LS 06

Chapter 06

‘Have you heard about that bizarre contraption the Bernards made? Just looking at it makes me dizzy and nauseous. I’d rather die of boredom riding in a carriage.’

The voice of Aunt Audrey, who had visited her father about five days ago, replayed itself in her mind.

About half a year ago, an academic journal had reported that the Bernard family, who ran the Montgor Paper Company, had conducted an experiment to fly through the sky using heat.

Or had it been six days ago?

In truth, the timing was unimportant.

The dining table, far too expensive for their means, had one leg that creaked, while the cold candlesticks were thickly covered in clumps of candle wax.

On the table sat onion soup with enough onions to make one sick of them, bread that was neither hard nor soft, and eggs fried in oil.

Her father sat at the head of the table, with her two younger siblings seated opposite him.

Nothing about this morning was any different from any other.

And yet Dolores had been reminded of Aunt Audrey because her father, Count Simon Artois, had exactly the same color on his face as the dingy apron Aunt Audrey had been wearing that day.

“If this isn’t the end of the world, then what is?”

His face even seemed a little more comically red.

A living, breathing embodiment of stubbornness, her father was the kind of man whose molars would ache if he failed to read the same newspaper at the same time every morning.

And yet, before he had even begun eating, he was already worked up.

“To think the Marquess of Grinda would make such an outrageous statement! This—this has to be some kind of mistake!”

“……”

“They’re conspiring to slander His Highness Adrien in order to target Lenore…! The principles and rights those people keep talking about are ultimately even more absurd than those people claiming they can fly through the sky, and yet they don’t understand that! Ah!”

Dolores watched in real time as the Romerto Journal—one of Bellof’s three major newspapers—was crumpled miserably by her father’s fury, flew through the air at high speed, and landed on the threadbare carpet.

It wasn’t difficult to guess what had angered Simon.

The answer was printed boldly across the front page.

[‘A Changed Grinda!’ Marquess Hardy de Perpeng Pulls Out His Beard! Ninac’s Betrayal!]

Had it been around this time last year that His Highness Adrien, the First Prince of Bellof, had renounced his position as Crown Prince and departed?

The Marquess Hardy de Perpeng had been the lord of the Orsh region, who had died two years ago. He had caused an uproar throughout Bellof society by claiming that His Highness Adrien had been secretly communicating with a foreign power.

The Marquess of Grinda, a staunch member of the orthodox Lion Party, had been someone who trusted and believed in the First Prince until the very end, and had fiercely attacked the Marquess Hardy de Perpeng.

The fact that things had ended up like this was more than enough to crush the hopes of people like her father, who still held onto the hope that His Highness the First Prince would one day return.

“Getting so worked up is bad for your heart. You collapsed last year, remember? The physician said you shouldn’t get excited.”

“Anyone with a passionate heart ought to be outraged by this! It is only right that they be outraged!”

Yes, yes.

Dolores rose from her seat and picked up the newspaper.

She had only glanced at it while intending to return it to her father, but the contents were truly depressing.

The next page, and the page after that, contained nothing that would cheer her father up.

There was an article about the wife of a certain lord who had squandered part of her family’s fortune on gambling before her husband’s death.

Another article covered the aftermath of the Bonel family’s recent success in purchasing a title through a blatantly ridiculous transaction.

Apparently, they had celebrated by literally hoisting one another into the air and throwing an enormous champagne party to announce that they had officially become nobles.

Neither story looked particularly pleasant, but her father especially hated the latter.

“What are you standing there reading?”

Her father urged her impatiently, holding out his hand.

Dolores suddenly realized she had been standing there and handed him the newspaper.

“Another article about the Bonels. I don’t think those people have any sense of shame.”

“It would be fortunate if they merely lacked shame. This is what happens when fools accept anyone just because they have a little money. Those idiotic Bellofians…”

Ah.

A mistake.

She had inadvertently triggered another one of her father’s long-winded speeches.

Her father had a tendency to obsessively delve into political circumstances that had absolutely nothing to do with him.

He even believed there was some particular faction plotting against Bellof.

Uncle Rudolph summed up her father’s condition in a single sentence:

“He’s got a political illness.”

“Weeds would be more useful than those people. I cannot understand why the royal family fails to see that the real problem is allowing these nouveau riches to run wild without knowing their place.”

Dolores met the eyes of Anais, who was resting her chin on her hand across the table with an expression of boredom.

Anais was unusually intelligent for her age, and equally proud, so whenever their father started talking like this, she almost never listened.

Her attention had already shifted to the pepper shaker.

“Another problem is that they don’t even know what they should actually be learning, yet they only care about useless private education such as academies and whatnot…”

“A problem indeed. We happen to have one academy student in this household, too.”

