacks.
You won’t choke on tofu anymore, you GUESS?! You mean you won’t choke on tofu anymore, full stop. No choking on tofu, otherwise whose going to write this novel for us huh??
When (no not if, WHEN) Rae gets number: Wait what just happened
Poor dirty little fella. Almost got pummeled by the prince. And you got trounced by tofu. We must be careful lest the tofu win. Take care! 🤣❤️
thanks for the chapter <3
First meeting with ML🥰🥰
What a meeting. Didn’t the prince like Siknae? He didn’t recognize him just because he was dirty like hell and looked probably worth then those thieves! Oh my poor boy and here I thought he would get saved like the damsel in distress. Instead he got nearly beaten up and isn’t allowed to call him by his name. 😌