2.
An empty liquor bottle went rolling down and barely caught on the very edge of the roof before it stopped.
Julie was glaring at me.
“Come down.”
“Well.”
“Now!”
Julie was only five years older than me, but to me, who had no parents, she was my only family.
Sometimes as a friend, sometimes as my one and only family, Julie had been by my side for twenty years now.
By now, Julie was the only one who remembered my childhood, when I had been so ill I could not even get out of bed.
With practiced ease, I hung from the roof, stepped onto the attic railing, then kicked open the third-floor window.
Pretending not to hear Julie nearly choking below, I flung myself straight into the room.
My landing was perfect, but because of my hangover, I bent over and retched dryly for quite a while.
The mansion’s only cleaner, who lived with a constant cough, found me and came over to pat my back.
“I lock the third-floor window, so how on earth do you open it every time?”
“I was drunk, so I don’t remember.”
The cleaner coughed and wheezed, then took a key from his pocket and inspected it suspiciously.
When I went down to the first floor, Julie was waiting for me with her arms crossed.
“What do you think about the crows that keep coming to our mansion?”
“Really? No wonder I kept waking up. They were noisy.”
“They’re being lured in because the liquor bottles are shining! Because of all the empty bottles someone piled up on the roof!”
“Ah.”
“Do you know I strained my shoulder taking them down one by one with a pole?”
“I’ll go back up now and bring them down.”
“No! I’m telling you never to go up there again!”
“Still, it’s safer if I go up when I’m sober……”
“Just! Don’t! Go up there.”
“Y-yeah.”
Julie let out a long sigh from somewhere deep within and swept back her hair.
“……What am I supposed to do when I keep wanting to climb high places whenever I drink?”
“Then climb the new clock tower in the square instead. Don’t crawl up onto the roof of this old mansion that’s about to collapse!”
“Clock tower?”
“The Spire Commemorating the End of the War. It seems it was completed as of yesterday. Quite timely, in the end.”
“Ah, that’s already done.”
The fact that the war had ended before the Spire Praying for the End of the War was completed was a fairly famous anecdote in the imperial capital.
Thanks to that, it became the Spire Commemorating the End of the War instead. Honestly, wasn’t that more meaningful?
Because the end of the war was worth more than any cause.
It was then.
The mansion’s only coachman was hurrying across the front yard, running toward us.
“What’s going on?”
“Looks like he’s holding something.”
Julie narrowed her eyes and tilted her head.
“You can see that?”
“Yeah. Something like a letter.”
Julie’s complexion worsened.
“Don’t tell me…… a notice of demand?”
Considering my reputation as a disgrace to high society, no different from vermin everyone avoided, it was harder to imagine that a proper banquet card or invitation had arrived.
So I, too, joined in Julie’s concern with a deathly pale face.
Of course, my face was mostly pale because of the hangover.
“We paid off all our debts, so there shouldn’t be any more demands coming, right? Or am I wrong?”
“Then perhaps a challenge to a duel.”
Even when her imagination had gone that far, Julie never once brought up a banquet card or invitation.
Honestly, even to receive a duel challenge, one had to have some sort of interaction with others.
From that day four years ago, whether they had been “business associates,” “friends,” or simply “acquaintances,” every single person I knew had been reduced to kindling, flared up, and vanished without leaving even ash behind.
In other words, no one ever asked after me again.
For four years.
“Haaah, huff, haa……”
Julie snatched the letter from the coachman’s hand as he was too out of breath to speak.
“What is this? Why is the quality so good! Who sends a duel challenge on something this fine?”
It was an expensive envelope, its unusual texture obvious the moment it brushed against one’s fingertips.
There was even a faint floral scent.
“A l-letter, haaah, the letter……”
“We can tell it’s a letter just by looking!”
Julie replied in frustration and turned the envelope over, searching for the sender.
“Here it is.”
When I found the sender before the flustered Julie could, she promptly shoved the letter into my hands.
“You check it, Baroness.”
“……”
Even then, I was checking the sender again and again.
Because the existence of that sender made me doubt my own eyes.
‘Isitan Gladineer.’
There was no one in the imperial capital who did not know that name, clear and concise to the point of seeming almost short.
The commander-in-chief who had achieved brilliant military exploits and finally returned with news of victory.
At the same time, he was an undeniable heavyweight who held one pillar of the only three ducal houses, and the youngest duke of this era.
If one heard even a single tale of his feats on the battlefield, the nickname “murder fiend” would seem insignificant.
On the battlefield, he had consistently displayed miracles beyond even the bizarre feats only a murder fiend could accomplish.
Without saying a word to Julie, I tore open the envelope first.
What was inside was……
“Lady Asha, my eyes aren’t deceiving me, are they?”
An invitation.
And not just any invitation, but an invitation to the imperial palace’s victory banquet, which was expected to be the grandest event in recent times.
An invitation personally sent by Duke Gladineer, the very guest of honor at that banquet.
Someone sent me an invitation?
Is this really an invitation?
Julie belatedly discovered the name written on the outside of the envelope and let out a short scream.
