In the morning, after hastily washing her face in the communal bathroom, Aira stared at the cracked mirror.

Despite her academic diligence, graduation left her feeling unmotivated. The 20-day leave brought her no joy. She would rather quickly board a ship, approach Jens, grab him, and ask how she could fulfill his wish.

“Hah…”

She knew she shouldn’t touch a superior officer’s—the captain’s—belongings without permission, but Aira couldn’t resist the temptation to glance through the documents while organizing them. She reassured herself that they couldn’t be too important since she’d been left unsupervised.

The contents of the documents were peculiar. The papers filling Jens’s room weren’t about military tactics or finances, but mostly observations and records of flowers, trees, marine animals, and other living organisms.

Aira frowned at the unexpected content. “Going to find a flower. Going to fulfill my wish.”

“I can’t believe ‘flower’ literally meant an actual plant,” Aira muttered incredulously. Just then, as she picked up a towel and turned around, she felt a sudden wave of dizziness.

“Oh no.”

Barely grabbing the sink to prevent herself from falling, Aira shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. But the dizziness intensified. She quickly took some medicine she always carried and swallowed it, but the lightheadedness persisted. She instinctively thought it might be the Emperor’s Disease, but it seemed to be something else.

“I should eat something.”

Aira staggered out of the bathroom. She wasn’t sure how many days had passed since she entered this room. She had simply curled up in the corner, endlessly wishing this unwanted free time would quickly pass, neither eating nor drinking.

She couldn’t even sleep properly due to her layered thoughts.

Outside, the spring sun was intensely bright. Aira trudged along with the piercing sunlight beating down on her shoulders. She wore a long brown skirt and an unadorned white blouse—clothes she had purchased despite Roje and Siris’s protests, simply because they wouldn’t attract attention. With a deep bucket hat pressed firmly on her head, she looked like an utterly ordinary young woman.

Among closed shops, Aira finally spotted an open street vendor and ordered an egg sandwich and lime juice.

While preparing the sandwich, the vendor glanced toward the noisy protesters filling the street.

“These protests are bad for business… You should stay indoors, miss. Or come out early in the morning. It would be troublesome if the investigators who came to suppress the protests caught you. Those guys are real thugs, I tell you.”

“Are you all right, ma’am?”

“Well, I… I have to come out like this to feed my daughter somehow.”

Aira received the sandwich and looked back.

Protesters from the southern Merelson region were marching with various placards, raising their voices.

“Return the sugarcane fields to the farmers!”

“Government, withdraw your unjust occupation immediately!”

“Acknowledge the fire and compensate the farmers!”

People dressed as farmers were protesting vigorously.

The parliament building was just a short walk away. Some protesters had brought their entire families, tightly holding their children’s hands as they walked.

“Excuse me… I just arrived in Oculer a few days ago, so I’m not familiar with the situation. What’s happening?”

“My goodness. Don’t you read the newspapers, miss?”

The vendor put down the lime she was squeezing and pulled out a sheet from the stack of newspapers used for wrapping.

Aira flinched momentarily when she saw her name in the headline at the top. She pressed her bucket hat down deeper and read the article the vendor pointed to.

It described a conflict between the government trying to mine magic stones and farmers from the southern plains’ sugarcane fields.

“The government, mining magic stones?”

“Magic stones used to be found mainly in the northwest or the Fosset region. But this time, they’ve discovered a large deposit in Lake Mere in the Merelson region.”

“…While the Archipelago is providing good work, wouldn’t mining magic stones benefit the locals too? It should be good for them.”

“Of course, that alone would be beneficial. That’s why they sold part of the fields for the initial factory site. But that lake is the water source for the surrounding sugarcane fields. And now they’re completely draining the lake to mine these magic stones!”

“The lake water?”

Aira blinked in surprise.

From what she knew, lake water was essential for continuously obtaining magic stones. They even deliberately pumped in water during droughts to prevent the lakes from drying up.

Was this common knowledge that Republic citizens didn’t have? Aira kept quiet and continued listening to the vendor.

“Nobody knew they had to drain the lake to extract magic stones.”

“That’s terrible.”

“So the sugarcane farmers repeatedly disrupted the construction. And when they found more magic stones than expected, they tried to expand the mining factory.”

“And naturally, the farmers wouldn’t sell more land.”

“Exactly. But do you know what’s even more outrageous?”

Seeing that Aira was unfamiliar with this hot topic, the vendor became more animated as she added sugarcane sugar to the lime juice.

“They’re claiming that Lake Mere and the surrounding lands were all royal property!”

“Royal property? From the old kingdom?”

“Yes! The southern Merelson region used to be part of the old Mere Kingdom. During the chaotic period of integration into the Republic, someone from the royal family sold royal lands that should have become state property to private citizens, and those became sugarcane fields.”

Aira caught on.

“So the government is saying that was improper.”

“Exactly! They didn’t say a word when sugarcane was profitable, but now that magic stones have been discovered, suddenly they care!”

The vendor pointed to protesters burning bundles of sugarcane, which oddly gave off a sweet scent.

“On top of that, those government bastards set fire to the fields to drive out the farmers and clear land for the factory. But it turned into a massive fire.”

“Good heavens.”

“Sugar prices are about to skyrocket. And just imagine how much that will drive up the cost of living!”

Aira gave them a somewhat sympathetic look.

The vendor, seemingly in support of the protesters, generously poured more sugar into Aira’s lime juice until it overflowed, then hurriedly poured some into another smaller cup.

“Oh dear. It might be too sweet now. Let me make you a new one. Would you mind waiting?”

“It’s fine. Here.”

“Huh?”

The vendor had expected the young woman to eat the egg sandwich with the lime juice, but she had already stuffed the last piece into her mouth.

After paying, the young woman disappeared into the crowd, sipping the lime juice through a straw.

Watching her leave, the vendor took a sip of the excess lime juice that had overflowed due to too much sugar.

“Ugh!”

The lime juice she had made was sickeningly sweet, beyond its natural sourness to the point of bitterness. Yet that young woman had drunk it without changing her expression.

“Can she not taste anything?”

* * *

‘On ships, we usually have preserved limes.’

‘Once you get used to it, you’ll miss this taste.’

Aira frowned at the dried lime slice the vendor had placed as decoration at the bottom of her now-empty juice cup.

She had ordered without thinking, but it brought back memories she had tried to suppress for four years.

It was fortunate she couldn’t taste anything in the juice.

‘They say sour things help with morning sickness. Is that why this comes to mind?’

The emerging memory made Aira’s stomach churn with nausea. She ended up vomiting everything she had just eaten—her first meal in days—against a secluded wall.

Rinsing her mouth with the remaining juice, Aira gripped the cup tightly.

Why did these memories keep surfacing when they belonged to events that had disappeared, had never happened? She wished even the memories could be completely erased. Then again, if they had been, she might have willingly walked back into that hell.

As Aira was about to throw away the cup while suppressing her churning emotions, she suddenly felt a chilling presence behind her.

Trying not to turn around, Aira slipped into a side alley. But the inexplicable creeping sensation remained.

It felt like moths crawling up the dark alley walls had attached themselves to her neck. Aira pressed her bucket hat down deeper and was about to hide herself deeper in the dark alley when—

“No, please! I’m pregnant!”

“Coming out to protest and then making excuses.”

“I’m not with the protesters!”

“Hmph.”

Behind the street where protesters were marching, in a dim narrow alley, men in investigator uniforms were blocking a woman, leering at her.

Tsk. Aira clicked her tongue. They always chose the worst targets.