“Are you all right, Miss?”

“Silvie.”

Buried in work and losing track of everything, my maid Silvie asked me that. Her beautiful eyes were filled with worry for me.

She had originally been an assassin raised by the assassin’s guild, before I had transformed it into the intelligence bureau.

‘As dazzling as ever today.’

I personally knew a bundle of foolish men who had flirted with her, drawn in by her beautiful silver hair and lovely face, and ended up with broken arms.

‘Beautiful people are thorny by nature. But beauty is precious. Just looking at her feels like my energy is being recharged.’

A strange thought suddenly crept in and left me dazed. I had been absent-mindedly captivated by Silvie’s beauty and drifted into odd thoughts.

Silvie was already well accustomed to my peculiarities, so without minding it, she slid a cup of lavender tea toward me.

“This afternoon you must attend the imperial ball. It would be best to apply a face mask now and rest lying down.”

“……Do you think I have that kind of leisure?”

I pushed the lavender tea aside and brought my lips to a nearby cup of cold, bitter coffee.

‘Blech.’

Truly revolting. I had asked someone to brew coffee strong enough to wake me up, and whoever it was had brought something undrinkable.

But it really did wake me up. I grimaced and sipped at the coffee. Even so, my eyes moved busily, scanning the documents on the desk.

Silvie urged me in a subdued voice.

“You should set the work aside for a moment……”

“Set it aside and it will only come back as tomorrow’s work.”

“Then you can set it aside again tomorrow.”

“……Have you secretly joined some religion?”

“I am simply offering sensible advice.”

It sounded like she had fallen into some strange religion that put its faith in tomorrow’s self.

Having personally learned from working in my previous life, tomorrow’s me was a less reliable creature than present me. Trusting that person made life genuinely miserable.

“It is truly important paperwork. I will look at just this and then get ready.”

At my answer, Silvie let out a deep sigh.

“I know you said the same thing last night and went to bed late.”

“What? How do you know that?”

Everyone had been nagging me so much that I had hidden away yesterday to work without anyone knowing. The light had gone out on me partway through, so I had not managed to finish, but still.

I narrowed my eyes.

“Do not tell me you turned off the light on purpose.”

“……”

Silvie averted her gaze. A silent confirmation.

“Good grief, honestly.”

A hollow laugh escaped me at the absurdity of it, and Silvie turned her cheek toward me and said:

“You may hit me if you find me disagreeable.”

“I won’t do that. I don’t find you disagreeable in the slightest.”

“If possible, I would prefer you use a whip.”

“I have no such hobby!”

A whip, of all frightening things! I pushed Silvie by the shoulders.

“Get out! I can’t concentrate with you here and my work is falling even further behind.”

With Silvie sent out, I plunged back into the work.

Even while working, Silvie poked her head in from time to time.

“Miss, you must rest even a little.”

Just one more thing, and then.

“Miss, even if resting is out of the question, you need to prepare for the ball.”

No, just let me finish this.

“Miss, His Highness the Crown Prince has arrived to escort you. But young Master Benjamin is telling His Highness that he is your escort partner for life and picking a fight, so please come and stop him……”

No, no, no. Just a moment, I said!

How much time had passed like that?

What woke me was not Silvie, but a young lady I had never seen before, adorned with jewels that sparkled so brilliantly they hurt the eyes.

“Are you ignoring me right now, Miss Goldworthy!”

“Pardon?”

I blinked. At the same time, by reflex, I raised my hand and wiped the corner of my mouth. When you wake up from dozing, you always have to wipe the corner of your mouth in case you drooled.

‘Oh dear, I must have dozed off.’

Everything was strange. The glittering crystal chandelier, the people dressed in colorful silk garments, the soft music drifting through the air.

‘Wait, music?’

Back home, quiet music was forbidden because it made one drowsy while working.

‘I was clearly in the middle of working.’

When had I ended up somewhere like this? Glancing around in a fluster, I rambled on.

“What were we talking about just now? That my maid says I should beat her with a whip if I find her disagreeable?”

