“Work?”

The circumstances of the suspicious man were as follows.

A certain nobleman wanted to demolish an existing building and construct a villa in its place, but the laborers had begun to flee.

It was because the ground had been shaking and strong gusts of wind had been blowing frequently of late, startling everyone. Something about nature being angered, or so they said.

“What a peculiar situation.”

“Precisely. I had already received payment and the deadline was approaching, and I had no idea what to do when I witnessed you demolishing that wall!”

Adele fell into thought. To continue surviving in this world, she would need money regardless. She was younger now, and going to the royal palace to receive a knighthood would be pointless, so the only method left was to make use of her extraordinarily powerful strength.

“How much will you pay?”

And so Adele was introduced to the rather fitting job of building demolition.

Adele was put to work at the site immediately, and the few remaining laborers tilted their heads at the sudden appearance of a small child.

However, when the little child who was at most six years old swung her fist and effortlessly demolished a wall, everyone dropped their tools in shock. The person who had hired her cheered and rejoiced.

Though he seemed bewildered by his own decision to have relied on a child without quite realizing it.

The employer also kept break times precisely on schedule. Thanks to this, the construction work became the best source of income available to young Adele. The act of demolishing things was also quite enjoyable.

It was another day of Adele happily going about her work.

“Sigh. It’s a shame, but I’ll have to let that one go.”

The foreman sighed and shook his head as he looked at someone. Following his gaze, there was a man with silver hair.

Even while carrying a load that was less than a quarter of what Adele was hauling, his legs were shaking without pause. It looked as though a single nudge would send him toppling over.

Adele thought he looked like a fluttering paper doll and shook her head just as the foreman had. A fellow like that would be grounds for dismissal even in the order of knights.

The man set the small load down on the ground and wiped away his sweat. Even then, he had not yet reached even halfway to his destination.

Even so, looking thoroughly pleased with himself, the man smiled with a refreshed expression and stretched his body this way and that as though working out the stiffness.

It was at that moment. The eyes of the two met.

“Huh?”

“……Oh?”

The man spotted Adele and wiped the lively expression from his face, staring at her strangely. It was not only the man who had turned serious.

Adele was so startled that she even dropped the sack she had been carrying. The red-eyed man who was tilting his head as he looked at her. He was unmistakably……

Adele looked at the disheveled appearance of the man who had been Vincent’s right hand before the regression, and who had been a sorcerer, and thought to herself.

‘Why on earth is this fellow here doing this?’

– – –

The man approached Adele immediately and began pestering her with one thing after another.

Where she lived, what she was doing, the kind of excessive curiosity that, if witnessed by others, would warrant a report to the guards.

Adele found it uncomfortable and considered giving him a good hit, but quickly shook her head. A fellow like that would meet his end from even a light flick of her finger.

It was right for the stronger party to exercise restraint.

But the man’s strange behavior did not end there. He made her an offer to provide her with a place to stay, seeing that Adele had been living on the streets.

The question of whether she could trust him changed the moment she heard those words. Even if she could not trust him, she could use him. She could not keep sleeping on the streets.

She had no idea why he had suddenly latched onto her and was feeding and housing her. Even when Adele pushed him away irritably.

It was quite suspicious the way he would occasionally mutter to himself while looking at Adele, but nothing changed about the situation. Being a sorcerer, she could not read his inner thoughts at all, but since he was not chanting any spells, she decided that was good enough.

What was more, for some reason, this sorcerer’s appearance right now was identical to how he had looked just before his death, decades later. Even then he had appeared to be in his early twenties, and she had thought it remarkable that someone so young had such great ability, and now he looked exactly the same, in his early twenties.

It seemed his aging had simply come early.

‘People whose faces age quickly tend to keep that same face even as they grow older.’

The man, just as before the regression, did not tell her his name. Of course, Adele was not curious either. There was no need to forge any kind of familiarity in such a peculiar living arrangement.

“Well then, I’m off to work.”

The man made preparations to leave without having touched the food at all. Perhaps he was struggling financially. It was certainly not a home that even someone living under another’s roof could call comfortable.

But Adele was not particularly burdened by conscience.

‘It’s none of my concern. If it’s too much for him, wouldn’t he just tell me to leave?’

