A Piece of the Truth (1)
"Whew. Not just chilly anymore—now it's straight-up cold······."
Thud.
Yulia shut the window and rubbed her goosebumped arms herself.
Severe winter winds were beginning to sweep through the Imperial Capital too, making it hard to get by without bundling up properly in layers.
If even the Vladimir Empire in the southern part of the continent was this cold, what on earth must the cold of the Demon Realm in the north be like? It was hard to even guess.
Come to think of it, it was about time for the first snow of the season.
Snow—what good was it? All it did when it came was make things colder and get in the way.
That had always been Yulia's thinking, but this time it was a little different. Whether it was because her body had changed and her hormone balance along with it, or because her mind had grown softer and more fragile, she found herself feeling—even if only a little, only the tiniest bit—that she didn't want to miss the moment the first snow fell.
"Tia. You have to bundle up nice and warm whenever you go outside. If you're not careful, you'll catch a cold······."
"Mmuuh?"
You'll catch a cold if you're not careful.
Yulia stopped mid-sentence and thought it over for a moment.
This child—so sturdy she was practically a monster—sick in bed with a cold, sniffling and moaning?
It was genuinely hard to imagine.
"You probably won't catch one, but it's still better to be warm, you know?"
"Warmest thing ever is snuggling with Mommy!"
"······."
Fwoomp.
Tia dashed over in a single step and buried herself in Yulia's arms.
For some reason, she just felt like being held today. Her mother's expression looked somehow precarious······ like she had something she needed to say.
Yulia, reluctantly wrapping her arms around Tia's back, opened and closed her lips a few times. There was something she had to say, but she quickly shut her mouth and swallowed it back down.
It wasn't going to be easy.
"Tia. Once I'm done with work today, there's something I need to talk to you about."
"Mmuuh. What ith it?"
"It's······ something. I'll tell you this evening. Will you hear me out?"
"Of courthe!"
At Tia's confident answer, a smile spread across Yulia's lips.
Tia had no idea what her mother wanted to talk about—not the faintest guess. Yulia couldn't imagine how she'd react upon hearing it.
Would she burst into tears and deny it?
Or would she feel betrayed and reject her mother outright?
Or if not that, would she quietly accept it······?
It frightened her; it terrified her. But she couldn't keep it unsaid—not when she'd already promised so many people.
Yulia pulled Tia into one last, tight embrace. She could feel Tia's warmth through her chest.
It was a warmth, a feeling, she wanted to hold onto forever.
"Alright, Mommy's going to go work now, okay? You'd better not be too much of a handful for the maids."
"I'm never a handful!"
"That's what you think."
"Mmuuuh······."
Yulia ruffled Tia's hair roughly and rose to her feet.
Several guests from the government office would be visiting the villa today, so Yulia, as the Marchioness's attendant, was expected to be quite busy.
Of course, having learned her lesson from the last incident, Tia had promised not to set foot outside the servants' quarters and the back garden for the entire day.
"Hehehe. Mommy's gone off to work, huh? Shall Tia play with the big sisters while she's gone?"
"······."
Barely a moment after Yulia stepped out, a young maid walked in with a smile.
She was the one assigned to keep Tia under watch and hold her in place for the day.
It was an additional precaution—under no circumstances could they allow Tia to run out and commit some gross breach of etiquette against the government's officials. So little do they trust me, Tia thought, and stuck out her lips in a pout.
She wanted to earn her mother's trust sooner rather than later.
Of course, Tia had completely blacked out the memory of having run at a guest and played horsey with him.
"What should we play, Tia?"
"Frisbee."
"It's windy and cold today, so how about we play inside?"
"Frisbee."
"Hmm······ well, a frisbee could hit the window if we throw it around, and that might get in the way of greeting the guests, so how about something else? Like, for example······."
"Then tag."
"······."
The maid's smile began to twist little by little.
It was still early winter, so the temperature itself wasn't that low, but the wind today was brutal. Going outside in this weather would be sheer madness.
True to form, Tia—who was not bound by the physical limits of a frail human body—kept insisting she'd play outside, running around all she liked······
"Tia! How about a board game, huh? A board game?"
"Not interested. Ta—"
"Wow! Board games sound so fun! Misha brought one out!"
"We're playing a board game right now, Tia. Wanna join us?"
"Mmuuuh······."
But even that resolve crumbled fast.
When all the maids gathered together and began fake-laughing and chattering as if they were having the time of their lives over the board game, Tia couldn't bear to be left alone, and came slinking over to plop down right in their midst.
