After the brief commotion, a cautious voice spoke up.
“Rphina unni is kind of… a siscon, isn’t she? Of course, I agree that we need to protect you too. Lottie is delicate.”
“‘Siscon’? And every time you call her ‘Rphina,’ it sounds strange.”
“So you don’t know what a siscon is. It means your sibling relationship is really close. And her name… well, I thought I should leave off the family name.”
“Our family name is Rosena.”
“And yet it’s not Rosena Serphina. Western-style names are hard after all.”
The friend sitting beside me and enjoying tea together was Minabel.
For reference, it seemed another human soul had entered Minabel’s body. A soul from a very distant world—even from a completely different era.
I discovered that fact in the spring when I was fifteen.
“Lady Cherita, why are you taking your shoes off before entering the mansion?”
“Going into a bedroom with shoes on is strange… and besides, the floor is cold.”
She, who had supposedly mastered every rule of etiquette and decorum, suddenly became odd.
One day while we were dining together, she just sat there watching my mother and father, waiting for them to lift their spoons first.
Something about elders needing to eat first.
We hadn’t originally been that close, but she was acting so suspiciously that I had no choice but to corner her and demand answers.
“Who are you?”
“Huh? Wh-what?”
“You’ve been strange ever since the tea party when you were fifteen.”
Minabel panicked and tried to deny it, but eventually sighed and confessed everything.
“When I entered this world, I received a power called a status window…”
“What’s that?”
See? She admitted with her own mouth that she had “entered” this world.
“Well, if I had to explain it… it’s like a magical… blackboard? That shows people’s feelings or conditions. I don’t know who made it. And the special thing is that it only appears when you say ‘status window.’”
She even explained that what she saw wasn’t parchment, but a blackboard.
“You die on the night you turn nineteen. You’re poisoned and then killed by people who attack the estate. Your whole family gets branded as traitors and executed. That’s why I agree with Serphina unni’s plan! Th-though she might be a little overprotective.”
She spilled future information so smoothly it was as though she had already seen everything happen.
Back then, Minabel still hadn’t fully adapted to our culture, and she was completely different from the original image of Lady Minabel Cherita that I’d heard about.
I had heard she was calm and loved reading and painting, but the actual Minabel Cherita was lively and loved wandering around.
Since she came from somewhere else, she naturally knew very little about etiquette or noble customs.
More importantly, whenever she had a spare moment, she would stare into empty air muttering, “Status window.”
And yet not a single person—including the Marquis Cherita family—noticed that her soul had changed.
Just knowing these two secrets was painful enough, but we were still nowhere near the end.
Now then, where should I even begin?
The maid who became a recluse after getting pregnant with the Crown Prince’s child?
The ducal household secretly raising that prince’s child?
The Third Prince hiding his abilities?
Who knows. Maybe I’ll uncover another secret by accident today too.
“Tie, what are you thinking about so deeply?”
That’s why everyone in this world is hiding something except me.
And what am I hiding, you ask?
Looking at the worried Minabel, I smiled faintly as if lost in thought.
As though I had some terrible burden of my own.
“No, it’s just…”
I am hiding the fact that I have absolutely nothing to hide.
Flotie Rosena. The second daughter of House Rosena.
I’m not joking—other than being a little perceptive, I truly have no special talents whatsoever.
“My lady, what are you worrying about so much?”
“It’s just… suddenly I feel like I’m violating the natural order of the world.”
“…S-status window.”
The moment I answered Elian’s question, Minabel muttered under her breath.
Her eyes widened as though she’d seen a ghost in midair, and her face turned pale with horror.
“Why? Were you trying to look up information about me on your ‘magic blackboard’? Worried I might’ve been cursed by dark magic or something?”
I meant it teasingly, but her face turned even whiter.
I should probably be more careful about opening my mouth in the future.
“But is it really dark magic?”
“No! No!”
Ever since childhood, I had grown up feeling as though I were being isolated from the rest of the world.
