Dorothy went white at the sight of me crying like a small child.
It wasn’t quite shock—more that she had been struck so thoroughly senseless that language simply failed her.
“What are you crying for? What have you done that’s so praiseworthy?!”
“That’s exactly right. What have I done that’s praiseworthy. I just—I just feel so terrible about what happened to you, sis—WAAAAAAH—!”
Rolling, heaving sobs.
Reducing an opponent to stunned silence through sheer emotional devastation was a specialty of mine.
For the record, I had once received the highest praise from our notoriously stone-hearted acting instructor.
Why?
Having carried memories from a previous life, I suspected. My emotional range was simply richer than other children’s.
“Sis—when are you leaving—WAAAAAAH—!”
True acting, after all, delivers its most dramatic effect not through the face but through the whole body.
Thud.
I collapsed flat onto the floor and wailed with full-body commitment. Dorothy rolled her eyes toward the ceiling and pressed her fingers to her temple.
“Ugh… shut up. You’re giving me a headache.”
“But I feel so terrible—!”
Someone as self-centered as Dorothy felt no particular sympathy just because a child was crying.
“If you feel so terrible, stop sniveling and do something! Do you want to watch me have a complete breakdown?!”
She would rather turn it back on you.
“I don’t know what to do—!”
“God, you’re useless! Fine! If you feel guilty, make yourself useful until I leave! What am I supposed to do with someone this hopeless?!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The moment I heard what I’d been waiting for, I killed the tears on the spot.
Then I hastily wiped my damp cheeks with the back of my hand, collected myself with brisk efficiency, got to my feet, and picked up a cloth.
“I’m so sorry—so at least let me clean your room.”
“…Do whatever you want. At least you have some shame.”
Dorothy’s temper eased a fraction at my submissive manner. She said nothing more, only crossed her arms and gave a silent nod.
Slide.
While Dorothy rested in her chair with her eyes closed, I crept quietly to the dresser and eased a drawer open.
Now came the important part.
Watching her carefully, waiting for the precise moment her eyes shut completely—I slipped a few of Dorothy’s labeled belongings into my pocket without a sound.
Then I turned back to her with freshly reddened eyes and clasped both hands together.
“I’m so sorry—could I also tidy your things?”
“Get it done quickly. I want to be alone.”
Dorothy waved a dismissive hand without opening her eyes. She had clearly stopped paying me any attention.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Heave-ho.
I scooped up an armful of Dorothy’s clothes from the laundry basket, waddled out of the room with the load pressed against my chest, and left.
Success.
“Honestly. She has absolutely no guard up. I suppose she assumes a little child poses no real threat.”
There was a specific reason I had gone through all this trouble to take Dorothy’s belongings.
Dorothy was House Foss’s only vulnerability inside this castle.
Exposing her as a spy at precisely this moment would give Calypse a meaningful advantage before he walked into Doctia.
So then—how to expose Dorothy as a spy?
A report.
The progress logs that field agents sent to their handlers on a regular basis. Find that, and everything would unravel.
“Oof. This is heavy.”
I lugged myself into the laundry room, dragged over a basin filled with ice-cold water, and shook the clothes into it.
Why was I suddenly doing laundry, you ask?
Because spies don’t write their reports on paper.
Paper was far too obvious. The risk of discovery was too great.
So the agents of House Foss wrote their reports directly onto the clothes they wore. A spritz of a vial containing the Poison Affinity compound made the writing vanish completely—but retrieving it was straightforward enough.
“Soak it in ice water for thirty minutes, and there you have it.”
This simple yet ingenious method meant that House Foss’s field agents had never once been exposed through their own correspondence.
Why?
…Because only a fool would put clothes in ice water when doing laundry.
“Oof. I’m exhausted already.”
Now I just had to wait thirty minutes.
I gave my hardworking arms a grateful pat with my fists, rewarding them for their effort.
Thirty minutes passed—
Hmmm.
The clear ice water began to shimmer with a soft blue luminescence.
It was like watching sunlight push through cloud cover and rise upward from the ground itself. The blue light rippled outward in all directions, then settled into a steady rhythm and began stitching letters across the fabric.
Dorothy’s report.
“There it is. The maid’s uniform was the report, just as I thought.”
I folded the water-logged clothes into a neat square and placed them in the laundry basket.
Then I arranged the items I had taken from Dorothy—a grown-up novel with touch this and die scrawled on the cover, a handkerchief embroidered with her name, and a pocket watch—in a careful row on top of the report-bearing fabric.
In a few minutes, the maids who came to collect the laundry would find the bundle.
Everything here had Dorothy’s name on it. They would know exactly whose it was.
“Phew. After everything I’ve done, surely I’ve earned my right to survive. I really, truly want to be done with House Foss…”
I just want a normal life. So why does the bar for normal keep moving further out of reach?
Hoo. I let out a long breath, turned to leave—
“Who told you to do the laundry?”
“—!”
A black robe unfolded directly in front of me.
The gardener.
“…Pardon?”
When had he gotten here? I hadn’t sensed him arrive at all.
…Is this man really just a gardener?
The silence with which he had appeared sent a chill down my spine.
Though startled, I stepped forward on reflex and put my body between him and the laundry basket. His gaze drifted toward the clothes behind me, and I swallowed.
