“It’s like walking on thin ice every single day. How long are we supposed to live like this?”

A maid coming down from the second floor with a laundry basket pushed open the door to the servants’ lounge and let out a long sigh. Even the way she set the basket down on the floor with a thud carried irritation in it.

“What now? Did something happen upstairs?”

“Ugh, just walking down the second-floor hallway makes it hard to breathe. The lady of the house is like that, so of course the master doesn’t come home much. What is she thinking, carrying on that way? What if he actually finds another woman?”

“Really. There’s no shortage of women who’d come running and lie down for him at a single glance.”

Dissatisfaction with Adeline, the mistress of the house, who had grown far more irritable than before, was beginning to surface among the servants.

The incident in the bedroom a few days ago had been the breaking point.

When Adeline locked herself in her bedroom for two straight days and refused to come out, Mrs. Lien finally stepped in. She could not leave Adeline starving indefinitely, so she intended to check on her condition, bring food inside, and tidy the room.

〈Don’t touch anything. Just leave me alone……〉

〈My lady. You have gone far too long without eating.〉

Mrs. Lien had entered carefully, leading a group of maids and carrying fresh bedding and an armful of flowers to arrange on the table. Adeline, lying sideways on the long sofa beneath the window, reacted sharply.

〈Don’t come in, I said don’t come in! Why does everyone ignore what I say?〉

She accused them of using the pretense of attending to her as an excuse to spy on her again. She said she was sick and tired of it.

Adeline snapped at them viciously, then, right in front of several servants, deliberately drew the small scissors from her knitting basket across her wrist. She held the sewing scissors with the look of someone already pushed to the edge of a cliff and murmured.

〈Just leave me alone…… please……〉

Fortunately, the small sewing scissors lacked the force to cut through Adeline’s veins. She was restrained and treated with bandaging and disinfectant, but the mistress’s shocking loss of self-control left every servant in the household horrified.

After that day, no one entered Adeline’s bedroom without permission. The master of the house, Kailen, was of course the exception, but aside from him, no one dared step inside without Adeline’s consent.

Then one day, Mrs. Lien gathered the maids together and, with a stern expression, warned them to hold their tongues and laid out a new set of rules.

Meals twice a day, at ten and seven. Knock, and if there is no answer, leave the food on the drawing room table and leave immediately.

Cleaning once every two days, at five in the afternoon. Enter in groups of three, collect the laundry, clean, and leave.

No one knew how Mrs. Lien had managed to broker such a delicate arrangement, but after Kailen’s visit, Adeline no longer reacted with the same hysteria as she had that day. Still, the growing discontent within the household was unavoidable.

In front of the head butler and the head housekeeper, everyone kept their mouths shut. But behind closed doors, they all had something to say about how the princess, raised in privilege, had taken her tantrums too far.

* * *

If you want to die, wouldn’t it be better to die sooner rather than later? There are plenty of ways to make it easier.

Lying in bed and staring at her bandaged wrist, her gaze drifted to the door leading to the dressing room.

She could open the wardrobe door and hang herself from the metal rod where the clothes were kept, or this time put real intent behind cutting her wrist again. And if even that frightened her, hadn’t she quietly stockpiled quite a few sleeping pills by now?

If you just steel yourself, it’s entirely possible.

Someone who had taken up residence in her head chattered away at her all day long.

Let yourself rest.

You’ve come this far. Why go on living so wretchedly?

One careless moment and she felt she might give in to that temptation, hang herself, and go to meet the child she had failed to protect. She wanted to let everything go and truly find peace.

But not yet…… it’s not time.

Adeline closed her eyes slowly. Leopold had appeared in her dream the night before. She recalled him smiling, saying he had no right to be called her brother, and that he was sorry for burdening her.

〈You, at least, must live. Please, survive.〉

“But my darling, I’ll come to see you before long. It will be lonely, but wait just a little longer. Just a little longer, until mother comes to you……”

Murmuring to herself, Adeline pushed back the blanket and sat on the edge of the bed. She needed to collect herself if she was going to pick up a pen and write anything. As she looked around for the slippers she had kicked off somewhere, something caught her eye.

The Varsen Gazette, front page.

The newspapers she had been deliberately avoiding since Leopold’s death lay scattered at her feet, waiting to be read.

Adeline’s expression was calm as she picked one up.

Leopold Rosenthal, sentenced to death for treason against the state, died before his execution was carried out.

According to the announcement, the cause of death is presumed to be poisoning, and the time of death has been confirmed as one day before the scheduled execution.