Things that seemed painfully obvious to me somehow went completely unnoticed by everyone else.
Whenever I pointed out the flaws in someone’s awkward behavior, they reacted as though I’d stabbed directly into their fatal weakness.
And then they would always make me promise not to tell anyone.
That was what confused me all this time. Even if I kept my mouth shut, would that really protect their secret?
But somehow… nobody truly noticed.
“T-Tie, so…”
“It’s okay. You don’t have to explain. I’ll keep it secret.”
Why am I the only one who knows these things?
I had just let out a sigh when I noticed Elian perking up her ears and trying to listen in on our conversation. I raised a hand to stop her.
“Elian, don’t you have somewhere else you should be right now?”
“Huh? Where would I go?”
Elian, her chestnut hair neatly tied up, frowned slightly.
“I need to have a private conversation with Minabel right now.”
“But I’m one with you, my lady.”
“No thanks. Let’s be two separate people.”
When I coldly shook my head, a subtle look of hurt crossed Elian’s face. At this rate, she was going to ask to become blood sisters with me or something.
Pretending to be stern, I tilted my teacup.
“So, Elian, go back to your room.”
“My room? Do you mean your room, my lady?”
Why was it so hard for her to understand that I meant she should go take care of the child?
When I waved my hand impatiently, realization finally dawned on her, and her face instantly flushed bright red.
Seriously, stop getting emotional over every little thing.
“My lady, if you need me, call for me anytime. I’ll run straight here from the garden.”
“Don’t worry. If something happens to me, my sister will probably come crashing through the window anyway.”
Elian looked at me as though she might burst into tears at any second before hurrying away with quick little steps.
“You really care about that maid a lot.”
“She’s a good person. Loyal to me too…”
“Well, I heard you took her in when she was starving to death on the streets.”
“It’s just… I couldn’t ignore her. You would’ve done the same.”
“My child, you carry the blood of the noblest person in the empire. No matter what happens, Mother will protect you.”
After hearing something like that, there was no way I could simply walk away unaffected.
Elian had a child.
A child born from a commoner woman who had fallen in love with a man of extremely high status.
And that man was probably…
“I wonder how His Highness the Crown Prince is doing these days.”
“What?!”
The moment I muttered that while resting my chin in my hand, Minabel’s voice shot up loudly.
I hurriedly clamped a hand over her mouth and warned her to keep quiet.
She desperately tried to say something through muffled noises, so I loosened my hand slightly, and she immediately whispered:
“Any other man is fine, but not the Crown Prince! In the first place, that person is…”
“No, I have absolutely no desire to become Crown Princess. It’s not like I know nothing.”
When I waved my hands in disgust, Minabel finally relaxed.
The First Prince Vincent, who had recently been named Crown Prince, carried all sorts of rumors around him. That he was a notorious womanizer, that he was a reckless troublemaker.
But all of those rumors had actually been spread by the Third Prince to conceal Vincent’s frail health.
“How do you know all this?”
“I just do.”
Not that I’d ever wanted to know.
“We absolutely cannot let anyone discover that the Crown Prince’s health is deteriorating.”
If only I hadn’t accidentally overheard a conspiracy while simply going out to enjoy desserts.
“I heard the Third Prince is incredibly brilliant. They say he hides behind the Crown Prince’s bad reputation and pretends to be a delinquent too. Apparently he was originally very gentle and wise.”
“Well, considering his birth status, it’s safer for him to act that way if he wants to avoid being killed.”
If only whispers that clearly belonged to an information guild hadn’t happened to reach my ears.
What ridiculous coincidences.
At some point, I simply accepted the fate of stumbling into enormous secrets without warning.
At this stage, secrets practically walked right up to me on their own.
Anyway, the world always revealed its secrets to me in the most absurd ways.
For example—
Like right now, when the silver-haired man beyond the wall changed his eye color just a second too late, allowing me to realize that his real eyes were ruby red…
