Slow Prison Life

Noblewoman Drives Off the Prince

Rachel was doing whatever she wanted when she was supposed to be bound.
She was coolly returning Prince Elliott’s glare. He quickly started yelling through the iron bars.

“Oi! Isn’t this a prison!? Why are you so relaxed!?”
“It is said that the people who live in the capitol are”
“That has nothing to do with right now! Oi, tell me how!”

The prison guard was completely bewildered when the Prince suddenly started talking to him and began shaking at his fierce glare. Naturally.

“Even if you ask me how I…….”
“Do you think I sent her to prison so she could have a happy vacation like if she were at a villa!? Go in there and confiscate everything that person brought in!”

He was given an order, but because it was impossible, the guard had a hard time talking back to the Prince.

“Even though you say so……in reality”
“In…….she’s steadied her basket from inside……”

Having the key and padlock explained to him, Elliott’s jaw dropped once again. The sparkling beautiful Prince, it was eerie seeming him with a strange look in his eye and a dumb look on his face………or so the prison guard thought.

“What do we do?”

The prison guard was at a loss when asked. The entire reason they had gone to get the Prince was to ask Elliott this very question. The guard took a glimpse over towards Sykes, but he was standing perfectly still looking the other way. Any help from him couldn’t be counted on.

Because the prisoner’s younger brother is intelligent, he should have been brought along as well……but they would all look incompetent if they were to call for him now.
The Prince scratched his head in irritation, and as his frustration boiled up, it pushed out a sudden rash answer.

“Break the chain! We’ll cut through and force our way in!”

Elliott kicked Sykes in the butt to get him moving.

“Oi, go call up some knights! Have them bring some tools with them!”
“Huh? ……….Ha, Hah!”

Sykes started running up the cobblestone steps, his boots creating an echo inside the chamber with each stride, and Elliott began ridiculing Rachel as she continued to lie back on her cushion.

“For you to pull a terrible stunt like this, your sins are only getting worse! The treatment you’ll receive will be exactly as it should be. I won’t leave you even a single blanket, imagine yourself miserable and shivering alone in the cold darkness!”

Proclaiming his intentions to an innocent woman with a wicked smile on his face, the figure of the Prince looked like a villain from every angle that you looked at him.
Glancing at the Prince’s smile from over her shoulder, his former fiancee made a small smirk and made a small, “Hmph,” through her nose.

“…….You should do as you want.”

 

Sykes came back with four other knights making up a five-man unit. The Prince immediately directed them to the problem chain at once.

“This is it.”
“Uwa…..you want us to cut this!?”

One of the knights screamed. The others knights were each making similar faces as well. Naturally.

They had been told that the chain the Prince’s finger was pointing to was the size of a woman’s pinky finger. The diameter of the chain, was not that. The diameter of the iron material the chain was made of, was.¹ In other words, if you were to try and wrap your hand around the chain, it was so thick that your index finger and thumb might not be able to touch……its the kind of chain you should be putting on a castle gate instead of a cell door.
The padlock keeping it shut was accordingly huge, so much so that Rachel dainty arms probably couldn’t have lifted it unless she used both hands. The keyhole had been carefully directed towards the outside of the iron bars meaning those outside the cell couldn’t see it.

“I was told we were going to cut some chains and brought the lever scissors…..”

The knight brought forward his specialty scissors made for the express purpose of cutting metal. By operating under the principal of increasing the pushing force, it was an impressive tool that increased the clamping force by several times.
However.

“If it was made of lead we could manage but…..”
“Is it useless!?”
“This, the material’s iron…..and it’s not even cast iron but forged…..”

Just to try it, two knights worked together with the scissors to try and cut through.
But no matter how much effort they put in, not even a trace of a bite would mar the surface.

“It’s impossible.”
“Is it really!? Some other, there has to be some other way!”
“Once, I did buy an iron saw…..”

The mean had an iron saw to cut through metal, so they decided to try using that instead. The knights took turns switching off and as a result…….

“Your Highness, we have left a slight mark…..”
“Hmm……after 30 minutes of work……”

This was going to take til dawn to cut. But then a knight finally took a look at the saw and showed the blade to Elliott who had been getting lost in his own thoughts.

“And it’s flat. The edge of the iron saw has been completely worn away.”
“……can we just keep changing saws?”
“We don’t have another one in the castle…..”
The entire dungeon fell into silence.

Behind these silent men, a small sound rang out in spite of them. As Elliott turned around, he saw the shoulders of a young noblewoman shaking as she tried to stop herself from laughing while reading her book.
Blood rushed to Prince Ikemen’s² head and he kicked the iron bars with his foot.

“Oi! Because of who is it that you’re making such a fuss in there!”
“Isn’t it because of Your Highness? Aren’t you the one who had me put in the prison? I wouldn’t have been able to make a fuss otherwise.”
“AHHHH!!”

When you put it all together, that’s how it is.
Elliott could feel his cheeks getting hotter, conscious of all the gazes gathered on him.

This woman, she was going to get it!

