The World Has Become Kinder to Her

“Frederick!”  

Fortunately, Lotus, who had been sitting on her bed, managed to catch Frederick as he collapsed.  

“Frederick? Frederick?”  

She called his name several times and shook his shoulders, but he did not wake up. It seemed he had fainted.  

“What should I do…?”  

Her heart pounded in her chest, but her mind remained strangely cold. For now, she laid Frederick on her bed.  

But she couldn’t keep him there indefinitely—he could wake up at any moment, and come morning, Jane would surely notice.  

*If I inform the family or the servants, things will get complicated…*  

There was no choice. The best option was to tell Kenneth, who seemed to have some rapport with Frederick and could contact either the magic tower or the Abran family.  

With careful steps, Lotus left her bedroom, moving as quietly as a cat, and headed toward Kenneth’s room.  

Just as she reached out to knock, the door slowly opened.  

“Lady Lotus.”  

It was as if Kenneth had sensed her approach. His calm blue eyes gazed steadily at her, as if fully in control once more.  

“What brings you here?”  

“Not me, Frederick. Could you help him?”  

Kenneth did not seem surprised that Lotus referred to Frederick by his first name. Instead, a bittersweet expression crossed his face, as if he had been expecting this.  

“He’s merely unconscious. There’s no need to worry too much.”  

Kenneth accompanied her back to her room and checked on Frederick, giving her the answer she most wanted to hear.  

Though Frederick was slender, he wasn’t short, yet Kenneth easily lifted him onto his back.  

“I’ll take him to his room and contact the magic tower. It seems to be an issue related to mana depletion.”  

Kenneth handled the situation calmly, his demeanor inspiring confidence.  

“I’ll also need to inform the Marquis, as we’ll need his permission for a mage from the tower to come. I’ll explain the situation appropriately.”  

Though it seemed like Lotus could now step back from the matter, she found that she couldn’t. She had a good idea why Frederick had collapsed.  

*—As soon as I returned, I started making this. I wanted to do it right this time, so I wouldn’t lose you in vain again.*  

*He collapsed because of me.*  

The realization weighed heavily on Lotus. The bracelet around her wrist, with its embedded mana stone, suddenly felt incredibly burdensome.  

The Marquis of Estelle usually stayed up past midnight, so Lotus led Kenneth toward his office. As they approached, they could hear the faint sound of an argument.  

“I’m not saying your opinion is wrong. But how can we overhaul everything all at once?”  

“If you think that way, nothing will ever change. Don’t you understand how absurd it is that the people we’re supposed to protect fear us? It would be better for me to take on the trainee knights and drill them hard for a year.”  

Lotus stopped in her tracks, and Kenneth followed suit.  

Though she had only caught part of the conversation, Lotus had a good idea who Hession was referring to when he spoke of protectors and those they were meant to protect.  

*…Is he talking about me?*  

Was he planning to upend the entire knight order just because they had been a bit negligent in their duties? In the past, she had only seen his cold demeanor, so she hadn’t realized it, but Hession was far more hot-tempered and extreme than she had thought.  

*Does this mean he was relatively gentle with me in the past, all things considered?*  

It was a conclusion she didn’t want to admit, but there it was.  

Perhaps because she had stirred up old memories while in her room earlier, a memory from when she was around ten years old resurfaced.  

While maids like Jane never harmed her without the approval of the Marchioness, a maid like Giselle was the type to go out of her way to torment her.  

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, Giselle wasn’t physically abusive, but she always had a mocking smile on her face as she spat out venomous words designed to wound deeply.

— *If it were me, I would’ve left this house long ago. You’ll never be recognized as a daughter here, so what’s the point of staying?*  

The ten-year-old girl couldn’t muster a single word in response.  

While it was unbearable to endure the coldness and disregard from the household, she was too young and too scared to leave. All she could do was hold back her tears and endure the moment.  

That day, Giselle, as usual, was venting her frustrations on her, until a young boy’s voice interrupted.  

— *Go on, keep talking.*  

— *L-Lord Hession.*  

— *I’m curious to see what else you’ll say.*  

Though he was only twelve, far younger than Giselle, Hession’s voice carried a weight that made him seem much older, a reflection of the prowess he’d already shown in swordsmanship.  

The maid, who had been so witch-like moments before, trembled like a leaf.  

— *I-I apologize for causing a disturbance.*  

— *Go. Be grateful you’re a woman, or I wouldn’t be so lenient.*  

Giselle quickly vanished, leaving only her and Hession behind.  

At that time, she had stopped calling him “brother” after the Marchioness had beaten her.  

An awkward silence hung between them, broken only by Hession.  

— *Come with me for a moment.*  

He led her to the kitchen. Perhaps out of pity, he took a cup of honeyed milk from the head cook and handed it to her.  

— *Drink it and get some rest.*  

It was still far too early for rest, though.  

*I didn’t realize it then, but thinking back, he had a cute side,* Lotus thought.  

Though their relationship had never been particularly close, it hadn’t always been terrible either.  

