Chapter 8

Stepping down from the carriage while holding her knight’s hand, Rudbeckia responded playfully.

“Why? If I don’t marry, you get to see me forever, isn’t that good?”

“Hah. Thank you for your work. Return safely.”

After greeting the private carriage’s driver, Hugo surveyed the mansion without even looking at his miss.

“Hmm.”

Hugo suddenly exhaled shortly, his eyes slowly narrowing. As they passed the guards at the entrance and went inside, his senses grew sharper.

Rudbeckia walked slowly through the vast garden while side-eyeing her serious knight.

“Welcome back, Miss.”

“Yes, Nanny.”

Sophia, who had been assigning work to newly arrived maids, approached Rudbeckia and Hugo.

“What’s for dinner tonight?”

Rudy asked brightly, pretending not to notice the mansion’s strange atmosphere. As expected, Sophia answered in a much more subdued voice than usual.

“It’s roast duck, which our Miss loves. However, both the Master and Young Master sent word they’ll be home late.”

“Why? Did something happen?”

“I don’t know the details, but I heard the Young Master has to go somewhere next week by imperial command.”

Rudbeckia blinked deliberately, wondering what the problem was. Then Sophia whispered like she was sharing a secret.

“They say it’s composed only of noble captains. With the Prince going too… From what I heard from the little ones, it’s actually just harassment, anyway, they say it’ll be terribly difficult.”

In other words, why should our Young Master receive such treatment?

“Since it’s come to this, Miss, you should eat his portion too. I’ll go up after teaching the new girls a bit more.”

Rudbeckia, who already knew this development, took a deep breath as she entered the mansion.

Back then, the Barad deployment that had left with just six people returned with 600. Rudbeckia had only heard a somewhat polished version of how that process had unfolded. At the time, she hadn’t been in a position to listen to their circumstances in detail.

She was in prison until they occupied the capital and staged a coup with just 600 men.

“Could you bring dinner to my laboratory?”

“Certainly.”

“Thank you.”

After going straight up to the fourth floor upon entering the mansion, she opened the storage room where her medicines and medicinal ingredients were kept.

Though she had returned about 4 years into the past, Rudbeckia remembered where everything was as if she had a map etched in her mind.

“Miss, are you in there?”

“Yes, I’ll be out soon!”

Rudbeckia planned to compound a medicine needed for the deployed knights.

In the past, Benedict had nearly died at their last stop before reaching their mission destination in Barad. That small village had neither a healer nor a priest.

With Benedict’s condition so dire that death seemed imminent, the captains requested help from Barad, but Barad also had neither healers nor priests.

They urgently contacted the Imperial Palace. And Nicholas immediately branded all the families who had departed together as traitors. The charge was attempted murder of an imperial family member. If Benedict had died, it would have become regicide.

Unlike Rudbeckia, who was the last to be arrested under guilt by association, Friedrich spent almost three months in the underground prison.

Afterward, the captains who had been branded as traitors, along with Benedict, staged a coup to survive, overthrowing the palace.

That’s when Aaron retrieved Rudbeckia from the underground prison, and seeing Aaron’s condition, she threw away her dignity and cried heavily. Aaron could only embrace his crying sister with one arm.

Just as she couldn’t prepare in advance without knowing what poison she had consumed, the same applied to what would happen to Aaron. Though she didn’t know what incidents would occur, she had to send him with something. Pain relievers, internal injury medicine, hemostatics, anesthetics, and her holy power.

Rudbeckia barely touched her dinner as she worked on making her already small medicines even smaller.

After some time passed, Sophia knocked on the door of her laboratory.

“Miss, may I come in?”

Rudy checked the time. Once she entered her laboratory, the servants usually wouldn’t come up to the fourth floor until she came out on her own.

Servants coming meant someone was looking for her.

“Is Father home?”

When Rudbeckia opened the door, Sophia was right there.

“No. Neither of them has returned yet.”

“Then why?”

Rudbeckia, who had been sitting all along, stretched and groaned. She yawned loudly and, as was her habit, tried to remember who had visited around this time.

Before she could recall the past, Sophia was quicker.

“Her Highness the Imperial Princess has arrived. She’s in the reception room now.”

“Irene? At this hour?”

“Yes.”

It was the middle of the night. She wasn’t the type to visit like this.

Sophia seemed as perplexed as Rudbeckia was. It wasn’t polite for anyone to visit without any notice, especially at such a late hour.

