Chapter 2.8

“You need to bend the wings a little more. Like this.”  

Thea, leaning her head on Lucia’s shoulder, took the pencil and corrected Lucia’s sketch.  

They were sitting on the grass, sketching the seeds of a sycamore tree, which had thin, wing-like shells that rode the wind.  

In autumn, the wing-shaped leaves would fall, spinning and riding the breeze far away.  

“So these shapes allow them to travel far even in weak winds?”  

“Yes. Elm tree seeds only have one wing, but they fly well too.”  

Lucia murmured as she chewed on her pencil.  

“That’s fascinating, truly fascinating.”  

Having grown up in the capital, Lucia rarely had the chance to interact with nature.  

But talking with Thea made her realize that there was no better inspiration than nature itself.  

Thea gazed wistfully at the small forest nearby.  

Lucia noticed and said, 

“Go ahead.”  

“I’ll be back soon.”  

Thea walked toward the forest to check if the trees she had treated in the greenhouse and transplanted were adapting well.  

What started as a simple inspection would inevitably turn into counting every new sprout one by one, so Lucia decided to go for a walk alone for an hour.  

Between the Imperial Palace and the harem lay a garden spanning over a thousand acres.  

Even with daily walks, she had yet to explore even half of it.  

Today, a gate that was usually closed was open, so Lucia stepped through it.  

She sat on a rusty bench and stared intently at Thea’s drawing of the wing-shaped leaves.  

Shapes that could travel far even in weak winds…  

“Hnng.”

The sound of a rusty gate opening reached her ears.  

“Hnng.”

No, it wasn’t the sound of a gate opening.  

A puppy was wagging its tail at Lucia’s feet.  

“Hnng, hnng.”  

The puppy looked up at Lucia with droopy ears and eyes as big as marbles.  

“What’s wrong? Are you hungry?” 

The puppy wagged its tail even more energetically.  

Lucia took out an apple she had brought along in her pocket and split it in half, placing a piece on her palm.  

The puppy only stared at the piece and didn’t eat it. Instead, it barked at Lucia with a desperate gaze.  

“You’re an omnivore. You shouldn’t be picky.”  

The puppy glared at the apple and jumped like a rabbit using its hind legs. However, it immediately fell forward.  

Now that she looked closer, both of its front legs were missing.  

Lucia pushed the drawing she had been looking at to the side.  

“Sorry.”  

She placed the apple piece on the ground. The puppy happily devoured it.  

After finishing the apple, the puppy lay on its back, showing its belly and rolling around playfully for Lucia.  

Where its front legs should have been, the stumps dragged on the ground, scraping the skin.  

Lucia lifted the puppy with both hands.  

If she took it to Reselda, she wasn’t a veterinarian, but she might be able to do something for it.  

However, as soon as Lucia carried the puppy out of the garden, it began to struggle and cry out.  

“I’m taking you to a good place. Stay still.”  

The puppy cried louder and thrashed around until Lucia had to carefully place it back on the ground before she dropped it.  

The puppy quickly crawled back into the garden.  

Lucia crouched near the bushes, watching the frightened puppy warily eye her.  

“Alright, I’m sorry. How about I just do one thing for you while you stay here?”  

***

Aristide checked to make sure there was no one around before stepping into the garden. He whispered,  

“Cannoli, Cannoli. Come out, I brought your favorite beef.”  

“Woof, woof!”  

Cannoli barked but didn’t emerge from the corner.  

Aristide tilted his head and approached.  

“What the—what is this?!”  

***

Lucia was standing on a ladder, clearing cobwebs from a corner of the guest dining room.  

Whenever she lacked new ideas for inventions, cleaning was the best way to clear her mind.  

Bang!  

Suddenly, the sound of the main door bursting open rang out.  

“Miss Bianchi! Miss Bianchi!”  

“Your Majesty?”  

‘What’s going on? I heard that His Majesty never visits without notice.’  

Lucia tilted her head and stepped into the hallway.  

Sure enough, Emperor Aristide was standing at the main entrance.  

“Miss Bianchi, what is this!”  

Aristide held out a puppy that Lucia was familiar with.  

The puppy panted happily, its tongue sticking out.  

“It’s a puppy.”  

“Not that! This!”  

He pointed to the wheels attached to the puppy’s upper body.  

The device Lucia had made was a small wooden board with two wheels, secured to the puppy’s torso with straps.  

The two wheels, attached to the ends of an A-shaped metal frame, allowed the puppy to move forward when it walked with its hind legs.  

Lucia patted the puppy’s head and said, 

“Tito, are you using the wheels well?”  

“Woof, woof!”  

Aristide exclaimed with a bewildered expression, 

“Tito?!”  

“It’s the puppy’s name.”  

“Tito, my foot! Cannoli! Its name is Cannoli!”  

“Oh, it had a name. I thought it was a stray, so I gave it a name.”  

Reselda, who happened to be passing by, greeted them.  

