CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Bjorn groaned and massaged his temples.
"Pull the arrow back, aim, then release. Is it that hard to understand?"
It's been an hour or two and the princess still has not been able to hit one target, even the nearest one. It's either she can't pull the string properly or the arrow just bounces off the bow and into the ground.
"Stop getting angry at me!" the princess yelled, her eyes starting to feel a stinging sensation as she tried to blink back the tears. "I told you that I didn't know how to use the bow! I told you to teach me something else!"
She felt pressured and lost. Her arms started to hurt from trying over and over again without rest and Bjorn was closely watching her and scolding her every time she falls.
"That's the easiest weapon to learn!"
"Not for me!" she dropped the bow and quiver on the ground and glared at Bjorn, "teach me something else!"
Bjorn sighed and shook his head. The princess is such a pain in the neck, he's starting to think that teaching her was a bad idea.
"You are just not trying hard enough," he sternly said. "This is the first time you tried the weapon, you should not give up that easily."
Tatiana jerked her head at his direction and shot daggers at him with her eyes.
"I told you that the bow doesn't feel right in my hands! I told you that I wanted to learn something else but you won't listen to me!"
"Stop being such a brat!" Bjorn snapped, "if you're not willing to learn, the just say so and we can end this stupidity! Stop acting like such a princess and a spoiled brat in the training grounds because this is not your territory!"
Bjorn panted after that. He immediately felt regret when the princess winced away from him. The tears that the princess was trying to keep in started falling.
"I-I—" Bjorn whispered breathlessly and looked around. It was only the both of them in shooting range, the princess's servant was not there to calm her down. He didn't know what to do next because this is the first time he ever made a girl cry.
He was so used to yelling and disciplining the knights in a harsh way that he accidentally raised his voice at her out of habit.
"That's why I told you that I wanted Morgan! You won't even teach me how to do it properly, you just keep shouting about pulling and releasing!" Tatiana sobbed and wiped her tears away. She felt a tugging pain inside her chest after getting yelled at by Bjorn.
She was scared of him being angry.
"You think that I enjoy being here and being trained by you?!" she yelled back, "I don't even want to see your face because you did nothing else but hurt me and you never fail to make me feel like I'm hated!"
Tatiana's tears were pouring down like waterfalls as she bawled and dropped to the ground. It was weird because she was crying more than she usually is, like feelings that were buried deep within resurfaced and hit her hard in a personal level. She does not recognize if the feelings were hers to begin with.
Bjorn couldn't speak. He swallowed hard and blinked several times. This was a situation that was new to him, something that he had never experienced before. He had no knowledge on how to treat women or how to handle them and make them stop crying. He wanted to run out of the shooting range and ask for help to stop the princess from crying. It was a scene that was unbearable for him to see.
But what Tatiana said pulled a string on his chest. Now that he thinks of it, he never treated the princess as a human. He would ignore her when she ran up to greet him, he would throw away the food that the princess prepared for him in front of her and he never failed to let her know that he will never love her. And it was all because of the engagement. He rejected her hard that day and that's when the princess started to change.
Now that he thinks of it, maybe he's partly the reason why the princess turned into a monster, because he was also a monster to her and he treated her like one.
He kneeled down in front of the princess and offered his hand.
"I'm sorry, my emotion got the best out of me," he meekly said, hoping that the princess would accept his apology. Deep inside he was partly confident because even if the princess los her memories, her heart will still remember how important he is to him and maybe forgive him.
The princess sobbed and stared at the calloused hand that was laid in front of her. A part of her wanted to accept it but she knows that it was the previous Tatiana's feelings. Instead, she slapped the hand away and stoop up by herself.
When she stood up, she looked down at Bjorn. Her chest ached seeing him like this and rejecting him but she and the original Tatiana were different. The previous Tatiana loved Bjorn, not her.
The original Tatiana may have accepted everything that he did to her but this one was different. She was tired of living at other's mercy and not being able to do whatever she wants. She's going to make sure that she lives this life the way she wants.
"No," she whispered, "I'm sorry for wasting your time. I won't do it ever again. I will train with Morgan when he returns and make sure that I won't be in your line of sight."
She started marching away as Bjorn slowly stood up and watched her walk away.
"I don't even want to be here in the first place," she complained, "I hate this freaking palace!"
Bjorn heard what she said but something puzzled him. Somehow, as the silhouette of her walking away started to fade into distance, a part of his chest started to hurt. It felt as if the princess was really walking away from him and will never ever come back.
--
END
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Villainess Reborn: SEASON ONE
FantasyENGLISH An orphaned high school girl trying to live a normal life was caught up in a bullying issue which made her high school life difficult. One time when she was trying to save a classmate from being bullied, she accidentally slipped and fell to...