Villainess Level 99: I May Be the Hidden Boss but I’m Not the Demon Lord - Volume 5 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: The Hidden Boss Gets Tricked

During my past life in Japan, my family had owned a white dog. He was such a mixed breed that it was difficult to come up with an answer when people asked what kind of dog he was, but some people observed that he looked a bit like a Samoyed. We had gotten him from my mom’s friend as a puppy.

In my current life, I was feared by all animals, but back then, my dog scorned me. He would listen to commands given by my parents and my younger sister, but he never obeyed anything I said. I remembered walking him as an elementary schooler, tears in my eyes as he kept tugging on his leash and dragging me forward.

Dogs were quite smart, able to distinguish one specific word from another. Words like “jerky” and “walk” could inspire a dog to wag its tail and clearly communicate its excitement.

On one particular occasion, my dog had heard my mother say “walk,” and in response, he had jumped around with joy. He’d followed his owner, someone he trusted completely, into the car...only to discover that instead of the promised walk, he’d found himself at the veterinary clinic. Understanding there was no use in resisting, our beloved dog had allowed himself to be hoisted up onto the exam table. He’d looked up at my mother with plaintive eyes, as if he couldn’t believe that he’d been betrayed. Watching this at the time, I had cackled.

Fast forward to now, and I was on the other side—the one to be mocked.

“Please try not to move too much.”

I was covered in white, just like my dog had been on that exam table. My movements were restricted, and I was surrounded by several people while some strange thing was wrapped around my entire body.

Patrick the backstabber wasn’t here, so I turned to his coconspirator, Eleanora. Help me, I pleaded with my eyes.

“It’s wonderful!” she exclaimed. “You look so lovely!”

It’s no use. Eleanora’s on the same side as everyone else who’s having their way with me.

I had been tricked into a wedding dress fitting. I probably looked quite foolish, running into the dress shop with my tail wagging.

It’s fine; mock me all you want.

Under the command of an older woman who seemed to be the boss, four ladies were busily working, running measuring tape all across my body.

I’d communicated my resentment toward Patrick, who had disappeared before I’d started getting changed, but the ladies had continued to work without paying any mind to my recriminations. I feared that it was highly possible that they had been brainwashed by their boss.

Even if I had been immortal, I wouldn’t be able to survive for long staying in a place like this. I’d entered the shop excitedly, and Patrick had firmly reminded me that I was there to “do a fitting and get measured.” Before I had been able to figure out what was really going on, I was forced to put on a wedding dress... By the time I’d realized something was wrong, it was too late.

I’ll run away. Patrick is my biggest obstacle when it comes to escaping. He’s not here, but maybe he’s waiting in another room. I decided to casually query Eleanora about his whereabouts.

“Where’s Patrick?” I asked innocently. “Shouldn’t we let him have a look as well?”

“You should most definitely wait for the wedding day to reveal your dress to him,” Eleanora said decisively. “That’s why I’m going through the trouble of keeping an eye on you.”

“He’s in another room though, right?”

“He isn’t here. Sir Patrick said he was going to deal with some other errands,” my watchdog explained, inadvertently revealing important information.

With Patrick elsewhere, I could escape at any time. That thought allowed me to relax a bit, but at the same time, some other concerns started to creep into my mind.

Patrick had probably tricked me into coming to this dress fitting because he had been worried that I would try to run from it. If he’d told me the truth before we’d traveled to the Royal Capital, I would’ve completely refused to leave the estate. I understood why he’d brought me here the way he had.

What I couldn’t understand was the need for a fitting. Now that I was actually here, I was able to confirm that my dress fit perfectly, and there were no issues whatsoever with any of the details. This could’ve been over in five minutes, but the strange, ritualistic adjustments were somehow still happening.

I turned to the older woman, the one who was commanding the other ladies with a stern look, and said, “The dress fits perfectly. I think it’s fine to say it’s complete, so why don’t we call it a day?”

“Absolutely not,” she sniffed.

“Well, um...”

“That spot, I think we can get it a bit tighter... Yes, about that much. Pin it like that. With that part a little more formfitting, maybe we should add another tier of frills... Hm, but the balance of the entire dress...” The woman completely ignored my request and only paid mind to the dress itself. I’d thought that I’d be able to deal with the other ladies as long as I took down the boss first, but I shouldn’t have expected to win a boss battle so easily.

Knowing I was at a disadvantage, I decided to target Eleanora instead. She seemed genuinely ecstatic about the whole affair. “Could you talk to her for me, Lady Eleanora?” I pleaded. “Isn’t this enough?”

“You have nothing to worry about,” she assured me. “I’m absolutely positive that this dress can become even lovelier!”

That’s not what I meant. I’m not worried that all the fussing will make it worse instead of better... As long as it’s not so small that it doesn’t fit, or so big that it’s completely baggy, then it passes muster. 

There were no issues with the size—after all, I’d gotten measured prior to ordering the dress. It already fit perfectly before they’d measured me themselves, so wasn’t that enough? What was the point in making any further adjustments? At this rate, it was going to be a disaster if I gained even the slightest bit of weight before the wedding.

“It’s fine the way it is,” I insisted a little desperately. “Having a little bit of extra room like this is perfect. I’m sure my body will change, even if only slightly, in the few months between now and the wedding.”

“I’m confident that you’ll be able to maintain your current figure,” Eleanora said encouragingly. “You never gain any weight, even when you eat a lot.”

I was momentarily distracted from my dress-related despair. “Do I really eat that much? I think I eat a normal amount.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that you’re a glutton... You just eat everything that’s available.”

Patrick said something similar to me just the other day.

I set aside these disgraceful statements about the amount of food I ate and focused instead on the fact that I could probably convince her to end this fitting by using my weight as an excuse. I just needed one more push. Perhaps if I emphasized how much I was going to overeat between now and the wedding, I could win her over.

What would be the equivalent of eating junk food for three meals a day, every day? Maybe pasta for every meal...? No, that doesn’t sound as intense. Maybe it would be better to go with something sweet.

I was racking my brain for ideas, and suddenly the dungeon boss—or rather, the owner—firmly said, “We’ll be on-site several days before the wedding, and we’ll be making adjustments until the very last second. There won’t be any issues with the quality of the fit. Your body won’t change that much in just a few months.”

“Then I’ll lose weight...” I offered desperately. “I’ll keep fasting and be one step away from looking like a mummy.”

“We’ll just pad out the dress if that happens,” the head seamstress explained.

Oh, right. I guess they could solve that by just stuffing the dress with as much cotton as they needed.

It appeared that losing weight wasn’t going to solve my problem either. I was interested in the Buddhist practice of self-mummification, but it wasn’t something I needed to explore right before my wedding.

My shoulders drooped with disappointment, and as my chin fell, my own body came into my view, adorned with white lace and frills. I was reminded of those flashy birds that lived in tropical areas. Apparently male birds sported decorative feathers in order to attract females.

Who even cares about attracting a mate? The human species has prospered because of one reason: language. We have complex vocal organs, and the parts of our brains that oversee communication are highly advanced. So why do we humans, being that we are such an advanced species, have to adorn ourselves with decorations to communicate our love? Why not use the time spent on clothes and makeup to dress up your vocabulary?

Wait, maybe it can’t be helped that humans also decorate ourselves. Words lack power. I tried to suggest we end this fitting with my words, but my idea was rejected. The same goes for the dressmakers—they tried to use their words to explain how important making these adjustments was, but it didn’t change my mind. 

No matter how many words one strung together, it was difficult to change someone’s mind. No matter how wonderfully decorated one’s statements were, or how honest and straightforward someone’s words were, there were many situations in which words were overwhelmingly powerless.

“Is it a curse or a blessing that humans were given the ability to use language?” I wondered aloud.

“Please stay still,” admonished the level boss.

I’d been reprimanded for trying to ponder the wonderful yet lamentable features of being human. I guess philosophers are unneeded in these times, I thought with an internal sigh.

I was starting to dislike this ambiguous communication tool called “words,” so I began to plan out my escape route instead. It would be easy to get outside, but it was going to be difficult to deal with this white garment of restraint. I couldn’t imagine how much it would cost me if I were to destroy it.

Should I get dressed and escape, or escape and then get changed? Right, I have to remember to secure a change of clothes as well.

Even though I was busy planning my escape, Eleanora used those powerless verbal tools once again.

“By the way, you’re not allowed to run away.”

“I’m not thinking of running...” I said innocently.

“Oh really? You’d suddenly become quiet, so I thought that you were coming up with an escape plan.”

She’d completely read my mind. I could understand Patrick seeing through me like this, but was my thought process really so simple that even Eleanora could figure out what was on my mind?

It seemed that my sudden silence had made my thoughts too obvious once again, and Eleanora frowned as if to say, “I knew it.”

What she actually said was “Why can’t you just stay still?”

“If I’m too obedient, I’ll be dragged into other situations like this in the future. It’ll be a loss on the books for me, a precedent stating that I obediently attend dress fittings. Even if I couldn’t avoid it in this first case, I need to visibly resist as much as possible so I can avoid this happening a second and third time.”

Even if my actions wouldn’t change the results, going through the process was important. I needed to act out to the point that Eleanora and Patrick would think, “That was horrible and I never want to take Yumiella to a fitting ever again.” Otherwise, there would definitely be a next time.

I’d really thought this through, but even after displaying my knowledge on how to navigate this cruel world, Eleanora just seemed deeply exasperated.

“Ugh... If you’d just endure the things you don’t like, they’d be over in a second.”

Huh? She doesn’t just seem tired of me, but she does seem kind of angry. Did I do anything to upset Eleanora?

Even though I was thinking of escaping, I hadn’t actually taken any action to do so. It would be unusual for her to be upset by my normal Yumiella antics, especially if I had not, in fact, done anything yet...

I wasn’t sure what to say to her, and some time passed without a sound. What finally broke the silence was Eleanora’s voice.

“Ahhh!” she screamed.

“Huh?” I asked, startled. “What’s wrong?”

Her lip quivered. “I said something so horrible without thinking. This is your bridal outfit, yet I described it as something you should just endure, something you don’t like...”

I had to think about which part of her statement she considered so horrible. The fitting was naturally something I disliked, and there was nothing wrong with calling it what it was: horrible. I wasn’t sure what exactly she was regretting, but Eleanora glumly looked down at her feet.

“I apologize. If I, too, continue to refer to the gown as something troublesome, you’ll truly feel that it’s a burden.”

“It actually is a burden.”

“You only get to wear a bridal gown once in your life,” she said wistfully.

I would’ve been fine if that were the case, but if you count the fitting and wearing it on the wedding day, I’ll actually be wearing it twice. I almost reflexively voiced that thought, but I held it back. That would just be me tripping her up with semantics. Eleanora looked up and steadily met my gaze as she continued. “That’s why I wanted you to feel happy while wearing your dress... I’m truly sorry. I’m just imposing my feelings on you, aren’t I?”

“I am happy though,” I pointed out.

“Even though you tried to run away?”

Her statements had made me curious. “Generally speaking. Actually...from your point of view, is the act of putting on a wedding gown itself what brings happiness? If you were to put on a wedding dress right now, would that make you happy, Lady Eleanora?”

