Even Though She Is a Girl of Love Level 0, She’s Stuck Being Asked To Kiss Him

CHAPTER 1.3: THE HIKIKOMORI DAUGHTER GOES TO THE ROYAL PALACE

She had heard that there was no one upstairs in the hall except for her. Curious, Doris moved through the corridor towards the sound of talking.

Peeking out from behind a pillar, she saw three young ladies in dresses talking to each other.

"It's a great opportunity to show the princess what she is, let's humiliate her in public."

The one with the slanted eyes who seems to be the leader of the group hides her mouth with a fan and said.

(Euphemia-sama...? What the hell are these people...? )

By all means, it's not about celebrating Euphemia.
"You remember the arrangements, don't you?"
The leader asked and the other two nodded. They hold a stack of papers in both hands.

"When the dance starts, we throw the letters in at once. We go back to the hall with a nonchalant look on our faces while everyone else is making a fuss.

"It's a good laugh if you break off your engagement at the engagement show."

"We must be very careful not to be spotted."

Just when the leader lady closed the fan.

"Oh, my..."

"What, you, don't freak me out!"

Doris unexpectedly appeared in front of the ladies.

"What are you going to do to Lady Euphemia...?"

"Oh, maybe you want to join us?"

The leader-ranking lady took a piece of paper from her minions and showed it to Doris.

"It came from my fiancé's house. It is a draft of a love note he wrote to the princess. And this is the princess's reply."

The lady in charge flickered a letter lined with fine letters.

"She's a terrible woman, isn't she, to someone you don't love... And how can she write words of love to someone else's fiancé?"

"Yes, it's unforgivable!"

The timid-looking handmaidens nod in agreement.

"Oh, that's a lie!"

Doris involuntarily raised her voice.

"It's rude to say it's a lie, the physical evidence is here. He told me: 'I'm not sure I love you more than Princess Euphemia.'"

"It's... Wasn't that just unilaterally captivated by Euphemia?"

"What do you mean?"

The wrinkles between the daughters' eyebrows are carved.

"Besides, Euphemia-sama is not a cowardly person who would betray Percival-sama."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't want to doubt it, but didn't you forget it?"

"You…!"

All three are understandably upset.

"It is not beautiful that you make such maneuvers to bring others down. It would be more constructive to improve yourself to turn around the gentleman who left you."

After saying that, Doris was silent.

(Wow, how rude of me to a stranger...)

Still, I couldn't stand the bad things said about my beloved Euphemia.

"You're being so rude. Are you one of the princess's henchmen? Oh, I get it. You must be trying to get the princess to give up her brother to you, right?"

"What are you talking about...?"

Confused by the unexpected being told, Doris is speechless.

"Your Highness the Crown Prince is also quite a womanizer. Both brothers and sisters are free-spirited."

Doris, who had lived for many years avoiding contact with people, had never before been exposed to such bare malice. It is unlikely that anything she says will have listened to anymore. The first time she had been in contact with someone for so many years, she had never felt so much malice in her life.

"C-Cut it out..."

As Doris's throat trembled, the carpet at her feet burst into a small flame. The flames were extinguished in an instant, so the daughters did not notice.

"I thought I recognized you from somewhere... Isn't that Miss Doris Norman?"

"The Accursed Countess?"

"The shady young lady who lost her place in the royal court and went into hiding in the clouds?"

The daughters' eyes have changed color. They are smiling with pity and contempt.

"I'm sorry that the princess has to look after people like you who have nowhere else to go."

"No way..."

Euphemia is not at fault in any way, but I can't believe she's being laughed at because of me.

A rippling laugh pierces Doris's chest. 

"Well, you'll have to watch. Let's start the princesses' engagement break-up event."

The ladies held up a stack of letters in unison.

Even if the contents of the letter were false, it would not change the fact that Euphemia would be harmed in front of the crowd.

"No… do not interfere… with the happiness of Lady Euphemia and Percival!"

Doris tries to stop the ladies who are trying to spread the letters but is shoved away by the leader and falls to the ground.

The moment the letter was about to leave their hands, Doris let out an unvoiced cry.

(Euphemia-sama...!) 

The next moment, Doris's vision was enveloped in white light.

It was the same scene as when she was cursed by a witch in the distant past.

(What...? What's going on...? ）

There should be a boundary to nullify the outburst of magical powers.

In the fading field of vision, she could see the stack of paper in the ladies' hands burning. Screams erupt from their mouths.

From further away, she thought she heard a voice calling my name.

"Doris!"

Unable to remember who the voice she was supposed to know belonged to, Doris let go of consciousness.

◇◆◇

Percival and Euphemia's engagement party ended earlier than planned.

This was due to an unexpected accident.

On the balcony of the hall, Doris's magic broke through the wards and exploded. A strange light illuminated the area, but fortunately, no property was damaged and no one was injured.

As the guards of the Court Wizarding Division evacuated the guests, Celeste ran up to the balcony.

On the way, the three ladies rushed down the stairs in a hurry, he called out to them, but they fled.

"Doris! Hey! Are you okay!?"

Her long black hair spread out like a fan, and Doris collapsed to the floor. Celeste calls out and hugs her. Her slender body was terribly hot.