Only then did the maids all turn away from each other and quietly breathe sighs of relief.
They'd almost had to run around in killer cold weather playing with Tia.
"You roll the dice like this, and move forward that many spaces. See? Easy, right?"
"What's even fun about this······."
Tia, still displeased, puffed out her cheeks and started learning the game halfheartedly.
But as the turns piled up one by one and the game entered its later stages······
"MMUUUH! That's cheating! How did you roll a twelve from there!"
At some point, Tia had become completely absorbed in the game.
"Hehehe. That's what you call skill."
"Oh. So you're not just supposed to throw them any old way······!"
"Exactly. Of course."
It had been said as a joke, but Tia took it completely seriously.
A die's roll is determined by the angle and speed of the throw, and the spin it carries. In other words, if you could control all of those factors, then theoretically, rolling whatever number you wanted was entirely possible.
For an ordinary human, of course, it was an impossible feat.
"Double sixes······?"
"Again? You rolled it again?"
But for Tia—with dynamic vision hundreds of times sharper than a human's, exquisitely sensitive touch, and the ability to control her strength down to the finest degree—it was more than doable.
Every time Tia threw, the dice came up twelve.
Though if a trap happened to sit on that space, she would sometimes deliberately roll an eleven instead.
As Tia began her lightning advance across the board, the maids' mouths hung wide open.
Is this magic? I'm fairly sensitive to mana myself, but I can't feel anything at all! Don't tell me she layered a barrier on top of it?
Tia is an absolute prodigy of magic.
They had no choice but to arrive at that conclusion. Effortlessly manipulating the dice while concealing every trace of magic from the outside world—what a masterful concealment art. Not a single one of them could have dreamed that the results involved no magic whatsoever.
So THAT's why the Marchioness covers her full tuition and sends her to school!
He must have glimpsed some extraordinary talent in Tia.
Only now did the maids exhale in unison, as if a great mystery had been solved.
Until this moment, they'd simply assumed the Marchioness was so head over heels for Yulia that he'd hand over his liver and gallbladder if she asked. Not knowing that that was, in fact, the correct answer, the maids could only marvel at the Marchioness's brilliant insight.
"Boring."
"······."
Having demolished the game in the blink of an eye, Tia promptly lost interest and turned away to sit.
She couldn't understand what was supposed to be fun about a game that whoever rolled the dice first automatically won.
Tia immediately wanted to go outside and hung onto the window.
Mealtime was approaching, and there were rooms that needed cleaning, so the maids began slipping out of the servants' quarters one by one.
"I wanna play outside······."
Mom and the Marchioness were busy.
The maids all dreaded going out.
And every indoor game on hand was boring.
Just as Tia heaved a deep sigh, a maid came up behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder.
"Looks like snow's coming soon. I'd bet it falls sometime this week."
"Snow? What'th that?"
"You don't know what snow······ is?"
At Tia's innocent, guileless look, the maid tilted her head. Part of her wondered how anyone could make it to this age without knowing what snow was, but then she reasoned the child must have come from somewhere much further south, and accepted it.
"Mmuuh! What ith thnow?"
"Snow, well—it's something suuuper pretty. When snowflakes fall from the sky, the whole world turns white."
"Tia can do that too! If I shake my hair, rrrright like this!"
"That's dandruff······. And go wash your hair."
"Don't wanna. More importantly—when it thnows, everyone comes out and plays with Tia, right? 'Cuth it'th super pretty!"
"Uhhh······ well, you see······."
The maid's eyes darted about frantically. When the snow came, she'd have to burn every ounce of her strength shoveling that white garbage—and after all that, was she really supposed to drag her exhausted body out to play with Tia? The childlike spirit that used to recharge her drained batteries at the mere sight of snow had long since vanished from within her, every last trace.
"I—I've got to get back to work soon too! Tia, you know you're not supposed to come out into the villa, right? I'll come tell you when all the guests have left, so just hang in there till then!"
"Mmuuh······."
Soon even the last remaining maid vanished as if fleeing, and Tia was left all alone.
Tia's gaze had locked onto the sky, and she had no intention of lowering her head.
Snow.
All of her attention was fixed on this mysterious thing—pretty, and white, and falling from the sky, apparently.
The window made checking the sky awkward. Tia started to step out of the servants' quarters and head outside, then hesitated.
She'd remembered her mother telling her to bundle up warm.
Tia didn't particularly feel the cold, but recalling that worried look in her mother's eyes, she armed herself head to toe—coat, fur boots, fur hat, even gloves—and only then bounded outside.
