Project Necro is an official initiative by Re:Library.

After moving to the lounge inside the residence, the four of them first let the conversation bloom with updates on how they had been doing.

The most heartwarming story came from Flora. After her mother’s passing, she had returned to live with the baron and baroness who had taken her in. There, she helped the baron with tending the garden, and learned cooking from the baroness, who was an excellent cook.

“She taught me lots of things I could make for lunch. I’m so excited to go back to the academy and cook together with you, Lady Ekaterina—I keep imagining it and my heart starts racing.”

As Flora spoke with her cheeks flushed, Mikhail gave a wry smile beside her.

“How wonderful! I’m looking forward to it as well. Please do teach me the recipes”

Ekaterina replied.
At the academy, she and Flora had cooked lunch together every day using the dining hall’s kitchen, but now it felt like something from the distant past. Ever since summer vacation began, Ekaterina had been living a thoroughly noble lifestyle and hadn’t cooked even once herself.

“I seem to have grown quite distant from cooking… I might even have forgotten how to adjust the fire in a hearth.”

In this world, there were no gas stoves or IH cooktops; cooking was done by burning firewood in a hearth. Controlling the heat was no easy task.
Charcoal, peat, and coal also existed in this world, but since they were expensive as fuel, they apparently weren’t used for cooking.

“Adjusting the fire… hearing that again makes me worry you might burn yourself.”

With a troubled expression, Aleksei took Ekaterina’s hand.

“Ekaterina, once the break is over, how about you stop cooking with your own hands? I’ll speak with the academy—perhaps we can have lunches brought in from outside, or assign dedicated staff to the dining hall. I’ll think of a solution.”

My Onii-sama really is such a siscon.
Ekaterina squeezed his hand back and looked straight into his neon-blue eyes.

“If that is your decision, Onii-sama, I will do as you say. But the lunchtime moments when you ate what I made were very precious to me. It would make me sad to lose that happiness.”
“……”

After a short pause, Aleksei cleared his throat softly.

“If you say it makes you happy, then I won’t take it away. Everything will be as you wish.”
“Thank you very much, Onii-sama. I’ll learn from Lady Flora and be sure to make something delicious for you.”

All right, got him on record! From now on, at the academy, I’ll keep making Onii-sama’s lunch!
Ekaterina clenched her fist internally.
Beside the smiling Flora, Mikhail stared off into the distance.

“…Why is it that hearing exchanges like this already makes me feel a sense of harmony?”

Sorry. Sorry we’re a siscon–brocon pair of siblings.

Putting that aside, the Prince and Flora-chan seemed more at ease together than before. Especially Flora-chan—she had been rather reserved around the Prince, but now that barrier seemed to have dropped significantly, and she could speak without hesitation.
Traveling together really does increase closeness, huh. The villainess-backed heroine-affinity-boost event was a success, maybe? Hehe, well done, me!

“It seems you’ve been very busy, Lord Mikhail.”
“There were various state functions. And I also toured my own territory.”

Spending summer vacation attending state events… being an imperial prince really is tough.
But—his own territory?

“You have a territory of your own, Lord Mikhail?”
“Yes. Ever since I was born.”
“Ekaterina, it’s decided that the first prince of the Empire is granted the ‘Blue Butterfly Domain’ at birth.”

Aleksei added this explanation, and Ekaterina’s eyes widened.
Amazing. As expected of the first in line to the throne.

.

The “Blue Butterfly Domain,” it seemed, was one of the imperial family’s directly governed territories.
Or rather, while the emperor naturally owned all the directly governed lands, when he took an empress or had children, portions of those lands were granted to the empress and the princes and princesses. Which land went to whom was largely fixed, and the Blue Butterfly Domain had, generation after generation, become the holding of the first prince. That was why a blue butterfly was incorporated into the prince’s crest.
The day-to-day administration of the land would be handled by the local magistrate, but once the first prince turned twelve, he’d begin learning how to manage the territory himself. Tax revenue from the domain became the source of the prince’s private court expenses, and decisions such as how to allocate funds over the year, where to spend them, and what to carry over to the next year were all made by the prince himself.
The imperial family’s income did not rely solely on directly governed lands, but learning the duties of a lord was undoubtedly part of the education required for one who would someday ascend the imperial throne.

Twelve years old, huh. That’s the age when you’re handed a pocket-money notebook and told to manage your allowance yourself—and instead, he’s managing a territory and overseeing court expenses. Even with careful guidance from those around him, being royalty is ruthless!

“The scale is nothing like Jurnova’s. It can’t compare to what Aleksei is doing.”

Mikhail smiled as he said it, but he must have his own hardships, different from Aleksei’s. And yet, he didn’t let even a trace of that show.
Perhaps this, too, was calculated—how one destined for the supreme position should present himself to his subjects.

…Oh geez… thinking about it makes my head spin.
Even if his territory isn’t as large as Jurnova’s, being a lord is just a waypoint for him—something he does in order to understand what it is. There are people of the land, there are lords, and far above them all stands the emperor. The sixteen-year-old boy smiling right in front of me will one day sit on that throne. Accepting that fate, without growing weary or slackening, he continues down the path that leads to it.

He’s still just a kid, though. He’s admirable, and knowing he’ll someday be our sovereign is reassuring because of his competence—but from the perspective of my previous life, I can’t help feeling a bit of unwarranted sympathy for a sixteen-year-old who can never just be a normal boy.
When we met at the academy, I never thought about things like this. Even though everyone knew he was a prince, he blended in as just another student.
But now that I think about it, his time at the academy must be an exceptionally special period in his life.