/
Joy said to Ethan without hesitation.
After being appointed as a knight and even enrolled in Stefan’s family, Joy is now a nobleman, but her words were rude.
But Joy was lucky. Ethan is in a good mood today.
“Yeah, You may not like it.”
Ethan answered leisurely with the tone that everything in the world can be like that.
She sensed that Ethan’s voice was different from usual, but Joy didn’t lose.
“I’m against the princess hanging out with you
!”
Joy remembered Ethan Bronte, who was cold and cruel Ethan Bronte during her time in Cerritian.
He always had a cold atmosphere. The way he rolled his eyes as if he already knew it all while pretending to be friendly.
Joy rolled her eyes, vowing that no matter how many people in the world were blinded by Ethan’s handsomeness, she would never be deceived.
But Ethan smiled kindly at her.
“Sure. You may be against it.”
At the sight of his happy smile, Joy took a half step back.
‘Have you changed your strategy?’
Ethan Bronte’s aura was different than usual. But that only made Joy more wary.
“If you are going to use the princess, you’d better stop now.”
Joy narrowed her eyes and looked fierce.
At Joy’s warning, who was quite charismatic, Ethan laughed.
‘The ignorant potato who didn’t know anything grew up a lot.’
It was Joy, whom he didn’t like very much, but maybe it was because he was in a good mood today, Joy’s concern for the princess just looked so sweet and cute.
“How can I use the princess? I came today because I was invited by the princess.”
“I know you meet all the young ladies in Lampas these days. I saw you go on a date with Monica in Caro last time.”
“I’m not going to meet her anymore.”
Ethan replied with a soft voice.
Then Joy’s face showed signs of confusion.
“You’re not going to meet her? why?”
“Because there’s no reason to meet.”
“Why is there no reason to meet?”
“I’m busy.”
“What?”
“By the way, is the princess inside
?”
Ethan naturally avoids answering, passing Joy and heading inside.
Like a hawk chasing a target, he walked in search of Dorothea.
“Ethan Bronte, if you make the princess trouble, I won’t let you go.”
“Don’t worry. If there is anyone who bothers her, I won’t let them.”
When Joy didn’t give up and put the threat on the back of his head, Ethan smiled and raised his hand as if he knew it.
* * *
Tok Tok!
A light knocking sound.
“You are looking for a music teacher.”
Dorothea’s face bloomed brightly as Ethan poked his head out through the crack in the door.
“Ethan!”
Dorothea covered her mouth with her hand, realizing that she had raised her voice too loud in delight.
“How have you been?”
It had only been a few days since he saw her at the concert, but Ethan asked as if they had been apart for months.
After exchanging a light but sincere greeting, Ethan saw Dorothea’s desk.
Books and papers were piled up thickly on one side of the desk as if she were working hard on something.
“Did you have any other work?”
“Ah, I’m going to attend a meeting this month, so I’m looking at some related stuff.”
Last time Raymond offered her to attend a meeting.
‘I had planned to keep quiet, but I didn’t want to just sit here and pass the time without knowing anything.’
Especially since there were so many important issues on the agenda this time, like the Hark trade and taxation issues.
“Can I take a look too?”
It’s been a while since he has seen data on state affairs, so Ethan’s eyes lit up with interest.
Dorothea nodded her head.
There is no such thing as a state secret, and Ethan is the person closest to Dorothea who helped run the state affairs.
“It’s just something the nobles are against.”
Ethan lightly glanced at the contents and smiled.
He was convinced that all the important issues of the meeting would be rejected instead.
Before the return or now, Carnan and the nobles wouldn’t have changed much, so it would be no different from the past.
Dorothea and Ethan knew how difficult it would be to reform the tax system. Because both of them suffered severe failures before returning.
The reason Dorothea is interested in policies related to people’s livelihood is that she recognizes the gap between the rich and the poor in Ubera, and power structures are biased toward one side.
Carnan and Raymond know this, too.
Carnan tried to handle the matter without harming relations with the nobility. But he tried to join hands with those in power, so of course he didn’t succeed.
Raymond, on the other hand, found it particularly difficult to deal with the problem of no answer.
Observing the failure of Carnan’s moderate method, Dorothea tried to reform it by coercion and violence but failed as well.
It’s easy to steal the bowl of the poor, but it is difficult to steal the bowl of the rich.
Perhaps it’s only a matter of time before the long-running Ubera fades into the background of history.
“Still, your face looked hard.”