The man left, and Adele patted her full stomach as she thought of the child she had forgotten about for the past few days.

“My stomach is full. Shall I go check on my subordinate?”

– – –

Duke Usder Rogato felt a cold draft in his quiet study and shivered as he opened his eyes.

‘When did I fall asleep?’

He had been sitting quietly in his chair with his head tilted back, fast asleep. It was the first time he had ever done so in the middle of conducting official business, and he felt somewhat flustered.

He set down the pen in his hand. It seemed right to call it a day here.

“I must have been tired lately.”

Muttering this to himself, the duke turned his head and let out a groan at a sudden sharp pain. The back of his head was throbbing so intensely that he could not breathe for a moment. As though someone had struck him.

Yet when he reached back to feel the area, there was no wound. There was no swelling either, making it impossible to imagine that he had been hit.

Perhaps it was simply accumulated fatigue. It might have been a severe migraine.

Whoosh——.

Another cold draft entered the room. Looking to the side, the window was shattered. Among the shards of broken glass, a small stone was visible.

It appeared the window had been broken by that stone.

“What is going on?”

There was no way someone as sensitive as him could have slept through the sound of shattering glass. It was a suspicious scene that made him wonder whether someone had snuck in.

Yet strangely, he had no memory whatsoever of what he had been doing before falling asleep, nor of why the window had ended up in that state.

The more he tried to trace his memory, the worse the headache became, so the duke shook his head and stopped trying to think.

He rang the bell to summon a servant and ordered the study to be cleaned.

– – –

As Vincent was being carried over Adele’s shoulder, he was trying to recall whether what had just happened had truly occurred.

It was so absurd it felt like a dream. But right now, tiny Adele was carrying him in a posture as though a log had been hoisted onto her shoulder and running with him, and the constant jolting was bringing on a wave of nausea. The queasiness in his stomach proved it was no dream.

Tap tap tap tap——.

The rhythmic sound of footsteps spread along the forest path climbing up the hill behind the estate. It seemed it was truly reality, not a dream.

Just moments ago, he had certainly been in his father’s study. For once, the duke had not gone to the palace and was working from his study at the estate, putting everyone in the household on edge. Everyone except Vincent, who had been swinging branches in the garden in his excitement over becoming Adele’s subordinate.

Rather than simply drawing the curtains if it bothered him, the duke had apparently been greatly irritated by the child bouncing around outside the window.

It did not take long before Vincent was summoned and called up to the study.

〈How dare you disturb your father while he is working!〉

Today it was a thin, long branch. Wherever he kept finding such switches, the duke’s room had been accumulating more and more things suitable for striking. Since once the duke started hitting, dozens of blows were the minimum, Vincent took a deep breath and steadied his trembling heart. Then he rolled up his trouser leg.

As the fair, small calf was exposed, the duke loosened up by swinging the switch through the air.

Vincent flinched at the sharp sound cutting through the air. It seemed even that sight did not stir any sympathy in the man. The duke, having finished his preparation, raised his arm high.

Just as the duke was about to bring the switch down on Vincent’s calf!

Crash——!

Out of nowhere, a stone came flying in and shattered the window.

〈What is the meaning of…… Ugh!〉

Duke Rogato, who had been startled, let out a single cry and collapsed on the spot. At the sudden turn of events, Vincent spun around, eyes wide, and looked down at his fallen father.

He was trembling, wondering if an assassin had snuck in and whether he would be next.

Then a familiar voice was heard. Adele followed, climbing up through the window.

〈Don’t worry. I brought him down with a highly specialized technique that cannot fail. He’ll probably lose about 30 minutes of memory.〉

After that, Adele moved with practiced ease and seated the duke back in his chair. She paused for a moment in thought, then even placed a pen in his hand. From start to finish, it was truly a remarkable sight.

Vincent finished his recollection.

That was really not a dream? No, what exactly was this highly specialized technique that caused 30 minutes of memory loss? How did Adele know about something like that?

And was it really all right for him to be carried like this by a girl smaller than himself?

Adele showed no sign of fatigue as she continued running at a steady pace even while carrying Vincent. Ever since he had met this child, his common sense had been crumbling away bit by bit.

“We’re here.”