“Hello, Your Majesty. Oh, Tito’s here too!”  

Aristide glared at Lucia.  

She had done something strange to someone else’s puppy without showing a shred of remorse!  

“Look at what you’ve done!”  

Aristide set the puppy down. It moved its hind legs vigorously.  

But instead of moving forward, it spun in circles.  

“It worked fine yesterday. What’s wrong with it?”  

Then, seeing Aristide’s sheepish expression, Lucia realized the reason.  

“You broke it, didn’t you?”  

Aristide coughed into his fist, his hand balled up near his mouth.  

He had merely fiddled with the fascinating device to see how it worked, but the wheel had come loose.  

His attempt to reattach it had resulted in this mess.  

“How did you manage to break it so perfectly? I’m impressed.”  

“…Are you mocking me?”  

“I’m being sincere. Your Majesty, you seem to have an uncanny ability to identify the key mechanism of a device and break it. I think I could learn a lot from you.”  

If she were mocking him, that would have been better. But her sincerity made it all the more irritating.  

After tinkering in her workshop for a few dozen minutes, Lucia repaired the puppy’s wheel device.  

Aristide watched as Lucia fitted the device onto the puppy—Tito, no, Cannoli!—and scratched its chin.  

Her expression, though neutral, appeared unusually warm.  

Lucia asked Tito, 

“When I said I’d take you home, you hated it so much, but you willingly followed His Majesty? Even you can’t resist power, huh.”  

Aristide also sat on the floor.  

“This puppy is very attached to me.”  

“You must have raised it for a long time.”  

“It was born at the Imperial hunting dog kennel. Since birth, it’s been missing its legs and was bullied by the other dogs. The kennel master intended to kill it, but I took it and raised it in the garden.”  

Lucia spoke without malice.  

“Your Majesty, you seems to prefer protecting the unfortunate in a passive way.”  

“I tried standing up to it once, but the cost was too high.”  

“Pardon?”  

“Never mind.”  

He stood and brushed the dog hair off his pants.  

“Do you want to keep it, Miss Bianchi?”  

“Would it be alright for me to keep your puppy, Your Majesty?”  

Perhaps because he was looking down at her.  

She wore the expression of a child unable to hide their joy at receiving an unexpected gift.  

This, too, was a first for him.  

Aristide asked the puppy, 

“Living in a house is better than living in a garden, isn’t it? Cannoli, you can live here, right?”  

“Woof, woof!”  

The puppy wagged its tail enthusiastically, as if something good had happened.  

“Then let’s do that. However, one thing must be made clear.”  

Aristide pointed to the puppy and solemnly declared,  

“Its name is Cannoli.”  

Lucia immediately countered, 

“Recently, we’ve been calling it Tito, so changing it to Tito would be better. We shouldn’t confuse it.”  

“No! It’s Cannoli! Cannoli, is your name confusing?”  

“Woof, woof!”  

Aristide triumphantly exclaimed, 

“See? It says no!”  

“How do you know that’s a negative response and not a positive one? You need to use a more scientific method.”  

Lucia lifted the puppy and looked it in the eyes. She called its name.  

“Tito.”  

“Woof!”  

“Cannoli.”  

“Woof, woof!”  

“Tito.”  

“Woof!”  

“Cannoli.”  

“Woof, woof!”  

No matter how many times she repeated it, the responses were the same.  

Lucia’s confient expression turned into disappointment, while Aristide’s demeanor became smug.  

“…Cannoli it is.”  

Aristide smirked mischievously.  

“Well then, good luck.”  

With that, he left.  

Lucia scratched Cannoli’s chin and muttered to herself,  

“…Fine, I guess you prefer your real name.”  

None of the researchers would oppose her keeping the puppy at home.  

In fact, when they had all visited the garden yesterday to see the puppy, the other researchers had been clamoring to take it home themselves.  

Emperor Aristide…  

‘I tried standing up to it once, but the cost was too high.’  

She pretended not to hear it, but the more she thought about it, the stranger it seemed.  

Rumor had it that Aristide had grown up as a Crown Prince without a care in the world.  

The Empress, who had desperately wanted to bear a second child, passed away after multiple miscarriages when Aristide was still young.  

But the esteemed Emperor had raised him well.  

So when Aristide ascended the throne, many were disappointed.  

Although they hadn’t expected him to match his predecessor, they had assumed he would at least possess the basic qualities and abilities of an Emperor.  

Instead, he turned out to be a lazy and unruly monarch.  

Why then would someone who seemed to have never experienced worry wear such an expression and say such words?  

In truth, today wasn’t the first time Lucia had seen that look on Aristide’s face.  

He had worn it when she was summoned to the study after waking up at the Imperial Palace, when she had accidentally overheard him in the study during a visit, and when she had stayed up fixing the wooden bird model.  

“Cannoli, does His Majesty often wear that expression around you?”  

Lucia lifted Cannoli and asked, but the puppy only licked her face in response.