“If I were to put on a wedding dress? Well, I don’t really have any plans of getting married. I do think wedding dresses are beautiful and lovely, but I don’t think I would be particularly happy wearing one right now...”

I’d expected as much. Eleanora was probably fretting at seeing me obviously annoyed by doing something that was supposed to be a joyful occasion. That was why she seemed a bit upset.

She was probably mixing up the idea of happiness itself with the things associated with happy moments. She probably understood in her heart that just wearing a wedding dress in and of itself wasn’t anything special.

“It’s not like putting on a bridal gown brings you happiness,” I explained. “It’s not that weddings are fun, or that the act of getting married is something that in and of itself makes someone happy. Happiness comes from the fact that you get to spend the rest of your life with someone you love.”

“You’re right,” Eleanora agreed with a nod. “The star is you, not the dress.”

“People take the necessary steps to be legally married in order to vow that they’ll spend their lives together, announce it to others, and then have a wedding to celebrate in an extravagant manner. For that ceremony, people put on beautiful dresses that match the opulence of the celebration. Many people might place a lot of focus on the dress, since it’s such a shiny, beautiful thing, but the only important element in the entire process is loving the person you’re marrying.”

Eleanora’s eyes were watering. Was what I said really so moving? As that thought crossed my mind, I noticed that all the ladies and their hands carrying measuring tapes and pins had also stopped moving. Because the room was so silent and still, it echoed when the boss clapped.

“How wonderful,” she said warmly. “All we can do is amplify that happiness. We can’t make unhappy people happy. I sometimes forget that, so it’s important to be reminded of this every so often.”

“I see,” I responded with a satisfied nod. “So you understand. Well then, let’s end the adjustments here. Please prepare my clothes for me to change into.”

The goal of my little speech had been to dispel any dissatisfaction Eleanora had been feeling, but I had been able to really stick the landing with a great conclusion. In the end, I had been able to use my words instead of just physically running away.

I’ll quickly get changed and flee from here having truly earned it.

I waited for the boss to signal that we were done, but she instead said the complete opposite.

“That has nothing to do with what you were saying,” the head dressmaker said with a firm shake of her head. “Come on, ladies, don’t just stand there! Let’s keep working.”

The seemingly useless adjustments continued. I felt like a patch of earth that was watching as people were ordered to dig a hole, and then refill that very same hole. I had no idea why they kept doing all of this, which made it unclear for how long this was going to continue.

I let out a sigh, and Eleanora followed with an even louder exhalation.

“Your words really made me think about the fact that you should pursue what makes you happy, Yumiella, but I must say this: you need to seem a bit happier right now.”

“Well, I can’t really help it...” I grumbled. “An annoyance is an annoyance.”

“I thought even you would be excited once you actually saw your gown,” Eleanora said with another sigh.

I couldn’t imagine the existence of any person who would be excited to see a bright white dress after believing they’d be building some sweet mecha armor. It was just as disappointing as being told you were getting a gas welding machine and being given a pack of travel tissues instead.

Just what was Eleanora hoping for anyway? Did she think I was going to stare at my wedding dress with dreamy eyes and twirl around in front of a mirror or something? No way. That would never be me.

I stood there for a while, imagining myself doing things I would never do and feeling sickened by those thoughts. After some time had passed, whatever they’d been doing to me was finished at last.

“We’re done now,” announced the boss lady.

“I’m getting out of this,” I insisted. “I want to change. Please hurry.”

“All right, all right...” The owner sighed. “Some customers don’t even want to move away from the mirror...”

These last moments were the worst part of it all. I’d been enduring this torture for so much time, and my freedom was finally within my reach. The final seconds ticking by made me the most frantic to be free.

I rushed the ladies from behind as they slowly led me away from the fitting room. I wanted to get back into the casual dress I usually wore, the simplicity of which was only borderline acceptable for an aristocrat to wear. I didn’t get comments about it, but it was enough to make a classy noblewoman scowl at me.

As I walked through the store, a large reflection caught my attention. It was the mirror they’d suggested I stand in front of before going to change. I had been rushing to get out of the gown, and I wanted to rip it off my body right at this very moment, but for some reason I paused before the mirror.

It was just a regular mirror. Things were valued here much differently than they had been in Japan, which meant that in this world, this was actually quite an expensive mirror, but other than the price tag it was no different from any mirror that I’d encountered over the course of my past life. It reflected light, and it showed an image of whatever was put in front of it. It wasn’t a special mirror that might summon a fairy, nor was it cursed to show the reflection of a bloody warrior. It was just a mirror that reflected my image—that was all there was to it.

I took in my reflection. My shoulders and arms were exposed under the translucent lace. The waist was so tight that it would probably suffocate anyone else who tried to wear it. Under the tight bodice, the skirt spread out into fullness and the lace overlaying it was worked into a pattern with dainty flowers.

The silhouette of the entire dress had surely been planned with extreme precision, and the embellishments had probably been made with extreme skill and care, but the overarching effect wasn’t something that took my breath away. I did think it was an impressive example of dressmaking, but I wasn’t particularly moved by it. I knew myself, and there was no way I would look at a wedding dress and think to myself, Oh, how lovely!

Still, maybe I’ll look at it just a bit longer, I allowed. My frantic anxiety seemed to have dissipated completely.

I tried different poses, bringing my hand down to my side and up to my chest to see what felt right. As I did that, I mumbled something that even I myself didn’t quite understand.

“Huh, I see,” I murmured. “So that’s how it is.”

I tried walking around in front of the mirror. I moved slowly and carefully, like I was dragging my feet, which made the skirt sway.

I turned around and looked back at the mirror. Bright white peeked out from between the locks of black hair cascading over my back.

“I understand,” I murmured. “I see.”

I started twirling around in front of the mirror, trying to get a glimpse of the dress from different angles.

So this is what I’m going to wear at the wedding. I’m going to wear this and walk out in front of everybody. I’m going to wear this and stand beside Patrick. I’m going to look up at his face, at around this angle...

As my gaze strayed from the mirror, I discovered Eleanora’s grinning face at my shoulder.

“What is it...?”

“Oh no, please don’t mind me. You can stare as much as you’d like to.”

I didn’t particularly care for the action of staring at glass covered in reflective material, so her words weren’t really helpful. I’d only stopped for a short moment to take a quick glance at the mirror. That was all.

I thought Eleanora’s smile was strange, so I looked around at everyone else as well, only to see that the boss and the ladies all had the same expression. They all looked like they were witnessing a deeply heartwarming event of some kind.

What is this? They’re acting like I’m entranced by my reflection or something. That’s not what’s happening.

“I just took a quick glance at the mirror, that’s all,” I insisted. “I want to get out of this thing right away.”

“You’ve been staring for quite a while,” Eleanora pointed out.

“Time is relative. You just unconsciously extended the amount of time I was—”

“Yes, yes! You’re absolutely right! Now, just forget about us and continue as you were,” Eleanora said, urging me to keep looking. Her words weren’t having the intended effect; I still wanted to change out of the dress as quickly as possible.

I’m going to move. I’m going to look away from the mirror and move.

“You have the wrong idea,” I assured her and the dressmakers. “I’m going to quickly get back into—”

“Oh, we should put a veil on her as well,” Eleanora suggested.

“I’ll wear it,” I said at once, the words leaving my mouth before I knew it. It was only then that I realized what was going on—I seemed like someone who was having the time of their life at a dress fitting. Observing me, Eleanora was trying to seem composed, but she couldn’t help but smile. “No, it’s not what you think...” I began, trying to explain myself. “A veil is that thing you put on your head, right? I need to check it out to learn how much such a thing might obstruct my vision. It would be bad if I didn’t try it today and instead had to come to another fitting later on.”

“Sure, of course, I understand,” she agreed with a knowing nod.

Before I could come up with a retort to Eleanora (who definitely did not understand), the veil quickly appeared. I tilted my head down, and one of the dressmakers placed the veil over my hair. I could see past the thin fabric, but it was like the resolution had decreased in clarity by quite a bit. Because of the lower quality of the image, my reflection looked like a completely different person.

I lifted my veil to expose my face, but it felt strange to do so. Perhaps it wasn’t good practice if someone else didn’t lift the veil for me.

“Lady Eleanora, please lift this up for me.”

“Sir Patrick is the only one allowed to do that,” she demurred.

“It’s not like that. I just want to check to see if it’ll snag anywhere.”

“Well, if that’s the case...”

I wasn’t going to think of Patrick just because a piece of fabric was being lifted off of my face. Eleanora didn’t seem too enthusiastic about the idea, but she nevertheless approached me. Though my vision was obstructed by gauzy white, I could tell that Eleanora, who was slightly shorter than me, was reaching up to take hold of the veil.

“Hold on; it would be better if you had a step stool.”

“I can reach you,” Eleanora reassured me.

“No,” I insisted. “You’re too short, Lady Eleanora.”

One of the employees quickly brought forward a step stool from the corner of the room. Eleanora carefully climbed onto the stool, mindful of the hem of her dress...and it still wasn’t right.

I sighed. “Now you’re a little too tall.”

“Um, you’re thinking of Sir Patrick’s height, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not. I just felt that you were a bit too tall.”

Eleanora bent down to make herself a little shorter.

This seems perfect. It’s not like this is the same as a certain someone’s height or anything, it’s just that this is a good height.

“I’m going to lift it now,” Eleanora said.

“Go ahead.”

I closed my eyes. The feeling of her grabbing the edge of the veil, the sound of fabric rustling around, the air brushing against my cheek—even with my eyes closed, I could feel the veil being lifted.

I slowly opened my eyes, and discovered Eleanora’s face inches from my own... Oh, it’s just Eleanora.

“Are you really that disappointed?” she asked.

“Was it obvious?”

“Your expression instantly became cold.”

My expression was always cold, though, because I was the intelligent and composed type. It was nothing surprising to point out.

I was perfectly satisfied with my own explanation until Eleanora continued, still holding up the veil with both her hands.

“You looked like a girl in love until you opened your eyes...”

“A girl in love?” I sputtered. “Who are you talking about?”

“You, Yumiella.”

“I feel like you’ve been trying to make me out to be someone who enjoys wearing a wedding dress.”

“Making you out to be...? There’s no need to do so; you’ve been quite obviously happy about it.”

This girl is trying to rewrite reality!

It wasn’t ethical to change history, but it was quite easy to do so. Digital data lasted several decades, while paper could usually persist for several centuries, but each would eventually degrade to the point at which it would become impossible to read the information. The exception to this was stone tablets, which had a lifespan of thirty thousand years.

In other words, if I left an accurate record of what had happened today but Eleanora carved a false account into a stone tablet, thirty thousand years into the future, humans would believe that Yumiella actively enjoyed wearing a wedding dress.

Stone tablets are so strong. Paper and e-books are all trash. We should prepare for the future by transitioning every piece of information to stone tablets.

I needed to do my best to convince my best friend of the truth before she became a historical revisionist.

“You’ve got it all wrong,” I earnestly explained. “Do you really think I would look at a wedding dress and think that it’s lovely, or that it’s beautiful? I would never close my eyes and imagine Patrick before me as my veil was being lifted, and I wouldn’t look forward to how he would react to seeing me dressed like this. I’m not thinking that it’s a waste that I’ll only get to wear this at my wedding.”

