“Mylene! I’ll cover myself with the blanket, could you bring me a new comforter?”

Hearing her words, Mylene quickly took out a blanket from the closet, handed it to her, then left the room saying she would take away the dirty comforter and bring a new one.

Only after Mylene’s footsteps faded away could she finally feel relieved.

She quickly ran to the window during Mylene’s absence.

“Quick, come up, quick!”

When she gestured toward the bottom of the window, the man who had been crammed into a space about two hand-spans wide, practically hanging there, climbed up the wall into the room while grumbling in an irritated voice.

“First you suddenly push me out the window, now you tell me to come back in…… You didn’t forget your room is on the third floor, did you?”

Well, I really couldn’t put him in the bed. What else could I do?

She quickly pushed him, who kept grumbling, toward the door.

“Mylene will be back soon, hurry and go. Be careful not to get caught on your way out!”

She opened the door and as soon as she confirmed no one was in the hallway, pushed him out of the room.

Then she closed the door after telling him to be careful on his way back, got on the bed, covered herself with the blanket, and quietly waited for Mylene to return with the new comforter.

Seeing how Mylene returned, handed her the comforter without a word, and left saying her cough seemed to have subsided, it seemed he had managed to slip out without being caught by the mansion staff. 

 ***

 The next day, she was able to greet a peaceful morning that contrasted with the previous night.

Perhaps because she had spent such hectic days recently, the very ordinary peacefulness she was experiencing now felt almost boring.

Father hadn’t scolded her as severely as she expected for attempting to run away, and Leila and her brothers seemed too busy enjoying themselves to even notice her.

She was about to go out for a walk after lunch when she heard Leila and her brothers laughing and playing in the garden, and quickly changed her destination.

Hmm……

Since she would be entering the academy soon, should she go to the library to look up some related materials?

Even she couldn’t remember everything she had learned in her previous life……

Heading to the mansion’s library, she sat for a long while reading books related to things she vaguely remembered learning at the academy.

Of course, after reading related books for about two hours…… she soon got bored and switched to novels she had wanted to read.

Well, they’re all books anyway, right?

She had been so absorbed that when she finally emerged from the world of novels, the sun could already be seen setting through the window.

Startled, she dropped the book she was reading and jumped up, looking around for a clock, when she sensed someone’s presence in a corner.

“Be quiet……”

……Rubert? 

 Sitting in a corner of the library with a pen in hand and frowning at her was her third brother, Rubert.

Brother Rubert looked at her somewhat irritably before adjusting his grip on his pen and starting to scribble in his book again.

Standing still and watching, she saw that her brother’s brow remained furrowed as if something wasn’t going well.

She carefully approached him.

Rubert Masipacius……

Both now and in her previous life, Brother Rubert was someone who never received much attention from Father.

The reasons were his mediocre intelligence, average physical abilities, and unsociable personality.

Her first and second brothers continued to help Leila’s advancement even after she graduated from the academy and became an adult.

Until the moment she married the young duke of Posilia and became pregnant.

But while Brother Rubert seemed to get along well with Leila initially, he soon turned his attention away from the Masipacius household affairs and became busier traveling to places he liked.

Ah, of course that doesn’t mean his relationship with Leila was bad at all.

He always gave his travel souvenirs to Leila first.

Of course, I never received any of those gifts.

If she were to create an ally who could have some say in the mansion…… Brother Rubert had the highest possibility.

Whether he thought of her as family or cared about her was now outside of her plans.

She no longer thought of them as her family either.

The fact was that this third brother, whose position was gradually being pushed aside, was someone she could successfully recruit for a win-win outcome.

Although the atmosphere had changed slightly with the Crown Prince’s appearance, she needed something that could briefly interrupt the flow of this mansion that still revolved around Leila.

She approached him with a friendly smile on her face.

He looked at her irritably as if her footsteps bothered him, then buried his head in his book again.

When she approached and glanced at the book he was working on, she could immediately tell where he was struggling and why he was fighting so hard alone.

The formula he was trying to solve was quite difficult — it had taken her time to understand it too.

