1
The witch’s paradise, the Nebulis Sovereignty.
Alice’s sad wail echoed throughout the palace’s medical office.
“Rin, hold on! Rin!”
“…”
“Rin?!”
Rin, a brown-haired girl, was lying on a bed. Alice cried as she held the girl, whose eyes remained steadfastly closed.
“Rin, please wake up!”
“It’s too late,” someone said to Alice.
“Your Majesty!”
The queen—in other words, Alice’s mother—had arrived.
“Rin has been tired frequently as of late. She must have reached her limit. I believe her duties as an attendant have left her exhausted.”
“What?!”
“Alice, are you sure you haven’t been relying on Rin too much? Perhaps you’ve put a large strain on her by doing that?” her mother said.
“But…I didn’t mean to!”
Alice was deeply troubled.
Rin twitched on the bed in front of her.
“Oof…koff…!” Rin was struggling to breathe.
“The doctor told me just now that Rin only has a week to live,” the queen said.
“What?!” Alice screamed again when she saw Rin coughing. “Rin, open your eyes! Please!”
What, exactly, had happened to Rin? It all started the day before…
“Lady Alice!” Rin, the attendant, had been scolding her mistress, Alice, from the crack of dawn. “You skipped the regular meeting again! The ministers had no idea what to do without you!”
“I had a headache…”
“You seemed to be just fine when you were eating right before the meeting!”
Alice was a princess many were calling upon to become the next queen. She was dignified and as charming as a fairy from a children’s storybook. Though she was only seventeen, she had a body even adults would envy. She was also one of the most powerful astral mages around.
She was a princess beyond reproach. Except…
…Alice hated her duties as a princess and would do anything she could to shirk them.
“You take every opportunity to run out of the palace to frolic about, and you push all the meeting paperwork onto me… But not today!” Rin shouted, clenching her hands into fists. “With all due respect, as a princess, you don’t have enough self-restraint, Lady Alice!”
Rin knew the reason this kept happening—because she was the cause. Because Alice had such a great attendant, she believed she could rely fully on Rin and slack off on her work.
“Go to your meetings! Study culture! And make sure to go to morning greetings, too! That’s only the first step to becoming the future queen!”
“Nuh-uh!”
“Lady Alice?!”
“I’m a princess. That’s exactly why I shouldn’t only focus on the palace all the time. I need to leave the castle and wander the streets to broaden my horizons. This is just as important as meetings and paperwork!”
“All you’re doing is buying bread and ice cream from the shopping district and watching movies!”
“But that’s good enough!” Alice puffed out her chest. “I’m trying to be a new kind of princess. How am I any different from a bird in a cage when I’m working according to a schedule dictated by others?! A true princess should live each day according to her own desires!”
“Again with those excuses…”
“So, anyway, I’m going out!”
“What?! Wait, Lady Alice!”
Rin had no time to stop the princess. She watched dumbfoundedly as Alice’s back retreated into the distance, then sighed.
“…Ahh. I can’t believe this is our future queen…”
“It seems you’re having trouble, Rin?”
“Your Majesty?!”
Alice’s mother, the queen, had walked into the room, as though taking the princess’s place.
“Did you see that…?” Rin asked.
“You have your work cut out for you, Rin. Especially when it comes to Alice.” The queen sighed. “But this is the perfect opportunity. Rin, would you like to do a little performance with me?”
“What kind…?”
“Let’s help Alice correct that habit of hers.” The queen’s eyes glittered. “Alice can only be so carefree and uncontrollable because you’re with her, Rin. She knows she can be negligent, because she has you to pick up the slack.”
“You’re right…”
“So, Rin, why don’t you pretend to be incapacitated?”
The queen had an entire production planned: Rin would act as if she had collapsed from exhaustion because of Alice’s repeated selfishness.
“Even Alice would be forced to reflect on her actions. She should finally do her work if she can’t bother you with it.”
“I see!”
“We must strike while the iron is hot. Let’s carry out the plan tomorrow morning.”
And so, the next day had come.
Alice had been fooled by Rin’s act.
And now they were in the medical office.
Rin was (pretending to be) unconscious on the bed and was convinced that their plan was going exactly as intended.
“L-Lady Alice…”
“Rin?! You’re awake!”
“Y-yes…”
Rin weakly opened her eyes. She gasped as though it was hard to breathe, but it was all an act. Alice was fully immersed in the deception as she gazed at Rin.
“Lady Alice…I have just one wish…,” Rin groaned.
“Tell me!”
“Please…become a princess…who doesn’t burden her attendant…”
“I will! I definitely will!” Alice’s eyes were red as she nodded. “I promise!”
“From now on…don’t doodle on the back of important documents or run away from your dance lessons to watch a movie…”
“Of course I won’t!”
On the inside, Rin was grinning, celebrating, and jumping for joy. However, she couldn’t let Alice realize it was a performance, or there wouldn’t have been a point to the production.
“Koff…koff!”
“Rin! Does it hurt?!”
“D-don’t worry about me… Please, just promise me. Become a wonderful princess…”
“I will! I promise!”
“Then…you’ll attend the next meeting?”
“I won’t!”
“Excuse me?” Rin accidentally asked in her regular voice.
What had Alice just said?
“I won’t go to the meeting!” Alice wiped her tears away. “How could I when my dear attendant is in critical condition!”
“…Huh? No, I ended up this way because you wouldn’t go to meetings.”
“Just wait, Rin!” Alice clutched Rin’s hand. “I’ll find you a cure. I can’t simply sit around!”
Then she stood up. She gallantly put on a coat to go out.
“I’m leaving the castle for a while. But I’ll be back before the week is up, so stay put!”
“Lady Alice?!”
It seemed the plan had backfired spectacularly.
Alice was doing this to save Rin. She now had a justification that allowed her to abandon her duties as a princess. And with that, Alice left the room.
Two hours later, in the palace courtyard.
Having finished preparing for her journey, Alice had her suitcase in hand.
“Skipping meetings and indulging in these books paid off. I remember reading this one.”
She held a very old book in her hands. Alice had borrowed it from the library.
“There is a legendary sacred mountain far to the south in the Sovereignty. After taking an arduous path up to its summit, there should be a legendary medicinal herb that can cure all sicknesses. The herb of Kittokiki…”
She had remembered it after seeing Rin.
With this legendary herb, she could save her attendant.
“A rugged mountain path and dangerous beasts. This will definitely be a journey full of hardships…” She balled her hand into a fist. “But I won’t let it beat me! I’ll brave any difficult journey or overcome any unforgiving path if it means getting my hands on the herb of Kittokiki!”
“You’re planning to take me with you on that dangerous excursion?!” a small, adorable girl with strawberry blonde hair shouted.
This was Alice’s little sister, Sisbell.
Alice had dragged her out of her room where she had been sleeping.
“No! I don’t want to go to some sacred mountain that’s in the middle of nowhere! Why me?!”
“Because you seemed like you were the least busy,” Alice said.
If Alice was a meeting-skipper, then Sisbell was an extreme shut-in. Because she had spent the better part of a year holed up in her room, she was seldom even seen walking the halls.
“This will be a rigorous journey. I would barely scrape by alone. So I think I need someone with me.”
“Then please don’t bring me, either!”
“All right, let’s go!”
“Wait a moment!”
She dragged the recalcitrant Sisbell along and triumphantly headed off on her journey to the legendary sacred mountain without a moment to spare.
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