It was true that Elliott was the cause. He was the one after all who had annulled their engagement and then thrown her in prison because she wouldn’t say she was sorry………but even so, Elliot was burning up at the revelation that this woman’s ‘decorative doll’ appearance was just for show, and he couldn’t bear to silently withdraw like this.

“Oi, bring me a spear so I can stab this woman!”
“Y, Your Highness!?”

Sykes, the prison guard, and all of the accompanying knights were astonished at what Elliott had started screaming.

“I’m not going to kill her. I’m just going to inadvertently hurt her by stabbing her in the knee or something. Then she’ll have to unlock these chains and come out herself!”
“That is, you’re right but…….!?”

Sykes and the other knights all shared an uneasy look.

It was the Prince who had suddenly declared he was abandoning the engagement and imprisoned his former fiancee all without following any of the proper procedure. The entire royal palace including the dungeon belongs to the King, and it can’t be said that the Prince had the authority to use it however he wanted. At the very least, he wouldn’t be able to make these kinds of decisions if the King weren’t away on an inspection.
Above this, wasn’t the Prince actually abandoning he duty by breaking an officially accepted engagement? She hadn’t committed any crimes (she bullied the Prince’s girlfriend, so imprisonment and execution should be out of the question), so the men would probably be punished at some point if they were to follow the Prince’s orders now.
And for some reason none of them thought the Prince would be much help if that were to happen. Sykes and the other knights all started silently pushing each other forward, but when the Prince ran out of patience and raised his numb voice……..they all stopped halfway.

“Oi, I’m getting anxious being made to wait like this. It’ll be fine if we just cut her a little, so…….”
“?”

The Prince’s words stopped mid-sentence, and when all of the men turned to see what he was looking at……….they saw what he saw, and they all stiffened up just like he did.

 

At some point the woman in the cell had stood up without anyone noticing.
And in an obviously familiar form, she had loaded up a crossbow.

“Y-You even brought weapons…….!? To bring weapons into a prison, you’re insane!”
“What are you talking about now? This isn’t a weapon.”
“Eh? I’m wrong?”
“It’s a self-defense tool.”
“That’s the same, IDIOT!”

For the time being Rachel was pointing the tip of the bolt towards Elliott, but she had settled into a position where she could shoot at anyone if she needed to. And none of the outside knights had any weapons to counter her.
Rachel gave a cynical smile towards the men who had all taken a step back.

“Since Elliot is lacking in both wisdom and patience, I assumed a situation like this would come up. By the way, unlike His Highness who liked to play and chase girls around town, I liked accompanying my Father and Uncle when they went hunting. Wild birds drop so well don’t you think?”
And with a smile……..she showed them all a beautiful smile that made their spines go cold.

“About three years ago, the village I was staying at was attacked by some brigands…….of course the Duke’s soldiers took control of the situation almost immediately, but I also helped take care of three of the men myself. That is…..I don’t have any reservations about shooting a human being so long as their an enemy, is something to take to heart don’t you think?”

 

Bad.

 

Sykes and the others couldn’t say otherwise.
These days, even knights probably don’t have any real experience. So whether they be knights or soldiers, they are made to practice so that if the time ever did come where they did have to stab someone, they wouldn’t hesitate. It was easy to tell apart the veterans who actually had killed someone before by this flow.
That’s the way it is in the world right now…..and now translate that to one battle-hardened high-ranking aristocrat.
She teased them, “Should I kill you~” asking them what she was supposed to do, and Elliott and Sykes became able to read the room.

Rachel tilted her cute, pretty little head.
“If you don’t do anything on your side, then I will allow your idiotic face to come down and visit me. But if you ever try to harm me or break in here Prince, I, I guess I’ll just have to exercise my right to self-defense don’t you think?”
Rachel smiled again and motioned to the stairs with her chin.
“If there’s nothing else, could you please pack up and leave?”

At Rachel’s question, the knights hurriedly dragged Elliott away, his legs unmoving even as they scraped against the floor. It looked like they were courageously dragging the Prince away from danger, but the truth of it was that they couldn’t leave if their superior officer stayed behind, so they were dragging him with them. Incidentally, the prison guard was the first of them to run.

 

Having his back pushed by Sykes to force him up the stairs, the Elliott was able to regain his mind and started shouting again.

“If you want to be in the prison so much, then stay there as long as you want! But on the other hand, do you think anyone on this side will let you out!? Even if you say you want to leave, we will never let you out! Even if you cry I won’t let you out!”

Rachel responded with a small yawn to her former fiancee’s threats and re-opened her closed book again.

“I want you to at least be able to say something like that to my face.”

She didn’t expect a reply. And by the time Rachel’s words had ended, the Chicken-Hearted Prince had already escaped.

Rachel fell asleep while still holding her book, thinking about all the happiness she her life would include starting tomorrow.

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1. I just wanted to point this out since I was really confused at first, they aren’t saying that the iron is as thick as a pinky finger. They are saying that the thickness of the iron is the same as the length of a pinky finger.

2. For anyone who doesn’t know, an ikemen is just a young, good-looking, and cool guy.