Alice lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling as if she could pierce it with her gaze. Sigh
Sleepless.
Just because it was the baron’s bed didn’t mean it was particularly uncomfortable compared to the academy’s. In fact, the priciest bed brand was pretty much established, and any noble household, or relatively wealthy commoners, would have that brand’s beds. So really, there was no reason to worry about being uncomfortable as a guest in a house of some standing.
The reason Alice couldn’t sleep wasn’t the bed itself, but Sylvia.
Or perhaps not just Sylvia, but Claire, or the kids from the orphanage who had been with Claire.
To be more precise—it was due to “the kids who had been with Sylvia.”
Alice prided herself on having known Sylvia for quite a long time. At five years old, that was a very young age in anyone’s life, and having known her for a whopping 10 years, it would be hard for others to argue against her claim of sisterhood. There are very few people in the world who can clearly recall memories from before the age of five!
But… today Sylvia’s expression was reminiscent of the memories from those five-year-old days.
Every time Alice got Sylvia’s expression right, everyone around would be shocked, and Sylvia would look at Alice as if asking how on Earth she could do that, but really, that “talent” was nothing spectacular.
If you wanted to read Sylvia’s expressions, you just had to quietly stare into her eyes.
Her eyes, aimed at someone or something, were never a moment ‘emotionless.’ Sylvia always lived calculating and thinking about something.
And the expression Sylvia had while looking at that guy, Daniel, was almost reminiscent of ‘longing.’
Seeing Sylvia with such a look filled Alice with an utterly bizarre feeling.
Discovering something unknown about someone you thought you knew your whole life wasn’t as enjoyable as one might think.
She wanted to know, yet the emotions she felt couldn’t be summed up in one simple term.
Even a dark ceiling in a pitch-black room would let some light sneak in if you stared at it long enough. Of course, it was too faint to even clearly see the faces of those nearby.
Turning her head to the side, she could barely see Sylvia’s face in the other bed in the guest room.
All she saw was a blurry shape beyond the darkness.
When she thought about it, Alice had hardly ever seen Sylvia sleeping. Since they had used different rooms since childhood.
Even during train rides lasting several hours, she never dozed off, whether in class or during her personal free time.
She knew that Sylvia lived a very orderly life, heading to bed without fail by 11 PM—
“Ah.”
Now that she thought about it, Sylvia always had a good night’s sleep. She would go to bed around 11 PM and wouldn’t wake until morning. Unless there was a mission to carry out or some task to do, Sylvia always maintained that regular routine.
Was Sylvia someone who needed a lot of sleep?
It surprised her that she was only now having that thought.
Always meticulous and organized, never failing to complete her tasks—
—like the last time, not just from that ruin.
“……”
She could distinctly feel the gun pointed at the back of her head. It wasn’t something she had seen directly or heard, but the murderous intent was clearly palpable.
A killer instinct that promised she would kill for sure.
Sylvia had never shown such a murderous intent—not even in moments where her life was on the line. So having her be in front of Alice like that intensified the strange type of killing energy.
It was strange. Something she’d never felt from anyone else.
Yet at the same time, it felt oddly familiar.
When she turned to look at him, she saw the gun in his hand.
The one Sylvia always carried around. It looked slightly older than the one Sylvia had.
At that point, Alice stopped her thoughts.
Somehow, it felt wrong to keep thinking about that strange person.
“……”
Had she been thinking too much?
Even though it had already been a month since that incident, the memory of that moment stuck stubbornly in the back of Alice’s mind, refusing to fade away.
They would meet again someday.
At least, she hoped the person who was sleeping next to her now wasn’t that person.
If Sylvia ever grew to hate her enough to want her dead, Alice felt she wouldn’t be able to endure it.
At the very least, she hoped she was as important in Sylvia’s eyes as the others at the orphanage from the same territory.
She knew she shouldn’t be thinking such things, but she felt a bit disappointed that she wasn’t from that orphanage.
*
Last night, she had slept soundly without any worries and had woken up.
She blinked awake before the sun had even come up, feeling far more refreshed than usual, and she pondered the reason for it.
It was likely because there was no one else around to pay attention to.
Leo was an important figure. The protagonist. Claire too, and the Grace couple weren’t exactly lightweight characters in the story.
But none of them had any reason to attack her.
Especially Alice. There was a time when she thought of her as a rival just last year, but in this year, she’d suddenly matured and was acting like an older sister.
Now, she was sound asleep, deeper than Alice was.
Once she sorted out her thoughts, it all made sense.
She didn’t need to worry about Lucas, nor did Leo and Claire suddenly rush out for a mission at dawn. There was no need to waste mental and physical energy being caught by other nobles on the streets. Everyone here was honest enough that Alice could let her guard down.
“Ha.”
And yet, she felt an oddly empty feeling that made her chuckle without meaning to.
She glanced over at Alice, but she seemed deeply asleep and likely didn’t hear her.
Alice got up from her bed. Most of her belongings from the academy had already been moved to the imperial palace, but she had brought some useful stuff with her from places other than the palace. Stuff packed into a large trunk.
She pulled the trunk out from under the bed and gathered some of her underwear and clothes from inside.
“……”
Then she quietly looked down at what she picked up.
What was in her hands was her uniform.
An endlessly military-like uniform.
In fact, the other clothes in the trunk were just as much so. Even if they weren’t uniforms, almost all her clothes had a formal style, just like what Lucas or Jayden usually wore.
However, it wasn’t that there were no dresses.
She thought of Claire. She had just returned last night, so she had worn her uniform until the end, but would she still be wearing it today?
While she liked swinging a sword, it didn’t mean she thought all her taste would be completely masculine.
She glanced down at the uniform for a moment before tossing it back into the trunk.
Then she pulled out another piece of clothing.
*
Even though it was summer, she didn’t want to shower with cold water.
It was quite clean, but the facilities were—at least by her standards—looked quite old. Well, to be honest, even a newly built shower wouldn’t be vastly different. After all, it was still the early 1900s here. Even though it was a different world, it wasn’t like they had smartphones or anything. Magic or steam engines had replaced the tasks that were resolved by electricity in her world, but it didn’t mean they had gone that far.
Steampunk smartphones. She’d love to see those. If they had a wind-up digital clock, surely they could make them too?
While she was lost in those thoughts, hot water was flowing adequately from the shower.
Gazing blankly at the foggy shower’s screen, she began to think about how they made the hot water with steam engines and then gave up. The truth was, she didn’t even fully understand how a boiler worked in her modern world either. Well, it was probably heated by coal or something similar. Back in the day, they had central heating boilers in apartments.
In either world, Alice thought about how she really didn’t know much about how the world works, and she couldn’t help but chuckle at that absurdity.
Strangely, that thought was comforting.
If she’d lived her life without knowing, then what did it matter if there were things she didn’t know in this world?
*
“……Sylvia?”
After finishing her shower, drying her hair, and getting dressed, Alice woke up. To her, it was quite late.
And then Alice was greeted with an expression of sheer shock when she looked at her.
No, it was more than just shock; it was far beyond simply being surprised.
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