Chapter 72: lasso.

As always, the local officials were completely unprepared for Yukomis’s visit.

But that was only natural and normal.

They had never seen Yukomis announce her arrival in advance.

Basically, she didn’t visit often, as she didn’t have much affection or pride in her territory.

However, the officials of Pranon knew that her visit would happen someday, unexpectedly and suddenly.

In an environment where the person in charge was usually away and only gave instructions by letter, the abuse of power and corruption of the workers would be rampant,

But in an environment where a fussy and sharp lord could fly in on a wyvern from the Solenas main family in one night, no one dared to think that way.

As always, Yukomis who came this time did not head to the Pranon mansion and government offices.

She didn’t flip through all kinds of documents at a sickening speed and ask in an overbearing manner why this number was like this, why this handwriting was like this, or how the things she had ordered were going.

She didn’t seem to care about such local inspections, and just seemed anxious and urgent.

…The time when Yukomis landed on the wyvern runway was at the crack of dawn.

The head of the wyvern runway, who met his lord after a long time, was already full of excuses for the mistakes he hadn’t made yet.

“Did you say a suspicious wyvern?”

But what she suddenly asked the officer who was giving a frozen salute was whether he had seen any suspicious wyverns in the nearby airspace.

“Yes.”

Yukomis, who had repeated all-nighters and overwork to finish the work that Ilesha had passed on, had a haggard and cold face.

Night flights, needless to say, took a great toll on stamina and concentration.

Pilots scheduled for night flights had to strictly adhere to eight hours of sleep or more, and dark adaptation for half an hour to an hour just before the flight was also recommended.

But there was no officer in this world who was brave enough to nitpick Yukomis with such petty regulations.

“I don’t think there was anyone suspicious.”

“Really not?”

Yukomis suspiciously raised her eyebrows.

“Yes. Almost all of the people who come to this runway on a wyvern have contacted us in advance. Most of them are nobles who come for leisure, so most of them are ladies from high-ranking families who have villas here. There’s no way their identities can’t be confirmed.”

“Exceptions?”

“Exceptions… would be nobles who come without a reservation?”

“Yes.”

“Those nobles are… other than the magicians who came down from the central government.”

“Central government?”

For some reason, Yukomis questioned that part.

“You mean someone from the Imperial Palace?”

“Yes. Of course, Lady Gongnyeo also… Ah, no.”

The officer hurriedly changed his title after seeing Yukomis slightly twitch her lips.

Officials working in the Count Territory of Pranon, not other places, had to call Yukomis not Lady Gongnyeo, but Count Gaka.

“As Count Gaka knows best, Pranon is visited by quite a few magicians belonging to the Imperial Palace.”

In fact, even if it wasn’t Yukomis, the Imperial Family often sent magicians to investigate taxes.

These were inspections that territories under the Duchy had to endure.

The larger the power, the more the Imperial Family tended to pay special attention to it.

As long as there was a quick means of transportation and communication called a wyvern, it was difficult to avoid the influence of the central government, even in the outer outskirts of the Empire.

“Someone like that came this time too?”

“Yes. They came just a few days ago. It was someone who almost covered their face.”

“They covered their face?”

“Yes. Senior inspectors from the Imperial Palace sometimes engage in anonymous activities for various reasons. I thought this person was one of those cases. Instead, I strictly checked everything, including the seal and documents they had, but they were all perfect. I checked the book, and the wyvern they came on was definitely a wyvern used by the Imperial Palace.”

“What’s the wyvern’s name?”

“It’s Dodo. I also checked the brand on the tip of the tail and the serial number of the custom tools. They all match the book.”

Since wyverns were livestock with a small number of individuals, tracking which wyvern they rode could guarantee the pilot’s identity with high reliability.

Therefore, the Imperial Family distributed a book containing profiles of wyverns in order to prevent identity theft and systematize flight records.

It was a system that Thermis had conceived, but as with all such systems, it was much more difficult to go through numerous consultations at the practical stage than the conception itself.

Branding, book production and distribution, renewal, etc…

Moreover, since corresponding education was required for field keepers and officers, it was only now being tested in the capital and advanced territories first.

Many of her legacies were roughly like that.

When she was alive, only research and groundwork were constantly being done, and only now were the results slowly appearing.

“Give me that flight document.”

