Ayla grabbed her hair as if confused about her own identity and said, unsure, I can't remember At all.', towards Theon.
Theon sighed at Ayla's extremely serious behavior and touched his forehead.
"You seem to be mistaken about something again."
"Ah I knew it. I wondered why my mother hated so much whenever I ate sweets when I was young, and that was all because she was my stepmother."
"No, that's not it"
"No need to console me. If the Count and his wife aren't my parents, then who are my real parents? Are they in Ruit?"
"Pfft."
Theon suddenly burst out laughing at Ayla's indistinct eyes.
Shortly after, Theon's broad shoulders started shaking incessantly, while he had his head down.
Is this bastard laughing now? When I'm so serious?'
Theon, who was laughing breathlessly with his head down, soon straightened his body as if he had calmed down and tidied up his disheveled hair.
Ayla looked at him with a sullen expression.
"Ahem, Zenia Is a fictional character."
What?'
At Theon's words, Ayla felt like she wanted to hide somewhere.
She was incredibly angry for being overly emotional and letting her imagination run wild on her own.
Asking where her real parents were It was one the most ridiculous bullshit that she would like to take back if she could.
She fanned her face, which turned red, and turned to Theon, saying, I-I know. It was a joke. A joke.'
Of course, those words destroyed the office.
Theon laughed so much, making fun of Ayla with all his strength, to the point where she wondered whether he was someone that could laugh like that.
"Will you Stop laughing now?"
"Hahahaha! Joke Did you say joke? Pfft."
"Stop laughing!!!"
For an instant, the world stopped, Ayla stopped, and the bastard Theon stopped too.
She wanted to take that back, but she had already screamed at him, so it was too late for that.
I'm screwed. I think it will be better to just give up this life'
There was an awkward silence between Theon and Ayla.
Both of them were just staring at each other and none of them said anything first.
"Explain why I am Zenia."
The heavy silence remained for a long time, and it was Ayla who broke it.
"We have to set up a trap to catch our target. We can deceive them perfectly and get the evidence."
With his usual cold eyes, Theon fixed his gaze on her and spoke in a low voice.
"So how do we do that?"
"It's simple. Zenia is a fictional character anyway. They don't care who Zenia is. They're only interested in the numerous jewels that will go into Zenia's hand."
"So?"
"Isn't the answer right there? They're certainly going to get their hands on it, and then we just need to catch them."
"So how are we supposed to catch them!"
Theon only smiled silently at Ayla's words and did not give a clear answer.
After quarreling with him for a long time, she felt her organs shaking inside her belly, saying she was hungry.
As she turned her head and looked at the clock, it was already long past dinner time.
Growl.
What an honest and self-assertive bastard.
Seeing that she usually doesn't feel hungry, she doesn't know why whenever she faced a serious situation like this she would beg for food.
To make matters worse, she was trying to ignore the embarrassment from behaving disgracefully
Now she really wanted to dig into the ground.
Theon, who looked at Ayla hiding her head in embarrassment, burst out laughing.
As if he felt Ayla's cold, firm eyes, he cleared his throat and straightened his posture.
"Ahem, I'm having a lot of fun today."
"Don't make fun of me. This is all because I used my head. Please don't hesitate and just speak comfortably. Why am I a princess all of a sudden? No, how can I be a princess?"
Theon turned towards Ayla, who was chattering incessantly, and slowly opened his mouth.
***
In the Stellen Kingdom, when delivering tributes, the person who made the list of tributes personally visited the distinguished guests and paid their respects.
As a result, only the distinguished guest who received the tribute and the official in charge of delivering it personally knew about the tribute that was actually delivered, and there was no special supervision at this point.
It was a custom that came from the previous generation of Kings, so no one raised any questions about it.
The officials only stayed quiet about this ridiculous way of handling it and no one tried to get involved, because even if they took the matter into their own hands and talked about the problems related to that, they knew they would be interrogated by a very suspicious King instead of getting praise.
Because their attachment to the Kingdom has long since disappeared and they are driven solely by their practical interests.
Thanks to this, there were rumors that some aristocrats who were looking out for this loophole took more goods than those delivered and embezzled them for themselves, by falsely filling in the list of tributes.