Chapter 6

Dorothy went pale at the sight of me crying like a little child.

It was less that she was flustered and more that she was so dumbfounded she had no words.

“What are you crying for? What did you even do right?”

“That’s true. W-what did I do right that I’m crying like this? I just feel so sorry for you, sister—waaaah!”

The tears came in a flood.

Method acting that left the other person staring blankly was one of my specialties.

For the record, I had once received lavish praise from an acting instructor famous for being coldhearted.

Why?

Maybe it was because I had memories from my previous life. Compared with children my age, I was much better at expressing emotion.

“Siiister. When are you leaving, exactlyyyy?”

When it comes to acting, it’s not the face but the body that makes it truly dramatic.

Thump—

I threw myself onto the floor and wailed, and Dorothy rolled her eyes and pressed a hand to her forehead.

“Ugh... you’re noisy, so be quiet.”

“But I feel baaad—!”

A self-centered person like Dorothy didn’t feel sympathy just because a child was crying.

Instead, she blamed the other person.

“If you feel so bad, then stop sniveling and do something! Do you want to see me lose my mind?!”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to dooo—!”

“Ugh, how frustrating! Then at least do some work for me until I leave! You’re completely useless like this!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The moment I heard exactly what I wanted, my tears stopped at once.

Then I quickly rubbed my wet cheeks with the back of my hand, scrambled to my feet, and picked up a rag.

“I-I’m sorry, so I’ll at least clean your room, Dorothy.”

“...Fine. At least you have some sense.”

After I finished cleaning the room—

“...I’m sorry, so I’ll organize your things too.”

I bowed my head, both hands folded neatly together.

Maybe she liked how meek I was being.

Dorothy’s anger seemed to ease a little. She simply crossed her arms and nodded in silence.

Creeeak—

While Dorothy sat in the chair and rested, I quietly opened her dresser.

This was the important part.

Watching Dorothy carefully, I waited until she briefly closed her eyes. Then I secretly slipped several items with her name on them into my pocket.

Then I turned back to her with reddened eyes and clasped my hands together.

“I’m sorry, so may I do your laundry too?”

“Do it quickly and get out. I want to be alone.”

With her eyes closed, Dorothy waved her hand irritably. She no longer seemed to be paying attention to me.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Heave—

I gathered up an armful of Dorothy’s clothes from the laundry basket, staggered out of the room, and left.

Success.

“Oh, honestly. She’s far too careless. Then again, she probably let her guard down because I’m a child.”

There was a reason I had gone through all this trouble to steal Dorothy’s things.

Dorothy was the Pose family’s only weakness.

At this point, only exposing her as a spy would put Calypse at an advantage before he went to the Kingdom of Doctia.

Now then—how exactly was I going to expose Dorothy as a spy?

The report.

The written record spies on missions regularly sent to their master to report on their progress. All I had to do was reveal that.

“Oh, this is heavy.”

After going into the laundry room, I dragged over a basin filled with ice-cold water, grunting with effort. Then I shook out the clothes and dropped them into the basin.

Why was I suddenly doing laundry?

Because spies don’t write reports on paper.

Writing them on paper would be too obvious. Too easy to get caught.

So the Pose family’s spies wrote their reports on the clothes they wore.

If you sprinkled them with a potion infused with the power of poison, the writing disappeared. But the method for making it reappear was simple.

“You just soak it in ice water for over thirty minutes.”

With this simple yet revolutionary method, the Pose family’s spies had never once been exposed because of their reports.

Why?

...Because unless you’re an idiot, who puts clothes in ice water to do laundry?

“Ugh. I’m exhausted.”

Now I just had to wait thirty minutes.

I pounded my arm with my fist in honor of all the hard work my muscle had done.

And once thirty minutes had passed—

Whoooosh—

A blue light began to ripple through the once-clear ice water.

It looked as though sunlight breaking through the clouds had begun rising up from the ground.

The blue light spread in every direction, then soon settled into a clear pattern and began embroidering letters across the fabric.

It was Dorothy’s report.

“Good. I knew the maid uniform was the report.”

I folded the wet clothes neatly and placed them into a basket.

Then I arranged the things I had secretly stolen from Dorothy—a scandalous novel labeled Touch This and Die, a handkerchief embroidered with her name, even a pocket watch—carefully on top of the clothes with the report written on them.

In a few minutes, the maids who came to do the laundry would find the fabric.

With Dorothy’s name written all over the various belongings, of course they would realize who they belonged to.

“Haa... If I’ve done this much, I should be able to survive, right? I really want to get away from the Pose family...”

I wanted to live an ordinary life. But why was the standard for “ordinary” so absurdly high?

Hoo—

I let out a sigh and turned to leave.

“Who told you to do the laundry?”

“!”

A black robe swept into view in front of me.

It was the gardener.

“...What?”

How long had he been standing there?

I hadn’t sensed him at all.

...Is he really just an ordinary gardener?

His presence was so quiet it sent a chill down my spine.

Startled, I instinctively stepped forward to block the laundry. When I saw his gaze shift toward what was behind me, I swallowed hard.

It was strange.

