Eden spoke in a sharp tone and fixed the servant with a hard look.

His father sent people regularly under the pretense of inquiring after his son’s wellbeing. It served two purposes at once — playing the part of a caring father to ease his own conscience, while warning his young son not to get any ideas.

His thoughts churned. Everything felt exhausting and suffocating. He had never liked any of this, but it had never been this difficult to endure.

Everything had changed after that one dreamlike night.

Eden suppressed his anger and spoke.

“……I’ll need to change before I see her. Have it prepared.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

The servant bowed once more and moved ahead to relay the message inside the estate. Just before stepping through the entrance, Eden looked up at the sky.

Unlike the day he had met Alisa, the sky was perfectly clear, without a single cloud.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

“Come on, come on. Quickly!”

Mrs. Ashford brought Alisa up to the second floor of the clothing shop and began preparing her in earnest. Trays hung with dazzling dresses came out one after another without end.

The seamstress moved around Alisa with a measuring tape, ready to wrap it around every inch of her, and took her measurements in rapid succession.

“No need to alter the size at all. I was worried the clothes might not fit since Miss Evelyn is quite slim, but Miss Alisa has a very slight build as well.”

Elinor held swatches of various colored fabrics up beside Alisa’s face and nodded along.

“I thought only dark tones suited her, but a pure white dress looks wonderful on her too.”

“Exactly! Miss Alisa is the best choice we could possibly make right now!”

Listening to Mrs. Ashford’s cheerful declaration, Alisa swallowed quietly. Beyond the seamstress, she could see the hour hand of the clock creeping past one.

It had been an hour since she slipped out of the Ludendorff estate. She was still all right for now, but once the shoot was over, three hours would easily have passed. She could already picture exactly how Mary and Hannah would react — but she decided to set that worry aside for the moment.

‘Even so, I’ll say this much. Find something else. No one will thank you for quietly playing the maid here. No one will take responsibility for your future.’

The Prince’s advice echoed in her ears. Old-fashioned words, but they hit so close to the mark it nearly brought tears to her eyes.

The moment she came of age, her uncle would try to drive her out of the estate. He would make sure she left without a single coin, and then he would never spare her another glance. There wasn’t a single wrong thing in what Eden had said.

‘Of course, Mother will come back before that.’

She would make sure of it — Alisa herself would pray and work very hard toward that end.

‘But even so, I can’t afford not to prepare for what comes after.’

Believing in miracles and depending on miracles were entirely different things. If her mother hadn’t returned by the time she came of age, Alisa planned to join a travelling theatre company and go looking for her herself.

“Miss Alisa, could you close your eyes? I’ll just trim the fringe a little.”

“Yes!”

“There we go, very lovely.”

The assistant gave a thumbs-up with her scissors in hand, and from downstairs someone called out:

“Mr. Edward Penrose has arrived!”

The announcement of the photographer’s arrival brought the hands of the assistants preparing Alisa to a halt. She had been closing and opening her eyes on command and moving her arms and legs this way and that when a mirror was held up in front of her.

“Oh……”

Alisa let out a small sound of wonder.

The long black dress, trailing all the way to the floor, fit her as though it had always been hers. The high-necked lace and long sleeves fashionable in the capital Lander, and the bell-shaped skirt flaring out from the waist, were strikingly elegant.

She looked like a completely different person from the girl who had walked into this shop in worn-out clothes not long ago.

“All right, let’s head down, Miss Alisa. You can see how lovely you look later in the developed photographs.”

Alisa was guided down the stairs by Mrs. Ashford’s hand. Several of the assistants waiting below took her hand to steady her, while others helped lift the hem of her skirt as they led her outside.

Following the assistants’ guidance, she was brought to a small garden behind the building. There sat an elegant wooden chair with floral embroidery on the fabric, and in front of it stood a large camera mounted on a tripod.

Her heart beat faster. She had seen this kind of thing several times a day when she used to follow her mother around as a small child, but since her mother left the house, she hadn’t seen one even once.

Alisa’s gaze lingered on those longed-for days.

The camera was slightly smaller than she remembered, with a fine leather-covered body. The front cover the photographer had already opened, the accordion-shaped bellows extending from it, the lens at the end — not a single part of it was unfamiliar.

‘But there’s nothing to be afraid of, Alisa. You already know what to do.’

Alisa looked at the chair in the camera’s frame. She let out a short breath — hoo — and the tension in her shoulders came down.

“Now, Miss Alisa, you’ll be nervous, but try not to shake too……”

She walked forward without hearing the rest of Mrs. Ashford’s words. Rather than sitting in the chair, she stopped in front of it and spun around. The long silver hair that had been combed neatly down her back flew up into the air, then settled softly over the black lace trim at her shoulders.

Elinor, standing nearby, said in alarm:

“If you turn like that, the hair……”

“Shh, leave her.”

“Pardon? Ma’am?”

“Let’s see what she does.”

Mrs. Ashford gestured to the photographer, Mr. Penrose. He stepped up to the camera, adjusted the focus, and began pressing the shutter.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

The shoot ended when the sun had lost some of its strength.

Alisa finally breathed again only after Mr. Penrose closed the front cover of the camera. Over three hours, she had changed into five different dresses and worn more accessories than she could count.

Completely worn out, she slumped over the chair that had served as a prop. The assistants were tidying the garden, and Mrs. Ashford had moved away to speak with the photographer. No one had the time to tell Alisa what came next.

‘……Did I do all right?’

Now that the shoot was over, worry quietly began to creep in.

Alisa looked around and shook her head. This was no time to be thinking about that. The biggest problem was that Mary and Hannah would have realized by now that she wasn’t in the estate.

‘I need to get back quickly.’

Growing anxious, Alisa jumped down from the chair and grabbed the nearest assistant.

“Excuse me, if it’s all finished, can I go now? They’ll be worried at home.”

“Oh, wait. We still need to give you your modelling fee……”

“I’ll come back for it later. I really have to go. And, um…… this gift box — if the gentleman upstairs comes by, could you pass it along to him? Just tell him Alisa left it for a moment, that’s all I need……”

“Of course, I’ll do that. Go inside and the other assistants will help you change. Go on, and come back for your fee another time.”

Alisa nodded and ran back to the shop. Her original dress was still in the fitting room. She took off the yellow dress from the last part of the shoot and pulled her own clothes back on.

In her rush to get her small clothes back on, she tore the seam at the elbow — but there was no time to worry about that.

‘Hurry, Alisa, quickly, quickly!’

Taking off the yellow dress from the final shoot, she felt her body lighten considerably. Alisa was about to step outside when she stopped and stared at the mirror fixed to the fitting room wall.

She never had occasion to look at herself normally, so she hadn’t noticed — but the reflection staring back at her was truly shabby and unremarkable. Enough to make Eden’s mistake of taking her for a maid immediately understandable.

The curls the assistants had so carefully combed through tangled right back up the moment she brushed against them while changing, and the body revealed beneath the tight old dress was all skin and bone, not a scrap of flesh to speak of. On top of that, she was short even for her age — there really wasn’t a single thing worth showing off.

The only passable feature, if she had to find one, was the pale green eyes she’d inherited from her mother.

Her face went red all at once.

Alisa felt deeply embarrassed about all the poses she had struck in front of the camera. She had imitated her mother from the magazine photographs she used to collect as a child, but it had surely looked terribly clumsy. She would count herself lucky if it turned out good enough to print.

She fidgeted in front of the mirror, then let out a sigh. Then she smiled softly.