“Princess Cordelia, sit down!” I hush rapidly. “We don’t want to get attention to ourselves!” I try to grab Princess Cordelia’s arm to keep her from jumping up.
“That’s wrong! I have to help them!” Cordelia replies immediately and gets out of my hold. I cannot hold her down. She walks towards the fighting mess, grabs a chair beside her and throws it at the table next to the fight.
The sound of the exploding chair rings through the inn we are staying. The two burly men stop fighting, the woman who was previously sobbing on the ground stops crying, the angry villagers surrounding them stop shouting. Everyone gapes at Princess Cordelia.
Princess Cordelia, magnet for troubles, a princess with inhuman strength.
“You,” Princess Cordelia points her finger at the crying woman sitting on the floor, “you love this young man here and wish to marry him, is that right?”
“Yes…” she sobs.
“But your family forbids that. So you two decided to elope.”
“Yes.” Her lover comes forward to comfort her as the angry villagers tries to separate them.
“You,” the princess then points her finger at the girl’s lover, “do you love this girl?”
“Of course I do!”
“Then what’s the matter? Why can’t they get married? They love each other!”
“She has a fiance! And we won’t allow her to marry such a poor guy. It’s all his fault! He must have tricked my girl and planned to get all her money!”
“Edward won’t do that!” the girl comes to her lover’s defense.
“That’s a false accusation! I love Anita!”
“They love each other, how can you separate them?”
The farce continues. Princess Cordelia has been ‘saving’ people left and right since we left the deep sea. I began to regret as soon as I left the sea. What if I mess up with the timing? What if it’s one hundred years earlier than the fated meeting between Princess Cordelia and her Prince? What if the prince is still a sobbing baby under the care of his nursemaid?
How can I act so rashly? That’s not like me at all. Adding to the fact that I am stealing Lord Valentine’s potion. That means I’m betraying his trust. I didn’t even leave a note explaining my disappearance.
But every single doubts vanished when we encountered our first trouble. We saw a gang of thieves trying to steal something from a carriage. Princess Cordelia of course immediately pulled out a tree, roots and all, by her side and threw it at the gang. They tried to fight back but all were being punched back by Princess. The thieves ran away. The ladies on the carriage were so grateful that they offered us a ride to the town.
That’s when I remembered, that’s the start of the novel, ‘Conquer the World-Mermaid Princess & Narcissistic Prince’. Don’t ask me why I read this novel back when I was a university student. Probably because of the word mermaid.
Saving those old ladies who turned out to be nobles of the country, Zehan, from a gang of thieves was the first scene of the novel. The old ladies will then offer Princess Cordelia a ride to the nearest town. Things turned out exactly the same as written in the novel. Seems like I did not mess up the timing. This made me slightly less guilty, at least I did not sabotage Princess Cordelia’s love life.
But that does not make my betrayal to Lord Valentine any less real. The potion was locked in a secret safe under layers of magical protection. Lord Valentine said he revealed the location and ways to unlock the safe because he trusted me. He said he believed that I would not betray him as there were many precious and dangerous potions inside the safe. He gave me the key to the safe because he was worried I would need something from the safe, like a life saving potion, in case something urgent happened. I betrayed his trust. For my own selfish use.
I do not regret following Cordelia and escaped from the undersea kingdom. I have to leave Lord Valentine. I have grown too attached to him. I am just an assistant, nothing more. I need to stop this weird feeling I have before things get out of control.
And maybe this is my fate, I am destined to become Cordelia’s travelling partner in her story. However, I have to think of a way to avoid meeting my death. If what the woman in red high heels in my dream said was true, then I must have already died in my original world. This is the only life I have left. There is no longer any slim chance that I can get back to my original world. I will do everything I can to avoid death.
Unfortunately, everything appears to be exactly the same as the novel. What if I try to change it? Can I change it?
This scene unfolding in front of me occurs after the old ladies drop us off in town. What happens next? It has been five years, and the story is just a silly one to begin with, not particularly memorable.
What happens next in the novel?
