The carriage rumbled down the cobbled road and the bumpy ride caused Diana to sway as she slept soundly on top of Cain's knees.
Cain held her hand, which no longer bore any scars. As he tickled her palm with his finger, she gripped down on it and it mumbled in her sleep.
He smiled softly and said to her, "They did a good job healing you up, didn't they?"
"I told you they would, didn't I?" said Elise, clearly fed up with Cain. She sighed and said, "People often prick themselves with a needle during embroidery sessions, so they always keep medical magicians on standby."
Cain glanced over at his mother, and then quickly returned his gaze to Diana's sleeping face.
"If the royal house demands it, please disown me with no hesitation," Cain mumbled to his mother while petting Diana's hair with his free hand. There was no self-pity in the way he said it.
"The queen is a forgiving person," replied Elise. "This incident occurred only before trusted friends who had come to attend the embroidery session, and at the end of the day, the prince was unharmed. I doubt she will demand a punishment that harsh." She caressed his knee to try to make him feel better, thinking that he must be burdened with guilt.
"If I'm disowned, Diana will become the heiress to the Elgrandark Dukedom. Then, rather than being married off to a family, she will take a husband to become an Elgrandark."
Cain was not burdened with any guilt, at all.
He calmly looked down on Diana's sleeping face and laughed softly.
The only way Diana would ever get married to the crown prince is if she were to enter the royal family by becoming his bride. If she became the heiress of the Elgrandark dukedom and it was necessary for her to take a groom to join the Elgrandark family, it would make a marriage with the crown prince impossible.
If Cain was disowned and cast out of the family, it would make things difficult to protect Diana as her older brother, but at least it would stop her from being married off to the crown prince.
"How could you hate the crown prince this much… Today was the first time you've ever met him," said Elise.
"It's not that I hate the crown prince. It's just that I love Diana," said Cain.
"Well… When we return home, I'll have Father discipline you…"
"You've already beat me, Mother," said Cain.
"It wasn't enough, apparently. You show no signs of guilt. You're a child of a nobleman. You need to learn how to control your emotions better. At this rate, we will have to train you to sit and watch with no emotion as we pinch Diana's cheeks," said Elise.
"Don't do that, please! It wouldn't be fair to Diana!"
"Well, then, you need to learn to control your emotions. Your actions are truly unacceptable whenever Diana gets into any sort of trouble," said Elise.
"…I shall work at it, diligently, then," said Cain.
"You're usually such an amazingly able child. How come you can't get past this?"
When they got back to the manor, Cain was ordered to stay in his room and reflect on his actions until Father returned.
Since the embroidery session was cut short and they had returned early, Ilvalino was not yet back, and Cain was alone.
Mother was forbidding Diana to come to his room to play.
Cain dropped himself onto the sofa and covered his face with both hands.
"Guhhh," he said, sighing deeply and bending over so that the hands covering his face touched his knees as he sat.
All of his tutors had been given the day off because of the embroidery meeting. He was confined to his room, so he couldn't go jogging around the estate to vent his stress.
Without Ilvalino and Diana, Cain experienced solitude for the first time in a while.
"Video games. That's what I want," he found himself mumbling. His mumbles traveled to the soft rug below him. They sank into the rug and disappeared.
In his past life, he had just made a Let's Play video for the game called Unlimited Academy of Magic. He'd played through all the possible routes that the game had to offer, and he had been editing the video for uploading. [Read this novel and other amazing translated novels from the original source at the "Novel Multiverse dot com" website @ novelmultiverse.com]
He had left games unfinished, too – like the online games he played, not for his YouTube channel, but out of his own personal interest, and the mobile games he had been playing on his subway commute, paying small amounts of money for upgrades here and there.
He had even been waiting for a special limited edition of a new game to be delivered to his apartment.
He had been so devoted to playing video games that he took a low-paying job so that he could get home early and play. On days that big-budget games were released, he always took a day of paid leave from work and played all day, making it to the mid-game on the first day it was out.
He had loved video games.
He had never wanted to actually make video games, but he had thought that if he could just make money off of playing them, his life would be complete.
The term "eSports" had come into use, and it had started to become more and more possible to make money through playing video games, but Cain had never really specialized in these games where one competed against other players.
That was why he had gone to uploading Let's Play videos.
He didn't want to spoil any new games that had just come out, so he had started with a video on an action game with no plot. He began doing research on how to edit his videos so that even with games with a storyline, his viewers could become interested in playing the game for themselves. Eventually, he had grown his channel to a point where he was making enough money to cover the cost of about one new game per month.
He had started to get comments on his videos, and he was reminded of the joy he got from playing video games in his elementary school days when he and his friends would discuss the progress they had made in the game or strategies on how to beat it.
I've discovered it all over again – video games are fun! I want to share these experiences with everyone!
Thoughts like that had run through his mind, and he tried his absolute hardest to meet his goals. But he had tried too hard, and that was how he ended up in his current situation.
"I want to play video games," he repeated, looking down at his hands, which took up the position of holding a controller. He made the motion of pressing buttons and pulling triggers, his fingers wriggling in midair.
Cain recalled a story in which the main character loved books, and when he was transported to a different world, that main character became an author in his new life.
There was another story where the main character loved eating, and in his new life, he became a miso and soy sauce maker.
Cain thought about how he could make card games, Othello, or some other board game in this world he had been transported to. He had been given a life of aristocracy – born into a high-ranking position close to the royal house itself. If he wanted to, he could get his hands on the necessary materials and workers to mass-produce these games.
But to build an electrical power plant, or invent the television, or produce hardware and programming software necessary for video games – these were impossible tasks for Cain to take on. They weren't problems that could be solved with money or political power.
Cain had accepted that since he had been born into this world, he had to do his best in his new role as a duke's heir.
Usually, this would just mean he needed to concentrate on his training and studies and seek the help of the family and servants he had by his side.
Cain was given a body that improved without fail whenever he put work into it – just like leveling up in a video game. This made it satisfying to study and train himself physically.
Diana was as adorable as always, and she seemed to be making progress along a path that steered her away from growing up to be a villainess. Ilvalino could still act closed-off at times, but he was no longer holding darkness in his heart. Cain felt like he was doing well, as far as the game went.
He didn't know if Mother had ordered them to avoid his room, but Cain couldn't hear any servants walking the halls outside of his doors.
He realized that this might be the first time he had ever been alone since he had been reborn as Cain.
"Man, I really want to play some video games," he said, a third time.
In a video game, you could play recklessly, and even if you made a mistake, you could just reload yourself. After all, most games let you save your situation as many times as you wanted. Cain wanted to play out someone else's problems and be inspired by them, or cry over them, or laugh over them.
This situation he was in where he mostly knew the possible outcomes of his game, but he needed to produce his own ending (with no extra lives, at that) was a lonely walkthrough of a game on hard mode.
Cain had been given some time alone, at last, and he found himself cracking under the pressure.