Eleanora nodded thoughtfully. “I hadn’t suggested all of that, but... I see.”

“I won’t allow you to carve this into a stone tablet.”

“A stone tablet? As in, words carved into stone? What?” Eleanora tilted her head in confusion, but it was possible that she was pretending to misunderstand me. She might actually just be bluffing.

I wanted to tell her that I wouldn’t allow her to use a clay tablet either, but before I could, my vision was obscured once again with diaphanous white fabric. The veil had left Eleanora’s hands, and it had covered my face.

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. It’s translucent, so I can still see more than I expected.”

“How much can you see?” Eleanora asked curiously. “I can’t even tell what kind of face you’re making.”

“I can’t see the details of someone’s expression, but it’s brighter on the other side of the veil, so I can see more than you probably can.” I nodded at her. “All right then, time to get off the step stool.”

I held my hand out for Eleanora. Even though my vision was still shrouded in white, I made certain that she had both feet on the ground before I let go of her.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I’m going to get changed now. It’s difficult to move around in this outfit, and my vision is obstructed. My ability to fight has significantly decreased.”

Eleanora sighed. “You still don’t plan on admitting the truth, do you?”

I gave up on trying to correct her erroneous assumptions, and instead decided to ask something else while I could—while I still had the veil covering my face.

I took a few steps back so that Eleanora could see me from head to toe.

“Um...in your opinion, how do I look, Lady Eleanora?”

“You look lovely. I think Sir Patrick will be completely taken by you.”

“Unrelated to what you think Patrick will think, what do you think? I’m not too knowledgeable on gowns and stuff like that, so I’d like to know how it looks to someone with your tastes.”

“I see.” I could see the gears turning in Eleanora’s mind while she stared at me, looking me up and down. She was quiet for so long that I moved my veil out of the way to see what was going on. With my unobstructed view, I could see her eyes clearly. Her glimmering ruby eyes were almost like a mirror, reflecting my image, and I let the veil fall back down, as if to hide behind it. “I think that it shows off your slender upper body really well,” she said at last. “The skirt spreads out elegantly, like a lily, and the lace on the shoulders is very grown-up! Most of all, the face you made earlier was so lovely, and it made me realize that wedding dresses enhance the bride. Sir Patrick will surely be stunned by your beauty.”

I see...

It was good to get her opinion, but I didn’t think much of it, and so I responded in an appropriately nonchalant manner.

“Huh, is that so?”

I wasn’t sure what kind of expression my face was making as I spoke. With my entire head swathed in the white fabric, no one was able to see it.

Covered by a veil of mystery, this moment was lost to history.

◆◆◆

The awful dress fitting that I had so deeply loathed was finally over, and we were heading to our town house by foot. It was a short distance from the dress shop to the second, somewhat smaller Dolkness estate located in the aristocratic quarter of the Royal Capital. Eleanora curiously scanned our surroundings as she walked at a slow pace alongside me.

“Aren’t you more familiar with this area than I am?” I asked.

“That may be so, but I’ve never before traversed the district on foot, so it all feels new to me. Although the sights themselves are familiar, I feel like there are a myriad of new things to discover.”

Several months had passed since Eleanora had started living with me in Dolkness County. Eleanora’s ability to adapt was impressive. In her new environment, she had even started wearing shoes with lower heels, and her iconic and incredibly flashy dresses became just regular flashy dresses. Eleanora probably thought of her new dresses as “simple” garments that “prioritized mobility.”

The Royal Capital was a busy place, and I’d considered whether traveling by carriage might have been a better choice, but seeing Eleanora enjoying the stroll back home reaffirmed that a carriage had been unnecessary.

“It also feels strange to be visiting the Royal Capital after being absent for a while,” Eleanora remarked. “Until I moved to the country, I’d lived here my entire life.”

“I guess this wasn’t really meant to be a visit back home, but would you like to extend our stay here?” I asked. It would be dangerous to leave her in the Royal Capital alone. Not only could she get herself into trouble if I took my eyes off her, but Eleanora was in quite the tricky situation when it came to her status.

Duke Hillrose had perished in Dolkness County after being surrounded by monsters that he himself had called, and his only living kin, his daughter, had been missing ever since... So ran the official account of events. Eleanora, the freeloader who was currently residing at the Dolkness estate, was a completely different person from Eleanora Hillrose. If they looked similar, that was just a coincidence. This Eleanora was completely unrelated to the daughter of the treasonous duke, but no one believed the version of the facts that the Countess Dolkness knew to be true.

The fact that the former duke of Hillrose was actually alive was a secret only known by high-ranking officials of the kingdom, Eleanora, Patrick, and myself, but everyone knew that the disgraced Eleanora was living in Dolkness County these days.

I didn’t care if people wanted to celebrate her or direct their resentment of the Hillroses at her; I just wanted her to be somewhere where Patrick and I could keep an eye on her, at least for the next few years until the heat from the duke’s coup died down.

Eleanora probably wanted to stay in the Royal Capital, but for now all I could do was extend our visit. It would likely not be a problem to stay an extra week or two.

As I thought about all the work I’d left behind in Dolkness County, Eleanora gave me a surprising response.

“No, that’s all right. We’ll return just as planned.”

“It’s no problem to stay a little longer,” I assured her. “You want to go shopping, don’t you?”

“I think I can do my shopping within the bounds of our current itinerary...” Eleanora was obviously swayed by my question.

I knew it, you want to do a bunch of things in the Royal Capital, don’t you?

Eleanora didn’t have any money to her name, but I was prepared to give her as much of an allowance as she wanted.

I’m basically Eleanora’s sugar daddy. I’ll make her call me “daddy” and boast about it to the former Duke Hillrose, her actual daddy.

Eleanora seemed to be deep in thought for a short moment before hesitantly opening her mouth to speak again. “Um, when I go shopping, um...I have a favor to ask of you.”

“Of course! You can ask me anything.”

“Would you like to go around the shops with me, Yumiella?”

My answer was instantaneous. “No, I feel like it would take a long time.”

Eleanora took a long time to shop. I’d gone out with her a few times when we were students, so I knew her habits very well. Not only would interminable actual minutes tick by, my internal sense of time would experience every one of those minutes as an entire year. Having been trapped in a prison of both absolute and relative time the last time we’d gone shopping was a traumatic memory for me, one which made me reflexively turn her down.

I’d gone back on my word in a blink of an eye, and in response, Eleanora pouted and looked the other way.

“I’m well aware that you don’t enjoy shopping,” she said with a sigh.

“It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just...not in my nature? Or more like...I have no interest in it?” I was just trying to explain that I wasn’t antishopping as a hard rule, but it seemed instead that I’d dug myself into a deeper hole.

Is Eleanora upset that I’m rejecting something she likes? I thought. I cautiously eyeballed her, trying to get a sense of her emotional state, but she continued to silently look away from me. Is she actually really mad? Eventually, Eleanora just stopped walking altogether.

“Um, Lady Eleanora?”

Eleanora didn’t respond and just stared resolutely ahead. I followed her gaze and saw she was looking at some aristocrat’s estate. I wasn’t sure who lived there, but it looked larger than the Dolkness estate, so they were probably at least a count or higher in the aristocratic pecking order.

Eleanora tilted her head in confusion as she stared at the mansion that seemed perfectly normal to my eyes.

“Is that the Archiam estate?” Eleanora wondered aloud. “It looks different than it usually does when my vantage point is from a carriage, so I can’t really tell.”

Our discussion about shopping was over before I knew it. I’d managed to avoid one inconvenient topic, but the Count of Archiam was actually an even worse subject.

The Archiam family’s territory was in the eastern part of the kingdom, and their land was famous for its lumber production. Yes, it was the very same Archiam County I had visited several days ago to pick up the logs. The memory was still fresh in my mind, so I was able to recognize the name right away, despite generally being out of touch when it came to members of the nobility.

If I recalled correctly, Count Archiam and his family lived in the Royal Capital. Unlike my parents, they were proper centralists, and the count probably had some kind of proper position related to the central operations of the kingdom. I wasn’t sure about any of the details of whatever position he might hold, though.

The only reason I knew anything at all about the Archiam family (despite my total lack of interest in the murky political affairs of the Royal Capital) was because I knew their daughter. Well, I knew of her anyway. I’d never had a real conversation with her, but I’d seen her around a lot. We had been in the same grade at the Academy, more than that...

In anticipation of what Eleanora might say next, I decided to act quickly.

“I’m not very familiar with the family, so I’m not sure if that’s their house or not,” I said nonchalantly. “Let’s look it up when we get back to my place.”

“We can just knock on the door and ask,” Eleanora suggested. “I haven’t seen Dorothea in a while.”

I let out a deep internal sigh in response to hearing Eleanora say exactly what I had expected her to say.

Dorothea Archiam, huh? After hearing her name, her face popped into my mind.

I knew Dorothea because she had always been at Eleanora’s side while we were all attending the Academy. The Archiam family were radical aristocrats—in other words, they had been in Duke Hillrose’s faction.

After the commotion caused by the duke’s coup several months prior, most of the families in his faction had found their titles revoked. Not knowing about Duke Hillrose’s plan to cleanse the Royal Capital of rebels, they had held a rally to take down the royal family, during which they had all been rounded up.

Of course, not every radical aristocrat had met this fate. At least half of the radical aristocrats had evaded punishment because they had been careful, by lucky coincidence, or because they had been visiting their provincial territories and so hadn’t attended the rally.

Though the fact that half of the faction remained seemed like it might be a problem for those loyal to the royal family, halving the number of radicals didn’t mean that the faction still held exactly half the power that it had commanded before the unsuccessful coup. With their unwavering leader Duke Hillrose and the other core members of the faction gone, the coterie had lost most of its influence.

I wasn’t sure what the actual situation was like these days, since I’d been away from the Royal Capital for so long, but the remaining radicals probably didn’t feel as if they could do anything that might call attention to themselves. Even if they were to claim that they’d known nothing about the duke’s plans to rebel, no one would believe them. Just gathering together in any number would likely cast a great deal of suspicion upon them, so they probably weren’t holding any gatherings these days to discuss any new plans to further their agenda.

Because of all of this, the Archiams would definitely turn away the daughter of their former leader. I wanted to avoid the possibility of Dorothea’s refusal to see Eleanora causing her pain.

“It would be rude to suddenly drop by,” I insisted, “so let’s visit another time after we’ve contacted them first.”

“I’ve sent several letters while living in Dolkness, but I haven’t received any response...” Eleanora explained. “I’m worried about her.”

There’s nothing to worry about. She’s probably just ignoring you.

Despite my concerns, Eleanora decided to charge ahead into the Archiam estate. She hustled up to the mansion gates.

She probably won’t give up until she’s flat-out turned away, I thought morosely as I followed her.

In front of the gate stood a single guard. I doubted that he’d let in any unexpected guests, unless they were of incredibly high standing.

“Excuse me,” Eleanora called out to the guard. He seemed to recognize the daughter of Duke Hillrose at once, and his face tensed up as if someone dangerous had appeared. “I’m Eleanora Hill—I mean, Eleanora. Is Dorothea here?”

