The Prince Doesn't Cry From Mere Onions

The pigs down at the public ranch were fed by-products from the public farm.

Before the war—in other words, before they had a public ranch and farm, the pigs of this village, like most pigs did commonly in most villages, found their food in the forest themselves. Soft roots and fallen fruit were their feed.

However, during the war, most pigs were either slaughtered to eat or caged in a pigsty the entire time.

And once the war ended, the villagers gave freedom to the surviving pigs, but….

At the end of the pig’s snout, that which had come back from scouring the forest, was a human finger.

After that day, the village built a public ranch for the pigs.

“…is how the story goes, but! The villagers have worked to retrieve nearby corpses for quite some time, so there won’t be any more pigs foraging corpses now.”

Delivering this brutal explanation nonchalantly, Anna took the pig out for a stroll with Bertram.

The little pig quite brazenly went forth, even in a forest he was entering for the first time. His snout was covered with dirt. He had swallowed who-knew-how-many worms already.

Watching the pig oink about happily, Anna rummaged her pockets for a snack and pulled it out. It was an item that was familiar to Bertram as well.

A small breadfinger. Only, it wouldn’t have as much butter as the ones he had in the palace.

Handing Bertram the cookie, Anna opened her mouth.

“You spoke with my mom earlier this morning, didn’t you? She seemed pretty mad.”

“I must have misspoke somewhere. I will ponder upon the situation and improve myself.”

“Hm…. Mr. Bertram, you know when other people have emotions, right?”

“Yes. I am able to read them.”

Bertram lowered his head to a height that Anna could now just barely see his face.

“Reading the movements in the brow, here, and comprehending the ups and downs of the eye; gathering clues such as the tone of voice, I infer the emotion. It is one of the things I learned how to do during the war.”

“Why would you make yourself learn that? I thought you got rid of your feelings to fight better.”

“He who does not know the fear of his subordinates will find himself standing alone at the front line the morning after the camp-out. He who doesn’t recognize hostility in the residents at a post will find that the rations he’s received from them have potato sprouts mixed in.”

The second example made Anna smile bitterly.

A few years back, Anna had resisted the soldiers trying to take her restaurant and ended up with a broken nose. On that day, the village residents had intentionally mixed ashes into the flour that they were to offer as military rations.

As hard as it was to imagine Bertram using violence like that against someone else….

It was hard not to become a b*st*rd during the war. Bertram must also have been a b*st*rd to someone somewhere.

Not to mention that he was a small-town b*st*rd to Carla now.

And Bertram seemed to know that himself.

“Miss Anna. I would like to prove to Mrs. Carla that I am not dangerous. I am not trying to dismiss the fear that she must feel at my mere existence, but I at least want to show that I am not here to plunder, nor serve this place as my newest battlefield…. Why do you tug at my pants cuffs, if I may ask.”

“’Cause I want to pinch your cheeks but you’re too far. Oh, are you about to lower your head for me? Don’t.”

“Okay.”

It was getting easier to predict Bertram’s patterns of behavior. Feeling ecstatic, Anna straightened her back and spoke towards the sunlight, roughly where she thought Bertram’s face must be.

“Mr. Bertram, you are no longer as scary as a soldier you might encounter during the war. In fact, you actually look sort of feeble! Your shell is giant but you look incredibly harmless, really!”

“Harmless?”

A description he’d never heard about himself in his entire life.

Even before the war, thanks to his huge size, he had never been able to hear that he looked harmless.

But Anna’s voice dug so powerfully into his mind, to the point of making him question if all those memories had been his delusions.

“Follow after me. I am harmless!”

“…I am harmless.”

“So don’t go around trying to prove your harmlessness for no reason! I’m talking about trying to answer people too honestly, or trying to react to others’ pointless jokes no matter what.”

In Anna’s mind, that was Bertram’s biggest problem.

For someone who didn’t know emotions, Bertram was too effective at getting on people’s nerves. If not for his build, he would already have gotten into more than a couple fistfights just by conversing with the men.

But that wouldn’t happen because the two people wanted to fight.

People were wary of Bertram when they first met him. Thanks to that, it was a matter of course for them to drop guarded jokes and bluff their way through in conversations with Bertram in order to get a feel for him.

On the other hand, Bertram was trying to appeal his harmlessness as quickly as possible. So he would answer everything honestly, and ask anything he didn’t know right away.

When such two positions clashed, the side loaded with extraneous emotions was the one to explode with frustration.

Instead of giving Bertram a rundown of this long-winded deduction, Anna picked out the most important solution from the explanation.

“Trust me. Remember when I said you were adorable? I was being completely honest, you know?”

“I do remember, but… I must say that I am not so gullible as to believe that I look harmless….”

“Oh, please! Just believe it while you’re here! I’m telling you, everyone from the chief to Dieter know how you can’t do anything bad, alright? Think about it. Did I, the smallest person in all the adults in town, shake in fear when I first saw you? No! I tried to feed you! And you still try to pretend you’re harmful!”

Instead of pounding his back, Anna punched at Bertram’s sleeve. The fluttering of his sleeve was increasingly distracting him, and in the midst of it, Bertram found himself answering.

“Yes, I am harmless in this village. Everyone knows. I won’t try to go out of my way to prove it.”

“Good!”

Lifting up the piglet in her arms, Anna patted its head.

Oink.

“What are you doing, Miss Anna?”

“I mean, your head is way too high for me to pat. And it’s probably weird to be patting an adult human’s head anyways.”

“….”

“Do you want me to?”

“That’s alright.”

Once Anna placed the pig back down, it wriggled its little behind as it scurried forward. It must be full enough now, seeing how it ignored the ripe raspberries nearby. The berries were now Anna’s to eat.

The hands that had patted the pig were becoming dyed in red.

And, somewhere where he could not see, so would Anna’s lips be in the process of becoming.

As Bertram imagined this happening, Anna stood on her tiptoes towards Bertram.

“You want some, Mr. Bertram? It’s okay if you can’t taste it. The popping texture is what makes it fun!”

“I’ll try.”

Bertram accepted the slightly broken pieces of raspberries from Anna’s hand and tossed them into his mouth.

It probably tasted like red.