Time passed, and the Crown Prince didn't return to his room.

  With no one watching me anymore, tears spilled down my cheeks and I trembled quietly in pce.

  I spent a fair amount of time agonizing over whether I should move or not — he did vey explicitly say that I should 'Stay right where you are' — and there was always a risk that the door could open at any moment. In the amount of time that I had gotten to know Prince Leopold, I had already learned that he had a short fuse, and I got the impression that he was definitely the type of man who preferred to py very rough. Earlier, he was trying to be gentle and 'nice' with me, but I couldn't predict how long he'd stay in that generous mood. Angering him would be a huge mistake, and I didn't want to deal with his violent proclivities yet another time on a single night.

  On the other hand, bending over a wooden table with my butt presented out was... embarrassing... to put it nicely.

  Ultimately, my self-respect overweighed my feelings of raw fear, and I honestly just couldn't deal with the humiliation of holding that posture even when nobody was around. I eventually folded to the ground like a piece of paper, pnting my exposed butt securely on the floor. My legs felt weak and frail.

  I felt as though I had literally been rammed between a rock and hard pce.

  I didn't want to deal with this anymore.

  I just wanted to go home.

  + + +

  I closed my eyes and thought about my situational dilemma further.

  Twenty minutes, and Prince Leopold still hadn't returned.

  Since he hadn't come back, was it sufficient to report back to the Majordomo that nothing happened because the Crown Prince got interrupted by a telephone call? My manager couldn't fault me for something that was completely out of my control. Furthermore, I had waited a substantial amount of time too.

  The bigger problem was Prince Leopold. The Crown Prince had given me a direct command to stay put, and I would definitely be in serious trouble if anyone found out that disobeyed his instructions. Prince Leopold would be the first person to realize that I had run away, and I would be risking my entire head on the way that he might react towards my escape.

  That being said, how much did he actually mean his commands? Was it literal? Did he really expect that I would wait for him the entire time? Would he be angry if he came back and realized that I had disappeared? How angry would he be? Would he be angry enough for report my transgression to the Majordomo, or would he let it slide without telling anyone because it wasn't actually that big of a deal to him?

  I nervously picked at the knot which kept my hands bound together.

  Prince Leopold did seem like a detail-oriented person, so it felt risky to mess with his scheduled pns and expectations. That being said, he did say that he would help me 'keep your job and your sary', which should indicate that he wouldn't arbitrarily try to get me fired. The issue was more so that I couldn't tell how much of it was actually a lie, but the Crown Prince at least (ostensibly) cimed that he was going to rape me for my own benefit.

  This entire situation was horrendously messed up, wasn't it?

  + + +

  After the clock reached 25 minutes, I finally reached my decision.

  Wobbling on my legs, I finally finished untying the knot around my wrists, and I approached the door.

  Briefly, I did consider grabbing a towel or a sheet from the Crown Prince's bedroom to cover my ruined maid uniform, but I quickly decided against it. On the off chance that I did encounter someone in the hallway, I didn't want to be accused of stealing Prince Leopold's belongings, which would certainly make this bad situation even worse.

  I wasn't really in a presentable state to stroll all around the pace.

  + + +

  My mind must have been so exasperated that I wasn't processing my thoughts very clearly, but I carelessly opened the front door without checking through the peep hole.

  I was greeted with the abrupt sight of two very tall guards in full armor who definitely were not there when I first entered the Crown Prince's bedroom. They slowly craned their heads down to look at me, and for a brief moment, I felt like a vulnerable squirrel that had was surrounded by two giant wolves the size of a bear.

  —Shit. I didn't realize that the Crown Prince would actually post guards at the door.

  "You're not allowed out here," one the guards said with a deep, lumbering voice.

  They didn't even move to draw their weapons, which went as far to say how little of a threat they judged me to be, although they did block the entrance in a way that it would be possible for me to push past them. One of the guards grabbed my arms securely, making the idea of escape a moot point to begin with.

  "I-I forgot something in the ballroom from the assembly earlier. Can I please go get it?" I asked, practically on the verge of peeing myself.

  The two guards looked at each other.

  They seemed to be retively reasonable folks, and they didn't have any reason to suspect that the Crown Prince's fuck toy was anything close to a legitimate threat. We were still work colleagues, and our retionship was something like co-workers in the same company who were employed in different departments. On a different day, it was entirely possible that we would be chatting to each other more casually, and the guards often liked to chat with the maids when they took their breaks at the water cooler.

  "Okay. What did you lose?" A guard asked. "One of us can go look for it."

  Two security guards was completely overkill for one maid, so they judged that it would be fine as long as one of them remained at their post. I wasn't officially a 'prisoner' anyways, and it didn't seem like the Crown Prince gave them very detailed instructions, so their task description was probably closer to a protective assignment. From their perspective, the pace maids were more-or-less harmless.

  "A pendant," I said. "It has a picture of my mother inside the locket."

  I felt sorry for sending them on a goose chase for something that definitely wasn't there, but I was already too deep in the lie to back out now. The pendant (incidentally) did in fact exist, except that I lost it a very long time ago far away from the Capital.

  "Understood," a guard said without questioning it.

  He smiled wryly at me and stepped away.

  + + +

  Bless that poor man's heart, but that guard departed on his quest for a missing item that he would never find.

  I sighed as I looked down at my feet again. The other guard was still had a secure grip on my upper arm, and my situation still wasn't much better than before. Even with one less guard, I couldn't wrestle out of the clutches of a professional football pyer. If I wanted to run, it would require wordpy and wits, but I would certainly get in trouble down the line if I tried anything that resembled an 'escape'.

  I wasn't a 'criminal' right now, but I could be thrown into the dungeons if I made the slightest misstep.

  Was this the end of the road?

  I didn't know what to do.

  —But at that moment, there was a sudden crash as the security guard turned around the corner.

  "哎呀!" There was an excmation.

  Two people collided, and there was a ctter of armor on the floor.

  ?