I’d been trained to notice ordinary people’s presence easily, and yet I hadn’t sensed him approaching at all.

“Come on. We’re having sandwiches.”

Fortunately, it didn’t seem he had noticed the writing on the fabric.

“Yes, sir.”

I nodded and swallowed my sigh of relief.

There wasn’t a single moment when I could afford to let my guard down.

***

“Tell me the truth.”

“What?”

But the moment he brought me into the garden, the man’s eyes sharpened.

Did he find out? That easily? Just who is this man?

“...Did the maids tell you to do the laundry?”

“Oh. Whew.”

“What’s with that sigh?”

Good. So he didn’t notice.

“No. Life is just unbearably difficult.”

I drew a line across my eyes with my fingers and shook my head, then returned to the point.

“Anyway, the maid sisters didn’t make me do it.”

“Then why did you?”

“It was my own way of making an impression.”

“What kind of impression?”

“The kind that says, ‘Please think well of me.’ You know?”

I gave him a highly trained, bright little wink, but he didn’t budge.

If anything, he only sighed and rested a hand on his waist.

“In any case, don’t do laundry from now on.”

“Why not?”

He frowned.

“What do you take the Kreutz family for? Do we look like people who’d make a five-year-old work for free?”

His tone was brusque, but there was concern underneath it.

Had he heard the things they were saying about me too?

He must have thought I had really been bullied, or gotten scared and started doing menial work on my own.

...At least it’s a relief he didn’t catch on about Dorothy.

But wait a second.

This man’s soft side is showing here too, isn’t it?

So the reason he brought me here was because he was worried the maids might be mistreating me?

...That’s even better.

“Mister.”

“What.”

Rubbing my hands together like a fly, I shrugged.

“If you’ve happened to feel even a little pity for what I’m going through, then perhaps this could be your chance to become the savior of a poor child—”

“Mouth.”

Ah. Not easy.

“If you mention children or family one more time, I’ll throw you out.”

“Tch.”

“Mouth, mouth. That mouth of yours.”

A large hand came toward me as though he were about to smack my head, but instead it lifted me by the underarms.

Grumbling the whole time, he set me down on the bench just the same.

Then he placed a sandwich and a glass of orange juice from the outdoor table into my hands.

“Close your mouth and eat. Before you get scolded.”

“Thank you.”

Wow, a sandwich and orange juice.

I failed to become his daughter again today, but this was still a pretty decent profit.

Thinking that, I bit into the sandwich without much thought.

“......?”

It was delicious.

Really delicious.

“You eat well. Were they starving you?”

No.

There had been plenty of days during spy training when I went hungry, but ever since coming here, I’d had three proper meals a day.

But this sandwich...!

Munch, munch—

It’s good. It’s so good!

As I devoured the sandwich, he clicked his tongue and pulled a handkerchief from inside his robe.

“Eat slowly. If you choke, there’s no point in eating at all.”

With practiced ease, he brushed the crumbs from around my mouth with the handkerchief. I kept eating neatly anyway and answered him.

“A nutritious meal packed with carbs, protein, and fat is always welcome!”

“Carbs, protein, and fat?”

“Yes. Carbohydrates, protein, and fat.”

“Why shorten perfectly fine words like that?”

“Then why do you go out of your way to say them all in full when it makes your mouth tired? It’s much faster and better to shorten them.”

“At this rate, we won’t even be able to hold a conversation.”

“Hehe.”

Watching him shake his head, I let out a silly little laugh. Sitting on the bench, my dangling legs swung cheerfully in the air.

Even though I had memories from my previous life, maybe because I’d spent two years living in a child’s body, my body sometimes reacted on its own whenever I was in a good mood.

Of course, only when I was beside someone I felt comfortable with.

Still... is it really fine for me to be here?

Munching on the sandwich, I suddenly looked around.

I hadn’t realized it on the first day, but this garden was apparently private—only the direct family and the assigned gardener were allowed in.

Come to think of it, Dorothy had said something like that too.

“By the way, mister.”

“What.”

“When does the Duke come into this garden?”

I asked it without thinking much of it.

“......”

The conversation, which had been flowing without interruption, stopped as though a boulder had dropped between us.

“Mister?”

“......”

Even when I called again, he said nothing.

His expression was hidden under the hood, but it seemed like a little tension had entered his sharp jaw.

“Who knows.”

After staring at me for a while, he turned his gaze toward the garden.

“He probably comes when he wants to be alone. Outsiders aren’t allowed in the private garden.”

“I see....”

What’s this? He’s answering more seriously than I expected.

I changed the direction of the conversation.

“Then I suppose you don’t run into the Duke here from time to time and chat with him or anything... probably not.”

“Why?”

“You can tell just by looking at the Duke’s personality.”

“...What about the Duke’s personality?”

I answered primly.

“That’s a secret. I’m not the kind of person who gossips behind someone’s back.”

“......?”

For a moment, his lips parted slowly, as if he were stunned.

Had he only just understood what I meant? The ordinarily silent man suddenly whipped his head around and snapped back at me.

“He’s charismatic, taciturn, and knows how to keep his mouth shut. If the head of a house has that kind of personality, what more could you possibly want?”