12. The Appearance Of The Second Prince

After Michael let go of Claude 's hand, Claude immediately left.

Just pretend I'm dead.

Those were Claude 's last words before he fled into the forest.

Claude ran aimlessly while wiping his eyes, tears falling, but he refused to admit he was crying.

Crash!

Suddenly, as he ran, he collided with someone. The person's body was bulky and hard, and when Claude bumped into him, he fell while the other person remained standing tall and sturdy like a wall.

"Oh my, who is this? Did I create this character?" Claude wondered to himself.

The person Claude bumped into was a young man, slightly older than Kane. The young man immediately helped him up.

"Are you okay?" the young man asked.

Claude accepted the hand and opted to stand up, trying to recall if he had created a character like a bison, with a big, muscular body.

"Why are you staring at me like that?" the young man asked, puzzled. Claude looked at himself in confusion.

"You... must be the Bison guy!" Claude pointed at the young man, and the young man pointed at himself.

"Hah, Bison?! Am I that big?! How rude!" the young man responded indignantly, from head to toe, it seemed Claude was not dealing with an ordinary person.

'Wait, blond hair, blue eyes, isn't this the person my father is looking for? The one causing my siblings to fight over? Oh, so this is their toy, causing chaos.' The young man resembling Bison was named Xavion. He was the elusive second prince, often unseen, who was quite surprised to encounter the person his father was searching for accidentally in the woods.

"Eeh~ what is the young lady doing in the forest," Xavion immediately changed his tone to mocking when he realized that the person in front of him was Claude , the blonde one who was the target of his sibling's affections.

Claude sighed tiredly when referred to as a young lady because he could already guess this was due to his novel where the plot was so crazy it couldn't distinguish between males and females.

"What did you say? Forest?" He looked around, realizing he had run into the forest without realizing it.

"Why am I here? You must have set me up," Claude suspiciously accused.

"Just ask your feet, you fool!" Xavion snapped. He quickly put on his cloak and disappeared, then he silently left, avoiding Claude .

"Hey, where did he go? Who is he?! I haven't asked yet!" Realizing Xavion had left, Claude searched for him. He looked left and right, but the young man was truly gone.

"He disappeared just like that, is he an assassin?" Claude mumbled, confused.

Finally, alone, Claude decided to climb a tree and sit there, staring blankly at the other trees. His mind was chaotic; he wanted to go home and sleep comfortably, but that was now just a dream because Claude had run away and might never return there.

He felt sad, wanting to cry and scream for being trapped in this character's body, always suffering, even though he had made some changes and even though the story was no longer following its original plot.

As Claude sat in silence, someone suddenly appeared sitting next to him, wiping away tears that had yet to fall on his cheeks.

"Oh my!" Claude was startled, almost falling as he realized the young man from before was sitting beside him.

"For you," Xavion handed him a lotus flower.

Claude was silent for a moment, thinking that perhaps the young man had picked it up earlier, explaining his disappearance.

"Ah, he disappeared again," Claude grumbled, feeling a bit lonely. He now had to start a new life.

"I'm confused where to go!" Claude screamed while running his curly hair. He didn't think about where he would go for shelter.

[I have met him, he's a little strange, isn't he?]

On the other side, Xavion was still there, able to disappear at will. That's why Xavion seemed like a ghost suddenly appearing even though he wasn't one; his form could simply vanish like a chameleon's.

Xavion followed Claude as the boy climbed down from the tree and walked weakly with a bewildered look on his face.

"I'm just a writer, I have no experience building a home, let alone without money!" Claude grumbled in frustration.

"You can trade, I can see the dolls on your back are good and probably expensive. You can borrow my tools for now," Xavion suggested.

"Aha!" Claude screamed again, startled by Xavion.

"What? Why are you surprised?" Xavion asked, puzzled. To him, appearing and disappearing suddenly was normal.

"You're following me!?" Claude shouted. Now he had a stalker?!

Xavion nodded.

"But why? I didn't know the plot would be like this. Who are you? Why are you casually following people? I just accidentally bumped into you," Claude said sarcastically.

"What plot?" Xavion asked, confused.

Instead of answering, Claude ran off. 'Oh, why did I blurt out random NPC lines!'

Claude truly didn't understand; the person always seemed to be by his side whenever there was a chance, even following him.

Even now, as Claude prepared a bed of leaves, the person helped Claude gather more leaves. A boy just a year older than him.

"Are you running away from home too?" Claude asked.

"Yes," Xavion replied.

"People only pay attention to Kane and Xavier and don't even recognize me," the young man sighed sadly.

"What?" Claude 's mind went blank.

"Don't tell me you're Xavion?!" Claude pointed directly at Xavion's face.

Xavion nodded.

'Oh my, because I didn't pay attention to the development of the second prince character when I was a writer, I truly don't know him and don't remember this character exists.' Claude cursed himself inwardly.

'Xavion, the lonely child, I wrote him as a character who has no interest in power or leadership, the son of the king's favorite concubine, disliked by the king for his peculiar thoughts, not an active character, I should have met him only on important days or big parties.'

"Eren, you didn't make the plot weird, did you?" Claude muttered. "You're not trying to write a harem story or something, right?" Claude kept muttering to himself.

Many aspects of the plot had changed, not just because of him, but maybe because Eren had changed it when he died in the real world.

'So what's your goal, Eren? Writing Xavion as a foolish character who ends up following me, whose life will surely be like a beggar's in the future?' Claude asked himself.