He carried Doris into the living room and arranged for a female officer of the wizarding division to accompany her.

He intended to stay with her until she woke up, but the female officer kicked him out of the room and he went to his own bed after midnight.

About four hours after that. Just as the sky was beginning to turn white, the bedroom door was knocked on.

When he opened the door, there was a maid with a pale face.

"Princess Euphemia... It's nowhere to be found."

The younger sister does not leave the room without telling the chambermaid. She knows she will cause worry.

All right. I'll look for her with you. I'm sure she's just gone out for a walk.

"I'm sorry to bother you, thank you."

The maid bowed deeply and left the room.

As Celeste was about to take off his nightgown, his eyes met the 'something' at his feet.

It was a long-furred white cat. Its eyes were the same sky blue as his own.

Where had it wandered in from?

"Where are you from? What's your master's name? ...... What the hell am I talking about?"

Celeste crouched down and stroked the cat's back, and a voice different from 'meow' came back.

"I don't have a master's. I'm not a domestic cat, big brother."

"What...?"

Celeste stiffened as he was stroking it.

"I didn't know that my brother was the type of person who talked to animals."

"What...? Euphie...?"

"Yes."

The white cat somehow looked great and turned its nose up as if to say 'huh'.

Celeste quickly paled, changed from his nightclothes into his loungewear in a swift, gale-like movement, and ran out of the room with the white cat under his arm.

He ran towards the only thing he could think of.

Her body is hot and she has trouble sleeping. Doris quivered her eyelashes and opened her heavy eyelids.

"Oh, you're awake, I'm glad."

A strange woman dressed as a maidservant.

 "Um... Am I...?"

"I heard you collapsed in the middle of a party, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince brought you here."

"Your Highness...?"

Was it Celeste's voice that she heard just as she was about to lose consciousness?

"You had an outburst big enough to break the nullification wards. You need to get some rest until your body settles down."

"I... must have done it."

I broke the boundary that the people of the royal palace had painstakingly put up.

"It's not your fault, it's your fault. It was the fault of the Wizarding Division that you couldn't anticipate that your magic power was growing."

"You're from the Wizarding Division...?"

The petite woman with shoulder-length red hair smiled at her freckled face.

"I'm Melinda, I may look like this, but I'm a great person. We'll talk about it in the morning. Just rest for now..."

As she said this, the bedroom door was slammed violently.

"What, it's rude when it's not dawn yet."

Melinda muttered as she opened the door and a young man with blonde hair jumped in.

"What's the matter, Your Highness...?"

Doris asked, half raising her body as she endured the heaviness of her body.

If you look, Celeste was holding what looked like a white hairball on her side.

"Doris... Doesn't this guy look familiar?"

Celeste walked over to the side of the bed and holds out a bright white ball of fur in front of Doris's eyes.

Inside the hairballs, bright sky-blue gemstones appear to be embedded. When I squinted in the dim light, I could see that it was the eyes of a living thing and that it had cute triangular ears.

"Well, cute cat."

Doris couldn't help but relax her mouth and move her face closer.

I don't know why, but I feel a constant attraction to this cat.

"The noble, divine atmosphere and the loveliness that makes you want to hug her are similar to Euphemia-sama."

As Doris let out a sigh of contentment, she heard a click of a tongue from somewhere.

Reflexively, she looked at Celeste, who replied, "Not me."

"You're so arrogant! Who do you think made you look like this?"

The white cat slipped out of Celeste's arms and landed on the duvet that wrapped Doris.

"What...? The cat spoke...?"

Boom.

Doris's cheek was pressed against the flesh ball.

"You're the only one I can think of who did it. The same thing happened with the strange light last night, you must have activated some kind of magic, right?　You'd better get back to me as soon as possible!"

"What? What? The original appearance? What do you mean...?"

"Doris, calm down and listen. This cat is Euphie."

"yes yes yes!?"

No wonder the air was not such a place where one could say that the heart-throbbing loveliness was......

"Euphemia-sama is a cat...? Why..."

"So, your magic exploded..."

As Doris's cheek was muffled with a meatball, Euphemia (a cat that looked like a cat) spoke up. 

"Hi. I'm sorry to bother you."

With a light voice that sounded as if entering a tavern downtown, a crack suddenly ran through the void.

The space in the room ripped open and a woman emerged from the break.

"Oh, no! A different girl has turned into a cat? What should I do? I thought I had come for the Crown Prince."

"Hey, who's this person? Why is your protective barrier so lightly broken?"

The intruder witch brushed back her wavy black hair and smiled bewitchingly as Melinda sounded bewildered.

"The answer is simple because your magic is lower than mine."

"Oh... You."

"You..."

Doris and Celeste's voices trembled simultaneously.

" 'Witch Ripley...' "

The witch, called Ripley, blushed happily when she spotted Celeste.

"Ah, there you are, the Crown Prince. But the magic reaction is different... My magic resonated with it, so it flew over."

Ripley's words were puzzling, and no one in the room could understand them.

"Umm..."

Dressed in a jet-black dress that followed the mellow curves of her body, the beautiful woman put her long, thin fingertips to her chin and made eye contact one by one.

Ripley turned her gaze back to Doris.

Ripley opened her mouth, her brow furrowed in suspicion.

"You... Who're you?"