He was a genius, but an unlucky one. After developing that medicine, he lived splendidly for two years, and then in the end…
Lebert had been driven out of the palace when it came out that he suffered from necrophilia. No one knew exactly what became of him afterward, but I had heard it ended badly.
“A shame. A fine physician, too. If he had only listened to me, he could have lived.”
I remembered what Dayson had said when the news of Lebert’s death reached him. Looking back, Lebert’s death had been suspicious too.
“He’s in a more dangerous place than I expected.”
Cho spoke while I was still turning my memories of Lebert over in my head.
“Where is he?”
“Under a black-market dealer. Apparently he works smuggling dangerous goods hidden inside people’s bodies. Why are you looking for a creature like that?”
Cho said she did not like that I was looking for Lebert. She called him a man who could not possibly be of any use to us.
That was only because she did not know the talent he had.
Lebert was a genius physician. He had been active for only a short time, but it was thanks to the foundations he laid in those two years that medicine advanced by leaps and bounds.
Still, a black-market dealer, of all things… When I thought of the many rare substances that had gone into the painkiller he made, it was not such an unlikely place.
“Can you bring him to me, Aunt?”
“If there’s money. Those black-market bastards buy their kids from the slums, don’t they?”
I held out the jewelry box I had prepared. Cho’s eyes wavered fiercely for an instant.
Since I could not freely get my hands on cash, all I could offer were necklaces, rings, and other accessories I had been given since childhood, but there were a great many of them.
And I haven’t even taken out a quarter of it yet.
And I also had Mother’s safe.
“Shh. This is just between us, Diana. Inside here are Mommy’s treasures.”
“What are they?”
“Hmm, what could they be? What do you want them to be?”
“A doll?”
A memory from my childhood came back. Before my regression, I had never even thought of opening Mother’s safe.
I had assumed it held her memories, and I believed that protecting them was the proper way to honor the dead.
But after the regression, I became curious. What was inside?
Not long ago, I had opened that safe. It was packed with an enormous quantity of jewelry and hard-to-find magic tools.
But what caught my eye was something else.
[The first clothes Diana wore right after she was born.]
[The first picture Diana ever drew.]
Unlike the other things shoved carelessly into the topmost shelf, those had been arranged neatly, like true treasures.
Every one of Mother’s treasures had to do with me.
I had cried so much the day I found them. Remembering it again made the bridge of my nose sting.
I did not want to dispose of Mother’s things carelessly, but wasn’t it right to try everything I could first, and use them only when I truly ran out of other options?
For today, at least, what I already had would be enough.
Cho opened the jewelry box I had held out and took out only the necklaces and rings. She held the gems up to the light, weighed them in her hand, and put exactly half into her pocket.
“This is enough.”
“You could take all of it and put it in your pocket, Aunt.”
“I work for what I’m paid, and I take only what I can work for. Eat too much and you get a stomachache. Write that down.”
Cho occasionally showed that she was, in fact, an aunt. She was different from the woman who had asked on the day we met what I was going to give her.
When I stared at her in surprise, Cho caught the tip of my nose and shook it.
“Aaah, Aunt!”
Cho watched me flail with delighted eyes, cackled, and put one leg up on the window frame. I rubbed my nose and said,
“At least have a cup of tea before you go.”
“You said you were in a hurry, didn’t you? I’ll bring him tonight.”
Cho simply hopped over the window and vanished.
“This is the fourth floor. I hope she’s all right.”
She must be all right, or she wouldn’t have jumped. I stared at the window Cho had disappeared through for a good while, then shut it. The wind was chilly.
“Now, let’s get some rest.”
I stretched long, and just as I was about to settle comfortably onto the sofa,
“My lady.”
Matthew, the butler, came to see me. In his hands he carried a heavy stack of documents.
“Come in, Matthew.”
I straightened my crooked ribbon and nodded. Matthew hesitated, then came into the room.
Worry had settled into his eyes as he looked at me.
“Matthew?”
He stood there holding the documents without a word, so I prodded him. If he had business with me, I wished he would say it quickly and leave.
I was a well-fed child, but if you used your head all day and worried about the future, you were bound to get tired.
Lebert was coming this evening, and I had wanted to rest until then.
“Documents have come up regarding a revision of the provincial estate tax law.”
So much for resting.
The moment I heard Matthew, I gave up on it.
A complicated tax matter, of all things.
The taxes the people of the kingdom paid were of two kinds. One was the tax paid to the king, the other the tax paid to the lord of the land.
The provincial estate tax law was the law on the tax that the residents of an estate paid to its master. It could be revised once every four years, when the Head of House and the vassals gathered together.
It had been revised when I was eleven, so this year was not a revision year. And yet the related documents had come up?
