“I told you. Someday in life you might go into the castle, so what harm is there in learning ahead of time? Grace and knowledge aren’t built in a single moment.”

“That’s exactly what I mean, Father. When would I ever go into a castle? We move house once a year, so I don’t know anyone. Would I ever meet nobles, or royalty? It’s strange.”

In front of the indignant Lia, he smiled gently as always. The corners of his eyes, where thick wrinkles lay in layers, deepened.

“As I always say, no one knows what lies ahead. Just like how I met your mother.”

Lia’s insides boiled with frustration. But her father, as always, wore an expression like a calm lake and merely shut his mouth. Further questions were pointless.

Slow, so slow, but time flows on after all. Drinking warm black tea ended today’s lesson.

Slapping his knees and standing up, her father said he was going fishing at the lake. He pulled down a hat frayed at the edges, shouldered only a single fishing rod, and left the house.

“Lunch is laid out in the kitchen. It’s rare meat, so eat it all and leave none.”

Her father left with a bright smile that seemed to hold not a speck of worry, and he would return only late at night, when the moon hangs on the high branches.

Watching his receding back through the window, Lia went into her room and brought out yesterday’s newspaper.

On the crumpled newspaper, the headline ‘The Noble Ones of Two Kingdoms, the Meeting of the Century’ was written in elegant handwriting that didn’t suit the tacky title.

“Blair….”

A jade-white finger passed over the black letters.

The beautiful woman of high standing, Blair Rose Van Lite. Lately, she was a person of concern who disturbed Lia’s mind.

Truthfully, she hadn’t looked at the princess attentively from the start. The princess was just one of many famous figures, a person with not a single reason to be special to her.

But Lia’s interest in the princess began from a chance occasion that came to her one day.

Her father Noah liked collecting various kinds of books, newspapers, and magazines. Reading what he brought home, as he was her only blood relative and family, naturally became her hobby.

Since she learned to read, her days were spent entirely with white paper and black letters.

But why was it?

The covers of the books her father obtained were very clean, yet strangely, when she opened them, a certain part was always torn out. It was almost like someone tore it out on purpose.

Look. The corner of the article she was holding now was also torn shabbily, wasn’t it?

Folding the newspaper and returning it to its original place, she recalled what happened last summer.

Sometimes there are such times, aren’t there? Times when all my actions and moments fit together like fate, and I meet a completely unexpected situation.

That day was like that.

Why was it? Her steps went to her father’s desk, which she normally never approached. Her eyes went not to the desktop but to the floor. Her hand reached, as if by magic, for something she could have dismissed as trash.

I don’t know why I wanted to unfold the crumpled paper. It was just that day. Just that day.

Lia saw her own face on the crumpled paper and agonized all night.

At first she wondered if it was a drawing of herself, but soon she became certain it wasn’t.

First, they lacked the money to invite such a skilled painter to paint a portrait, and she had no such memory either. Second, her father normally disliked her showing her face around. For whatever reason, he had no cause to leave her likeness in a painting.

Then what on earth was this drawing?

A startling thought came to her mind as she pondered.

The torn corner of the newspaper she read a few days ago!

When she fetched the newspaper left at her bedside and matched them, the pieces fit exactly. Goosebumps rose on her skin.

Groping through quite old memories, Lia’s mouth opened and a small question popped out.

“I really wonder. What is Father hiding from me?”

He was the person who raised her with all his strength, afraid she’d get wet if it rained and be blown away if the wind blew.

He was the person who raised a fist-sized baby to this size, even begging for milk as a widower, even as he went hungry for days on end.

That father is hiding something from me. And something very big. What could it possibly be?

Lia spoke to her father, who was ladling potato soup, on a bleak evening of winter rain.

That terribly ordinary day the father and daughter spent together was, in truth, the last day of the year.

“Father, I think I need to go to a clinic.”

“Why, where does it hurt? Does it hurt a lot?”

Noah asked, startled.

“No! Not a lot. It’s just slightly uncomfortable….”

Lia answered, trailing off.

Noah’s peaceful face twisted seriously.

His daughter was a child who never showed pain from childhood until now. Even with a burning fever, even when her toenail came off after catching it in a door gap, she never once said it hurt.

For such a child to seek out a clinic. For Noah, it was nothing but a worry enough to make his hair stand on end.

“Where! Where does it hurt!”

Noah dropped the spoon he was gripping and asked once more.

Lia felt sorry for worrying Father, but the intense pain that struck her these past few weeks was not something she could simply endure.

From some point on, whenever she was about to fall asleep, her heart ached like it was burning. At first it lasted three seconds, then ten seconds, then more than a minute of terrible pain.

She gritted her teeth and endured the groans so her father wouldn’t worry, but yesterday’s pain differed from any she experienced before. It lasted far longer, and it was so enormous that her clenched teeth shook.

But Lia decided to gloss over it so her father wouldn’t worry.

“It’s not serious, so don’t worry.”

“You’re a child who didn’t say a single word about pain even when you tumbled down the stairs and broke your ankle.”

“Oh, Father. To be exact, it wasn’t broken then. It was just a sprain. If it were really broken, I’d have rolled around saying it hurt, wouldn’t I?”

Lia tried adding comical gestures to lighten the stiff mood, but it was useless before Noah’s worry.

“If you have a worry, don’t hide it, tell me.”

His straight brows, sparse with white hairs, gathered fiercely. Noah examined every part of Lia with sharp eyes.

“Is it because of that matter you asked me about before? Have you perhaps developed a sickness of the heart?”

Her bowed head shot up at once as her father murmured low.

“Since you were little, if your curiosity wasn’t resolved, you would suffer a fever for nights on end. Is it because of that?”

“….”

Clever Lia decided to save her words. Though her father’s worried heart troubled her, her long-festering curiosity outweighed reason.

“Is it really because of that?”

Noah’s face, already dark, was dyed with despair.

“That’s right, Father. This burning pain in my chest might be a sickness of the heart. It hurts so much. Sometimes I can’t even breathe.”

Lia said, thumping her chest. Then, in Noah’s endlessly shaking pupils, his dearest daughter’s fist was reflected.

Now Noah’s complexion was close to ashen. Only the words that his daughter hurt so much she couldn’t breathe circled in his mind.

“Tomorrow I turn twenty, an adult. Please tell me now. In truth, I already know a lot.”

“You know?”

“I found this under your desk.”

Lia pulled a crumpled, folded paper from her pocket and held it out to her father.

“It’s a portrait of a woman who looks exactly like me. Blair Rose Van Lite, her portrait.”

Noah’s face was dyed with confusion. His expression said he never dreamed his daughter would hold this out.

Lia watched her father’s expression and waited quietly.

It was quite a tedious time.

The steaming food turned cold, and the candle newly taken out when setting the dinner table shortened by half.