“That might be it. Come to think of it, visiting the imperial palace at eight years old is a rare experience.”

Mother nodded to herself as if she finally understood, then elegantly speared a bite-sized piece of egg with her fork.

No, please explain.

I was breaking out in a cold sweat down my back from the sudden cognitive dissonance.

My expression must have looked desperate, because Father spoke even more gently, as if trying to reassure me.

“You don’t need to worry too much. Our family has served the imperial household since our founding ancestor, so no one will treat you carelessly. Besides, Her Majesty the Empress is also your godmother.”

Godmother? The godmother I know? As in godfather and godmother?

“No one expects perfect etiquette from a young child, so think of it as visiting your aunt’s house.”

The more he says, the more outrageous it gets.

I’m not sure how they interpreted the sight of me dropping my soup spoon, but Father and Mother continued earnestly reassuring me that there was truly nothing to worry about.

Things like, they would sort out any mistakes I might make, or if I was really that anxious, would I like to learn at least a little formal etiquette.

No, I need time to adapt to this absurd situation. Stop piling on!

***

I finished my barely-touched meal and stepped out of the dining room to find Annie waiting by the door.

By the way, Annie was a nickname.

Her full name was apparently longer, but it seemed I had always called her Annie from the moment I learned to speak.

Earlier, when I used her full name, she started crying big fat tears, asking, “Did I do something wrong, Miss?” — so I decided to seal away the full name forever.

Mother had been invited to a luncheon at another family’s house and said she needed to go prepare, leaving me in Annie’s care.

She also passed along the misunderstanding that I was afraid of visiting the imperial palace, so the parents’ worry transferred neatly onto Annie.

Oh goodness, please.

The garden we came out to through the east entrance near the dining room didn’t have many flowers in full bloom. Spring it may have been, but apparently they needed a little more time.

Walking near a cluster of yellow flowers resembling forsythia, Annie spoke to me calmly.

“Miss, do you not want to go to the imperial palace?”

“……First of all, why am I going there?”

“You’re going with the Madam to see Her Majesty the Empress. Her Majesty has been quite ill since winter. Every time a letter arrived from the imperial palace, the Madam would be unsettled for the entire day.”

“Right, she was.”

It was news to me, but saying I didn’t know would sound strange, so I answered as though I already knew.

“They both wanted to visit each other so many times but couldn’t, so they’ve only been exchanging letters all this while. Then spring came, and while Her Majesty the Empress normally accepts no audience requests by order of His Majesty the Emperor, she made a special exception for the Madam’s visit. Her Majesty also wrote in a letter that she wanted to see you, so you’re going together.”

Given that she’s also my godmother, the two of them must be very close friends. Why can’t they just visit each other without me…

“It will be the first time you’ve seen her since you were a baby. She must miss you very much.”

Something like meeting a niece after a long time, perhaps.

Talking about various things, I had managed to get a little distance from the estate.

I turned around and looked at the estate I had been facing away from until now. And then I completely forgot what I was about to say.

Why is that called an estate? Isn’t that a castle?

The scenery I had only ever seen on a backpacking trip through Europe on a whim was spread out before my eyes.

An enormous structure of pure white, impossible to call a house, gleamed and sparkled in the sunlight. Is that all marble?

Judging by the rows of windows on each floor, it was roughly four stories, and if there was space beneath the roof as well, the whole thing including any basement came to six stories or more.

The scale of the garden, indistinguishable from a vast open plain, was difficult to gauge even by eye.

There was no visible wall, which meant either there was no wall, or it was so far away it couldn’t be seen. And my guess was the latter.

Apparently, there was also a forest to the north, and I had no desire to learn more about that.

“……So this time, oh my. Miss?”

“Annie, I’m asking just to check.”

“Yes.”

“Is that mountain over there also ours?”

Setting the forest aside, the mountain visible beyond the gentle hills was bothering me greatly.

I thought surely a house wouldn’t include a mountain, but Annie answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“Of course. This entire area is the Winstone family’s private land.”

