……I Wasn’t Waiting
……I wasn’t waiting.
Time rewound to the morning thirteen days earlier.
Serena rubbed her eyes as she rose from bed, staring blankly at the clock.
Half past six. Roughly two hours remained until Lumina would wake.
I really ought to start living more regularly.
Until now she had spent her days learning Lumina’s habits and adjusting to her new surroundings—time that felt far more extraordinary than ordinary. Now that the adjustment period was over, Serena intended to resume the disciplined routine she had kept at her family home.
As the first step, she finished washing her face and changed into exercise clothes.
It was time for the escape training she had neglected for so long… in other words, running.
Serena had barely run at all lately. The point where her skills would start to dull was approaching, so she began carefully with a light jog rather than pushing herself.
Six minutes per kilometer should be fine.
That pace would cover ten kilometers in an hour—quite fast for an ordinary person. For the prepared black-hearted Serena, however, it was leisurely enough that she could, with only a slight exaggeration, belt out death metal while running.
“♬”
She circled the roughly two-kilometer garden path three times, then finished the jog with a hundred-meter sprint.
“……Haa, haa. Still managing the low twelves, though.”
Haven’t rusted that much yet, have I?
Serena smiled faintly at her own skill and youth.
On the morning of the fifth day of jogging—varying her speed and distance just enough to keep things interesting—something inevitable happened. Doing anything regularly made one easy to notice.
And there were eyes watching Serena run every single day…
Members of the Heavenly Wolf Knights who remained at the ducal estate for reasons of injury recovery, training juniors, escort duty, and perimeter security. For them, physical stamina mattered every bit as much as it did for the black-hearted Serena.
“That little lady is running again today?”
Sharing a common interest, these simple northern knights began to feel an internal sense of kinship toward the young lady they had not even properly introduced themselves to yet.
“Hoh… her form’s rather solid. Looks like she’s been running for a while.”
“Oh, she’s going all out now.”
“She’s fast. How many seconds do you figure that is for a hundred meters?”
“My squire runs about the same as that lady—mid-twelves.”
“Isn’t that boy the most talented among the squires?”
“He is. And for a girl her age to already move like that… she doesn’t even seem to be using mana. If she weren’t the young lady’s personal maid, I’d have recommended her for enlistment on the spot.”
“A shame. Still, she’s small and quick—just like a squirrel.”
“Golden hair, so a golden squirrel, then.”
On the fifth day of jogging at the ducal estate, Serena earned the honor of being called the Golden Squirrel by elite knights second only to the Imperial Knights.
……Was that really an honor?
Everyone was simply cooing over her with their eyes.
“Ugh. I can’t take it anymore. This is unbearable.”
“Libertas?”
The female knight Libertas fidgeted restlessly, then carefully approached Serena after she finished her jog.
Serena, true to her Meridiana blood, was quick on the uptake. She had noticed from the very beginning that the Heavenly Wolf Knights were watching her. She simply pretended not to notice, since she sensed no hostility.
But when someone walked right up like this, pretending became rather difficult.
Serena greeted the approaching Libertas with an expression of pure twelve-year-old innocence.
“Sir Knight?”
“Hello. I am Libertas, a senior knight of the Heavenly Wolf Knights. Might you be Lady Meridiana, who recently arrived as the young lady’s maid?”
“Yes! That’s me.”
“Well, um… this isn’t meant as a lecture, so please don’t take it the wrong way and just listen lightly. Would it be all right if I patted your hea—”
Haaah. She looks so adorable all sweaty that my true feelings almost slipped out. Libertas clamped both hands over her mouth.
“……I mean! When you move your body—running, for example—have you ever tried using mana?”
“Uh… I can use a little magic, but I don’t really know how to use mana while moving.”
“I see. If you wouldn’t mind, Lady, would you like to learn a bit of mana usage and self-defense from me…?”
At Libertas’s offer, Serena’s eyes lit up.
“Oh! Really? Is that okay?”
“As a maid, learning at least the bare minimum of self-defense is advisable. And having a reliable escort nearby would be good for the young lady as well, wouldn’t it?”
“I think so too! I’d love that!”
And so Serena learned all sorts of things from the female knight—from reinforcing her body with mana to light self-defense techniques.
“Yes! Excellent! That’s exactly it!”
“Yay!”
Every morning Serena threw herself into Libertas’s training, and every evening after Lumina fell asleep she devoted herself to reviewing what she had learned.
Libertas quickly became captivated by the girl who absorbed every single thing she taught, even reviewing on her own.
She completely internalized something this difficult? Serena… is she a goddess?
And Serena, for her part, welcomed this stroke of fortune that had come looking for her of its own accord, immersing herself wholeheartedly in Libertas’s instruction.
She’s even teaching me this? Libertas… she’s a goddess!