“Lady Dorothea is quite busy,” he answered stiffly. “We cannot receive any unexpected guests at the moment. I hope you understand.” It was an ordinary, professional response.

I was relieved that the guard wasn’t intimidated by Eleanora and had provided such a polite and innocuous response. I should be able to take her home now, I thought as I arrived late to the scene.

“Looks like we can’t see her today. Let’s try again some other time,” I suggested.

It was only then that the guard noticed my presence. His face tensed up even more than it had when he’d laid eyes on Eleanora, and beads of sweat appeared on his forehead despite the chilly weather.

Ah, he’s probably worried about what the protocol is if Yumiella Dolkness insists on being let in. He’s fully aware that it would be impossible to stop me if I decided to force my way in, but of course I won’t do anything like that.

I repeated my statement to Eleanora so that the guard would understand that I had no intention of imposing upon the Archiam family.

“We can’t force him to let us in,” I reiterated. “It appears that Dorothea is in fine health, so let’s go home.” Would that be enough for Eleanora to obediently back down?

Even if she can’t see Dorothea, maybe knowing she’s all right will be enough to satisfy her. I could tell that Eleanora was quite seriously concerned about the fact that her friend hadn’t replied back to any of her letters.

I continued before Eleanora could respond. “She’ll hear that you came by, so maybe Dorothea might try to come see you herself while we’re still in town. Even if you can’t see her, you can probably exchange letters...”

If Dorothea can’t even send out a letter, Eleanora might try to come see her again. The guard seemed to understand the thought I didn’t verbalize and nodded over and over. An innocuous letter stating that they couldn’t meet would likely arrive at the Dolkness Estate in a few days.

I held my breath as I waited for Eleanora to respond.

“You’re right...” Eleanora turned to the guard. “I apologize for our sudden intrusion. Please give Dorothea my regards.” After her graceful response, Eleanora took a bow and stepped away from the gate. She truly seemed in that moment like the daughter of a duke.

After we left, Eleanora continued to walk along the stone paths of the aristocratic quarter with her own two feet. The familiar sights for some reason felt melancholic.

“If I strongly encourage them, we might be able to see her,” I offered as I walked alongside Eleanora.

“My time in Dolkness County has been so much fun,” Eleanora said with a sigh. “I’d forgotten that the Hillrose family name is no more.”

Prior to now, Eleanora hadn’t seemed to feel the slightest bit of disappointment at the fact that her nobility had been revoked. She even seemed to enjoy the fact that she was living a more modest life compared to the past. Even if she couldn’t attend balls, she was discovering new ways to have fun.

However, the loss of her status had also taken away her friends. Even though I’d decided I would never bring this up, the thought left my mouth before I could stop it.

“There are plenty of ways to become an aristocrat again.”

That was a true statement. The easiest method would be to adopt her into the Dolkness family, but that wasn’t the only path. It was difficult to establish noble status for a new family, but it wasn’t impossible if one was determined to do so. Regardless of which method she wanted to use, the steps toward either were a hassle, so I’d long ago decided that I wouldn’t bring it up unless it seemed like Eleanora really couldn’t endure her situation anymore.

To my surprise, Eleanora didn’t jump on my idea at once. Instead, she said, “I don’t know what’s different about my past noble self and my current self...”

Nothing was different. Eleanora was the same person, but it didn’t feel right to deliver such platitudes when she had been so easily cut off by her friends. Still, I didn’t know how to respond to her. I often made jokes or pretended to know what was best in these situations, but I felt like what she needed right now was my honest thoughts.

So I told Eleanora the truth of my feelings toward her past and current selves.

“I like you now, but I wasn’t very fond of you in the past. I wanted to spend my time at the Academy without ever talking to you once. It wasn’t that I disliked you, but more that I was...not good at dealing with someone like you? Yes, that’s it.”

“Huh? What?!” Eleanora stopped in her tracks and stared at me, her face full of confusion. “Do you like me more now because I’ve changed, even though I haven’t noticed it?”

“You haven’t changed at all,” I assured her. “You’ve changed from my first impression of you, but what I thought of you around the end of our first year is the same as what I think of you now.”

I didn’t think that Eleanora’s personality had changed much at all since she’d warned me to back off from Prince Edwin because of some incredible misunderstandings. But I hadn’t wanted to get close to her at the time.

As we talked, I was able to gather my thoughts so that I could explain what I’d disliked about her.

“It’s because you were the daughter of Duke Hillrose. I didn’t want to get tangled up in any political annoyances, so I was avoiding you. But you were relentless, so I gradually gave in, and that brings us to today.”

“Because I was the duke’s daughter?” Eleanora considered this. “So you don’t dislike me anymore because I no longer hold that status?”

“Uh, well, I feel like you might be more of a risk now when it comes to possibly getting mixed up in political issues. But regardless of our current statuses, I think we still would’ve ended up having the relationship we have today.” I felt like that wasn’t enough of an explanation, so I decided to continue. “I already love who you are, so whether you’re the duke’s daughter or a commoner, and regardless of how much trouble you might find yourself in, I want to be your friend, Lady Eleanora.”

No matter how good a person she was, I hadn’t wanted to get friendly with a Hillrose. That was how I’d felt in the past... Actually, I still felt that way. Eleanora was an exception to my rule; I still preferred not to get involved with anyone who might drag me into their aristocratic problems.

In other words, I hadn’t found Eleanora’s company pleasant in the past simply because I’d wanted to protect myself, and now I’d exposed those feelings to her. We were now friends, and Eleanora was a very kind girl, so she would probably forgive me.

Maybe she’ll be a little upset though, I thought, but when I looked over at her, I found that she was smiling as if she were relieved.

“I’m glad to hear that,” she said, clearly relieved. “I wouldn’t know what to do if you hated me...”

“Well, that’s just how influential the status of being the duke’s daughter was. That title was what people noticed first, not your personality.”

Yay! She forgave me.

We’d ended up standing around talking for a while, and the conversation had come around to a good stopping point, so it was time to go home. I started walking again, and Eleanora trotted beside me.

Oh right, there’s a path coming up that we can’t use because of some personal circumstances. I stopped in my tracks again, and I turned around to let Eleanora know that we would be taking a detour.

When I faced her, I found Eleanora sadly hanging her head. “After talking with you, I’m now sure of it. Dorothea doesn’t want to see me because I’m no longer the duke’s daughter.”

“Well, we don’t know that for sure without asking her...”

“Oh, right, the title only affects first impressions.” Eleanora thought for a second. “Then that means that Dorothea became my friend because I was the duke’s daughter...?”

I had no response to that. All aristocrats based their relationships on the familial backgrounds of others. This was a notion that I’d accepted as common sense, but it felt like an incredibly cruel truth.

What do I do here? The only problems I can solve are ones that can be brute forced.

“What would you like to do?” I asked her helplessly. “Should we charge in on the Archiam estate? Should we steadily work toward getting you back into the nobility?”

“I’ll pass on both. I don’t want to cause Dorothea any trouble, and I don’t particularly want to become an aristocrat again.”

“It might be impossible to resurrect the Hillrose family, but if we try, I bet we can do something close.”

“There’s no need for you to exert yourself, Yumiella,” she refused firmly. “I love my life in Dolkness County.”

Eleanora did indeed seem to be having fun living in Dolkness County. But that was possibly because Eleanora had a strong heart, and so she was able to find the fun in everything. She always said she was having fun and enjoying things, but I’d never once heard her say that she liked her current life more than her past life. I wouldn’t be surprised if she secretly felt that while she enjoyed her life in Dolkness County, she’d loved her life in the Royal Capital even more. I wasn’t sure if Eleanora’s words were her true feelings, or if she was just being considerate—it felt like perhaps she herself didn’t know either.

Not only that, but the Royal Capital wasn’t the only thing about her past life that she’d loved. I had avoided the topic of her beloved until now, but I decided this was my opportunity to bring him up.

“If you’re in the Royal Capital, you’ll be able to see His Highness.”

Eleanora sometimes spoke of her memories with the prince even after she’d moved to Dolkness County, but the frequency had gradually declined. Eleanora was the kind of person who repeated the same stories over and over, to the point that you could memorize them even while only paying partial attention to them, so the fact that she didn’t talk about Edwin anymore definitely wasn’t because she had no new stories to share.

“Now that I’ve lost my aristocratic standing, I cannot marry Sir Edwin.”

“Huh...?” I sputtered. Eleanora had made quite the significant statement, but I was so surprised by its finality that I couldn’t probe any further.

As I stood there stunned, Eleanora said, “Let’s go,” and she started walking off. “There’s no way I could stay in the Royal Capital,” she continued, looking over the townscape. “I have unfinished matters back in Dolkness County.” Her profile suggested that these unfinished matters weren’t silly games, but serious business. Eleanora’s soft hands balled into a fist as she stated with determination, “I have to continue my battle with puttara.”

“Excuse me? Did you say ‘puttara’...?” My train of thought came to a screeching halt upon hearing the unfamiliar term. I had been paying unusually careful attention to Eleanora’s words, so I’d clearly heard her say “puttara,” but the sound was foreign to my ears. Most people would’ve likely responded, “Pu—what?”

Perhaps I was just unfamiliar with the word but was actually familiar with the concept of whatever it was. “Oh, that’s what’s called such-and-such in Japanese,” was a thought I’d often had when confronted with unfamiliar vocabulary, which still sometimes occurred even after living in this world for quite some time.

Considering the context in which she’d used it, it didn’t sound like something peaceful. I wasn’t sure what kind of battles Eleanora was throwing herself into unbeknownst to me, but then Eleanora started explaining what puttara was.

“Puttara is a battle where you take other’s planks,” she explained. “You take a thin, wooden plank about this big, and you lay it on the ground... Oh, in some places, people use fired clay in place of wood. Um, so you put the plank on the ground, and then your opponent...oh right, it’s usually done with two people. I also enjoy having a free-for-all with a large group. Now, where did I leave off... Oh, right, so the opponent’s plank is also placed on the ground, and you win if you flip over that plank with your own plank. You slam it onto the ground, and then it goes flop and twirl. You get to keep the plank you flip over. Oh, I almost forgot, the planks also have illustrations on them, and one of the ways to enjoy puttara is to collect planks with good art.”

I made sure not to miss a single word in Eleanora’s incomprehensible explanation, and I did my best to try and understand what this thing was.

Is this menko? The Japanese game where you flip cards on the ground using your own card? This is just menko, right? I see, it’s menko.

I imagined the daughter of a family that had been at its zenith, second to only the royal family in power, now playing silly games with children, and I suddenly felt deflated.

Right, she even participated in digging up potatoes. Isn’t getting lost in games like that, like...kind of my thing? Oh no, my worry for Eleanora almost went down to zero.

After being rejected by her friend from the past, Eleanora was obviously hurting. But at the same time, she was excited about playing menko back in Dolkness County.

“I’m glad you’re having fun,” I said at last.

“Would you like to aim to become a champion of puttara as well?” she asked me eagerly. “If we work together, beating Kye could become a reality.”

