I could sleep longer the next day since I had no work, and I woke up feeling nice and refreshed. The weather was good too — a perfect day for going outside.
Keith would usually come with me whenever I went to the castle, but today he was busy helping Father with his work, so my maid, Anne, came with me instead.
“Don’t do anything reckless and make sure that you are not, under any circumstance, alone with Jeord,” Keith said.
“Do not do anything abnormal. Do not run around with your skirt pulled up,” Mother followed up.
The two of them then asked Anne to be very, very careful.
Is it just me, or am I still being treated like an 8-year-old child despite being a 18-year-old, respectable, adult lady?
Regardless of this treatment, at least they gave me permission to go to the castle (I insisted that I wanted to thank someone for returning something important which I had lost), so I promised to do as they said and boarded the carriage.
Upon reaching the castle, I decided to go to the room where my book had been kept. If I went there, I could probably seek out the person who had found my bag, and ask any questions I had directly.
I also wanted to ask Jeord if he knew about the note, but Keith had told me that “Prince Jeord is very busy with his official affairs, so if you want to greet him, limit yourself to a brief goodbye right before coming back home,” so that would have to wait.
Accompanied by Anne, I went to the storage room. I was walking deliberately and elegantly, as Mother had instructed. I can be ladylike if I need to.
The last time I’d been to the castle was during the graduation party for the twin princes. Back then the whole place had been covered in festive decorations, but now it was back to normal.
When I reached the room, I spoke to one of the servants who was working there and, after stating my name, asked to see the person who had found my bag. That servant rushed to lead me to a table in the corner of the room, quickly bringing me tea and snacks.
I hadn’t received the castle-treatment in quite a while, so I went ahead and commented to Anne under my breath. “When I’m treated like this, I kind of feel like I’m some kind of noblewoman!”
“…Young miss, in case you have forgotten, you are a noblewoman,” she replied, amazed.
Of course she was right — I was a noblewoman who had people take care of everything, from dressing up to preparing meals, for her. But Mother gave orders to all the servants to be very strict with me, so they would say things like “Do not leave crumbs around when you eat.” That didn’t really make me feel like a noblewoman.
I was still thinking about that when the person in charge of the room, a middle-aged man, came in. He greeted me gracefully and replied to my questions. Unfortunately, he didn’t know who had first found my bag and brought it in here. The mysterious benefactor just found it lying around in the castle, carried over to this room, and left it here. The servants all happened to be very busy at the time, so nobody took the trouble to look at the person’s face, and now they couldn’t even agree on whether it was a man or a woman who had done it. I felt disappointed that I had gained no information at all, but the man’s sincere apology at being unable to help kept me from saying that out loud.
“After it was brought here, could anyone have touched it?” I asked him.
“Was anything missing from your bag?!” he replied, turning pale.
Of course I couldn’t just tell him that there was a note talking about an otome game in there, so I came up with an unrelated, half-hearted excuse.
“No, it’s just that thinking that anyone could have touched it is a bit… you know…”
The man, relieved, explained that in general only the servants had access to this storage room, but, considering that sometimes they were all so busy that they had to leave the place unattended, he couldn’t say with 100% certainty that nobody had access to it.
Furthermore, only one of the servants, a woman, had opened the bag to check its contents. I casually asked that woman whether she had looked inside the book, but she said that she hadn’t, as she wasn’t really into reading and wasn’t interested in books.
This left me with two possibilities as to who had put the note inside my book: either the person who had brought the bag here, or someone who had snuck into the storage room while the servants were away.
I left the room, convinced that it held no more useful information for me. I planned to ask Jeord if I ran into him, but that didn’t sound likely.
Neither he nor Sophia knew that this world was set inside a game. If they did, they would know what the “routes” and “ends” I sometimes talked about meant, and they wouldn’t look so weirded out. And they definitely would have mentioned it in the 10 years we’d known each other.
So, it was only reasonable to think that the note had been put in there by someone else who had entered the castle, or more specifically the storage room.
But who? If this person knew about the game, were they another person reincarnated into this world from Japan?
While I was walking alongside Anne, thinking hard about the information I had collected so far, Pochi came out of my shadow all of a sudden and started running away while wagging his tail.
This is just like that time at the party…
I knew that a Dark Familiar like Pochi wouldn’t soil the castle floors or anything, but I still couldn’t let him run around by himself. I have to do something!
I forgot about Mother’s warning, pulled up my dress, and started running after Pochi as fast as I could.
“Young miss! Wait!” I heard Anne call out from behind me, but I was too busy running after my dog to worry about her.