In fact, Pranon, which had both good wyvern routes and shipping routes, was very likely to become a hotbed of smuggling and piracy. It was an undeniable fact, and it was enough reason for the central government to intervene in the administration of the local territory. While Yukomis quickly scanned the documents handed over by the officer, he continued his supplementary explanation.

“The wyvern they ride changes every time, but the stated purpose of the visit was to monitor pirate activity. They were actually someone who came periodically with that mission. The fact that they had a lot of luggage wasn’t too strange if you thought of it as preparation for a single-person patrol flight.”

“So that Dodo wyvern isn’t at this runway now.”

“Yes. After registering here, they took off again on the wyvern. After that… I haven’t seen them, so they must still be somewhere in Pranon.”

What was written in the document was a pseudonym. But there was no way she couldn’t recognize it.

Only insiders knew the pseudonym that the Imperial Family was allowed to use for anonymous activities,

Because Yukomis was that insider.

“Any special notes?”

“Special notes… you mean?”

The officer answered immediately without recalling for long.

“They had a remarkably clear and kind voice. If they were someone who covered their face and worked, they must be a high-ranking official in the Imperial Palace, but they used honorifics even to the lowest-ranking soldiers.”

“And they smelled good. Something citrusy…”

There was no need to hear more. All the characteristics matched Ilesha.

Even the recorded dates roughly matched the time when work began to pour into Yukomis.

The aviation system that her sister conceived, Ilesha promoted, and Yukomis refined.

How well it was working, even Ilesha herself, who had worked on the system, had failed to hide her identity like this.

‘…And another person too.’

…When she thought of the Kifoll flight documents she had put in her arms, she could only laugh bitterly.

“Count Gaka, is there any problem?”

Meanwhile, the flight officer thought that Yukomis was not at all satisfied with his answer.

She, who at first seemed to be full of anxiety, was now making a complex expression that seemed to be anxious and angry at the same time.

“…No, it’s not your fault.”

The officer looked down at Yukomis anxiously, but Yukomis shook her head.

She wasn’t angry with him.

He was just an ordinary manager. If Ilesha wanted to use the Imperial Family’s privileges to deceive such an officer, there was nothing she could do.

“It’s just someone I know.”

“Ah, I see.”

The target of her anger was not the officer in front of her, but Ilesha.

She passed on the work to tie up her hands and feet, and secretly came here when Signa… no. When ‘she’ had escaped from her grasp.

Naturally, Yukomis didn’t think of that as a simple coincidence.

Ilesha’s despicable scheme seemed so transparent that Yukomis couldn’t calm down at all now.

Maybe she was pretending to be nice in front of her, putting on all sorts of pretenses, and if she really had any intentions and was plotting this, then…

“I’m here to see her too.”

Trying to maintain her composure, Yukomis said to the officer.

“First, bring out the fastest carriage.”

Karat, who was left on the first floor, was thinking that this was taking too long no matter what.

“I heard that she’s checking her condition, but is it normal for it to take this long?”

Aisha asked, but Karat had no way of knowing.

He couldn’t go up and ask Her Highness the Princess, ‘Why is this taking so long?’, not someone else.

“Her Highness the Princess is someone who knows a lot, so maybe she’s really doing the treatment all at once.”

“That could be, but…”

Aisha still seemed uneasy.

“I only went up to the second floor hallway for a moment, but it seems too quiet to say that…”

“What do you mean too quiet?”

“It was so quiet that you could hear a pin drop… I wondered if my senses were temporarily paralyzed…”

“Eung…”

She didn’t say anything more, but it seemed like they shared similar anxieties.

If you asked them what they were specifically anxious about, they couldn’t answer… but anyway, they were anxious.

Even when they thought of Signa as a normal young man from a self-made family, they couldn’t shake off the impression that everything seemed somehow precarious.

However, even after they revealed to her that she was actually Thermis, somehow that anxiety not only didn’t go away, but only intensified.

‘The spirit dwelling in the body of a child makes her act like a real child’

Signa herself said that, but to the two of them, the current Signa was obviously much more mature than a ‘real child’.

It was easy to forget, but a child around the age of ten was a much more immature and selfish being than you thought.

In fact, noble girls tended to mature quite late.

Perhaps it was because they lived much longer than ordinary people, so there was no reason to rush into life.

When you thought about it, her actions weren’t that different from her previous life.

The friendly, easygoing, and playful attitude was the same as before.

