A truly pretty young lady with a small frame, curly golden hair that reached her waist, and deep green eyes.

The fact that she could still picture her so vividly even after more than a decade was a testament to just how beautiful she was.

“Twelve is not such a young age. My name is Bailey. I have worked at Heitzrind for a long time. If there is anything you don’t know going forward, you are welcome to ask me. But if you are to stay here, there is something you must keep in mind. This is not the Baden household.”

Bailey paused briefly before continuing.

“You are not a servant of this house, but neither are you a master like the duke and duchess or Master Karl. To put it plainly, you are no more than a guest living here by the duke’s grace. You must know your place and conduct yourself accordingly. The duchess you met earlier, in particular, does not tolerate mistakes.”

The word “uninvited guest” rose to Bailey’s throat, but she felt it was too harsh a word to use on a child who was looking up at her with wide, guileless eyes, so she softened it.

Still, that was exactly what the girl was. An uninvited guest.

“You said you were at a charity school? Life here will certainly be better than it was there. But do not forget what I said about knowing your place. Never draw the duchess’s attention, and see to your own affairs yourself. You are twelve, so I trust you understand what I am saying?”

Her words were as cold as they could be, yet Bailey looked at Adele with quiet worry and concern behind her eyes.

Everything Bailey said was true, and it was all something this small child would need to hold to from now on.

Adele gave a firm nod. Moisture gathered in her green eyes.

* * *

Whether it was the unfamiliar bed, Adele tossed and turned a great deal.

The room was much smaller than her old bedroom, but thinking back on the nearly two months at the charity school where fifteen or so people shared a single room, this was far from bad.

The firewood Bailey lit kept a warm air drifting through the room.

The room still felt strange as her room at Heitzrind, but the knowledge that she had a space of her own brought her some comfort.

On top of that, the room had outer shutters that connected to the outside.

A peek through them revealed a breathtaking rose garden spread out beyond, and for twelve-year-old Adele, that was a very powerful temptation.

Adele shifted to lie on her back and stared up at the ceiling.

Everything that unfolded over the past few months felt like a dream. A dream she never wanted to dream again, a relentless string of terrible nightmares.

Adele always thought her life was a happy one.

A beautiful and graceful mother. A kind and wonderful father. And their beloved Adele, showered in their love.

Adele never saw a manor as grand as her own home, and anything she wanted was always within reach.

A childhood with nothing lacking, rich in every way.

The tragedy that fell over that life came last year, the year Adele turned eleven.

Adele’s father, Michael Baden, was not of noble birth, but he was widely regarded as a man of considerable business acumen.

Starting with mining rights in the new continent, he expanded his ventures and became a major player in the world of investment, and most of his enterprises were successful.

About a decade ago, when the Wirt Constitution was proclaimed and the country transformed into a republic, many things began to change.

The boundaries between king, nobility, and commoner collapsed.

The constitution abolished the class system and legally prohibited discrimination based on rank.

This was not limited to the Erwin Empire. It was a change shared across the world.

In that climate, the middle class, those who accumulated wealth through commerce, came to occupy the center of the Erwin Republic. Adele’s father, Michael Baden, was one of them.

Noble titles disappeared, and the political class shifted to fit the republic as well.

Some nobles, quick to read the changing times, swiftly turned their advantages toward becoming businesspeople.

They still prized bloodlines within their own circles, but they understood. The world was changing, and power lay in the accumulation of money.

It was a time of chaos, where everything shifted rapidly.

Even through all that change, Adele was safe and at peace.

She now understood that was because of her father’s efforts and her mother’s protection.

“Adele, my beloved daughter. It breaks my heart to leave you behind.”

Adele thought of her mother in the final moments before she passed.

The beautiful noblewoman others once praised was nowhere to be seen. Only a frail, gaunt and grieving mother lay in the bed.

Her beautiful mother died giving birth to her younger sibling.

Her father was busy traveling between the new continent and the southern lands for business, so the many maids of the Baden household and Adele were the ones who looked after her mother, Rene.

Her mother gave birth to a boy who did not reach full term, and the faintly crying infant soon stopped breathing before he could even take to the br*ast.

Adele never forgot her mother’s sorrowful face that day, nor the ashen face of her newborn sibling.

Her mother was frail throughout the pregnancy, mostly bedridden and sunk in depression, but Adele truly never imagined she would leave her and her father behind like that.

The blow to her father, who loved her mother deeply, was immense.

He rushed home and held Adele, the only one left, and wept.

Baden knew he had to pull himself together for the sake of his only daughter, so he fought with everything he had to hold his faltering business together.

Then, three months ago, he lost his life to a tropical disease in the southern lands.

That day, too, rain fell in a dreary drizzle, just like today.

It was a heavier rain than could be called spring rain, and from that day on, everything in Adele’s life changed completely.

On the day of the funeral, many people dressed in black flooded into the Baden household.

Those who invested in Michael Baden wasted no time once they learned his business collapsed. They reached out in every direction, swarming like a mass of black ants, each trying to recover even a fraction of what they were owed.

The valuable furnishings and belongings of the Baden household were shattered and scattered, and Michael Baden’s business was torn apart piece by piece.

It was a scandal large enough to make the front pages of countless newspapers.

Adele wept loudly as she watched her home fall to ruin.

The creditors had no interest in who remained in the Baden household, or whether that someone was a young child who still needed someone’s care.

They pushed into Adele’s room and took the pretty hairpin her mother gave her, and the ivory jewelry box her father brought back from the southern lands.

They called Adele the daughter of a thief, but in her eyes, they were the thieves.

Not a single small gift from her beloved mother and father remained, and Adele sobbed and sobbed at the unbearable grief of it.

Her nanny, a dark-skinned woman from the southern lands, pulled Adele tightly into her arms.

“It’s all right, young miss. The master and the mistress have surely found each other now and are happy. They are no longer in pain, and what a wonderful thing that is. So please don’t cry. Those wicked people will face divine punishment from the god Bashni. Do not meet their eyes. Looking at people possessed by evil spirits will bring misfortune upon you.”

The nanny held her little miss, who seemed to have regressed to a much younger child, and whispered to her in halting Erwin.

Listening to her gentle nanny’s voice, endlessly soothing her, Adele briefly lost consciousness.

How much time passed, she didn’t know. When she opened her eyes again, her nanny was gone too. And Adele was led away by someone’s hand to the charity school.

When her thoughts reached that point, Adele squeezed her eyes shut.

Those two or three months at the charity school were the most terrible memories of her life.

She never once slept soundly, and the hair she once took pride in was forcibly cut short.

The curly golden hair her mother used to brush gently with a soft comb was truly beautiful even to her own eyes, but the long locks that once reached her waist were lopped off in the name of hygiene and education.

Even that was done clumsily with a dull pair of scissors, leaving the shoulder-length hair completely uneven.

One memory chased another, and before she knew it, tears slid down Adele’s face.

The pillow grew wet from the endless stream, but the tears would not stop easily.

Adele forced her thoughts to stop and buried her face in the pillow.

Tomorrow her eyes would be swollen.

A rustling and bustling around her roused Adele, and she forced her eyes open.

“You’re awake? Wash up quickly and change your clothes.”

Bailey woke the child while pretending not to notice that Adele’s pretty green eyes were half swollen shut.

After finishing her work the previous evening and lying quietly in her own room, she found herself thinking of that mouse-like girl, and a vague unease settled over her.