“Kyu…”

Yolly halfheartedly accepted Saena’s praise with a nod and climbed onto the bed. He seemed ready to sleep again.

‘You always sleep again after coming back…’

For some reason, whenever Yolly returned from Constantine’s room, he always slept more like this.

‘Maybe he doesn’t actually sleep there and just stays by his side?’

Since she had never looked in on them, she couldn’t know.

“Alright. Go ahead and sleep. I’ll come back after doing some work.”

“Kyang.”

With a big yawn, Yolly curled up into a ball and fell asleep.

After calling a maid to help her wash and change into an indoor dress, Saena headed to her office.

* * *

Recently, the translation had been making incredible progress.

Though she was concentrating more than before because she needed something to focus on when her mind was empty to avoid distracting thoughts, even accounting for that, the results were amazing.

As a result, she had been spending more and more time returning from her office to her bedroom.

“Madam.”

“Mm.”

Perhaps because of this, lately, either Yolly or Darielle had started coming to fetch her like this.

“Madam?”

“Mm.”

Realizing it was an unconscious reflexive response, Darielle approached closer and leaned on the desk while raising her voice.

“Oh my… Madam!”

“Huh, what?”

“You need to rest. How long are you planning to stay here?”

“Hmm? What time is it?”

It felt like she had only been here for a few hours at most…

“It’s past eleven.”

“What?”

When had it gotten so late?

“I’ve drawn your bath. The maids are waiting too. Please wash up and rest.”

“Alright.”

Saena rose from her seat, rolling her stiff shoulders and stretching.

“Your concentration is really amazing. I get sore just sitting at a desk for an hour.”

“I thought you had quite a workload too, Darielle?”

“I do more fieldwork. For paperwork, I have an assistant who handles it, so I just sign off on things.”

“Oh, really?”

An assistant does sound nice.

But given that Saena had to travel between the imperial capital and Kramer territory, it was awkward to hire an assistant due to those circumstances.

Since this was still an adjustment period, she was taking a wait-and-see approach. Later, once a pattern emerged, she would probably need to get an assistant.

Darielle gave various instructions to the maids regarding Saena’s bath before saying goodbye and leaving for the day.

Saena relaxed and let herself be tended to. As she was quietly being attended to in the bath, the contents of her earlier work naturally came to mind.

She had recently discovered a very interesting section in the book she bought from Bellua Antiquarian Bookstore and was in the process of translating it.

[Arlesian has a grammar method? structure? that’s only used in written form?]

‘That’s where I got to in the translation.’

It makes quite a bit of sense, right? I think I translated that part almost correctly. And what were those words that came after…

‘Content, leave, inform, negative form, easy, important. And ■■ and □□.’

Left content. Not easy to inform? Don’t want to inform? Important ■■ or □□?

‘What could ■■ and □□ be?’

They seem to be the key characters based on the context, but she couldn’t get a sense of their meaning at all.

Since it was about Arlesian having a unique grammatical structure, ■■ grammar? □□ character?

‘Assuming this interpretation is correct…’

Saena started randomly inserting objects she could see in front of her into ■■ or □□ to form words.

‘Water structure, bath structure, hand character, foot grammar, bathroom character, woman grammar…’

None of it made sense, but since she didn’t know anyway, she kept muttering different combinations.

Meanwhile, Saena had finished bathing and was dressed in her nightgown. When she was seated at her vanity to have her hair dried, her gaze naturally went to the full-length mirror.

‘Mirror.’

Mirror character. Mirror… character?

Left important content that they didn’t want to easily reveal in ■■ character or mirror character…?

‘Hm? Wait a minute, this…’

Mirror character? Could it be referring to mirrored letters? Left-right inversion?

“Gasp!”

Saena jumped up in shock.

“Ma… Madam?”

“Did we pull your hair? We’re so sorry!”

The maids apologized in surprise, but she didn’t hear any of it. She couldn’t stay still due to the shivers running down her spine from the tremendous clue she had just discovered.

“I need to check, I need to verify!”

“What?”

“What do you need to check?”

She couldn’t let such a lead slip away by going to sleep. She needed to resume work immediately.

“No, I just thought of something. This much is fine for my hair, you can go now.”

“But your hair isn’t completely dry yet.”

“No, it’s enough, you can go.”

Saena practically drove the maids out, threw on just a robe, and immediately headed back to her office. She hurriedly examined her last translation sheet.

“Arlesian, especially written form… has unique grammatical system? structure? exists.”

Yes. It makes sense.

“Riddles? People of that time loved them. So this structure…”

The people of the Arles-Promesa era loved riddles?

“Books and letters…. hidden… hiding the real message they wanted to convey…?”

So they used mirror characters or ■■ characters to write the answer or true meaning of the text in a dual layer?