“Maybe.”

Karat had recently begun to realize what the identity of this sense of incongruity was.

“Maybe she hasn’t shaken off all the regrets of her previous life yet.”

“Regrets…?”

Aisha carefully held the silver tray and placed another teacup in front of Karat.

It was already the third cup. Karat nodded lightly and accepted it.

“Are you saying that she misses the life she had when she was the eldest daughter of the Duchy?”

“Rather than that…”

Karat scratched his head slightly.

“I chose the wrong word. Rather than regrets, it should be closer to a ‘shadow’.”

Aisha roughly noticed the nuance that Karat was trying to say.

“She’s now in a body that’s no different from a girl her age. Somehow, she was destined to be far from a magician in both her previous life and this life. In fact, there are few people who are more suited to the existence of a magician than her.”

“That’s right. It’s really a cruel thing…”

“I’m saying this because Baron-nim isn’t here…”

Minon wasn’t in this place.

As the Princess’s ‘examination’ lengthened, Aisha forcibly pushed Aina to take Baron-nim and go sightseeing in Pranon.

“It would have been better if she had been a girl from the start. Then, she could have become a magician, and maybe things would have been less twisted when she reunited with Yukomis-nim.”

It was true that it was difficult to expect great magic from the bloodline of a Baron family like Minon,

But even so, it would have been much better than her previous life, which was endlessly close to being incompetent.

“Maybe… the current Signa-nim is a more helpless body than a girl her age. As you can see, she has become so sensitive to magic. And even if Yukomis-nim heals those symptoms someday, she will never be able to return to a life where she mistreated her body like she did when she used the name Thermis. In fact, she should never do that.”

Karat brought the teacup to his lips once and then took it off again.

“But the deeds she built up in her past life are constantly following her like a ‘shadow’. Relationships, habits, responsibilities, everything is from when she was still Thermis. She’s unknowingly trying to carry those burdens even now when she’s become helpless.”

In the first place, if Signa was really an ordinary girl who resembled Thermis, she wouldn’t have recognized the Princess, and she wouldn’t have decided to meet her alone.

Going back a little further, she wouldn’t have decided to fight against the knight Galar in Isit,

Then Silissa would have come late and rescued everyone as Yukomis had thought.

“But, she’s Thermis-nim. I’m just a maid, so I’m not in a position to tell her what to do…”

“I’m the same.”

Karat sighed.

“And that’s exactly the problem. The most presumptuous thing is to dare to say ‘Don’t do presumptuous things’ to her.”

If she had the body of Thermis in her prime, and even the blessings she had received all over her body, she would have really taken care of most of the trials on her own.

There was no room for doubt in that. It was something that had already been proven.

But she still carried the accumulated relationships and responsibilities, and only her body had returned to a terribly weak girl.

“Maybe it’s a matter of pride.”

Aisha said.

“Pride?”

“Karat-nim was also someone who was chosen by Thermis-nim, right?”

“Yes.”

“That’s right.”

“So she can’t just pass on the work to Karat-nim, who was a subordinate, or Yukomis-nim, who was a younger sister, and just stand by and do nothing… Maybe her pride doesn’t allow it.”

“Eung… pride.”

“I think it’s okay for her to throw away those things and enjoy a normal and affluent life now. She only suffered in her previous life until the moment she died in battle. I really think it wouldn’t be bad for her to live as Yukomis-nim’s younger sister, a life with reversed positions.”

Karat also agreed to some extent with those words.

“To be honest, I want to see that… see more of that side of her…”

“…Yes?”

“No, that’s, because she’s become a little more dependent now, that…”

Aisha blushed a little.

“That’s, it’s not unpleasant.”

Seeing Karat’s complexion darken a little, Aisha hurriedly made excuses.

“No, but Karat-nim. Listen. I always only heard ‘I’ll take care of it myself’ from her, but I felt like I had temporarily returned to being a really dedicated maid. I thought that Thermis-nim was relying on me, so that… after a long time, should I call it a sense of fulfillment. Something like that…”

“Ah. If that’s what you mean… I might understand to some extent.”

Aisha’s expression as she said those words was somehow a little strange, but they were understandable words.

“Come to think of it, Aisha-ssi was her exclusive maid, so you knew her much longer than I did.”

“Yes, yes. We maids are people who have to find joy in serving others. Otherwise… we can never do this job for long. Fortunately, both of us sisters were able to work happily thanks to serving good masters.”