Following him, I ended up in a dark hallway. It was weird that the hallway would be so dark, since it was still afternoon. I looked behind, and Anne was nowhere to be seen. I’m going to get scolded once I come back, aren’t I?
Anyway, I had seen this hallway somewhere. I picked up Pochi, who had finally calmed down, and looked around.
Oh, right, this is the same place he ran off to during the party!
The hallway had also looked very dark back then, but I hadn’t given it much thought, since it was at night.
Maybe there are a lot of trees planted around the windows or something.
I also saw that even though it was still pretty early in the day, the torches were already lit. I remembered that, during the party, I saw a woman in this hallway who told me that I wasn’t allowed to go any further.
I squinted to see through the darkness and made out the outline of a door. Was there a room at the end of the hallway? What kind of room could there be in the castle that people weren’t allowed to enter?
Curious, I started moving forward.
“Oh, a guest? That’s quite unusual,” said the cold voice of a woman from behind me.
I turned around and saw an elderly woman, followed by several servants, elegantly walking towards me.
Now that she was close, I could tell two things: the first was that she was probably somewhere in her fifties, and the second was that she looked so beautiful that, in her younger days, she must have been extremely popular.
“…My dog ran away, and I just followed him here, to catch him…”
The woman didn’t look angry, but since I was stepping in a place I had been told was off-limits, I thought I had to explain myself.
“Really? I am glad you were able to catch up to him,” she replied with a warm laugh. I was relieved that she wasn’t mad at me, but seeing her laugh so nonchalantly, I couldn’t keep myself from telling her what was on my mind.
“Excuse me… what is at the end of this hallway? It looks like there’s a door, so I think there must be some kind of room…”
“Oh?” replied the woman, blinking in surprise at my uncouth question. The servants behind her shot me cold stares.
I’m pretty sure I screwed up right here.
“Sorry, I was just wondering… I’m sorry I was so uncouth with my question,” I hurriedly apologized.
“Oh-hoh-hoh, do not worry,” laughed the woman. “We have nothing to hide here.” She then looked at the door behind me. “My son lives there,” she said.
“Your son?”
“Yes. He is well of age, but he refuses to leave his room — or do anything at all, really. Quite the troubled son, is he not?”
She sounded really casual despite the gravity of what she had said. First of all, I was surprised to know that there were shut-ins in this world as well.
“But,” she said, staring sadly at the door, “the reasons why he became like this are so serious that I cannot bring myself to force him out of his room. I let him stay there, and sometimes, like today, I visit him.”
“…That must be tough for you…”
Previously, I had considered shutting myself in the mansion to avoid the Catastrophic Bad Ends, but seeing the sad expression of a mother worrying about her child made me glad that I had ultimately decided against it.
Still, a shut-in inside the castle… who could that be?
Ah! I’m pretty sure that only the royal family and the servants live inside the castle. The servants have their own, separate quarters… and this place doesn’t look like that, which means that the shut-in is a member of the royal family! Unbelievable! And wait, if he’s royalty, then his mother must be…
“Excuse me, but you are…” I said.
“Oh, I have not introduced myself yet. I am Estella Stuart,” she replied.
“Stuart…?” I said to myself, surprised, as she chuckled.
“In regards to my rank, I am the dowager queen and stepmother of the current king. But now I am but an old woman, living away from the public eye and with too much free time on her hands.”
I’ve been talking to the former queen without any hint of formality… that’s why the servants were staring at me like that!
I introduced myself in a hurry. “I am Katarina Claes, daughter of Duke Claes.”
“Oh? The Katarina from the rumors?”
Rumors? What rumors?
“Oh-hoh-hoh, I am glad I could meet you,” she said with a smile. She seemed like a calm, kind woman.
“Katarina!”
“Lady Katarina!”
I heard two voices calling for me — Jeord and Anne. They were probably looking for me.
“I wish I could have spoken with you a while longer,” Lady Estella said, still chuckling. “But it seems that there are people looking for you. Let us meet again.”
She gestured for me to go towards Jeord and Anne. I bowed to her like a proper noblewoman should and went back through the hallway.
I walked back to Jeord and Anne, who started scolding me. “Don’t run around with your dress pulled up,” “Don’t do weird things on your own,” “Think before you act,” and so on and so forth. I knew it was my fault for running off like that, but I still felt dejected.
I also found out that it was Anne who had told Jeord that I was lost inside the castle, and the two had then started looking for me together.
“I’m very sorry. I heard that you were very busy with work today, and I made you lose time looking for me,” I apologized, and he looked at me in confusion.
“I did indeed have official business today,” he said, “however it was only a greeting which lasted but a few minutes. Who, exactly, told you that I was busy?”
“Keith told me, but I guess he was wrong.”