The timing was wrong. It meant something had gone wrong.
Come to think of it, there was a riot over taxes this year.
What exactly had happened? My memory was hazy.
“I’ll handle it myself, so don’t trouble yourself.”
Count Kolkos had loathed it whenever I took an interest in the affairs of the estate, and around that time he had thrown banquets every other day to keep me distracted.
No wonder I can’t remember.
“Give them here.”
I held out a hand to Matthew.
“Pardon?”
Matthew asked back in confusion.
Lately people kept making me say everything twice.
What was wrong with them, honestly? Did I have to make a magic tool that fit in the ear and magnified voices?
Come to think of it, the mad physician made that kind of magic tool too, didn’t he?
I itched to meet him quickly. But before that, I had to look at the documents Matthew had brought.
“Didn’t you bring them to show me?”
“That is so, but…”
“Then hand them over.”
“Will you be able to read documents on tax law, my lady? They are very difficult.”
Matthew was quietly looking down on me. But his words did not make me angry.
Because the thirteen-year-old me had been a child who kept as far from studying as possible and knew nothing of the world. Not that I had known the world well even after I grew up.
That was why I had been fooled by fools out to swindle me, and ended up as dew on the execution ground.
But I was, and it is rather awkward to say so myself, a genius.
After meeting Dayson, I threw myself into my studies with the single-minded wish to become a good queen, and that was when I discovered my own extraordinary gifts.
In a year I mastered the continent’s five languages, and in my second year I became well-versed in all of the continent’s history. With my exceptional mind, I helped the kingdom develop in many fields.
But all of it became Dayson’s achievement, not mine.
“Diana, I don’t like you putting yourself forward in front of other people. Other men will look at you. Isn’t my love alone enough for you?”
“When did you think of all this! You’ll let me announce it under my name, right? I adore how hard you work for me. Diana, you know my success is your success, don’t you?”
“Diana, you researched the tax law? How wonderful. That’s exactly what His Majesty has been interested in. I’ll go and speak well of it to him. I love you. As expected, you’re my best partner.”
I believed what Dayson said. That he did not want me noticed because he loved me.
Fooled by the garbage line that my success was his success, I lived as his shadow.
I was a once-in-a-generation genius whom the academies of every nation were hunting for with burning eyes, but unfortunately,
all I did was study and chase romance, and I wrecked my whole life.
No, wait, my ruin was not my fault! Those damned bastards stabbed me in the back! Ungrateful scum.
“My lady? If you do not understand it, you need not look at it.”
Matthew, mistaking my deeply creased face for a failure to understand the documents, spoke up.
“No. I can read them. Give them here.”
Matthew set the documents on my desk with a doubtful look. There were so many that the little three-legged table wobbled as it tried to hold its balance.
If Matthew had not caught it in time, the documents would have been a mess.
“Replace the desk in my bedroom first, right away.”
“But did you not say you liked that desk? That it was pretty and compact, and you were happy with it…”
I had said that. I tended to forget it, but I was a thirteen-year-old child who liked cute, pretty things.
“Leave that one as it is. I mean to put in one more desk. I think I’ll be working in my bedroom from time to time from now on. There’s quite a lot to do as Head of House, isn’t there?”
“Are you thinking of taking up the duties of Head of House in earnest, my lady?”
Matthew’s eyes narrowed. Under that appraising, measuring gaze, I raised my head and looked straight at him.
“Why? Don’t you trust me, Matthew?”
I asked, and searched Matthew’s expression for every detail.
There was a spy of Count Kolkos’s in our household. Information from the house leaked out this way and that, and it had been weighing on me.
I trusted no one except Janice. Matthew, who was the third generation of his family to serve as butler to House Irenber, was also a subject of suspicion.
If Matthew doubted me and obstructed my work, there was a chance he was Count Kolkos’s lackey.
Whose side was Matthew on?
“No. How could that be? It is only that…”
Matthew’s voice trembled slightly.
“Only?”
“You always said it was your dream to marry into a good family and live in comfort…”
Had I said anything so embarrassing?
My face flushed red.
“I don’t remember.”
For now, I feigned ignorance.
“Before that, you said you would live with the master and the mistress forever.”
If I was a genius, Matthew was a prodigy. His memory was precise.
“That one I remember. But that’s something every child says when they’re little.”
I was mortified by my past self, but I answered as though it were nothing, and fortunately Matthew let it drop without another word.
I tried to turn the conversation naturally to the tax problem.
“Thank you, my lady.”
But then, out of nowhere, Matthew bowed low at the waist.
“To hear that you have resolved to carry on House Irenber, my lady, this butler could die without regret. No, once you become the proper Head of House, I will be happy to die.”