“I’ll pass. You’ll have to aim for the championship title on your own, Lady Eleanora. I’ll go and cheer you on, though.”

If someone like me (whose strength was on a completely different level) were to join in, I would completely mess up the game. I was perfectly fine with not ruining a children’s game.

I was so tired that I could push aside my curiosity and think responsibly. Perhaps I was more emotionally affected by today’s incidents than Eleanora had been.

We resumed walking as we continued chatting about the menko-like game apparently known as puttara. Eleanora, who was much more energetic than I was, walked half a step ahead of me as if she were leading the way, taking the shortest route back to the Dolkness Estate.

Eleanora was the first to realize where we were. She wrapped up our conversation on puttara and said with her usual cheeriness, “It’s been a while since we’ve gone this way.”

“Oh, shoot!”

I had completely forgotten about letting her know that we would be taking a detour. Because we had taken the shortest path, we had wandered into the path I’d been trying to avoid—the most dangerous area in the Royal Capital: the Sparkle Street Poison Swamp.

The Sparkle Street Poison Swamp was a street in the aristocratic quarter of the Royal Capital. This was a business sector that always seemed to suddenly appear in regions in which the nobility resided. Various sparkly shops lined this boss-rush street. They were all luxury stores that targeted aristocrats.

First up, a sparkly dress shop. The pink dress in the shop window dealt a tenth of my max HP in damage.

Next was a sparkly café. The atmosphere around it made it seem like the servers and customers would laugh at you if you went in wearing shabby clothes, and that also dealt a tenth of my max HP in damage.

Then, a sparkly jewelry store. The gems shone with incredible luminosity and brilliance, taking another tenth of my HP away.

A sparkly fragrance shop followed. Just looking at the outside of the store made me feel like I couldn’t breathe, and I took another hit of percentage damage.

Finally, there was the sparkly black tea shop. I loved black tea, so this one I could endure... Agh! A creature so stylish that it had to have just visited the aforementioned four shops exited the store. Another tenth of my max HP disappeared.

I internally grumbled as the highly dense, sparkly miasma leached away my health merely because I was walking through it. The percent damage so characteristic of the poison status effect accumulated, and I had only half my health left—my HP bar was now yellow.

“Coming here makes me miss the Royal Capital,” Eleanora remarked wistfully.

“This is the Sparkle Street Poison Swamp,” I pointed out.

“What? What is that?”

It was no surprise that Eleanora didn’t understand the name of the street. After all, I had come up with the name Sparkle Street Poison Swamp myself. How else could there be a street named “Poison Swamp”?

Ever since the first time I’d wandered into this street and just barely escaped with my life, my body flashing red, I hadn’t returned here even once. I was saddened to learn that this street had been left uncleansed and still remained to torment the innocent to this day.

There were cases in which areas like this had been purified. The town I’d lived in during my past life had boutiques selling the latest fashion and accessories and such, but over the course of several years, they had transformed into nerdy stores. There were several anime stores, specialty bookstores selling manga and light novels, card shops, PC stores, model shops... It had become a bonus stage of sorts.

I would like it very much if Sparkle Street Poison Swamp were to be purified, or rather, invaded in a similar manner to these boutiques in my past, but it was the same stylish space it had always been. Eleanora seemed to enjoy looking at all the shops lined up before us, but my life force was still slowly depleting.

I need to escape quickly. If I stay here, I’ll sustain nerve damage and my organs will start shutting down. By the end of it all, I’ll just be a pile of bones, my flesh melting away... At least I feel like that’ll happen. This space was just that unsuitable for me. I’m more than aware that I’m letting my discomfort get to me and deal damage.

As proof of that, Eleanora was strolling among the storefronts without taking any damage in the least.

“It’s been so long since I’ve been anywhere in the Royal Capital,” she said with a smile just as brilliant as every store in the area. “I’m excited for tomorrow.”

“Why tomorrow?”

“Sir Patrick and I planned that today would be the dress fitting, and then from tomorrow onwards we could visit wherever we’d like. You’re going to go build some armor, correct?”

I hadn’t heard of this. I would’ve refused to go if I had heard the plans for the first day, so Patrick and Eleanora were correct to keep the true itinerary from me.

I see, so we’re going to be separated tomorrow.

Just before Eleanora had spotted the Archiam estate, I’d turned down her request to go shopping with her. I mean, it’ll take so long, and I don’t care... Eleanora also understood my interests, considering that our plans had already been set with the idea that we’d be doing separate activities. Still, she said she wanted to look around the shops together...

“I’m strong,” I suddenly declared.

“Yes, you are...?” Eleanora agreed, despite being clearly confused by my announcement.

I was strong. I’d surpassed level 99, and the level assessment tool didn’t work on me any longer. Even if I took percent damage that ignored the amount of defense I had, I could turn MP into HP by using recovery magic.

“I’m strong, so, in other words...poison doesn’t work on me. I can get around in a poison swamp just fine...” This poison was particularly blinding, but I was the strongest, after all. I was totally fine. I finally stopped using terminology that was ridiculous for me to expect her to understand, and I reworded my statement to be more direct. “Would you like to go shopping together?”

“What?! Really?!” Eleanora’s expression when she responded was also an incredibly potent poison, its strength incomparable to the sparkly poison swamp that surrounded us. Her smile was going to kill me before this stylish street did. “Yay! What order shall we visit the shops in? Hm... I can’t decide.”

“What if we just go to one shop...?”

◆◆◆

After thinking long and hard about it, Eleanora chose the perfume store. She led us to the front of the store. She practically had to push me toward it. I steeled myself and was about to grab the door handle, but the entrance was opened from the inside.

“Welcome, please come... Huh?”

These sorts of stores often had the closest thing in this world to an automatic door. There was an employee inside whose job was to notice the arrival of customers and open the door to greet them. Some places even had a doorman stationed outside to do nothing but this job.

For this sort of store sans doorman, the person inside who opened the door for you would become the associate in charge of helping you, and they would guide you to whatever items you desired. They would even explain the products in detail, then ring you up and send you off. That was why I didn’t like these kinds of places. I liked to shop on my own, browse freely, pick up products of my choosing, and pay for it all at self-checkout. That was my ideal shopping experience. I didn’t want to go to a store where the employees would start small talk as if it were the natural thing to do.

Not only did I dislike these types of stores, but being Yumiella Dolkness, I had one other problem. The employees would start trembling with fear and think things like, “Oh gosh, Yumiella’s here. Who knows what kind of horrible things she’ll do to us...”

To prove it, the woman who opened the door for us was completely frozen, her friendly customer service smile plastered woodenly on her face.

I understand why she’d react like this even if I’d never been here before. Makes you really think about the disadvantage of having distinctive black hair... Oh? Wait, the frozen woman isn’t looking at me...

Eleanora suddenly spoke up, paying no mind to the unnatural silence.

“It’s been a while.”

“Lady Eleanora, it is you! I knew it!” The woman wasn’t staring at a dangerous being, but at a regular customer.

The employee’s customer service smile completely disappeared, and her enthusiasm suddenly spiked. Just who is Eleanora to the people in this store? I wondered. I feel like their relationship is more than something between just an employee and their customer.

“I thought you wouldn’t be visiting us anymore,” the woman said. “I’m truly glad to see you here.”

“I’m happy to be here as well,” Eleanora replied. “Thank you so much for always sending me perfumes.”

Oh, I guess those packages Eleanora sometimes gets are sent from here, I thought, connecting the dots, as I was left out of the conversation.

But those aren’t mail-order items. This store was gifting them to Eleanora for free. Why would they do that?

After I had solved one mystery, another popped up. This was common for mysteries. It was a mystery why mysteries attracted more mysteries. That just added another mystery.

The employee finally turned my way. “I apologize for my behavior. I just got so excited.”

“It’s no problem,” I assured the clerk. “I’m just keeping her company, so don’t mind me.”

“You’re Countess Yumiella Dolkness, correct? I’ve heard a lot about you from Lady Eleanora.” The woman gave me a warm look, like I was an old friend. It seemed that she wasn’t afraid because Eleanora had spoken to her about me. Her impression of me was likely a much cuter one compared to what the general public thought of me. “Um... We don’t have anything strong here, so I would greatly appreciate it if you don’t thrash around in the store.”

“I wouldn’t thrash around even if there was something strong... Actually, what do you even mean by that? ‘Something strong’?”

“I’m sorry, I heard from Lady Eleanora that you were that sort of person...”

It seemed that the version of me that Eleanora had spoken of wasn’t too different from the general public’s opinion after all.

Really, what would “something strong” even be? That’s way too vague.

The woman’s awkward expression quickly faded away as she guided us inside. I’d anticipated that the store would be filled with the intense smell of perfumes, but it actually didn’t smell too much. I scanned the establishment and saw that several of the windows, of which there seemed to be many, were opened halfway. And that’s a... They even had a magical instrument that generated wind. It seemed like the store had proper ventilation. Perhaps these features were so that customers wouldn’t be distracted by any extra scents while testing the products.

I was relieved that the store was at least a comfortable environment. The employee encouraged us to take a seat.

“Please, have a seat over here,” she offered. “I’ll prepare some tea, so please wait a moment.”

Oh no. Looks like we’re going to be here for a while. I wanted to quickly go in, buy something, and then zoom back out. I guess it’s fine. I was prepared for the possibility that this might be a long shopping trip.

Now that we were alone, I decided to ask Eleanora the question that had been on my mind.

“Lady Eleanora, I’d like to ask you something.”

“I think I said something like, ‘She overreacts to things that are stronger than her,’” Eleanora preemptively explained.

“That wasn’t what I wanted to ask about...” I now understood how she described me to others, but that hadn’t been my question. “What kind of relationship do you have with the people who work at this store? Did you invest capital in their operation in the past or something?”

“We have a regular shop-and-customer relationship. I was friendly with the clerks here.”

I’d thought it was something more along the lines of Eleanora saving the store when it had been down on its luck, and now the store continued to send gifts to her as thanks or something like that, but Eleanora had immediately denied that.

Most stores wouldn’t gift expensive perfumes to someone who’s just a customer. I wanted to ask for more details, but the employee from earlier returned. Not only did she have a tea tray in her hands, but several other people followed behind her. Apparently if an employee at a perfume store went to the back, they would return with more people.

“Lady Eleanora! I’m so happy you’ve visited us again!” one employee exclaimed.

“I’m glad to see you’re doing well,” another chimed in.

“Have you been using the perfumes we’ve sent?” a third employee asked.

They were quite overwhelming. The level of their affection for her far surpassed how a store would normally treat a preferred customer.

I’ll just have some of the tea they brought out and calm down, I thought as I grabbed the tea cup. I brought it up to my face to take a whiff of the familiar scent, and... Oh, this is herbal tea. Even the tea here smelled elegant. I endured the never-ending wave of damage to my senses and sat quietly, like a piece of furniture.

Eleanora ignored my unusually obedient self and enthusiastically engaged in conversation with the others.

“I’m also glad to see that you’re all doing well,” Eleanora said. “Of course I’ve used all the perfumes you’ve sent.”

“It’s fine if you can only tell us about the ones you found particularly memorable, so would you mind giving us your thoughts?”

“Let’s see...” Eleanora began.

