In her slumber, the princess had a long, long dream.
She dreamed she was ten years old again, the happiest time of her life. Mo Wang and his companions were still alive.
Loraine would scold her for not eating her green peppers, Jack would sneak her into the kitchen for a midnight snack, Mei and Fei would practice their Shen Mountain Fist every morning, and Eva would tell her stories about her and her sister whenever she was sad.
And Mo Wang, who always acted like a bad boy, would stand up for her whenever she was bullied.
Amy, saphira, Dongdong, DaVinci... their faces flashed before her eyes.
Everything had been so perfect, so happy. Even after the kingdom fell, he had worked tirelessly to gather the survivors and establish a resistance in the Floating Castle.
Everything had been going so well... until the day he went to the Rah Empire.
The day that clumsy, reluctant hero, who always put his life on the line for her and the kingdom, disappeared.
Some said he had left her. Others said he was dead.
She still remembered the pain of that day.
Mo Wang, I've learned how to fight... I'm not that little girl who used to hide behind you anymore.
I've learned to eat my green peppers, and I've learned to fold my own clothes...
I've done everything you asked me to.
So... where are you?
I really, really want to see you again.
And then, the face she had longed for appeared before her, and she woke up in a small, dilapidated wooden bed.
"Wh-where am I?" the Future Princess mumbled, looking around. She remembered opening a time portal back to the past, but she had been caught in a temporal storm.
"I'm... alive? This hut... it's so run-down."
Who saved me? she wondered, and then noticed she was wearing a clean set of pajamas.
Creak~
The door opened, and she looked up to see a familiar face. Her world froze.
"M-M-Mo Mo Mo Mo Mo..." she stammered, as if in a dream.
"Huh? Are you alright? What are you mo-mo-mo-ing about?" he asked, concerned that she might have hit her head.
"H-hello. D-did you save me?" she asked, trying to keep her composure.
"Yeah, it was a close call yesterday. I never thought you'd fall out of the sky and land in my bathtub."
The princess's face turned beet red. "B-bathtub?! F-fall out of the sky?!"
"Yeah, I was taking a bath, and then BAM! you just crashed in."
"Th-then my armor..."
"Oh, that," he said, and pulled out the tattered silver armor from behind the door. "It was pretty wrecked, so I took it off for you."
"Y-you took it off?!" she squeaked, and curled into a ball like a cooked shrimp.
"Of course. You can't sleep in wet armor, you'll get sick," he said, and then added, "But you're in better shape than I thought. And your skin is so fair—"
"Aaaah! Stop talking!" she shrieked, and threw a pillow at him.
He caught it easily. "What's wrong? Shy?" he teased, and then pointed at her pajamas. "I changed you into these, too. Even found some underwear for you—"
CRASH!
This time, it was a water cup.
"Hey! That was my only cup!"
"D-dummy... How can you say things like that so casually..." she mumbled from under the covers.
"Alright, alright, stop being shy. It's not like I haven't seen everything—ouch!"
A fist connected squarely with his face.
Ten minutes later, with a bandage on his nose, Mo Wang was grumbling, "So violent... and I saved your life..."
The princess, now dressed in a set of casual clothes he had provided, was pouting at the table. "It's your fault for saying those things!"
But... this feels... nostalgic, she thought. He had always been like this, cluelessly crossing boundaries and making girls angry.
She looked down at the pajamas, her heart skipping a beat. These are his clothes.
"Hey? Are you okay?" he asked, waving a hand in front of her face. "You're not running a fever, are you? Your face is red again."
"N-no! I was just wondering... if the water in your bathtub was clean!" she blurted out.
He burst out laughing. "Don't worry, I scrub it every day! But now... can you tell me why you fell from the sky, wearing such strange armor?"
Her breath hitched. She looked at his face, so much younger and more vibrant than she remembered, not yet ravaged by war.
"I-I was just practicing my flying, and I accidentally fell."
"Oh, practicing flying? You're a magician, then? What's your name?"
"N-name?!" she panicked. "Um... my name is... Beatrice!"
They both froze.
(Is she still this dumb, even ten years later?) Mo Wang thought. Everyone in the kingdom knew that Beatrice was the royal family's surname.
He had recognized her the moment he saw her. He just hadn't expected her to show up now, instead of during the invader's attack.
"Oh, Beatrice? That's a very nice name."
(Thank goodness, he's still as dumb as he used to be,) she thought, breathing a sigh of relief.
"By the way, Your Highness must be hungry. I brought some chicken legs, would you like one?"
Her hand froze in mid-air. "What... did you just call me?"
"Huh? I said the chicken is getting cold, you should eat."
"No!" she stood up, her chair scraping against the floor. "You called me 'Your Highness'! How did you know?"
"Hahaha, you must have hit your head and are hearing things. How could a commoner like me possibly know a princess..."
"Look at me!" she grabbed his collar, their faces inches apart. "Something's been strange from the beginning... You knew I would fall into your bathtub, you had pajamas that fit me perfectly, and you even..." her voice trailed off, "...you even knew my underwear size..."
"Hey, I'm just very experienced."
"No! You knew who I was all along!"
"Hehe, you found me out. I never thought the future princess would be so perceptive," he said, and ruffled her golden hair.
"Why... why did you know?" she whispered, and collapsed into his arms.
"Why wouldn't I? As your one and only knight, I would rather die than fail to recognize you. No matter what you look like, what you've been through, or how you've changed, I will always know it's you."
He didn't know how he would be sent to the future, but he knew one thing: of all the characters in the game, the one he pitied the most was the Future Princess.
He had chosen to return to the past with the Little Princess, leaving her all alone. And now, her arrival meant that his future self had made the same choice.
He held her close, and for the first time, the girl who was supposed to have a heart of steel, finally allowed herself to cry.