But.
What if it were a life-or-death battle against Phillippron?
I looked down at my hand floating on the water.
I lacked confidence.
Confidence that I would lose.
&
I welcomed Marsha, who had come to the mansion.
“Wow… so this is really the Brennan Territory?”
The moment Marsha stepped out of the carriage, she looked around.
It was merely a word of admiration,
but her eyes were already moving busily.
Since Marsha was the one who knew old Brennan better than anyone,
her admiration could only be all the greater.
“What do you think?”
“It’s really amazing.”
Marsha had a face of sincere admiration.
Then her gaze shifted toward the mansion, and she tilted her head slightly.
“But the mansion is the same?”
I looked at our mansion.
Truthfully, it was only the mansion that I had deliberately left untouched.
The stairs I had run around on in my childhood,
the garden full of memories with my mother,
and for Father and Richelle as well, this mansion held countless memories.
“Because it’s the most beautiful place to me. I didn’t think any change could make it more beautiful.”
Marsha gazed at the mansion for a moment, then smiled quietly.
“Right. You did well, Brother. After all, there are memories of me here too.”
“Memories with you? Ah, right, here you… to me…”
“S-stop!”
Marsha cut me off, her face reddening.
I had to hold back a burst of laughter.
“By the way, what brings you here?”
At those words, Marsha immediately pouted.
“It’s been so long since I came. What do you mean, what brings me here? How cold. Do I need to have a reason to visit?”
At that expression, I finally let out the laughter I had been holding back
and stroked Marsha’s head.
“Haha. Fine. I got it. Nothing’s wrong?”
“Tch. Don’t pat my head. I’m a lady now too.”
Though she said that, Marsha only feigned displeasure and didn’t completely avoid it.
She turned her head a beat too late for no reason,
and added as if grumbling.
“And when did you start patting my head…”
Marsha, trailing off, glanced lightly at my forearm.
Her gaze stopped there for a very brief moment.
An arm incomparable to before.
And not to mention the angular shoulders,
the moment she saw my firm body, Marsha’s face turned a little red.
“Well, you do look like a brother now… ahem.”
She cleared her throat needlessly and quickly changed the subject.
“Anyway! I heard the territory changed and wanted to see it. I’ve been wanting to come, but you’ve been so busy, and well, our territory was a bit busy too. Honestly, I only made a little time today.”
That was probably the case.
They too had been striving tirelessly to grow after nearly going to war over the territory,
and having heard of Deharmont’s collapse, they must be even more overwhelmed now.
“Oh right! I was going to see you at the party during tax declaration, but how come I couldn’t see you even once?”
“I was a bit busy. I had many invitations too.”
“Tch. Annoying.”
Marsha lowered her head and kicked an innocent pebble.
“Why did you get so busy? You could have come to see me for my sake…”
Seeing her like that, I laughed.
Strangely, when I looked at Marsha,
I felt like I was going back to the past.
The complicated old dynasty, the fall of Deharmont, the suffocating flow of politics—all grew distant for a moment.
Because seeing Marsha grumble brought back childhood memories.
My heart felt that much lighter.
“You said you were a lady earlier, and you’re not a child anymore.”
“Hmph.”
Marsha turned her head away sharply,
then looked at me as if she had suddenly remembered something.
“Ah! Brother, you heard the news about Deharmont, right? What happened?”
At that name, the comfortable heart from moments ago became uneasy again.
Of course, it wasn’t Marsha who had become uncomfortable.
“I don’t really know either. Just that it happened.”
“You have no idea how surprised I was.”
Marsha’s voice dropped a little too.
“That amazing Deharmont falling apart. And in an instant too. What on earth did they do wrong?”
I shook my head.
“If you’re talking about wrongdoing in terms of good and evil, their wrongdoing might be a good deed to someone else. So that’s the wrong approach.”
Marsha’s eyes went blank.
Even though I knew she would have trouble understanding, I continued explaining.
“If we’re talking about mistakes… well, there would be many kinds, wouldn’t there? It’s not something I can explain. However, if the Deharmont family collapsed due to their mistakes alone, then either your family or mine could collapse at any time, and it wouldn’t be strange at all.”
“…It’s a bit hard to understand?”
Marsha furrowed her brows.
“What I’m saying is, don’t look at it as a matter of wrongdoing.”
At those words, Marsha felt somehow scolded and pouted.
“Tch. Who said they did something wrong? I was just… curious.”
She scraped the ground with her toe for no reason.
“I just feel bad, that’s all. And I heard they were of commoner origin?”
At that moment, I stiffened very briefly.
I thought what came next might not be good.
Of common birth.
The words Seraphinlie hated as much as death.
I didn’t know how Marsha would take them.
But Marsha spoke with a face completely different from what I expected.
“Isn’t it amazing? To have gone from commoner to there. It’s really cool.”
“…”
I looked at Marsha wordlessly,
and Marsha tilted her head.
“What’s with that face?”
It was then.
Marsha’s gaze suddenly moved behind me.