She sat across from him and wrote out the formula in a slightly easier-to-understand way, then casually handed it to him.

He gave her a displeased look before turning his head away without accepting the paper she held out.

She gently placed the paper she was holding on top of the book he had his face buried in, and as he turned to show his irritation at her, he ended up looking back at the paper and began examining the formula she had solved.

“……What are you?”

At his question, she shrugged her shoulders.

“You know I’m smart.”

Brother Rubert let out a hollow laugh at that.

“So, are you trying to show off how smart you are?”

“If I wanted to show off, I wouldn’t have given it to you so quietly. This is a formula that even first and second brothers couldn’t properly understand until now. How do you think Father would react if you solved it perfectly in front of him?”

Hearing her words, Brother Rubert slammed his fist on the desk with a bang.

“You solved it all and want me to just go tell Father about it? You want me to be a parrot that just repeats what others say?”

At his words, she shook her head.

“I only wrote down the first part of the formula that I understood. I haven’t been able to solve the rest because it’s still too difficult. I was planning to learn the rest at the academy.”

Of course, that first part happened to be the most difficult and important part of the formula.

Hearing her words, Brother Rubert stared intently at the paper before slipping it between the pages of his book and leaving the library. 

 ***

 When dinner time came, she deliberately brought up what had happened in the library in front of everyone.

“By the way Brother Rubert, did you find the answer to that problem you were pondering over in the library?”

Everyone’s attention focused on Brother Rubert.

Hearing her words, Brother Rubert looked at her with a surprised expression.

Since he didn’t like drawing people’s attention, she had to set the stage to somehow make him noticeable to Father.

Brother looked between her and them with a flustered expression before hanging his head low.

“Just…… there was a difficult problem……” 

 As he trailed off, she jumped in to support him.

“I just happened to peek at what Brother Rubert was studying when I saw him reading in the library.”

Hearing her words, Father looked at her and Brother Rubert with an expression of disapproval.

“You shouldn’t disturb your brother’s studies.” 

 Wow, this is truly comedic.

Our Father, who is truly such a proper father, turned my actions into wrongdoings even at this timing.

“I was also studying in the library — you don’t think this genius head of mine was just made this way, do you?” 

 The Marquis frowned at my deliberately provocative words, but she paid no attention and cut her steak into small pieces before popping a piece into her mouth.

The Marquis sighed and turned his attention back to Brother Rubert. 

 “So, what was so difficult?”

“Ah…… I was studying magic formulas.”

Hearing Brother Rubert’s words, the other brothers immediately exhaled with an “Ah~” as if they knew exactly what he meant.

Brother Bershua immediately made a disgusted expression and shuddered as if his whole body had broken out in goosebumps.

“That one, right? The spatial movement formula.”

Brother Rubert nodded at those words.

When the topic of spatial movement formulas came up, second brother Rembro immediately covered his ears with both hands.

“Ugh, just thinking about how we struggled with that at the academy…… It’s absolutely impossible at our level. They’ll pass us if we just roughly memorize the formula and pretend to know it.”

Brother Rubert scratched his cheek with his finger before speaking.

“Um…… I did manage to solve it somehow……” 

 Hearing those words, everyone except Leila and her stared at Brother Rubert with wide eyes.

While spatial movement formulas were taught as one of the basic magics at the academy, their use was strictly prohibited for minors.

Even adults could only use this magic after passing intense scrutiny at the imperial palace to verify they perfectly understood the formula and had the power to control that magical force, and only after being granted qualification. 

 If Brother Rubert had truly solved this formula that even adults found difficult, it meant Marquis Masipacius would gain a genius son Rubert in addition to his genius daughter Rowenloa.

Father stared at Brother Rubert with a surprised expression for a while before clearing his throat “ahem—” to focus everyone’s attention in the dining room on himself. 

 “When you say you solved that formula…… do you mean you memorized it or something like that?”

Brother Rubert shook his head at Father’s words.

Brother Bershua’s face darkened as he watched Brother Rubert. 

 She looked at them with a satisfied expression.