Eleanora talked about perfume for a long, long time. She went on for about as long as it took a military buff to answer the question “Is the A6M Zero strong?” It was one thing to talk about the turning performance and its weapons, but they would also go on and on about flight ranges and the quality of fuel back in the day, and then add on the reasons for their opinion that it was wrong to compare air superiority fighters to land-based interceptors. At the end of it all, their conclusion would be unclear.

I was the only one who had steeled herself for a long lecture on something they didn’t care about. Everyone else surrounding Eleanora was earnestly listening to Eleanora’s thoughts. Some were even taking notes.

“After testing them all, what left an impression on me the most was Patchouli’s newest product. The design of the bottle made me think it would be a chypre, but it was definitely a fougère.”

“We do sell this one as a chypre,” one employee commented.

“I can see why,” Eleanora said with a nod. “There are some women who steer clear of fougère perfumes. I believe citrusy perfumes will continue to grow in popularity. I think that’s a good thing, since not many people dislike citrus notes...”

“There aren’t very many new releases for gourmand fragrances. It’s unfortunate, since we know that gourmands are one of your favorite types of perfume, Lady Eleanora,” an employee pointed out. “We do make one in-house, but it’s gotten less-than-stellar reviews.”

What language is this? There are so many technical terms that I have no idea what they’re saying. The only word I’ve heard before is “Eleanora.”

Eleanora had explained some of these concepts in the past, but I didn’t know the terminology that went with these descriptions. I couldn’t swap out the terms for Japanese equivalents, like I was able to with the menko-like game, so I couldn’t remember the specific vocabulary very well.

I had no idea what they were talking about, but their discussion continued endlessly.

“Really?” Eleanora said curiously. “I don’t remember seeing an original perfume in the packages...”

“It wasn’t something we could send...” One of the employees reached for a bottle. “Um, we have it over here. Would you mind testing it out for us?”

“Yes, I’m very curious!”

I couldn’t even follow the context clues, so I had no idea what Eleanora was curious about. I silently stood up. No one seemed to pay attention, and I was able to wander around the store on my own.

“This is...” Eleanora voiced her opinions with confidence. “Hm, it seems like there’s some kind of animal musk mixed in. I wonder what the base notes are like... It seems like those notes aren’t meshing well, so it may need to mature for longer before they are cohesive. It’s too strong as it is, so you also might want to lower the concentration...”

“Yes, I see, this is very helpful.”

As I stared at the bottles lined up on the spotless shelves and desks, I could still hear their conversation. I could tell that Eleanora was saying something helpful—after all, I knew that the words “this is very helpful” meant that what she was saying must be helpful.

As I perused the store’s products without much thought, I realized that these bottles would be no different to me than a milk bottle filled with rainwater. Since this was the kind of store laid out for an attendant to follow you around, there wasn’t a single product description written anywhere. For now, I deduced that the bottles with the same mark on them were likely from the same brand.

With the still-continuing and apparently very helpful conversation as my background music, I walked around. Suddenly, something caught my eye. There was something off about one of the shelves. Of course, the surface was lined with bottles of perfume, but these bottles were different from the others. For example, there was a bottle that had a flower-shaped mark on it, and it was the only such mark of its kind on the shelf. But I had seen a bunch of bottles with this mark on it on a different shelf on the other side of the store. This was the only shelf I’d seen on which several brands were mixed up, and even the way they were displayed seemed disorganized. This entire store was impeccably organized, yet this one spot was chaotic.

What encouraged me to keep inspecting was a handwritten sign. It didn’t list any of the standard things that these sorts of signs usually did, like an explanation of the product or why the store recommended it. In fact, there was text that was strangely poetic on this sign, and written in terrible handwriting. Reading just a little of it gave me secondhand embarrassment. The thought of reading the rest of it sent a shiver running down my spine, but I decided to speak one of the verses aloud.

“A droplet of love trickles onto the endless expanse that is the sea—” I began.

“Ah! Ah! No! You can’t read that!” Eleanora interrupted my reading of the horribly embarrassing poem, despite the fact that she was supposed to be passionately engaged in conversation. It didn’t seem like it was anything for her to be that embarrassed about, but she turned accusingly to one of the employees, her face beet red. “You still have that poem displayed?!”

“It’s quite popular. We all think it’s lovely.”

“Something was wrong with me back then,” Eleanora groaned.

I tilted my head in confusion at their conversation, and one of the employees began explaining the origin of this little poetry corner. “This shelf is a collection of perfumes recommended by Lady Eleanora. We can’t put her name on it anymore, but they’re the favorite products of the Lady Eleanora, so of course they all sell very well. Her poems are also quite popular.”

“Lady Eleanora wrote this?” I asked.

“Yes, this is the original, handwritten poem.”

Whoa... So Eleanora created this back when she was blinded by love.

Judging from her reaction, this seemed to be a part of Eleanora’s past that she’d rather not remember, so I decided to not touch on it too much. She would probably lose her mind if I asked any more about this poem, so I decided to ask about something other than the handwritten sign.

“Does Eleanora’s recommendation change how well a perfume sells that much? I know she was the duke’s daughter, but was her endorsement that effective?”

“Of course it is,” the employee said eagerly. “Even ateliers from other kingdoms send us letters asking for Lady Eleanora’s reviews of fragrances. There isn’t a single person in this industry who doesn’t know her.”

Out of all the young women in this kingdom, the person with the highest standing had been Eleanora, the daughter of the duke. I could understand if the reasoning behind this had been something like the idea that she was in a position to control the trends in a niche community for a specific age group in a single kingdom...but foreign kingdoms too? It was surely difficult for her to have such influence just because she was Dule Hillrose’s daughter. It seemed that the revocation of her nobility hadn’t affected her status in the fragrance industry, and she had in fact been giving some high-level advice earlier.

Is Eleanora actually a big deal in the perfume industry? Is she a celebrity reviewer or something?

Eleanora was hiding her face in both hands, still taking damage from the poem.

“You should just manufacture your own fragrance,” I mumbled.

“We don’t have a full factory, but we do have some she made.” The employee pointed out a few bottles. “This, this, and this one as well. These are all sold as items that have been produced from start to finish by Lady Eleanora.”

The employee lined up several bottles of perfume so I could get a better look, and I recognized them. Eleanora had received them all as gifts. Whenever I borrowed them to use them, Eleanora would notice and get excited, so I’d wear them just to see her happy.

Now that I think of it, she said she’d come up with a lot of ideas and had them make it for her or something...? I thought that meant they were custom fragrances, but I guess they’re manufactured as actual products. Isn’t that incredible? Is she making money off of this, like as a job? Oh, right, I don’t think she has been sent any money.

“Do you buy the ideas from Lady Eleanora?” I asked.

“No.” The employee looked thoughtful. “I’m not sure about the details of the contract, but every time we produce a new batch, Lady Eleanora receives a portion of the proceeds.”

Huh? Is the money being taken by a middleman or something? I looked at the gullible poet herself, who seemed to have been listening, and she casually responded, “I’ve set things up so the money gets donated to the Sanonist church.”

She’s a saint. The church should hurry up and officially announce that Eleanora is an actual angel.

Back when she was the duke’s daughter, the amount of money she’d earned from this must have seemed like small potatoes. It probably wasn’t that much, overall. I knew it wasn’t polite of me to do so, but I ended up asking the question in my mind.

“So, how much do you earn from it?” I walked up to Eleanora and brought my ear close to her. Eleanora then softly whispered her profits from producing the fragrances.

“About...” Her voice fell in volume as she spoke the numbers.

“Huh...? That much?”

“Apparently, there’s a trading ship that buys them in large quantities to sell them in other continents,” she explained.

It was a number much too large for me to ever give away entirely to charity. However, it seemed that her products were going to continue selling, so that number was only going to increase. I was so stunned by this information that I could only give a half-hearted response.

“I see...”

For some time after that, everyone aside from me enthusiastically kept discussing fragrances. Of course, I still had no idea what they were talking about. Despite my lack of knowledge, I kept listening. Everyone’s excitement kept growing, and eventually it seemed to have become something similar to a brainstorming session.

They began predicting future trends, and they tried to tread the fine line between common and niche fragrance notes before coming up with bottle designs, taglines, and marketing strategies. It took about two hours before they got to a point where everyone was satisfied.

After all that, it was finally time for us to go. Eleanora seemed quite hesitant to leave. Usually I would say something like, “Let’s go already,” but all I could do was watch her, full of newfound respect.

Dearest Eleanora, the freeloader of our family, was someone I’d believed wouldn’t last three days if she went out in the world without a penny to her name. Contrary to my assumptions, she’d totally been able to make a living on her own this whole time.

I was proud of that, yet also somewhat sad. Before I could figure out how I felt, Eleanora and I left the perfume store.

◆◆◆

When we reached the Dolkness estate in the Royal Capital, Patrick came out to greet us.

“Welcome back... Um, how was it?” Patrick seemed quite uncomfortable.

I was momentarily at a loss as to why that might be, but then it occurred to me. Oh...I forgot! He tricked me into a dress fitting and getting my measurements taken. No wonder he looks guilty. 

I could understand why he’d bamboozled me, considering my usual attitude toward such things. But there was no way that I was going to forgive him that easily.

“It seems like you successfully completed your fitting,” Patrick observed a little hesitantly.

I fixed him with a steely look. “I won’t forgive you for the rest of our lives.”

“I’m sorry.”

“When I take my final breath, I’ll use it to voice this resentment as I die. If you go first, I’ll keep whispering in your ear as you drift off, reminding you of this incident.”

Patrick’s expression froze over. It seemed that he hadn’t expected for me to be this upset. (To be honest, I wasn’t actually that upset. The dress, as it had turned out, wasn’t entirely evil—in fact, in some ways it was kind of good.)

Well, but...hee hee... I can’t allow him to persist in some erroneous belief, like thinking that I actually like the dress... Don’t underestimate Yumiella Dolkness. I’ll hold quite the grudge against him for forcing me into that wedding dress. I’ll hold it until I die. I’ll bring it up every time we have a lover’s quarrel, and I’ll wrap it up with a “You’re always like this!” 

As my train of thought continued, I found myself to be more riled up than I’d expected. I’d uncapped my level and Patrick was level 99, so if we faced off, it would be a battle between the two strongest people in the world. Before anything like that had a chance to happen, though, the noble lady who was one of the weakest people in the world chimed in.

“You have to hear about this, Sir Patrick!” Eleanora cooed. “Yumiella was so happy when she saw her wedding dress. She was staring at her reflection in the mirror, and she seemed like she was full of bliss.”

“Are you sure you’re not mistaken...?” Patrick asked, voicing his question before I could deny Eleanora’s outrageous claims.

Patrick understands me. I would never be happy wearing a gown like that, let alone spending a long time staring at my reflection and imagining him lifting my veil, making me feel like I’m dreaming. I would never think something like, “I’m so happy I get to wear this.” That would never happen.

Eleanora had just interpreted things in a way that worked in her favor. I decided to correct her version of events.

“Don’t you remember how I was resisting?” I insisted.

“But...but after you put it on, in front of the mirror...”