“Oh, I see,” he said, with a smile that seemed to be hiding something.
We went back to the guest room while chatting, and I was served tea and pastries. That was the second time that day, but I definitely wasn’t going to complain. Chasing Pochi had made me thirsty. As soon as I took my first sip of tea, Jeord started talking.
“How far into the castle did you go?” he asked. He and Anne had seen me walk towards them from deep inside the hallway, and they had apparently been wondering about that. I told him about my encounter with Lady Estella.
“Oh, so you met the dowager queen,” he murmured, staring down pensively. His usual smile was nowhere to be seen, and instead he had a concerned expression.
This must mean I’ve done something really bad this time…
“I shouldn’t have spoken so casually to her… I didn’t even know who she was,” I said, and Jeord looked at me, his expression still troubled.
“Not at all. Since the previous king died, she has avoided the public eye almost completely. Most people our age would not know her appearance, and, in any case, she is not the kind of person to be offended at not being recognized. You should not worry about it.”
“I see! So, what’s the problem?”
“Problem? What do you mean?” he asked, surprised.
“Well, you look so distressed…”
“Oh, that is what you meant,” he said, laughing gloomily. “I was simply embarrassed.”
“Embarrassed? Why?”
“Because you have come to know a most unfortunate truth about my family — the fact that my uncle has barricaded himself in his room and has not left it in years. We are not actively hiding that, nor is it a complete secret, but it certainly is not something we are proud of.”
The royal family would never be proud of an adult shutting himself inside the castle, that much was clear.
“But I heard that there were very serious reasons why he started doing that,” I said, remembering what the former queen had told me. Maybe he was scared about some Catastrophic Bad Ends waiting for him outside his room.
“Indeed, he has his reasons. But those, too, all relate to trifles amongst relatives… Katarina, you do know that the previous king had concubines, yes?”
“Yes, I know that much.”
Sorcié’s current king (Jeord’s father) only had one wife (Jeord’s mother) and no concubines. And since he already had four sons ready to succeed him, he had announced that he didn’t plan to take on any concubines in the future. I didn’t know about other kingdoms, but, at least here in Sorcié, monogamy was the norm.
However, I had heard that the ancient practice of holding concubines still remained in high society, with some nobles going as far as having several lovers. Apparently, the former king was one such noble. Because of my young age, the only king I directly knew of was the current one, so I didn’t have any more details.
I just figured that, as the most powerful person in the kingdom, kings would have to take concubines for political reasons, and I didn’t give it much thought. If anything, I was a bit surprised that the current king had only one wife.
“I see. But do you know how many?”
“…I don’t. Sorry,” I apologized for my ignorance. Maybe I’d heard about it before entering society as an adult and then forgot it.
Jeord shook his head. “No, it is expected that you would not know that. The royal family has tried to keep that embarrassing number hidden from public knowledge.”
“Did he have so many that it’d be embarrassing?”
“Yes. He felt five official concubines, but in truth he had so many that it would be impossible to count. And, as if that was not enough, he also had an incredible number of lovers,” he said with disgust on his face. “That information is supposed to be a royal secret, but all nobles at least as old as my parents know about it. Indeed, your father probably knows too, but elected not to tell you — this is no topic a young lady would want to hear about.”
Knowing that your king — well, former king, but still — had so many concubines and lovers wasn’t exactly pleasant. Much more so because my parents were so tenderly in love with each other that the idea of having a concubine just sounded unfaithful.
“You can imagine that such a large number of concubines would lead to a large number of children. As you know, in our kingdom the king personally selects his successor from amongst his sons, but the former king left this world before he had the chance to do so. Obviously, this resulted in a heated battle for the throne.”
The king had died before deciding who would get his crown, and left behind several children. Jeord went on to explain that the queen had no children of her own, and the concubines’ children joined the race, either supported by the high-ranked families of their mothers or by unrelated nobles who hoped to raise their social status. I was too young to have any direct memories of it, but most of the candidates either lost their lives or were exiled during this dispute, which lasted almost two whole years.
I already knew about this battle for succession, but I didn’t know that it had been this extreme. According to Jeord, that was because the details had been kept hidden as much as possible.
“My father was the son of one of the official concubines, a woman of high rank, but he did not care much for the crown. He says that he entered the conflict because he could not stand how unsightly the whole affair had become, but I do not know the truth about it. I only know that my uncle was the king’s youngest son, so his life was spared and he was left to live inside the castle. However, he has not left his room since,” he said, looking sad.
Even if his life had been spared, he had probably suffered tremendously at the hand of the other competitors. Now, Jeord said, the former queen was taking care of him.