I saw her pupils widen sharply,
and I too turned around following her gaze.
Seraphinlie was standing there.
It was impossible to know how long she had been there.
She stood in the ambiguous boundary between the corridor and the garden,
looking at us.
Her expression wasn’t particularly pronounced.
She seemed surprised,
yet also pretending to be unaffected.
Only her fingertips were very slightly stiffened.
Seraphinlie looked at us for a moment,
then slowly turned around and went back into the mansion.
“Uh, uhh…”
Marsha belatedly opened her mouth.
“I-I’m not seeing things right now, am I? It’s not a hallucination?”
She looked at me with wide eyes.
“Why… why is that person here?”
“…”
“Wait.”
Marsha’s face turned pale in an instant.
“Could I… have made a slip of the tongue? What do I do.”
Just looking at Seraphinlie’s figure even now,
the pain she was going through was visible at a glance.
So it was natural that Marsha thought she had made a mistake.
I smirked as I watched Seraphinlie walk away.
“No. You did well.”
“Uh, uh? I did well?”
“Yes.”
I stroked Marsha’s head again.
“Our Marsha has really become a lady.”
This time, when I patted her,
for some reason, she didn’t put up even the slightest resistance.
Marsha stayed still, then quietly blushed.
“We…”
Then she came back to her senses.
“Wait! But why is she really here? What is it? What’s going on?”
“There’s a good reason. It’s a personal matter, so don’t ask anymore.”
“Tch. But why your house?”
Marsha climbed back into the carriage.
“Anyway, I really came just to see you for a bit. I’ll be going now.”
“Didn’t you say earlier you came to see the territory?”
“…I-I don’t know. Anyway, I’m leaving!”
I waved my hand as I watched Marsha leave.
***
Seraphinlie was walking down the mansion’s corridor.
Slow steps.
Right now, she was recalling
the words Marsha had spoken, in her head.
Isn’t it amazing?
To have gone from commoner to there.
It’s really cool.
Of common birth.
Words like a curse to her.
But [someone said] it’s cool.
Not one person, but two.
She could think of Leyon’s words as consolation.
Even that was something to be grateful for.
But Marsha’s words were clearly sincere, not consolation directed at her.
Because she had said it when Seraphinlie wasn’t around.
At that moment, Seraphinlie stopped and looked out the window.
The sunlight of the Brennan Territory wasn’t overly bright,
and the wind blew gently from the garden.
Amidst that peaceful scenery, the words she had just heard settled in her heart once more.
Then, a small smile rose to her lips.
Her steps, moving again, were a little more vigorous and faster than before.
But she couldn’t walk far before she had to stop again.
Inside the open office door,
she saw Leyon’s father holding several documents.
Drevan was standing in front of the desk.
His face was as gentle as always,
but now he was frowning as if something wasn’t going well.
Two aides stood before him,
and on the desk, documents appearing to be ledgers were spread out in several directions.
“Why was this bundled like this?”
Drevan said, rummaging through the documents.
There was more bewilderment than irritation in his voice.
“This merchant guild is cheaper, but if it arrives late, the outer wall construction schedule will be delayed. And it can’t overlap with the provisions wagons either…”
“T-that’s why we temporarily divided it into three groups.”
“Wouldn’t dividing it into three make it more complicated?”
“But if we send it all to one side, the price…”
Seraphinlie quietly listened to those words in front of the door.
At first, she tried to just pass by.
This was Brennan’s office,
and she was a guest.
Moreover, she was no longer someone who could interfere anywhere under the name of Deharmont.
But strangely, her fingertips itched.
Seraphinlie nearly entered the office in that instant.
But her feet stopped in front of the threshold.
Because she wondered if it might be overstepping.
How long has it been since Deharmont fell?
She thought they might think she was trying to stand before the ledgers again.
Trust.
Because she had lost that.
But when she recalled the help she had received here,
she didn’t want to stay still.
She wanted to help.
She had already been thinking this continuously.
But no matter how she thought about what she could help with, nothing came to mind.
Right.
The thing she was best at.
The moment that thought arose,
she crossed the threshold.
“Um, Father.”
The three people in the office turned their heads simultaneously.
Drevan made a briefly surprised expression,
then soon smiled gently.
“Ah, Seraphinlie. What is it?”
Seraphinlie caught her breath for a moment before speaking.
“Could I…”
She pointed at the documents on the desk.
“May I… take a look?”
A brief silence.
The two aides exchanged glances.
As fellow aides, they didn’t look particularly pleased.
But Drevan smiled even more.
“Yes. Please take a look.”
Those words came out so easily.
Doubt,
wariness,
nor any intention to test her could be seen.
Seraphinlie nodded slightly and took the documents.
The moment she grabbed the paper,
her fingertips trembled very slightly.
But the moment her gaze touched the letters,
that trembling soon disappeared.
Guild supply manifest.
Outer wall material distribution.
Warehouse transfer records.
Soldier pay date.
Her eyes moved quickly.