“Lady Eleanora, Yumiella is the last person who would do that,” Patrick said. “I’m sorry for forcing you to take on such a difficult role in accompanying her.”

“I’m glad I went,” she said decisively. “I got to see Yumiella’s bridal gown after all.”

Patrick had apologized to Eleanora, who’d responded by saying there was no need for it... Excuse me? Aren’t you apologizing to the wrong person?

My anger that had died down was boiling back up again. Taking notice of this, Patrick awkwardly turned to me and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d dislike it to this extent.”

“I understand that I needed a fitting,” I grumbled, “but did you really need to trick me?”

“Would you have willingly come to the Royal Capital if I’d told you beforehand?”

No, I would’ve thrown a tantrum about how I didn’t want to do it, and I’d have stubbornly stayed holed up in Dolkness County... But if I answer truthfully, then Patrick wins.

I fell silent for a moment, my face impassive as I plotted my rejoinder of vengeance.

“Don’t change the point of the argument!” I retaliated at last. “At least tell me this—did you not trust me?”

I had to say, it was quite the inspired response. I’d cornered him now. If he said that he did trust me, then that would contradict the fact that he had tricked me. If he said he didn’t trust me, that meant that he was failing me as my boyfriend. I had picked a point of contention that was advantageous for myself, and I’d presented him with two options, neither of which would provide him with a win condition. I was the strongest, even when it came to arguments.

“I trust you.”

Aha! Here’s my opening.

“Then why—” I began to ask, but he cut me off.

“I trusted, from the bottom of my heart, that you would refuse to go to any kind of dress fitting, and instead stubbornly stay in Dolkness County, no matter what I said.”

“I see...”

Does this mean...I lost?!

Conversations weren’t supposed to be a battle in which you tried to get the other person to lose, and yet I had challenged Patrick and pathetically lost. I was the only one who’d even thought of this as a battle, and Patrick had triumphed without any intention of trying to win.

Patrick had lied to me, or rather, I’d driven him to the point where he’d had no choice but to lie to me. Still, if the world were truly filled with people who understood and accepted their faults when they were pointed out, then there wouldn’t be war. I, too, was ruled by human nature—in other words, I was going to be upset.

The white dog that my family had owned in my past life in Japan had also hid in the garden and sulked after we had returned from the vet. I was no different.

The man who’d baited me with new armor and brought me to a place I hated spoke to me now in a soothing tone. “Let’s go make some armor tomorrow. I’ve found a place that makes custom pieces, and as long as it’s within the capabilities of their craftspeople, you should order exactly what you want.”

“Really?!” I practically squealed. “That part wasn’t a lie?! I can do everything, including the wires and the pile bunker and the purge function?!”

“As long as it’s technologically possible.”

Yay! My time has finally come! I should request the ability to swap out various parts of it, to make it adaptable to different situations. Something with interchangeable parts would be good. Standardizing it would also be good. The biggest benefit would be that I could forcibly attach nonstandard pieces to it. This’ll be the best way to design it. Or wait, maybe I should just throw everything onto it, like adding every possible topping onto a pizza. That would be wonderful too.

“Which do you think is better,” I asked Patrick, “a convertible unit or a unit with everything on it?”

“You should go with what you want...”

I nodded with satisfaction. “That’s true, it’s my own armor after all.” Shaking myself from my armament-based reverie, I realized we were still lingering outside the entryway. “Oh, we’ve been standing here for a while, haven’t we? Let’s go inside.” I turned and happily opened the front door.

As I did this, I once again recalled the dog from my past. Even when he’d been upset after getting a shot, he’d immediately start happily wagging his tail once we gave him a piece of jerky...but I decided to not think too deeply about it and focus on my new armor.

◆◆◆

I was excited to explain the purge function to Eleanora, but she clearly didn’t appreciate the nuances of such a system, and gave me the unimaginative response of, “If you’re going to take it off and throw it away, you shouldn’t have those pieces in the first place.” I was startled to discover that I’d chattered for so long about ideas for my new armor that night had fallen.

After eating dinner and taking a bath, I climbed into bed, ready to sleep. It felt a little strange to call it “my” bed. Once I had graduated from the Academy and left the dorms, I had only returned to the Royal Capital a handful of times. Though this room was technically mine, I couldn’t help but feel like I was sleeping over at someone else’s home.

Tomorrow, I’m going to make armor that’s full of dreams and imagination. I should sleep in preparation.

Instead, I stared at the ceiling. “I can’t sleep...”

I’d started thinking again about what kind of features I wanted to add to the armor, and my excitement was making me feel wide awake, and I couldn’t fall asleep.

A beam is standard, right? Where should I put it? One beam right in the middle of my chest would look really powerful, but adding it to my arm and making it removable would also be a good option. I could also add it somewhere else so that I could whip it out in tricky situations. Even if I decide to add it to my arm, then comes the issue of where on my arm... I can’t make this crucial choice on my own. I should ask Patrick what he thinks tomorrow.

“I can’t wait...” If I kept agonizing like this on my own, I wouldn’t be able to sleep peacefully tonight.

I leaped out of bed and headed to Patrick’s room. I hope he’s still awake. If he’s asleep, I’ll have to force him to wake up.

I crept down the dark hallway and arrived at the guest room he’d been assigned. First, I lightly knocked.

He answered at once. “Who is it?”

All right, he’s awake. I opened the door without permission, and Patrick sat up in bed as he rubbed his eyes. Oh, did my knocking wake him up? It’s fine, he’s awake now so we can settle this quickly.

“Oh, I didn’t realize it was you, Yumiella. Did something happen? I’d like to sleep.”

Are you planning to get some restful sleep while ignoring my feelings, Patrick?

I couldn’t let him flee from my feelings, so I made a beeline for the bed and climbed onto the mattress, straddling his knees through the sheets, pinning his legs in place. Then I grabbed his shoulders and pushed him down so that he had no possibility of escape.

“Hey!” he sputtered. “Yumiella?! What’s wrong?!”

The outer sides of the covers were cool to the touch, and I realized that I felt a bit chilly. I need to be in perfect health tomorrow for Armor Day. I’ve never caught a cold before, but better safe than sorry—I should stay warm. I wiggled my way under the covers and held Patrick down from there.

“H-Huh...?” Patrick wasn’t even struggling in my grasp; he seemed frozen with shock. Oh, I guess it would be confusing for me to suddenly barge into his room without saying anything. I decided that I needed to explain how dire the situation was so that he could properly give me advice.

“Um, Patrick...” I said, a little flustered. “I’m so excited that I can’t calm down.”

“I-I see...” he stammered.

“I tried to do something about it on my own, but it won’t go away at all.”

Patrick’s head fell back onto his pillow, his eyes wide and his body stiff with shock. In the dark room, and snuggled under the covers (which made things even darker), I could clearly feel the warmth of his body and hear the rapid beat of his heart.

Will he take the placement of the beam seriously? Or will he just give me a cold response, like, “I really couldn’t care less”? It’s a serious topic, Patrick. 

“Please, Patrick?” I whispered into his ear as he continued to lay there silently.

Suddenly, Patrick aggressively grabbed me and flipped us around. He was now on top, and I found myself looking up at him. He held me down by my shoulders with his strong arms, and our faces were so close that our noses almost touched.

Patrick continued in his silence for a bit longer before swallowing hard and opening his mouth to say, a little dazedly, “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

Shouldn’t I be the one to seek his approval for this important conversation? I guess it’s fine. It seemed that Patrick was going to take my beam discussion with the appropriate amount of seriousness after all, so I decided to jump right into it.

“I’ve been struggling to determine the placement of a beam,” I said in a rush. “I want to put one on an arm, but I’m not sure exactly where or what direction it should point.”

“Huh?”

“I’m not sure if I want it here, or here... Oh, I guess it’s hard to explain like this.” I shoved Patrick off of me and got back out of the bed. I stood at his bedside and started pointing at places on my body as I explained. “I’m not sure if I should put it here, between my wrist and elbow, or here, between my elbow and shoulder. In this configuration, I’m imagining that the beam would shoot out parallel to my arm. But I’m not sure about the direction. It could point this way, or the other way.”

There was a short pause. “I really couldn’t care less,” Patrick answered. There was a strangely defeated expression on his face, and he kept himself wrapped up firmly in the covers.

How rude. He was so serious just seconds ago. He even had an unusually intense look in his eyes.

Though Patrick seemed deeply uninterested, he gave a long-suffering sigh and pointed limply at the spot between my wrist and elbow.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to operate if it were positioned here?”

“What about the orientation of the beam?” I asked.

“I think this would be the obvious answer,” he said, indicating the angle with his hands.

That would require a shooting position in which I’d have to hold my arm straight out in order to shoot the beam. It would be very similar to Mazinger Z’s Rocket Punch.

I considered the virtues of this position, and then observed, “I think the opposite direction could work too.”

“The opposite?” Patrick repeated. “How would you even shoot that?”

My idea was to attach the beam between my wrist and elbow, with the beam pointed so that it would shoot out backward. I folded my arm in half at the elbow, bringing my hand up toward my shoulder and pointing my elbow upward to show him how it would work.

“Like this,” I clarified.

“Wouldn’t that be difficult to operate?”

“Oh my,” I said with a little pout, “don’t you have a sense of whimsy, Patrick?”

“I don’t see a benefit to it.”

That was a good point, actually. What would be the practical benefits...? Maybe whimsy took too much priority here. I’m really glad I talked to Patrick about this, since he’s so often able to provide a perspective that I don’t have. Let’s see, could there be any benefit...? Oh, that’s right!

“Here’s my logic,” I explained. “I wanted to add a device that shoots out a wire on this side, and it would be difficult to use if it didn’t shoot out toward my hands, right? That’s why I have no choice but to place the beam so it faces my elbow.”

He sighed again. “You came up with that just now, didn’t you?”

Now that we’d both shared our ideas, we’d come up with a wonderful plan together. I was so emotional that my body was trembling. It’s incredible, just incredible what Patrick and I can accomplish together...! Okay, I’m getting a little too excited, I need to calm down.

I sat on the bed, and Patrick unraveled the covers from around his body and moved to sit beside me.

“This beam you’re talking about is like the fiery breath of a dragon, right?”

“Yup.”

“It’s fine to think about where you want to put it, but something like that is...” He shook his head. “Well, I guess you’ll find out tomorrow.”

I forgot. It’s not like we can just make whatever I want.

I was a complete amateur when it came to the practical considerations surrounding the construction of armor and magical instruments. There were probably good reasons for why professionals decided on a certain layout in a given design. It was probably best if I kept my nose out of the specifics about design specs when I didn’t have all the information. I should just tell them the big picture of what I want, and even if I notice an element that I think might look better if it was oriented in a different way, I’ll keep it to myself. It was possible that the golden ratio of beauty to utility could be destroyed by my unschooled opinions.

“I’m really excited about tomorrow,” I remarked.

“You should be prepared for the possibility of things not turning out the way you expect...”

“My expectations are something ambiguous that only exists in my imagination, so I might end up a little disappointed,” I admitted. “But even if that happens, I’m sure I’ll get attached to whatever I end up with as I use it over time. Maybe the final product will be something better than I could ever have imagined.”

“I hope that happens...”