With Sorcié as peaceful as it was now, this was hard to believe. And the fact that it hadn’t happened that long ago made it even scarier.
“I am far from proud of these circumstances, and I was anything but eager to talk about them, but I also did not want to hide the truth from you,” Jeord said, dropping his gaze. “My grandfather’s licentiousness disgusts me, and I have no intention of becoming like him. However, I cannot deny that I am his grandson.”
Jeord sighed, then went on. “Katarina, do you hate me now that you know what kind of promiscuous blood flows in my veins?” As he asked this, he had neither his shady smile nor his usual confident expression. I had never seen him look like this.
So that was why he didn’t want to talk about it. It was true that I couldn’t think well of a man who surrounded himself with dozens of women like that, but… “The former king and you are two different people. Something like this would never change my opinion of you, Prince Jeord,” I told him with a smile. “I also know for sure that you’re not the kind of person to be unfaithful or play around with women.”
I had known him for around ten years now, so I had a pretty good idea of the kind of person he was. “So don’t worry about your granddad, and… Prince Jeord? What’s wrong?”
He was looking down even lower than before, hiding his face. I made to get up and move towards him, worried that he may be feeling sick, but he gestured for me to stop.
“I am sorry. Please… wait for a while. I cannot… show you my face right now,” he said.
Why couldn’t he show me his face? I took a good look at him and noticed that his ears were turning red. Maybe he had gotten a nosebleed from the heat! It was a very hot day, he had been running around looking for me, and to top it all off, he had been drinking this hot tea.
The handsome, perfect prince with a nosebleed… of course he wouldn’t want to show that to anyone.
Understanding the situation, I went back to eating pastries, trying as much as possible not to look at him, waiting for his nosebleed to stop. Look at me. I’ve grown into such a thoughtful lady.
After a while, presumably after his nosebleed stopped, he turned his beautiful face back up. “Thank you, Katarina,” he said with a smile.
Pretending not to see a nosebleed was expected of a noblewoman such as myself. Taking care not to look at his nose, I smiled back, saying, “You’re welcome.”
After chatting about unrelated things for some time, I remembered why I’d come here in the first place.
“Ah, Prince Jeord, I meant to ask you something. Did you see the book that was inside the bag I forgot here at the castle?”
“Book? Oh, you mean that kind of book which you and your friends like reading. I saw the cover, but I did not open it. Why do you ask?” he asked suspiciously.
“It’s nothing. It’s just not the kind of book that I’d like boys to see,” I said, making up a random excuse.
“Is that so?” he asked with a smile.
That meant that Jeord probably didn’t know about the note. My investigation had been fruitless.
“I have work tomorrow, so I’d better go,” I said after a while, and he saw me off to the gate.
“I will go to visit you the next time I have a free day,” he said, smiling at me.
“I know how busy you are, so don’t worry if you can’t.”
“Not being able to see you is what worries me the most,” he whispered sensually in my ear, making my whole body go limp.
So little time after having a nosebleed, he had already got his cool back, and his mannerisms were as sexy as usual. I didn’t expect anything less from FL1’s main love interest.
I let the breeze coming into the carriage’s window cool off my blushing face and eventually reached home. Once there, I worked in the fields for the first time in a long while.
Ah, farming is awesome. I feel so relaxed the second I take my trusty hoe in my hands. And the weather’s so good! This is the perfect day off.
However I had learned nothing new about the note, and had no more leads left to follow. Unsure of what I should do next, I stared at the blue sky, waiting for a good idea to come to me. None came.
I stayed in the fields until it was time for dinner. Both my parents and Keith had already come back home, so we all ate together.
The fact that I had run around in the castle while pulling up my dress had already been reported to Mother, who ignored the fact that it had been an emergency and got mad at me, giving me a lecture so long and tiresome that, when I finally went back to my room, I ended up falling asleep before I could worry about any of the many things that I had to think about regarding my future.
★★★★★★
After finishing what little official business I was required to attend to in the morning, I returned to the office that was adjacent to my room to begin work on some documents.
That morning’s matters had taken less time than I had expected, so as soon as I was done with this paperwork, I would be free. Since my fiancée Katarina was not working that day, I could visit her house to see her.
Just when I was done and preparing to leave, I heard that Anne, Katarina’s maid, had lost sight of her inside the castle. I had been intending to visit her, but to think that she had already come here — and that she was lost, at that…
I met with the maid and asked her for details. It turned out that Katarina had been chasing around her dog, who had run away. Losing sight of one’s mistress inside the castle would normally be worthy of reprehension, but, considering that her mistress was Katarina, if anything I felt pity for the poor maid.