Authorities stated that no signs of outside involvement were found, and that self-inflicted death currently remains the most likely conclusion.

Regarding the suspicion of foul play raised in some quarters, they added that further investigation would be difficult as no evidence or witnesses had been identified.

A representative of the inspectorate conveyed that all necessary measures to maintain national order would be taken appropriately.

It was an article containing nothing surprising, nothing she did not already know. Looking at the publication date, it had been printed around the time she had just received the news about Leopold and lost consciousness.

But there was more than just that one newspaper. Quite a few more sheets of paper lay beneath it. Whoever had deliberately brought this many newspapers and left them here must have been remarkably diligent and thorough, possessing enough cunning to slip past the eyes of both the head butler and the head housekeeper.

Adeline skimmed through the headlines of the many follow-up articles calling for a thorough purge of the remnants of a bygone era, a cowardly end, the true nature of a corrupt royal family, and moved on. Then her fingertips stopped on one page.

The remains of Leopold Rosenthal, donated for medical research purposes in accordance with public interest. Transfer to the National Medical Inspectorate completed.

Her already pale face drained past white and began to turn ashen. She had thought there was nothing left about Leopold that could shock her, but she had been wrong. A hollow, involuntary sound escaped from her parted lips.

“……Ah.”

One of the main reasons Adeline had been waiting for Kailen lately was that she wanted to consult him about claiming Leopold’s remains.

But he had not appeared recently…… and one of his personal secretaries had come to find her and delivered a piece of news she could not verify as true or false.

〈I felt I ought to inform you first, my lady, which is why I came. An urgent matter has arisen at the main office, and the councilman finds himself unable to return to Varsen for the time being.〉

Kailen was away, but she had believed Leopold’s remains would be handed over to her as next of kin through the proper procedures. She had been waiting only for that news.

And yet, Leopold’s remains had been donated for use in experiments……

She could perhaps have accepted it if he had simply been buried without ceremony as an unidentified body, but experiments, no matter that he was a convicted criminal. It was a cruelty she had never even heard of.

The unofficial interview with a medical examiner that followed forced itself into her eyes no matter how hard she tried not to read it.

Bringing the remains of a criminal who pretended to be noble into the medical field, to be dissected piece by piece.

A harm in life, a resource in death. The body of a traitor, returned to the public good.

“The state has already rendered its judgment on this matter. As a researcher, I simply handle the given subject as efficiently as possible, without exception.”

“But if I may add a personal observation…… well. The donation of his body is perhaps the only contribution he ever made to the nation.”

The combination of provocative words showed not a shred of human decency toward the donated remains. The black print of the countless mocking columns beyond that drove into Adeline’s chest like blades, one by one, until drawing breath became difficult.

“Ugh……”

Adeline’s hands holding the newspaper no longer trembled. The fine shaking stopped, and in its place a strange sensation flowed through her fingertips. It felt as though someone had cut clean through her just below the shoulder. Her fingers, her arms, her shoulders. They no longer felt like her own. And gradually, from the tips of her feet as well, that numbing sensation crept up and struck the backs of her knees.

“Ah……”

It was a truly horrifying feeling, to have her mind perfectly clear while her body refused to obey her. Even in the midst of this, Adeline did not want others to see her crawling on the floor. It was obvious that whoever had brought these newspapers had done so hoping to witness exactly this.

No one entered her bedroom without permission anymore.

But still…… I don’t want this.

She fought with everything she had until the very end, trying not to collapse, but her limbs went numb and she lost her balance and fell.

“……Hng.”

Her slight body sank down onto the pile of newspapers and twitched weakly. One arm bent at an awkward angle, and drool began to spill from her slack lips. As she felt the rustling paper stick against her cheek, the reddened corners of Adeline’s eyes grew wet. She was horrified and terrified that someone might find her in this wretched state. She prayed inwardly, please, please, let no one open that door.

* * *

Kailen, leaning back at an angle on the treatment room bed, let out a short, disbelieving laugh. He found it absurd that he had been stabbed in broad daylight, in the middle of a busy public street of all places.

“I didn’t think I’d actually get stabbed…… and by someone who’s only ten…… what, ten-something years old?”

Collen, who had been standing the entire time Kailen was being treated, half-sprawled onto the sofa beside him as he answered.

“Thirteen.”

“Right, thirteen years old.”

“Lucky for you it was a thirteen-year-old who stabbed you, Councilman. That’s why you’re still alive.”

Collen could not understand why he was the one feeling completely drained when the patient with a punctured side was sitting up perfectly straight.