Oh, I see. Patrick is worried about how long it’ll take to make. Obviously I’m not expecting a custom-made item to be completed in a day. I’m sure it’ll require precise measurements since it needs to conform perfectly to my body, and I’ll have to try it on repeatedly so that they can fine-tune it too.

I wasn’t someone who would be bothered by getting measured and going to a few fittings, so I hoped that it would end up being a piece with meticulous attention to detail.

Speaking of measurements, that reminds me that the dress fitting from earlier today was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. Well, I guess the wedding dress itself might not have been so bad. Maybe.

The thing that I had least enjoyed was being told to stay still and being forced to go along with something that seemed meaningless to me. I would’ve had the time of my life if I had been going through maintenance that involved calipers and a welding machine, but the tools that had been used on me today were boring, awful tape measures and straight pins.

I still haven’t forgiven him for that. Just what was Patrick up to while I was suffering through that ordeal without him...?

I wasn’t sure if Patrick was going to fall back asleep right away, so I scooted closer to him. I leaned my head on his shoulder as I asked, “By the way, where were you during the day?”

“Sorry for sending you to the dress shop.”

“I won’t ever for—” I narrowed my eyes. “You just changed the topic, didn’t you?”

“During the day?” He shrugged. “I popped into the Ashbatten estate here in the Royal Capital.”

Suspicious. Patrick usually saw through me when I wasn’t telling him something, but the opposite happened as well. You must be hiding something, Patrick.

There was only one reason a man would obfuscate his whereabouts: he was at a mixer...or he was gambling...or he was engaging in a hobby he’d promised to stop...or he was secretly meeting up with his mistress, and so on and so forth.

Wait, that’s way more than one! Which is it? Is it a woman? Oh wait, it may be premature of me to assume he’s cheating on me with a woman.

“Are you cheating on me with a man or a woman?” I asked as I sniffed him for any evidence that might remain on his body.

“Fine, I’ll tell you.” Patrick finally seemed to be ready to come clean, though I doubted that he was about to tell me the gender of his partner in an affair. He was probably going to tell me where he’d gone after leaving me at the dress shop. Considering the fact that he’d returned to the Dolkness estate before I had, and had even come out to welcome us home, he probably hadn’t traveled too far.

I sat up straight and turned to look at him. Patrick seemed much more uncomfortable than I had expected.

“Huh? Seriously, where did you go?”

“I was here the whole time,” he said, still being vague.

There was nothing suspicious about admitting that he’d been at this mansion, the Dolkness Estate in the Royal Capital, since Eleanora and I had both been at the dress shop. Unless he had invited someone over, the only people here were the servants... Oh, I see. I finally realized what he’d been up to.

This estate did have other residents—my parents lived here. I had been in a good mood because of the armor, but I suddenly became overcome with melancholy at the thought of my parents.

“I see,” I said heavily. “So you met them. What did you talk about?”

“I pretty much just introduced myself as your fiancé...”

“There probably wasn’t much else to talk about, was there?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

Even if we didn’t discuss the details, I could imagine how the interaction between my parents and Patrick had gone.

My mother and father were textbook examples of useless aristocrats. They only thought of their territory and the citizens who lived there as machines that produced money. All they wanted in life was to expand their power in the Royal Capital.

The Dolkness Family held no official position in the central government, and my parents didn’t hide their ambition to climb up the ranks by teaming up with the radical aristocrats. They’d planned to use their daughter (me) as a tool to gain advantageous political connections through marriage, but—unfortunately for them—said daughter had been born with horribly unfavorable black hair and eyes. They had sent her off to their provincial territory as if to hide her, but in the end, that same daughter had forcibly succeeded to the family title. Now, the two lived out their disappointing days holed up in this estate.

I had spoken to them a few times since I’d snatched up the title of countess from my father, but we just never seemed to be on the same page. They were people who believed that actually working to better your territory was the ultimate torture, while climbing the ranks in the central government was the only form of happiness... Even if we understood each other’s words, it was difficult for us to understand each other’s thoughts.

My excitement died down, but more than that, Patrick seemed dispirited. I leaned on him once more.

“No one can really talk to them,” I reassured him. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I’d heard about them, but I never thought that, um...”

“You didn’t expect them to be that horrible, did you?” I said, filling in the blanks for him. He didn’t confirm or deny it, but he’d probably wanted to say something along those lines.

He went on. “I know your situation. I know that you had a family in your previous life. Still, when I think about those people saying horrible things about you when you were just a baby...”

“We apparently didn’t live together for too long,” I said with a shrug. “Evidently, less than a week after I was born, the wet nurse took me to Dolkness County. Although that same wet nurse also seemed to have left before I turned one. I don’t remember any of it, but that’s what I’ve heard.”

I had regained the memories of my past life at five years old, and I’d spent my days since then level grinding. Everyone had always been incredibly cautious when interacting with me, and I hadn’t talked to people very much, so it was a miracle that I had gained a decent level of language skills at that age at all.

If I had spent my days in the Royal Capital as the count’s daughter, I probably wouldn’t have had the time to go to dungeons, which was an activity I loved. I felt that things had worked out all right in the end, but Patrick didn’t seem to feel the same way. He seemed sad and a little angry as he spoke about my parents.

“You’re their child!” he seethed. “I can’t forgive parents who would treat their own child like that.”

“I think you’re absolutely in the right to feel that way, but also I think that having a black-haired child was outside of the scope of what was acceptable for them.”

“I understand the reasoning,” he admitted with a sigh, “but I think you’re too objective about how you’ve been treated.”

Since I’d had the mental age of an adult at five years old, it was hard to understand the perspective of someone who had experienced those events as their actual childhood. Perhaps I didn’t think of my parents as my family any more than they considered me their child. In other words, neither my parents nor myself could even begin to understand Patrick’s anger. I understood as a general theory that parental neglect wasn’t good, but even if I was technically the victim in this case, I didn’t feel like I was a victim of anything, so emotionally I had no further input.

I tried to put this into words in a way that Patrick might understand. “I would feel bad if I found out about another child who had been treated the way I was, but considering my situation, I don’t actually feel much at all about what happened to me. Please don’t get too upset.”

“You’re right... There’s no point in getting angry.” Despite Patrick agreeing with me, he didn’t seem completely satisfied. He tapped his finger, like he was trying to figure out what to do with his unsettled feelings.

I tried again. “Back in Japan, I had a regular family. I had a mother and a father, and I was raised with genuine love.” I’d had parents, a younger sister, and I’d even had friends. I’d even had significant others (I still thought they counted, even if they’d been in a digital world).

I didn’t feel that way at the time, but looking back on it, I had been raised in an ideal family. I wasn’t a poor child who had been all alone since birth...unlike, for example, Yumiella 2.

I didn’t like that Patrick was concerned with something that didn’t really bother me. I turned to look at him, and I found that Patrick was already looking at me. Our eyes met.

“They’re your family though,” he insisted.

“Like I said, I had a family in my previous life.”

“What about in this world? Isn’t it painful to not be able to see the people you consider your real family, since they’re in a world that you can’t return to?”

I guess if I had to pick whether it’s painful or not, it is, but...I’m the one who died. I don’t think I’m too sad about it.

My family in Japan had probably mourned my death. Oh, I wonder what picture they used for my funeral. Smartphones are for playing mobile games, not for taking selfies. Arcades are not places to take pictures in photo booths while screaming happily at friends, but places to lose robot fighting games while screaming in rage at a screen. I think the only usable picture I have was the one in my high school yearbook. Ha ha...

I thought I’d be able to laugh off that thought in my head, but it wasn’t actually funny in the slightest.

“You were like that when we first met at the Academy. You acted like you were fine on your own, and you convinced yourself that you could endure the loneliness...”

I considered this. “That may be true... Now, I can’t imagine fleeing the kingdom and living on my own.”

“It’s not good to lie about how you feel...in my opinion. You should be honest about what you really think.”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t take notice of normal things because you weren’t bothered by them,” Patrick continued. “It was only just now, after discussing your lack of feelings for your family in this world that I even considered the fact that you have a family back in your previous world. To be apart from people you are close to is...” He didn’t finish his thought.

Now that it had been put into words by someone else, the reality that I’d accepted because there wasn’t anything else that I could do suddenly seemed to weigh heavily on me. I felt relieved that I could remember the faces of my family in Japan, but I was still a bit sad about it all.

“I try not to think about it,” I admitted, “but in the end, I guess I am sad about it.”

“I wasn’t trying to make you recall painful memories, but, um...”

“It’s okay, I understand. It’s not like the sadness will go away if I try to sweep these thoughts under the rug. I also might forget things if I don’t think about them.”

Patrick looked much sadder than I expected I did. I usually would’ve said something like, “Why do you seem more tragic than the actual person in the middle of all this? You should be careful about being too empathetic,” or something like that, but I was currently grateful for Patrick’s penchant for lamenting. The fact that someone existed who would be just as upset about how I had been treated as if it had happened to them was enough for me to feel like I was loved.

It hurt to be apart from my family, but even if I had been able to return to Japan, I wanted to stay in this world. I studied Patrick’s face. I choose him, I realized. I want to be by his side forever.

Through an awkward smile, I tried to show the man by my side that not everything was so bad.

“I’m glad that I came to this world,” I said decisively. “Maybe I didn’t have the best parents, but I have a family now. Wait... Maybe we’re not family yet because we aren’t married yet? I guess it depends on what your definition of ‘family’ is.”

“We’re already family,” he confirmed without hesitating. “I don’t know exactly what definition I go by, but I know that I think of you as my family.”

“Me too. You’re my family, Patrick.”

I had been misguided; I didn’t have to worry about any of the traditional definitions of family. If I had my family—if I had Patrick—with me, I could overcome anything, no matter how painful it was. But just as I was feeling grateful to have him in my life all over again, Patrick said something that was equally as misguided as I had been earlier.

“I’m glad. I’m the first to become your family in this world.”

“No,” I corrected. “Ryuu was the first to become family.”

Man, I was really saved by my dear dragon son. Children may help their parents more than parents help their children.

I was now not only thinking about my family in my previous life but also Patrick and Ryuu... Various thoughts were getting jumbled up, and I suddenly realized that I was about to cry. It would be embarrassing if he saw me cry. Just as that thought crossed my mind, Patrick’s eyes glimmered in the moonlight. He appeared to be teary-eyed as well.

“Yeah, that’s right... It’s nice that you have Ryuu.”

“Yeah.”

It was wonderful to be able to have someone to share both joy and sadness. Filled with the warmth of happiness, my tears sunk back into the depths of my ducts.

Though my mind had been headed in a negative direction, I was fine once I turned my attention the other way. I even started thinking about the armor I was going to make tomorrow. I was truly blessed.

“Well, we need to get up early tomorrow, so I should go to bed. Sorry for intruding like this so late at night.”

“It’s really nice that you have Ryuu,” Patrick repeated.

“Huh? Yeah, it is.”

Still uncertain of why Patrick had reiterated his statement about Ryuu, I got up. I guess “first” isn’t the right expression when discussing family. Family isn’t something you order by who was first. I should tell him that some other time if I have the chance, I thought as I left his room, closing the door behind me.