Maya stopped her nagging and opened her eyes wide when she saw the child I was helping down from the horse. Yet she still busily wiped my hands with a hot towel, which was just like her.

“She’ll work at the mansion from today. Maya, you teach her. Skip the nagging.”

“If only you would listen to the nagging. Jenne, what have you been doing beside Miss? You should be brushing her hair and helping her dress every morning!”

“There needs to be hair to brush! Listen, I have a lot to say too. Do you know what happened? I went to her room to brush her hair, and she had vanished, leaving just a note, and it turns out she had infiltrated a carriage full of terrifying men without a word of discussion……”

As Jenne continued without taking a breath, I could imagine Maya about to explode, so I quietly stepped back.

I have no idea why I’m surrounded by nothing but nagging people. Approaching Brook, my only sanctuary, he gave me a gentle smile.

“Shall I bring you tea first? Or a meal?”

“……What is that?”

The thick stack of documents he was holding in one arm exuded a presence impossible to ignore. In response to my question, Brook answered with an embarrassed face.

“These are tax settlement documents from the Scud territory. You must be tired today, so I’ll review as much as I can.”

Brook now needed a magnifying glass to see small print. Especially with tax documents filled with tiny letters and numbers, he wouldn’t be able to get through even a quarter of it after spending all day.

If I had returned a few days ago as scheduled, we could have reviewed them at a leisurely pace. With a slight smile of contrition, I said:

“Please prepare tea and snacks in the study. I’m not that tired, so I’ll just change clothes and come down.”

“But still……”

“Instead, Brook, please look over the other matters. Which area was severely flooded by heavy rain last summer? Make sure to send letters to all the managers there to prepare well. The rainy season will start soon.”

“I understand.”

“Has anything unusual happened?”

“No. I’m glad you’ve returned safely, Miss.”

As I was about to speak again while looking at his warm smile, Maya’s stern face came into view after hearing Jenne’s complaints.

She’s shorter than me with smaller hands, yet somehow developed such a formidable personality—it’s both understandable and puzzling.

I quickly gave Brook a nod and began walking with brisk steps. Without fail, Maya’s clear voice flew toward the back of my head.

“Miss, I feel like my insides are burning up! I’ve been praying to God Gier even in my dreams to please stop doing dangerous things, but why do you always seem to jump into danger pits whenever you go somewhere?”

“Then stop wasting your effort, Maya. There is no God.”

“What?”

When I spoke flatly, I felt Maya falter. I glanced back and let out a sneer.

“If any exist, it would only be the evil god Parki. The innocent die while the guilty live well. Isn’t that how the world works?”

Maya’s cute face darkened instantly as if she understood the meaning of my words. Since I hadn’t meant to be spiteful, I let out a faint sigh and spoke lightly.

“Please prepare butter pudding and honey cake for snacks. I don’t need help dressing.”

“Yes, Miss.”

Leaving Maya behind, whose expression quickly relaxed as if relieved, I suddenly looked toward the corridor leading to the west wing as I walked. Portraits of previous barons hung there.

I still occasionally see Kirhin’s image throughout the mansion. Even though I’ve now spent far more time here alone than I did with him, the memories from that time remain vivid in my mind.

“……I’m back, brother.”

After murmuring quietly toward the brightly smiling face in the portrait, I deliberately forced strength into the corners of my mouth. I tried to smile, but it didn’t seem to work as intended.

* * *

Hoern, the manager of Scud province, was not a diligent man. His laziness, inherited from his father’s position, was evident just by looking at the amount of crops he claimed to have harvested.

The yields were inconsistent, the documentation was poor, and annual production was declining. Scud, being relatively inland on the continent and therefore warmer, had been among the top three territories managed by the Bickman family in terms of harvest just a few years ago.

In such cases, there are only two possibilities.

Either he’s secretly falsifying harvest amounts to line his own pockets, or he’s truly incompetent.

I had intended to send someone to investigate since last year, but it kept getting postponed due to merchant group business. There weren’t many people I could trust with family matters.

Another year will pass like this. It will only benefit Hoern.