It genuinely unsettled me.
I had been trained to detect the presence of ordinary people without effort. Yet this man had appeared beside me without making a sound.
“Come out to the garden. I have sandwiches.”
Thankfully, he didn’t appear to have noticed the writing on the fabric.
“Yes, sir.”
I gave a nod and quietly released the breath I had been holding.
Not a single moment of rest.
________________________________________
“Tell me the truth.”
“Pardon?”
But the moment the gardener had drawn me out into the garden, he turned that sharp gaze on me immediately.
Had he figured it out? Already? Who is this man?
“…Did the maids tell you to do the laundry?”
“Oh. Phew.”
“What are you sighing about.”
He hadn’t pieced it together after all.
“No. Life is just very complicated today.”
I shook my head wearily from side to side, then returned to the matter at hand.
“Anyway—the maids didn’t ask me to do it.”
“Then why did you.”
“Call it an audition.”
“What kind of audition?”
“A please-look-favourably-upon-me audition. You know the sort.”
I attempted a precisely calibrated, radiant wink. He did not move a single muscle.
He merely sighed and put a hand on his hip.
“Regardless, no more laundry from now on.”
“Why?”
He frowned.
“What do you take House Krost for? These are not people who would have a five-year-old doing unpaid labour.”
The words were blunt. But behind them, faint and persistent, was worry.
Perhaps he had overheard the other maids talking. He may have assumed I’d been bullied, and had quietly taken to doing chores out of fear—or some desperate attempt to ingratiate myself.
At least the business with Dorothy is still safely hidden.
But wait—just for a moment.
This man was showing his warmth again right now, wasn’t he?
Which meant the reason he had come to find me was because he was worried I might have been mistreated.
…That was actually rather promising.
“Mister.”
“What.”
I rubbed my hands together with great deliberateness and shrugged.
“If you’ve developed even a small degree of sympathy for my circumstances, perhaps this would be the ideal opportunity to become an unlikely savior to a most deserving child—”
“Mouth.”
He’s not easy.
“One more word about guardians or children and I’ll throw you out.”
“Tch.”
“That mouth.”
His large hand reached toward my head in a way that might have been threatening—but instead hooked under my arms and lifted me clean into the air.
He grumbled the entire time. Yet he carried me directly to the garden bench and set me down with the same steady ease.
Then he placed a sandwich and a glass of orange juice into my hands.
“Close that mouth and eat. Before you get yourself into more trouble.”
“Thank you.”
Oh. A sandwich and orange juice.
Today was another day I had failed to become his daughter, but this was a respectable consolation prize.
I started eating without thinking too hard about anything—
“……?”
It was good.
Really good.
“You’re eating like you haven’t had a proper meal in weeks. Were you starving?”
Not at all.
There had been plenty of hungry days during spy training, but since arriving here I had eaten three full meals every single day.
Yet this sandwich—
Chew, chew.
It was so good it was almost unfair.
I must have been attacking it with undisguised urgency, because the man clicked his tongue and pulled a handkerchief from inside his robe.
“Slow down. If you choke, eating was pointless.”
He wiped the crumbs from the corners of my mouth with practiced ease. I barely noticed—I was far too focused on eating—and answered around a mouthful.
“A well-balanced meal is always cause for celebration!”
“Well-balanced?”
“Carbs, protein, fat.”
“Why abbreviate perfectly reasonable words?”
“Why would I waste breath saying them in full when a short version works just as well?”
“At this rate we won’t be able to understand each other at all.”
“Hehe.”
I laughed at his head-shaking and looked out at the garden, dangling my legs off the bench with a small, contented swing.
Having memories from a past life didn’t make me immune. Two years of living in a child’s body had done something to me—when I was genuinely happy, my body responded on its own.
But only next to comfortable people.
Actually—should I even be sitting here?
I looked around the garden properly for the first time, chewing thoughtfully.
I hadn’t noticed it before, but this turned out to be a private garden—accessible only to direct family members and their designated gardener.
Come to think of it, Dorothy had said something like that too.
“By the way.”
“What.”
“When does the Duke usually come to this garden?”
I had asked it without any particular intent behind it.
“……”
The easy flow of their conversation stopped as if a boulder had rolled silently into a stream.
“Mister?”
“……”
Even calling again received no response.
His face wasn’t visible beneath the hood, but the clean line of his jaw seemed to hold the faintest trace of tension.
“I suppose he comes when he wants to be alone,” he finally said, turning his gaze toward the garden. “It’s a private garden. No outsiders permitted.”
“Mm. I see…”
Strange. He answered that more seriously than I expected.
I shifted the direction of the conversation.
“Then I imagine you don’t exactly stop for a chat whenever you happen to see the Duke here.”
“Why?”
“Well—looking at the sort of person he is.”
“…What sort of person is he?”
I tilted my chin with an air of great principle.
“That’s a secret. I make it a point never to speak ill of people.”
“……?”
His lips, which had been still, parted slowly—as if he had just worked out what I meant.
The quiet man snapped his head around and shot back with a sharpness that came out of nowhere:
“Charismatic. Stoic. Discreet. For the head of a great house, those qualities are more than sufficient—what more could anyone possibly want?”
________________________________________