My lovely fiancée was not quite like any other noblewoman. When she ran, she did not hold anything back. If she was wearing a dress, she would just pull it up and go off at such a speed that no normal woman could hope to catch up to her.
I thanked the maid for her efforts and helped her look for her mistress, deducing where Katarina could be based on the direction she had been running towards.
“Katarina!” I called out again and again while making my way through the hallways.
After a while, I finally heard her carefree voice, replying casually from deep within the castle.
“Yes?”
She came towards us, and I made sure to sternly tell her not to do weird things on her own, and to think before running off. After I had scolded her, and she had realized that her maid had requested my help in looking for her, she apologized to me.
“I’m very sorry. I heard that you were very busy with work today, and I made you lose time looking for me,” she said.
That was most curious. My official work for the day was a simple greeting, and my schedule was no secret. I asked her who had told her that, and she said that it was her brother.
My rival in love had lied to her so that she would interact with me as little as possible. I made a mental note to give him a piece of my mind at the next opportunity.
We eventually reached the guest room, where the servants had prepared tea, and I asked Katarina something that I had been wondering about — namely, how far into the castle she had gone.
She had run towards me and her maid from deep inside the hallway. It was not that there was anything dangerous in the building, but I could not control the whole place at once. I needed to know how far she had wandered in order to properly admonish her.
With her usual casual, endearing expression, she gave me the most surprising answer: she had reached that place, the one where we normally did not go, and there she had met the former queen.
That room, hidden in a corner that people rarely approached, was surrounded on the outside by trees, covering it in darkness even during the day. I remembered thinking of it as a somewhat frightening place as a child.
While I tried to recall at what age I first found out about my recluse uncle, who was not himself much older than my older brothers, Katarina suddenly frowned and apologized about not knowing the former queen. I told her that it was not a problem at all — Katarina certainly was far from good at remembering people, but, in this case, it was not her fault.
“I see! So, what’s the problem?” she asked, looking even more troubled.
As it turned out, she had seen my expression grow concerned, although I had not noticed it myself. That would normally never happen to me, but my self-control was not as steady when I was with her.
I should just tell her the whole truth, I thought. After knowing her for all these years, I understood that Katarina was completely immune to subtlety.
I honestly told her that I was embarrassed that she had found out about the unfortunate circumstances of one of my relatives. She cocked her head to one side, looking genuinely confused. I told her that the man refusing to leave his room was my uncle, and she remarked that she had heard there were serious reasons for why he was doing so.
Of course, I thought to myself, surprised. How could I forget that my fiancée is such a person? She would never despise someone because of something so superficial. She always gets to know people before judging them.
That is why I decided to tell her what I had not planned to reveal until after our marriage — the truth about my despicable grandfather…
I told her about him, his promiscuity, the way he used his power to gather women around him, and the terrible battle for the throne that ensued because of him. She listened to my explanation without ever averting her gaze.
Finally, I mustered my courage and told her my opinion of him. “My grandfather’s licentiousness disgusts me, and I have no intention of becoming like him. However, I cannot deny that I am his grandson,” I said, unable to contain a sigh.
I then asked her, “Do you hate me now that you know what kind of promiscuous blood flows into my veins?”
If I may say so myself, I had always been an extremely gifted prince, without any noticeable flaw. I was good at reading people and well-liked within noble society. But, even then, there was nothing I could do about this heritage of mine.
No matter what I thought of him, I could not change the fact that the former king, a man whose mere mention was enough to upset many people, was my grandfather. That was why I had hesitated to speak about him to Katarina before our wedding.
I was worried that she would despise him, and, by extension, his grandson — me. I knew that Katarina was not like other people. I knew that she likely would not care, but still, I could not shake this fear.
I waited for the answer like a criminal waiting for judgment.
“The former king and you are two different people. Something like this would never change my opinion of you, Prince Jeord. I also know for sure that you’re not the kind of person to be unfaithful or play around with women.”
That was even more than I could have hoped for. Not only did she not think less of me, but she also said that she knew that I was not the kind of person to act like my grandfather.
I once again felt that Katarina Claes was the greatest person I had ever met, and meeting her was, in fact, the happiest thing to have ever happened to me.
I could not keep my face from turning red as my composure fell apart, but I did not want Katarina to see me like that. I hid my face and thanked her.
When I finally regained enough self-composure to look back at her, she was smiling at me. We chatted some more about other trivial matters, and then I escorted her to the carriage that took her home.
I promised to visit her as soon as I had the time. Missing the point, she said not to worry if I could not make it. I whispered, “Not being able to see you is what worries me the most,” in her ear, and the way she blushed was so lovely that my expression risked falling apart once more.