I let out a long sigh and lifted my head. My neck and shoulders felt stiff as stones.

Though I thought about visiting before it got too hot, the merchant group business didn’t seem likely to allow me that luxury. Since the end of the Freemont civil war, trade volume had surged like a tide, leaving mountains of documents to check.

With one cheek resting on my hand, I looked around the quiet study. Only the crackling sound of burning wood thankfully broke the heavy silence.

Sometimes I appreciated this quietness, but occasionally it felt frighteningly lonely.

How nice it would have been to have someone I could rely on by my side.

Maya, Jenne, Brook, Tom, and Nix were all with me, but there was a deep cave in my heart that could never be filled. So deep that no one’s voice could reach it.

Why should I keep running when there’s no one left to acknowledge my efforts?

I had tried my best, thinking that since Kirhin had brought me into the family, I should do whatever I could to prevent the Bickman family from collapsing. But sometimes I felt so tired I wanted to let everything go. Today was one of those days.

After roughly organizing the documents, I lay down with my arm bent to the side and closed my eyes. Taking a deep breath of the old wood and paper scent, my consciousness immediately began to drift. After tossing a couple of times to find a comfortable position, sleep caught my ankle as if it had been waiting.

I had no intention of resisting, but perhaps because my body was too tired, I couldn’t fall completely asleep. Though my body was so drained I couldn’t move, some part of my mind stubbornly refused to turn off. It seemed the habit formed from spending days in tension still remained.

How much time had passed? As I was sinking helplessly into drowsiness, a breeze suddenly blew in from somewhere.

Was there an open window?

The night air was still quite cool. Thanks to Maya leaving the fire in the stove, I wasn’t cold. Rather, as I was gladly welcoming the refreshing feeling that seemed to drive away the stuffiness, my senses suddenly sharpened. I felt a presence.

Thinking Maya had come in, I tried to get up, but my body wouldn’t obey. Something dense and invisible was pressing down on me from all directions without any gaps. I expected Maya’s hand to shake my shoulder soon, but even after a long while, she didn’t wake me. She just looked at me.

That gaze was so meticulous that I could tell exactly where it was focused.

I first thought it was strange. Maya wasn’t the type to hesitate about whether to wake me or not in such situations. She would have been calling my name and loading up her nagging from the moment she opened the door.

Wait.

Come to think of it, had I heard the door open?

As I tried to trace my intermittent memories, the sound of a faint sigh brushed my ear. The owner of that sigh began walking toward me.

The footsteps weren’t Maya’s. Yet somehow they didn’t feel unfamiliar. I could feel my heart pounding. An inexplicable tension was coiling around the nape of my neck.

His hand, which had been quietly watching me, landed as lightly as a feather on my head. That hand stroked my hair a few times with such slow movements that its weight was barely perceptible. It seemed like a touch determined not to wake me at all.

I felt like I might burst into tears.

I knew well who I wanted this hand’s owner to be.

I had dreamed this dream hundreds, thousands of times. But when I woke up, sometimes it was Maya, sometimes Brook, and most often just empty air.

I thought I should open my eyes, but I didn’t want to. Because if I opened them, this sensation would become a lie. Because this scent, created by my imagination, would wash away completely.

Rather than confirming the lonely reality where no one was there, it was better to remain immersed in a dream where I could imagine freely. Even this brief fantasy was a luxurious happiness for me.

Tears that had begun to well up flowed silently. Longing welled up, making my breathing gradually quicken.

The fingers that had been stroking my hair gently brushed the bridge of my nose as if wiping away tears. I wanted to cling to that momentary warmth. I wanted to tie it up so it couldn’t go anywhere.

But if it must leave, it could take everything of mine.

“……Come back.”

When I let out a sound as muffled as a breath, the gaze on my face became clearer. Please, as I barely moved my lips again, a firm palm gently stroked my hair. The dim light I had sensed beyond my eyelids became complete darkness, as if covered by a shadow.

The soothing hand, like comforting a child to sleep, soon guided me into slumber. Though I tried to resist because I didn’t want to lose that touch, before long all the lights in my mind went out, and I finally fell into a dreamless, complete sleep.