“……I see.”

So an entire region and private land could coexist under one name. I stared at the magnificent estate, honestly, a castle, sitting on grounds that had to be at least several hundred thousand pyeong, and felt utterly hollow.

A windfall is something you’d normally celebrate, but when you land in a house of this astronomical scale, an upstanding modern person like me feels fear before anything else.

***

The entire morning was spent touring the estate.

When I said I wanted to walk around the house, Annie paused the walk midway, went back inside once, and had other servants bring a carriage.

At first I thought, do I really need a carriage just to look around the house, but since the private land included a forest and a mountain, it made more sense.

What I learned from the tour:

The Winstone family estate is located on the outskirts of the capital, and holds a vast tract of land large enough to host a hunting festival and a harvest festival each season.

There is no surrounding wall, and the explanation given was that there are no petty thieves bold enough to attempt robbing the Winstone estate and that a far better system than any physical security had been put in place.

“Does a real dragon actually protect this house?”

“That’s right. To be precise, it’s the magic the dragons cast that protects the Winstone family.”

There was still some time before the history lesson scheduled for the afternoon.

Everything Annie explained that involved “magic” was beyond my understanding, so I had ended up in the library.

She said there was a book written in an easy, storybook style so that young descendants like me could read the old tales tied to the family, and Annie brought out a charming little history book.

The thickness was considerable, but the large text and many illustrations made it genuinely easy to read.

I’ll set aside the various wild adventures of the founding Count of Winstone.

At any rate, the event that had played a major role in settling the early chaos following the founding of the Empire was The Great Dragon Subjugation.

The reason it was called “great” rather than just a subjugation was that it had been an enormous battle to drive the dragons, who had gathered in a horde, beyond the far northern highlands.

Apparently, since dragons were not creatures that humans could k*ll, driving them away had been the best option.

And the person who had led the charge in that endeavor was the founding ancestor of the Winstone Count’s family.

The details were classified and had not been passed down to later generations, but through some combination of force, persuasion, and every kind of wisdom they could muster, they had ultimately succeeded.

It struck me as odd that the title awarded for all that effort had stopped at Count, but if the descendants had been satisfied with this rank for generations, there was nothing much to say.

The important thing was that when the dragons departed during that period, they had left various spells cast upon the Winstone Count’s family as they went.

If it were me, I don’t think I could look kindly upon the people who had fought against me, especially the one who led the charge.

Perhaps they had grown fond of each other through the fighting, because each dragon had left behind a spell that would carry on through the generations, like a gift.

Some dragons granted freedom from illness and long life, while others prevented enemies with malicious intent from finding their way in.

The list of spells called “blessings” came to well over thirty entries even by a rough count.

It was too daunting to read all of it, so I skimmed through and closed the book.

“There’s quite a lot.”

“Hehe, yes. Truly a great many. Because the magic the dragons left behind protects the estate like a blessing, there’s no need for something like the wall you were wondering about, Miss.”

“Right…… Anyone who harbors ill intent is said to turn to ash on the spot, so no one would normally come.”

What a remarkable system. Even with the entirely subjective standard of “ill intent,” the magic that repels intruders apparently does activate from time to time.

Apparently, once every ten years or so, some fool with no regard for their own life tries to sneak in and the next morning during patrol, what “used to be” an intruder is found, burned to charcoal.

That was why there were no petty thieves attempting to rob this estate.

From the Winstone family’s own perspective, there could be no more reassuring security system, but is this really alright?

They say if there are ten people in the world, three will like you, six will be indifferent, and the last one will dislike you no matter what you do.

There must certainly be people who dislike this family, statistically speaking and this is how they are dealt with, this extremely?

The most unsettling thing was that it was subtly out of place and deeply jarring, yet everyone in the world accepted it as perfectly normal.

Is this family really alright?

“You’ll need to head to your lesson now. Would you like to study in your room as usual? Or since you’ve come all the way to the library, shall I bring your teacher here?”