“Lady Asha! Lady Asha!”
“I’m listening.”
“Why would that commander-in-chief, famous for his cruelty, invite you, Lady Asha?”
Unfortunately, I knew nothing either.
There had to be something to speculate from, at least.
The duke was practically a complete stranger to me.
I could swear that he and I had never even brushed past each other by chance.
Until I turned nineteen, I had been unable to take even a single step outside the mansion because of a chronic illness of unknown cause.
By the time I recovered completely and first set foot in high society, he had already left for the battlefield.
While he was on the battlefield, a young baroness with neither parents nor connections had bravely entered high society and unexpectedly gained a lover.
After that, she lost that lover in a manner more miserable than anything else.
A love potion.
He said he had drunk one.
That was why he had come to love me, he said. It had only been a moment of madness.
And so he left.
Without the slightest lingering attachment.
That rumor spread like wildfire and struck the imperial capital’s high society.
At the time, the gossip papers were breaking their all-time circulation records.
I had become the woman who tried to bring a man down through dishonest means.
‘It’s truly horrifying.’
‘Would a woman in her right mind ever cling to a man like that?’
‘It isn’t even obsession. This is a crime.’
‘How dreadful must it be? To realize that all this time, he had been whispering words of love to a woman he didn’t even love.’
‘It’s only because the count was broad-minded enough to forgive her, really…….’
‘I heard that woman fell ill before she could even walk and spent over ten years bedridden. Could she have learned anything properly?’
‘Maybe she was trying to turn her life around by entering the duke’s family.’
‘I can only pity the count for getting tangled up with a woman like that.’
‘For someone like her, she certainly has high standards.’
I shouted with all my might.
‘I didn’t give it to him!’
But no one believed me.
No, no one listened.
Not even him.
‘I didn’t give it to him. I’m telling the truth.’
‘What does that matter?’
‘…….’
‘When there wasn’t a single moment when I ever loved you.’
Not long after, he became engaged to another woman.
As though his past with me were some shameful stain.
I shook my head hard, driving that idiotic moment of reminiscence out of my mind.
Ugh, don’t jinx me, seriously.
Julie was looking at me with concern.
Just as I was about to open my mouth to tell her not to worry, Julie said,
“Perhaps he likes gossip?”
“…….”
“Maybe he wanted, even this late, to see Lady Asha in person—the heroine of that famous scandal?”
So that was what you were pondering?
In the end, at a loss for words, I muttered,
“……That’s not exactly a reason to be happy.”
The coachman, who had still been catching his breath until then, straightened his back and said to us,
“Something about thanks, he said he wanted to, to offer his thanks, and that you must, huff, attend…… he insisted. The errand boy who brought the letter, cough!”
Julie patted the coachman’s back as he still struggled to get a hold of himself.
It wouldn’t do for the oldest person in our estate to fall ill.
While Julie hurried off to bring a glass of water, I supported him and moved him inside the manor.
All the while, my mind spun so quickly it was busy.
But to be honest, it was no different from spinning my wheels.
‘Thanks?’
‘To me?’
‘When has he ever even seen me?’
‘Thanks? Greetings? Attend? He even insisted?’
It wasn’t as if a clever solution would come to me, but I had to keep repeating it to myself.
‘Why?’
If I wanted to find the answer to this unsolvable question that had come to me after four years, then apparently—
“Are you going?”
“I have to.”
In the end, I had no choice but to go to the victory banquet myself.
* * *
I placed a hand on Julie’s tense shoulder and said,
“Don’t worry. Your work was…… perfect.”
“I know that too.”
Julie put on a prim expression and looked me up and down.
Then she praised herself all on her own.
“Perfect.”
“…….”
In any case, if only to ensure Julie’s efforts in dressing me from head to toe didn’t go to waste,
I firmly resolved to get through the banquet safely and return.
“I’ll be back.”
But Julie did not withdraw her distrustful gaze from me.
“If you’re going to cause trouble, first prepare yourself never to show your face before me again.”
“Trouble? Why would you say something so frightening? Julie, don’t you trust me?”
“What is something that is always present at a banquet hall?”
“Other nobles craning their necks just waiting to see me make a fool of myself?”
“Think again.”
“……I don’t know? Servants?”
“Lady Asha. If you go to the banquet hall now, what is the first thing you want to do?”
“First, I’d start with a glass of champagne…… a glass, and then…….”
“…….”
“You won’t believe me even if I promise not to drink, will you?”
“At that point, I’d rather serve the crows living on the manor roof as my masters.”
“That sounds nice.”
“Does it?”
“……No.”
“I’ll say it again. Don’t come back after causing trouble. I won’t take you in.”
“All right…….”
I climbed into the carriage, crestfallen.
The hard-of-hearing coachman only noticed the signal to depart after I pounded the carriage wall repeatedly with my fist.
Feeling the hangover I had been holding back in front of Julie rise up, I collapsed onto the seat.
“……Urgh.”
Whether I did or not,
the carriage set off with a rattling jolt.
Toward the imperial palace.