Before long, her fingers stopped on a line.
“Why was this arranged like this?”
“Hmm?”
“Here.”
Seraphinlie pulled one document forward.
“You can’t send the Karen guild’s cargo directly to the outer walls. In this state, it has to pass through the north gate warehouse one more time, so it takes time and wastes labor.”
Drevan narrowed his eyes.
“Hmm.”
Seraphinlie quickly spread out another page.
“And this one, I don’t think you need to divide it into three places; you can use just two. But you have to adjust it like this instead.”
“How?”
“Right now, the soldiers’ pay date overlaps with this materials payment date. That’s why everyone is saying it’s urgent. But if you push it back by just three days, this opens up here.”
Seraphinlie’s fingertip pointed between the dates.
“Instead, during those three days, you have to receive this guild’s cargo first. Anyway, this side already wants to curry favor with Brennan, so they’ll budge even if you bargain the price down a little less.”
The two aides watched Seraphinlie’s mouth, frozen stiff.
At first, they had offended expressions,
but now, seeing paths they hadn’t noticed being revealed at every point she made, they couldn’t close their mouths.
No matter how well one knew ledgers,
understanding another family’s ledgers required time.
Every family had its own methods,
and every merchant guild had different characteristics.
Yet she had completed a perfect analysis in this short time,
so the two aides, who knew that well, couldn’t help but look at her as if she were a monster.
Serafinlie did not stop.
One page.
Then another.
Each time a sheet turned, the chaotic flow on the desk was sorted out little by little.
“This part isn’t a cost issue, but an issue of order.”
“Hmm.”
“Here, the other merchant guild is feeling us out. It’s not because of the amount. They’re trying to see how desperate Brennan is.”
“Ha-ha.”
A laugh-tinged exclamation slipped from Drevan’s mouth.
Serafinlie lightly tapped the final page.
“So adding a little more here would be a loss. It’s better to cut them off firmly and look elsewhere.”
With that, she set the last page down.
“If you change it like this.”
Serafinlie gave a small smile.
She still had no strength,
but she was clearly more focused than before.
“The costs will go down, and the schedule won’t get tangled.”
Drevan looked over the documents again.
At first, he followed the parts Serafinlie had pointed out,
and then he checked the dates and the merchant guild names again with his own hand.
Then he let out a low exclamation.
“Well now...”
His expression was one of genuine admiration.
“So this is how you solve it. I was only looking at which of the three guilds to keep.”
The two officials hurriedly peered into the documents as well.
“I-if we do it this way, we’ll need fewer laborers, and with the guilds too...”
“Ahem... This really will work.”
Drevan glanced at the two officials and chuckled.
“It isn’t that you two are incompetent.”
Then he turned his gaze to Serafinlie.
“It’s that Serafinlie is far too remarkable.”
And he spoke sincerely.
“Thank you.”
“If I was of help... I’m glad.”
A little light returned to Serafinlie’s eyes, which had been so listless.
Drevan organized the documents again.
“You were truly a great help.”
Then he added, as naturally as could be,
“If you ever want to look at them again, feel free.”
At those words, Serafinlie lifted her head slightly.
Ordinarily, in a situation like this, it would mean someone was trying to use her.
Someone who had handled Deharmont’s ledgers.
So it would only be natural to try to make use
of what little value she had left.
But from Drevan’s expression and voice,
and even from his intent, she could tell.
He was trying to give her confidence.
He was doing it to help her.
And so Serafinlie nodded as well.
“Yes.”
And after that day,
Serafinlie found herself spending more and more time sitting in the office without even realizing it.
Sometimes she laughed because even she found it absurd.
In Deharmont, this was work that had made her feel as though she were suffocating every single day.
Yet now, that very work was helping her breathe.
Finding tangled flows,
untangling wrongly bound costs,
reading the intentions of merchant guilds,
and matching dates—each time she did so, her mind cleared little by little.
In the end, she keenly realized that she was someone who had to look at ledgers.
“Father, I think it would be better to fix this part here.”
“Oh? Is that so? How?”
Drevan leaned forward as if he had been waiting.
Serafinlie pointed to one side of the document.
“If we leave this payment date as it is, it’ll overlap with the next transport again. It would be better to cut it off here once and insert this guild in the middle.”
“Hmm. I see.”
A moment later, another problem caught her eye.
“Here too, I think the guilds are overlapping too much right now. In this guild’s case, they’re unexpectedly good at transport as well.”
“Oh? Are they?”
A little while later,
Drevan looked at the organized ledger and laughed heartily.
“Ha-ha! Thanks to our Serafinlie, we’re saving a truly great deal of money!”
At those words, Serafinlie flinched.
“...Our.”
It was a word that slipped out very softly between her lips.
“Hm? What did you say?”
Serafinlie quickly lowered her gaze.
“Ah, nothing. I’ll look over this too.”
Before she knew it, another smile had settled at the corners of Serafinlie’s mouth as she examined the ledger,
and far more light had seeped into the eyes with which she looked at it.