“Wow, if this is true, it explains why certain sections were impossible to translate until now.”

Since the approach was completely wrong, there was no way they could be translated.

Saena went out and got a mirror of suitable size.

Then she gathered papers where she had copied passages from the ancient text that had been particularly difficult to translate and began examining the characters reflected in the mirror.

“Wow, wow, woah…! I-it’s readable?”

Arlesian characters each had a somewhat seal-like form. That’s why the characters themselves looked like patterns, and each character could contain many meanings.

However, she had never thought about the possibility that these forms could make sense even when flipped horizontally.

“Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.”

Repeating exclamations of amazement, Saena moved her hands frantically.

She became deeply immersed as she turned the pages.

Hours flew by without her even noticing.

“The ancients loved… perfect form…. even when flipped. undistorted…”

Ah, is that why Arlesian characters are seal-like in form?

Most Arlesian characters were square-shaped, mixed with rectangular and circular forms. So mirror letters were possible, and even when the characters themselves were flipped, they formed symmetry…

‘Symmetry? Wait…. ■■ could probably be interpreted as symmetry.’

Symmetrical structure? Symmetrical character?

Symmetrical characters and mirror characters?

‘Come to think of it, the black diamond also has a perfectly symmetrical structure… And the largest pattern on Constantine’s back also forms symmetry…’

“Oh!”

The largest framework on his back! Isn’t that a marquise shape? It’s exactly like the diamond shape!

Saena’s mouth fell open at another sudden realization.

It was an incredible discovery.

* * *

It was the fourth day.

Once again, dark circles marked Constantine’s sleepless eyes after several days without proper rest. As he forcefully closed his bloodshot and dry eyes, he sensed a now somewhat familiar presence.

“Kyuhu.”

Seeing Saena’s beast arrive with what looked like a sighing expression, it seemed he might be able to sleep today.

— No, this beast, he’s here again!

But for some reason, he wasn’t particularly welcome.

Though he should be grateful that besides Saena, there was another being who could help him sleep in the realm of silence, for some reason Constantine found this beast’s presence strangely irritating.

But this sentiment wasn’t his alone.

The beast’s expression was just as disgruntled as Constantine’s sour face.

— Look at that, that arrogant expression! Just reeking of unpleasantness! Get out right now!

Yolly made what looked like a big sighing expression before climbing onto the bed. The way his tail tapped the bed seemed to say ‘hurry up and go to sleep’.

“……”

— Master!! How can you tolerate this sight! Let’s throw him out right nowww!

But what could he do? Saena seemed to be sending Yolly out of consideration. What did his feelings matter?

‘Right, let’s just sleep.’

His sleep state had definitely reached its limit too…

This beast somehow knew Constantine’s limits so well, only visiting on days when he had reached his extreme. Sometimes after three days, sometimes after four, varying each time.

— Master! Even though you don’t even like this beast! Why are you doing this!

Still better than you chattering all night long, you bastard…

But then.

— Hehehe. I’ll be quiet today. So let’s throw him out quickly, okay? Master?

Caligo came with a deal.

“Shut up.”

But Constantine rejected it mercilessly.

“Kyung?”

Yolly, with an expression that seemed to say ‘What did I do?’, looked even more displeased than before.

“Not you.”

“Kyawng.”

The wolf cub irritably pattered the spot where he would lie down before curling up into a ball. And when Constantine lay down, he slowly moved a bit away before lightly placing his bear paw on Constantine’s hand.

— Ah, Masterrr! You keep doing this…

His attitude suggested he didn’t want any more contact than the jelly part of his paw.

Actually, before, Yolly used to plop his bear paw on Constantine’s forehead or place his paw on any bare skin nearby, but he’d been acting like this since that time Constantine made a mistake.

‘Ha, I don’t want to sleep touching a beast either!’

In his half-asleep state, when he felt the warm body nearby, he unconsciously embraced it—how was he supposed to know?

If he had known it was that brat, he would never have done it.

He even kissed it.

‘Kyaak!’

Thanks to that, he had to listen to the beast’s screaming along with getting slapped by those bear paws for quite a while.

Getting slapped by the beast’s bear paw that day didn’t hurt, but it felt strangely, very, dirty. Yet he couldn’t genuinely get angry at the beast, so he had to just furrow his brow, close his eyes, and swallow his anger.

Since then, that beast had been keeping some distance from him, barely making contact just with the tip of his fingers like this.

“……”

Though it felt somewhat like being treated as a plague patient, it was still more comfortable when Caligo’s voice subsided.

He needed to quickly put his exhausted body to sleep like water-soaked cotton, but strangely, sleep wouldn’t come. Though his mind was quiet, it felt oddly different from what Saena provided.