As Anais reached toward the pepper shaker, she fell victim to Pablo’s mischief.

Pablo, who was currently at home for vacation from Sophino Academy, behaved as though he suffered from some sort of illness that compelled him to devise a new prank every moment.

With a strange dolphin-like squeal, Pablo snatched the pepper shaker away, and an inevitable quarrel broke out.

“Give it.”

“Nope.”

Dolores reached under the table and lightly smacked both of her younger siblings on the legs.

“Ow.”

“Ah.”

“Quiet! Quiet! Ana! Show some decorum!”

Their father shouted.

The arrow of his anger, however, landed on Dolores rather than Pablo, and Anais’s expression immediately turned into a pout.

“In any case, the people you associate with matter. You must never associate with greedy people who happen to have a few paltry coins. Especially you, Pablo.”

“Can’t we just be friends with everyone? The more friends you have, the better, right?”

Her father glared fiercely and sprinkled salt over his eggs.

“No.”

“But—”

“Ahem! Pablo! The reason you need to graduate from Sophino Academy is so that you can learn the level of refinement possessed by the people you will meet there. It is not so that you can associate with commoners!”

And once again, her father’s attention returned to Sophino.

Her father had long taken pride in the fact that Pablo attended Sophino Academy, while simultaneously harboring an inferiority complex about it.

At least, that was how it seemed to Dolores.

Pablo answered meekly, “Yes…” and lowered his head.

Only then did their father smile in satisfaction.

Leaning slightly toward Dolores, Anais muttered as though speaking to herself,

“I miss Uncle Rudolph so much.”

There really was no one other than Uncle Rudolph who could save them from moments like this.

After lunch, Father went out.

He had an appointment to meet with members of the Platypus Party at an inn in the city.

Father considered going around meeting influential figures to be his duty.

The house became little more than a lawless territory once he left.

Her younger siblings, who had behaved so obediently whenever Father was around, became like colts with their reins cut loose.

They paid no attention to Dolores or Uncle Rudolph either.

Today, Anais confessed to something she probably could have kept to herself: she had secretly read Pablo’s diary.

Pablo immediately retaliated by throwing Anais’s beloved doll into the fireplace.

Fortunately, it wasn’t fireplace season yet.

However, because the soot and piles of ash from previous use had yet to be cleaned out, Anais’s doll emerged looking absolutely miserable.

“Are you crazy? Are you seriously crazy?!”

“You looked at it first! You went into my room!”

“You were the one who left the door wide open, you idiot!”

“Ebeeeeeeeee.”

The screams and shouting never stopped.

The seventeen-year-old tomboyish girl and the fifteen-year-old boy were simply too incompatible to live under the same roof.

Ignoring the noise ringing painfully in her ears, Dolores cleaned up the dining table, dragging one leg slightly as she walked.

Normally, Anais helped her little by little, but today, it seemed impossible to rely on her.

Dolores returned to her room.

Her second-floor room received plenty of sunlight.

An old bed that creaked with every movement and a bedside table were positioned toward the center-right.

Two drawers stood beside the window, while a bookshelf and a wardrobe with a broken handle stood to their left.

Downstairs, the bickering voices of her two younger siblings still filled the house.

My head hurts.

Dolores hung her cane against the wall and walked toward the window, dragging her left leg slightly.

Perhaps she had overexerted herself.

Her left leg, which had difficulty finding its strength, trembled intermittently.

It happened more frequently on days when she suffered from migraines.

Warm light streamed diagonally across the windowsill.

Even though it was autumn, the light felt almost like spring, as though something were blooming.

She pulled her heavier leg up onto the chair, rested her chin on her knee, and gazed at the countless specks of dust dancing in the sunlight.

The air inside the house was not cold at all, yet her back felt chilly.

Perhaps it was because, once again, her father’s sharp contempt and disgust had accompanied her like an unpleasant garnish.

She missed her mother, whose warmth had run deep beneath her rough exterior.

Dolores brushed her ripe wheat-colored hair behind her ear and lifted her head.

Her vivid scarlet eyes reflected the two picture frames sitting atop the bookshelf directly in front of her.

The dust covering the frames was as thick as the time they had been neglected, and as distant as lingering regret.

It had been a confusing day, as though she had left her mind somewhere outside the house and forgotten to bring it back.

Time passed agonizingly slowly.

Eventually, in order to escape from her own tedious thoughts, Dolores opened a book of fiction someone else had created.

As she repeatedly tried to pour her mind into another world, the pain in her knee gradually subsided.

Meanwhile, the downstairs had grown quiet before she even realized it.

The white light shining through the window slowly turned a deep reddish hue.

How long had she been reading?

Anais suddenly flung open the door and poked her head inside.

“Can I come in? A letter came for you.”