Karat listened to her words with a somewhat bitter feeling.

Come to think of it, not only the Aisha sisters, but also Yukomis and Thermis might resemble each other a lot.

“Pride…”

With his hands clasped together and looking down at the teacup on the table, Karat fell into thought.

Yukomis was the embodiment of pride and responsibility.

Even though she had fallen so far that she couldn’t even be compared to the past, she was someone who couldn’t bear to turn away from the work that had fallen in front of her.

She kept trying to risk danger in the same way as in the past.

Even though she said with her own mouth that she had become a third-rate spell caster, she didn’t hesitate to use tactics such as becoming bait.

“Even though they seem to be the complete opposite… indeed. Maybe sisters tend to resemble each other.”

Aisha’s words might be right. I wish Thermis-nim would also give up her pride to some extent and think that it’s okay to rely on others.

It would be okay for her to just act spoiled like a child, and no one would think badly of it. No, Yukomis-nim might even be happier like Aisha.

If there was some kind of opportunity. An opportunity to accept and enjoy the new position.

“How is school?”

Come to think of it, when they first reunited in Irendel, she had clearly said through the mouth of ‘Signo’ that she wanted to become a scholar.

It was something that had been put on the back burner due to the series of dense incidents that had occurred.

Magic school. There were also many other children her age gathered, and Thermis was just not as good as Yukomis in academics, but she was still a genius, at least in the top students.

Thermis was a person who was quite knowledgeable in theory, even if she couldn’t use magic.

She couldn’t not know, as she was someone who had commanded magicians and fought against magicians.

Not only magic, but her intellect, which often came up with brilliant ideas in all sorts of fields, was unusual in a different direction from Yukomis.

‘You always said that you have an ordinary mind, but Yukomis-nim never thought that way. So this time, you should really spend your time leisurely doing research or studying that suits your aptitude…?

Clang!

Suddenly, the sound of a silver tray falling to the floor woke Karat’s pleasant thoughts in the middle.

Karat, who raised his head from the teacup, saw Aisha’s face, which was pale blue.

“…What’s wrong?”

Come to think of it, there had been no words from Aisha for a long time while Karat was thinking about this and that.

“Th-Th-There… Ka, Karat-nim…”

Aisha slowly raised her trembling hand and pointed towards the entrance of the lounge.

Turning to the direction her fingertips were pointing, Karat also tasted the fear as if the floor was suddenly falling into an endless abyss.

“Hello. Karat.”

There stood Karat’s master, Yukomis.

Emitting a terrifying cold that seemed to have just crawled up from the underworld,

Her voice was also so cold that it instantly froze the space.

A haggard complexion due to all-nighters and overwork, and disheveled hair and clothes due to a long flight.

“…What was supposed to resemble what?”

The eyes visible between her unkempt and flowing bangs,

Did not show any light, as if staring into the abyss.

“L, Lord.”

Karat was feeling that chilling sensation in his spine, very similar to when he was standing at the threshold of death.

He tried to get up and greet her, but the strength drained from his whole body, not to mention his lower body, and all Karat could do was stand up and make an awkward posture.

“Wh, since when.”

He asked that, but judging from her attitude and atmosphere, it was certain that she had already heard everything, including the most critical parts.

“Since when?”

…The main gate was open thanks to the Princess’s visit,

Yukomis was not someone who brought attendants,

And the steps she had learned from Thermis were elegant, silent, and… secretive at times like this.

So much that even Karat couldn’t notice.

“…Indeed. You’re asking that question first.”

The corners of Yukomis’s mouth twisted as if she had heard something interesting.

“N, No. I’m…”

“You’re asking since when I was listening?”

She seemed to be smiling, but at the same time, she didn’t feel any laughter at all.

“From your mouths.”

In one of Yukomis’s fists, there were two documents that had already been crumpled up.

Her fist, as well as her shoulders and the ends of her hair, were trembling.

“…’Thermis-nim’ and the like started coming out.”

“…That’s,”

“Don’t even think about making excuses that you misheard. I’m not deaf.”

“Heu…”

Karat let out a low groan with a voice that sounded like he was being strangled.

“Can I ask you a question too?”

She trembled with terrible betrayal as she said those words.

“Since when did you know?”

The beginning and end were cut off, but it was a question that couldn’t be misunderstood.