"Hmmm······."
And then she simply waited, and waited.
Until this "snow" thing came.
Before long Tia's neck grew stiff from craning upward, and she flopped down flat onto the lawn.
But beneath a sky smothered in pitch-black clouds, no matter how hard she strained her eyes, there wasn't a single white thing to be found.
Maybe I'll just take a nap, she thought, and closed her eyes.
"Mmuuh?"
Just then, something cold touched the tip of her nose.
For an instant she thought someone had splashed water at her, and Tia sprang up, looking all around—but there was no one there.
While Tia stood bewildered, a cold sensation touched her wrist next, in the gap between her glove and her sleeve.
Startled, Tia lifted her head.
"Whoaaa······!"
Only now could Tia understand what the maid had meant.
It was snowing.
White, beautiful things were drifting slowly down from the sky.
Tia immediately stripped off her gloves, spread her palms wide, and caught the snow in her hands. The flakes that landed on Tia's warm palms melted and vanished in an instant.
Quickly growing excited, Tia began darting this way and that, bound and determined to catch every last snowfall from the sky.
"Muhehehe!"
The snowfall thickened fast. What had begun as a brief, slushy flurry soon swelled into a great fluffy flurry, sifting down in a soft hush.
The accumulation came quickly too. Before she knew it, the back garden was blanketed in white, the grass vanished from sight entirely.
Squelch, squelch—sounds kept popping up near the feet of Tia as she sprinted back and forth.
Each time Tia busily ran around leaving footprints, the snow covered them over and erased them; she'd leave new ones, and they'd vanish again, over and over. A stubborn streak took hold of her—she resolved to stamp every last inch of the garden with her own footprints, and kept running without rest.
"Haa······ haaaa······."
She wore herself out in no time.
By now even the thrill of seeing snow for the first time had faded somewhat. Tia sprawled out across the vast white expanse, panting hard.
It was pretty. It was fascinating. It had been fun, too.
But something was missing.
She was in the middle of racking her brain over what exactly that something could be.
"Tia!"
"Mmuuh?"
At the welcome voice, Tia shot bolt upright.
Mom had come out of the villa and was waving at her.
Ah. She's going to yell at me for taking my gloves off, isn't she.
Now, where did I throw them?—and as Tia looked around here and there for her gloves, something unexpected happened.
"Hyah!"
"Mommy?"
Yulia burst from behind the screen of trees and dove into the snow.
The snow falling from the sky blanketed her silver hair and maid's uniform in a single instant.
Mom, who hated going outside on cold days, was running toward her with—somehow—a delighted look on her face.
While Tia watched, dazed, Yulia grinned broadly and scooped snow off the ground, packing it into a ball.
A snowball flew at the still-motionless Tia.
"Mmyah?!"
"Puhahahaha!"
The snowball struck Tia square in the face, and the shattered snow slid dripping down her cheeks.
Tia's expression, scrunched up in a what on earth is this? frown, quickly shifted to one of astonishment.
Mom was laughing.
With a face Tia had never once seen, with a voice Tia had never once heard······
She looked like nothing so much as a carefree young girl.
So when Mommy's really, truly happy—this is how she smiles.
The thought struck Tia, and she went completely blank.
Up until now, Mom had never felt genuine happiness, not even for a single moment.
Realizing that made her chest ache.
And she felt pathetic at herself— pathetic for never having noticed it until now.
"Mmheh!"
"What are you doing? Aren't you going to throw one? You're just going to stand there and take it, my daughter?"
Another snowball flew, landing dead-on against Tia's forehead.
Watching her mother sweep the hair from her face and laugh, Tia gradually felt the heat rise in her.
There was no more guilt, no more anything.
Tia packed a snowball and charged at her mother. None of it mattered anymore.
All she wanted was to let this itchy, restless body loose and run wild with her mom.
"Honestly. And here I wondered why you were so earnestly begging me for a short break."
The Marchioness, having drawn back the curtain, let out a sigh of sheer incredulity.
The back garden, snow tumbling down in fat flakes. There, mother and daughter were squealing with laughter, hurling snow at one another.
"So that's how Yulia smiles."
It was a real laugh—not a fabricated one, not a businesslike one. With his eyes, seeing through that much was simplicity itself.
As he watched the pair for a long while, a smile gradually spread across the Marchioness's lips as well.
It was, indeed, a thoroughly satisfying sight.
"GWAHCK!"
"Mom! Are you okay?!"
That is—right up until Yulia took Tia's fastball straight to the face and nearly blacked out.