“Did you serve her tea?”

“Of course.”

“Alright. Go get some rest then. It’s late.”

Rudbeckia silently rushed down the stairs to the second-floor reception room. Indeed, Irene’s knight, Derek, stood in front of the reception room door.

Rudbeckia passed by him and hurriedly opened the door.

“Irene.”

“Rudy.”

Unlike Rudbeckia, who was already filled with worry, Irene smiled softly at her. Looking at Irene’s smile, it seemed as if it were noon right now. It appeared so leisurely.

“What’s wrong?”

“Come sit down first.”

Rudbeckia sat down across from her friend who was drinking warm tea. They were both still in the same clothes they had worn at the shop during the day.

Rudbeckia was not only startled but confused. She had never encountered such a situation in the past.

Moreover…

“I think I need to take a vacation.”

She had no memory of this either.

“For about half a year, maybe?”

“Half a year?”

“And about the medicine in the shop. I took quite a lot. I left the payment.”

Rudbeckia’s red eyes stared blankly at her friend’s golden eyes.

Rudy suddenly felt scared. She needed to figure out why Irene was acting this way.

“Irene, wait. What’s this suddenly…”

“If it’s difficult to run alone, you can hire staff, or close temporarily.”

What’s going on here…

“Where are you going? Where are you going that made you like this?”

“I’m going to my mother’s hometown.”

Depending on who heard it, Irene’s words might seem strange, or not strange at all.

But to Rudbeckia’s ears, who couldn’t separate it from the past, everything sounded strange. Especially Irene’s outward appearance of trying to stay calm—it seemed the strangest.

They had been friends since they were eleven. Just as Irene could immediately tell when Rudbeckia was lying, Rudbeckia knew best what Irene looked like when she was lying.

“Rin, I’m so worried. Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

Coming at night and announcing this like this meant something was definitely wrong.

Rudbeckia gripped Irene’s hand firmly, as if she wouldn’t let go until she spoke.

“Don’t say nothing’s wrong. Don’t shake your head. Your hands are trembling right now.”

As Rudbeckia said, not only Irene’s hands but also her lips were trembling. Rudbeckia waited more desperately than ever for her friend’s voice.

“Irene.”

“I’m sorry, Rudy.”

But Irene just apologized quietly and hung her head low.

Rudbeckia didn’t let go of her hand and gently announced.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about. Let me go on that vacation with you.”

Irene looked at her friend. Her face was dumbfounded, seemingly asking what that meant.

“I can’t let you go alone right now.”

Having died and come back to life had taught her many things. Health was much more important than she thought, and while one shouldn’t live too carelessly, one shouldn’t live too hard either.

It was best to avoid people who gave bad feelings, and when you felt this uneasy, something would happen, so you had to do something.

“Where exactly is the destination?”

For these reasons, Rudbeckia, who was feeling anxious and afraid right now, decided to go with Irene.

“…Hovent Village.”

However, the moment she heard Irene’s answer, Rudbeckia drew in her breath. Her friend’s destination was more than enough to terrify Rudbeckia.

“Where did you say you’re going?”

“Hovent Village. That’s my mother’s hometown.”

Hovent Village was a very small village located between Count Rolls’ territory and Count Renner’s territory.

Rudbeckia didn’t know this village was Irene’s mother’s hometown and had never been there, but she couldn’t forget the name.

It was a village situated at the foot of the last mountain where people departing from the Capital would stay before crossing over to Barad.

In other words, it was where Benedict had almost died in the past.

“Since Brother is going the same way, I thought I’d ask for his help.”

Already feeling extremely uneasy about Irene’s announcement that differed from the past, Rudy became uncontrollably agitated from the moment she heard the name of the village.

Suddenly, Irene was taking medicine and traveling with Benedict.

“Irene… I don’t know what to say right now.”

Rudbeckia’s lips quivered as she stumbled over her words. She had just reached an absurd conclusion drawn from reasonable doubt.

Ah, but this thought is too strange. Too, too strange?

“Rudy, what you’re thinking is right.”

“Wh-what?”

When Rudbeckia asked back in a frozen voice, Irene scratched her forehead and gave a fleeting smile.

“Unbelievable things don’t happen to just one person in this world.”

“…Rin.”

“Since you suffered so much in your previous life, I thought it would be better to hide it, but I’m sorry. I dare… I think I need your help.”

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