A smile appeared on Ethan’s lips as he scanned her face.
But, unlike him, Dorothea turned awkwardly.
“I only saw it once.”
Her voice was weak.
‘I decided to live without paying attention to the emperor and politics, but the stories about politics I’m hearing are getting to me.’
Does she want to leave politics just because she has tried it once?
If you actively bring up these kinds of things, it is obvious that everyone thinks you have political greed.
It’s common for good intentions to be misrepresented.
‘If I were to propose a new policy to Raymond, he would accept it, but the other nobles certainly wouldn’t.’
She lives in a world where invitations are piled up just by showing the spirit.
“Just once, but you really work hard.”
Ethan said, carefully reading Dorothea’s writings.
Instead, she said that she had only prepared a meeting, there were piles of traces of Dorothea thinking about the problems and improvement plans of empires that were not on the agenda of the meeting.
Some of the policies seemed to be the result of her frantic penning of desires that couldn’t be satisfied by being a princess.
So he couldn’t help but feel happy. This is because all the thoughts and plans she wrote down were the same as old Dorothea.
To be precise, Dorothea Milanaire before becoming a tyrant.
It was a time when he said he would restore the Empire to its old glory by turning the empire into a rich nation.
No, the languages she had written were more mature than before.
So Ethan had no choice but to fall in love with Dorothea again.
“It’s sad that this discussion is going to die without coming out to the world.”
“Ethan, I told you, I don’t want to be emperor.”
“But you said you wanted to be a good person.”
“Yes. I want to be a good person.”
“These thoughts that you wrote down are very good, Princess.”
The quintessence of the future she knows, numerous trials and errors, the experience of failure and development.
In addition, to support measures for single mothers and relief measures for the poor, reforms of the financial system were also included to improve the lives of the people.
These innovative systems, which would have tangible effects if implemented with the power of the imperial family, would be enough to convince the nobility.
“But if I try to do this, everyone will think I’m trying to become emperor.”
‘I need the power to put those ideas into practice.’
It might have been better if Dorothea wasn’t part of the royal family and if she hadn’t had the Spirit of Light.
“It’s really hard to guess what the princess is saying about ‘being a good person’.”
Ethan said, holding Dorothea’s hand affectionately.
“What is ‘being a good person’ for the princess?”
Dorothea rolled her eyes and hesitated, unsure of how to answer Ethan’s question.
Unable to answer for a long time, she hesitated for a moment, then pulled out an old piece of paper that had been folded in the corner of the chest of drawers and showed it to Ethan.
‘A list that I have been thinking about for so long that I think I can memorize it even in my sleep now.’
“The bucket list of living a good life
?”
“After I returned, I decided to live like that.”
At Dorothea’s words, Ethan hid the corners of his lips that twitched up with his fists.
‘Oh My God. Isn’t it too cute? Did you think like this after returning?’
Like Dorothea Milanaire, it is development-oriented and planned.
‘Her execution still makes me sick to my stomach when I think about it.’
she crossed the line and got a new life, she made a list to fix what she’d done wrong. And she still has that list.
He read through Dorothea’s old resolutions.
[First, a friendly smile once a day.]
‘Oh, so cute
!’
The image of Dorothea trying to smile was so adorable that it brought tears to his eyes.
[Second, don’t covet what belongs to someone else]
‘It’s cute too
!’
The thought of small, young Dorothea, sitting in front of a large desk that doesn’t even fit her body, writing this down, was driving him crazy.
After all, the world is a place to live and see.
Who would have imagined that in his lifetime he can see Dorothea Milanaire’s ‘The bucket list of living a good life’.
[The throne belongs to Rey. Theon belongs to Julia.]
‘This isn’t cute.’
It wasn’t at all pleasant to think of Dorothea, who had written this phrase alone after returning.
Ethan’s expression, which was always full of smiles, stiffened slightly, but his eyes soon moved over curiously about the next line.
Below that, some items for living a good life, such as saving people and donating, were written.
‘It was so beautiful that my heart skipped a beat as I realized that she must have written them down one by one while wondering, ‘What does it mean to be a good person?’.’
And one line that seems to have been written late at the bottom.
“Made Ethan a good person?”
“Ah!”
Dorothea hurriedly took her bucket list from Ethan’s hand.
She added to it when she met him after her return when she never imagined he had returned too.
Since she had decided to live a good life, it was a promise she wrote that she would also make Ethan, who had walked the path of the tyrant Dorothea, a good man.