At my answer, the young lady’s face went pale.

“Good heavens, what on earth are you saying?”

“Ah, I am not quite awake yet. I am having trouble following the conversation. So I would appreciate it if you could explain what we were discussing.”

“That is horrifying!”

Even after I had gone to the trouble of offering an explanation, the young lady shuddered and fled as though running away.

I tilted my head and looked to the side.

‘My escort at today’s ball was supposed to be my fiancé, Crown Prince Adolf.’

But the one holding my hand was my dear younger brother Benjamin. Left with no choice, I asked Benjamin:

“Did I say something wrong, Ben?”

At my question, Benjamin answered in a stiff, soldier-like tone.

“You are always perfect, Sister.”

The gleam in his eyes as he looked at me was also like that of a captain gazing at a division commander in the military.

In short, it was a look that made clear he would never say anything unfavorable.

“……Right, who am I asking.”

I let out a deep sigh. Waking up from a nap had left my temples throbbing.

‘Well, what could go wrong?’

Too tired to ask and piece things together one by one, I simply yawned and left it at that.

And the next day.

For some reason, I had become the Empire’s villainess, one who beat her maids on a whim and banished even His Highness the Crown Prince without a second thought.

❀❀❀

To Miss Nanari of the Drian household, who is on track to be recorded in the Empire’s history books as the first young lady to die of laughter.

I had no idea you were such a person of leisure. To think you would fill an entire page of letter paper with “lol”s written out by hand.

How honored I am that the behind-the-scenes story of high society’s greatest villainess amused you so.

But if you mock me so openly and end up getting whipped by the social villainess, what then? Rumor has it that I apparently tried to whip His Highness the Crown Prince and was only stopped by force.

I suppose I ought to practice swinging a whip to live up to everyone’s expectations.

After the page filled with “lol”s, you had written words of concern for me, isolated as I am in society.

Are you performing the role of a kind young lady who comes to her senses belatedly and worries about the social villainess? After laughing to your heart’s content and then worrying about me, there is no sincerity to be felt.

And for me, it was not such a bad situation. I insisted it was all Silvie’s fault for the whip remark, which meant I was able to eat a mountain of chocolate marshmallows that had been strictly forbidden under normal circumstances.

Speaking of chocolate marshmallows, it reminds me of the outdoor banquet where I first met you, Miss Nanari.

You were terribly adorable as a child. You came straight up to me and said, quite sweetly and honestly, that you thought I was a fairy, that I was so pretty.

So why have you become so disagreeable?

❀❀❀

I met Nanari Drian at a garden party held in the Drian family’s garden.

The ancestor of the Drian family was a dragon who had helped found the nation. Any citizen of the Empire would look upon the Drian family with reverence, but I felt none of that whatsoever.

‘The eldest son of this family is going to go berserk as a dragon and reduce the capital to ashes.’

Knowing the contents of the original story, there was absolutely no way I could look upon them with reverence like everyone else.

Truthfully, banquet or not, I had no desire to go anywhere near the Drian family. But there was only one reason I had swallowed my fear and come here.

‘Know your enemy and know yourself, and you will win every battle.’

The villain destined to destroy this Empire, Karl Drian.

I needed to know what kind of person he was, so I would not accidentally trip his berserk switch.

And there was just a small, truly small, curiosity about what a genuine dragon’s descendant actually looked like. In the end, there was little to be gained.

‘More ordinary than what I had heard.’

I fanned myself with my folding fan and thought as much.

‘I had imagined that a dragon’s descendant would live somewhere like a cave.’

Or perhaps have gold piled up like a mountain. But the Drian manor was not particularly different from any other noble manor.

‘If anything, our Goldworthy ducal family seems to sparkle more.’

Our ancestors must have been magpies, because all the descendants went absolutely mad at the sight of anything that glittered. Money, money, and more money.

Thanks to our ancestors throwing themselves at anything that turned a profit, the descendants lived every single day crushed under work. And since they had inherited that very greed intact, they could not let a single thing go and were grinding their own bones into the effort.