*How did things end up the way they did?*  

The memory of Hession slapping her—his first and last time—overlapped with the earlier recollection, leaving her confused by the stark contrast in his behavior.  

— *I can’t bear to watch you like this anymore.*  

He had said those words before striking her, and he had looked just as shocked as she was by his own action. His eyes had blinked in surprise, his lips parting as if to speak, but he had only stepped back, dumbfounded.  

Hession, indifferent in most things. Hession, who had given her honeyed milk. Hession, who had struck her out of frustration and then seemed shocked by his own actions.  

*What is it, really?*  

Lotus couldn’t shake the unsettling feeling, like a grain of sand stuck in her shoe, but she didn’t know how to define it.  

— *There’s nothing more convenient or perfectly distorted than human memory.*  

The memory of Theodore’s low voice whispering that phrase snapped her out of her long reverie.  

*Now’s not the time for this.*  

Kenneth, as always, waited patiently for Lotus to collect her thoughts.  

“Apologies, Sir. I was lost in thought for a moment.”  

“It’s no trouble. I was just gathering my words for the Marquis myself.”  

Though his face remained expressionless, Kenneth didn’t seem cold. His calm presence gave Lotus a sense of peace as she knocked on the office door.  

The voices of Hession and the Marquis abruptly ceased.  

A moment later, the door opened to reveal Hession, his expression tense.  

“Lotus, what brings you here at this hour…?”  

Recognizing that it was his sister at the door, he tried to soften his expression, but when his eyes landed on Kenneth, his attempt at composure failed.  

Kenneth observed this with mild amusement. Unlike his half-sister Lotus, Hession was an easy man to read.  

Hession had always disliked Frederick, but he felt no particular animosity toward Frederick. He wasn’t the type to pay much attention to his surroundings, and whatever hostility Hession exuded barely registered for him—it was almost endearing in its intensity.  

What amused him even more was that, in his moments of irritation, Hession resembled Lotus in a subtle but undeniable way.

“I came to speak with you, Marquis,” Kenneth said respectfully.  

“And why are you with my daughter?” the Marquis of Estelle questioned, suspicion creeping into his tone.  

“I accompanied him. I was just showing Sir Kenneth the way,” Lotus swiftly intervened, cutting off any further interrogation from the Marquis.  

“What’s the reason you need to meet me at this hour, Sir Kenneth?”  

“Frederick has collapsed, and I’ve requested assistance from the magic tower. A mage will arrive shortly, and I’m here to seek your permission for their entry.”  

“Why has Lord Abran collapsed all of a sudden?”  

As expected, the Marquis couldn’t let that question go.  

“It’s because of me,” Lotus interjected.  

“Lotus, what do you mean?”  

“I can’t explain all the details since Lord Abran is unconscious, but his collapse is my fault. Please, I ask for your help.”  

Lotus spoke with a mix of sincerity and performance, putting on a sorrowful expression.  

She truly was worried about Frederick’s wellbeing, but she also wanted to avoid too many probing questions in this complicated situation.  

Her uncharacteristic display of vulnerability worked as intended. Neither the Marquis of Estelle nor Hession pressed her any further.  

*Things I learned from Theodore…* she thought to herself.  

They turned out to be useful in situations like this, though she hadn’t expected them to be.  

Soon, a few more servants and the head butler were awakened, and the Marquis’s household welcomed the mage from the magic tower.  

To Lotus’s surprise, the visitor was someone she knew all too well: Manores, who would later become the deputy master of the magic tower.  

Aside from his younger appearance, with his brown curly hair and the glasses that made him look even more intellectual, he was exactly as she remembered him.  

The man who shared a certain camaraderie with her while dealing with the troublesome Frederick.  

Seeing Manores brought a small wave of nostalgia to Lotus, though she had to feign ignorance since this version of him had never met her before.  

“I am Manores from the magic tower,” the mage introduced himself.  

Unlike Theodore, Manores didn’t bother to hide his prickly nature. He gave the bare minimum of courtesy to the Marquis and Hession.  

Lotus couldn’t help but recall Frederick’s assessment of him.  

— *Manores is as solid as the magic he wields—like a rock.*  

That same rock-like toughness and bluntness were evident now, as Manores had come in the middle of the night to clean up after Frederick, just as he had in the future.  

Connections like this, she mused, were far more intricate and durable than she could have imagined.  

*So this is how he ended up becoming the tower master’s right-hand man,* Lotus thought, piecing together the threads of the past and present.  

As Lotus was making sense of the situation, Manores’s sharp gaze landed on her.  

More specifically, it zeroed in on the bracelet Frederick had given her, now secured on her wrist.  

“How irritating. I think I have a rough idea of what’s going on,” he muttered to himself, running a hand through his hair.  

“Where is that insufferable idiot—no, I mean, where is Lord Frederick?”  

The comment had been prefaced with a bolder adjective, but he caught himself.  

The Marquis of Estelle and Hession exchanged brief, puzzled glances, while Lotus and Kenneth did their best to maintain neutral expressions.