The result was a spectacular infinite-power incident in which two fools gazed at each other and endlessly stoked each other’s motivation.
Then came the fourteenth day of jogging and the tenth day of training.
Just as an overheated furnace will eventually go boom—the still-young twelve-year-old body of Serena hit its limit.
“Cough, cough…….”
Serena had come down with a truly vicious full-body cold.
“Sniff. Ehehe…… I won’t be able to go see Lady Lumina today.”
Even keeping her eyes open—or gathering her wits in the first place—was overwhelming. She considered forcing herself to visit Lumina anyway, but…
No. I’d just give her the cold.
That child had no one else to rely on but her. If Lumina caught a cold, things would become troublesome. So Serena decided to set her heart at ease and rest.
Had Serena possessed even a little more composure, she could have sent Serasia or one of the estate servants to inform Lumina. But this twelve-year-old girl, serving someone for the first time in her life, never thought that far.
As for Serasia, the moment she heard her master was ill she half lost her mind, sniffling as she nursed Serena.
And that was how Lumina came to wait for a Serena who never arrived, knowing nothing at all.
At the very moment Serena lay sick in bed, on the fourth floor in Lumina’s room…
Because Serena had not come, Lumina had been forced to make do with truly tasteless rye bread for her meal. Yet her feelings were not all that bad.
……So it ended up like this after all.
Somewhere in her subconscious she had already sensed it coming.
Lately Serena’s attitude toward her had been changing little by little. The more recent the days, the more frequently Serena left her side. Her voice had taken on a strangely languid, exhausted quality, and there were many times when she simply fell asleep in a corner as if she lacked the energy to deal with Lumina at all.
Yesterday’s Serena in particular had been so perfunctory it seemed she had forgotten she was even Lumina’s maid.
Maybe she’s grown tired of me…….
Human emotions were consumable. A child’s interest, especially, was highly volatile. Perhaps her interest in Lumina—who always responded weakly, sluggishly, and without any fun no matter how much one spoke to her or teased her—had simply run dry.
Or perhaps she had realized that Lumina had been completely abandoned by the ducal house. In that case, a change in attitude would not be strange at all.
Lumina closed her eyes.
It didn’t matter. She had dropped out at just the right time.
She was terminally ill. A person who would leave this world before long, and she did not want to leave behind any lingering attachments.
Serena’s gentle hands washing her, the kindness of feeding her warm food, that playful voice that teased her—she had nearly forgotten her own circumstances because of them.
And before she could forget completely, Serena had been the first to pull away. For Lumina, that might well be something to welcome with open arms.
Better to fall from a moderately high place than from somewhere far too high.
That way…… it hurt less.
That was what Lumina thought.
Yes. This is the end…….
Still, she shouldn’t speak too harshly of her stepmother. Even if it had only been a few days, that girl was the first person who had stayed by her side for so long. She had done enough.
Even as she thought that—
Lumina’s ears were already straining to catch the footsteps of a certain girl she had begun to grow used to.
As night deepened, the air grew cold. Lumina pulled the blanket all the way up over her head.
……Serena’s scent.
Perhaps because she was from the warm south, Serena had often complained of the cold and freely taken Lumina’s blanket to cover herself. As a result, the blanket was thoroughly steeped in Serena’s body heat and scent.
It was strong now, but with time it would gradually fade.
And when that time came……
……Ah.
A faint sense of sorrow made Lumina curl up tighter beneath the covers.
In the end, you’re just like everyone else.
Thinking too deeply only made her feel worse. Why did she even think? Her specialty was to empty her mind completely, like a doll.
Lumina closed her eyes, determined to empty her heart entirely.
That was when it happened.
Thud— thud— thud—.
Footsteps far too light to belong to an adult. They sounded a little more tired than usual; the intervals between them were longer.
Lumina poked her head out from under the blanket just a little. Then came the slow sound of the door opening.
“Haa, haa…… Lady Lumina. I’m sorry. You waited, didn’t you? I came down with a full-body cold today…….”
What. So it was just a cold.
“……I wasn’t waiting.”
“I’ll somehow get better by tomorrow, so be good and stay put, okay?”
So she’s coming tomorrow.
“……You don’t have to get better by tomorrow. Don’t come.”
“Hehe. Look how stiff your voice is. Did you get sulky because I didn’t come? Uh, uh…… achoo!”
She must have been really sick…….
“I’m not sulky. You’ll give me your cold, so close the door and leave.”
“Yeees~”
See you tomorrow.
The door that had opened closed again.
The presence beyond it remained there for quite some time afterward. Lumina, with her sharp ears, knew it clearly.
Only after that presence, which had lingered so long in front of the door, finally disappeared beyond the stairs did Lumina pull the blanket all the way up over her head once more.
It smelled of Serena.
A scent that would not disappear from now on.