COARV Chapter 6

Fitting for a female lead in a cross-world transportation story, Lina shows off a good deal of unassuming, gentle charm throughout the story. Maybe that's why she never quite gets used to the lavish, idle bathing rituals particular to nobles. So she sends the maids away and always bathes herself.

Which is why she discovers the star-shaped mark on her own body embarrassingly late. Fair enough, I suppose—the mark was on her inner thigh, wasn't it? Somewhere pretty awkward, if I'm remembering right.

Come to think of it, that's strange.

How does Seria even end up finding that out, then?

Anyway, the original Seria held a fierce belief that there was no way Lina could be a Stern. So she assumed nothing would happen even if Lina touched the celestium. It wasn't a thought born of any good intention.

It was only that no one on earth wanted Lina to not be a Stern more badly than Seria did.

So—surely not. She won't be. And if she isn't, I get to laugh at her. I'll establish my own standing this way. With that mindset, she got Lina to touch the celestium, and….

The result was: ta-da. Lina turned out to be a Stern too.

Of course all the precious, coveted things go to the female lead. From that point on, the already half-mad Seria went fully, completely over the edge. She spent a while committing every kind of villainy imaginable, and not long after—snick—her throat was cut, and that was that.

After that, her name never comes up in the original again.

I have to be careful. Careful…

I'll get to Haneton territory quickly, hole up there, and never come out again for the rest of however long it takes the original to run its course. Reaffirming my life plan to myself once more, I set off to meet the noblewomen who'd be waiting for me.

"Oh my! The wedding hall is so beautiful!"

"They said a Stern's wedding hall would be a whole world of stars, and it really is!"

"Stern means 'star,' doesn't it?"

The noblewomen's eyes lit up, gawking at the wedding hall in a daze. They were ladies from Haneton territory, newly arrived just yesterday. After a small welcoming tea party, they'd heard the preparations had just finished and come along to see the hall together.

It was a beautiful hall.

A ceiling raised through two full floors. A vivid, glittering crystal chandelier that seemed to fall in soft, scattering droplets. Elegant gilded marble columns, and stone angels carved as though mid-song. White muslin draped down long from the ceiling, gathered like clouds.

Best of all, dozens of metallic banners glinted like scattered gold dust. That singular decoration—the deeply traditional whatever-it-was, only ever handed out by the Grand Temple, and only for a Stern's wedding….

...read about it in the original, but seeing it for real, it's even prettier.

It hadn't looked quite this magnificent, the first time I'd seen it. Back then it had already carried a rich, dignified air, but now it was just like…. the Saint? Dazzling and radiant enough to be the Saint's own wedding.

The priestesses wouldn't have decorated it like this. Had Kallis ordered it done?

The weather was too cold for a tea party in the garden. Still, the annex Berke's main castle had opened up for us was lovely enough that we managed a very pleasant little gathering all the same.

And the pastry chef's skill was remarkable. Its owner, Lesche, wasn't even that into sweets and never touched them himself, but the original said he'd hired a genuinely gifted pastry chef for a fairly charming reason. Which only worked out well for me. As the noblewomen chatted away, I sampled an éclair generously drizzled with chocolate.

"Lady Stern. Haneton territory is truly beautiful. There are even several large theaters."

"The one thing it's lacked is a lady of the house…."

"But that's about to change, now that Lady Stern will be the Marchioness of Haneton!"

These noblewomen were kind to me. Probably to win my favor, given that I'd soon become the Marchioness of Haneton. Well, whatever the reason—no cause to dislike being treated well.

Once I'm in Haneton territory, I'll be seeing plenty of them—better to stay on good terms now.

Besides, winning over the ladies of the house was always the smartest first move, wherever you went. There was nothing to be gained by rubbing noblewomen the wrong way.

The little tea party turned out to be quite enjoyable.

The viscountess, skilled at the harp, played a piece that lingered pleasantly in the ear the whole time. I hummed along and gathered up my silver laurel branches. Silver laurel branches were an absolute necessity for the glacier inspection. Unlike ordinary laurel, their leaves shimmered a silvery gleam.

Much like how pure silver, salt, softened iron, and sage burned in flame were all said to purify a space, these silver laurel branches purified the glacier—the monster's tomb—and reinforced the seal binding it. They also offered some effect, however modest, against celestium's temperature drop, which was why knights kept spare branches on hand as a stopgap whenever no Stern was available.

If Stern were a plant, it would probably look exactly like a silver laurel tree.

Plant a silver laurel branch into the glacier's snowfield, and come back some time later to find it withered black. Which meant the more frequently new branches were planted during inspections, the more sharply the odds of a monster appearing dropped.

Naturally, ordinary Sterns didn't much care for this task. The winter glacier held onto the north's chill and grew bitterly cold. But I didn't mind going out to the glacier all that much. If simply showing up faithfully kept my reputation shooting up like a weed, there was no reason to dislike it.

Keeping a wretched death a little further off—that's a good thing. I was gathering up my silver laurel branches with real energy when it happened.

"You seem happy, my lady."

I startled and turned around. Silver hair glinting like snow, eyes a vivid, blazing red. A face too beautiful to feel entirely real.

"Your Highness."

It was Lesche. I bowed my head slightly as his red eyes settled on me.

"It seems the Haneton retainer couples have mostly arrived. The castle's been a real racket."

...Was I being too loud?

"I'll be more mindful."

"That isn't what I meant."

"Pardon?"

As I lifted my bowed head, I fumbled and dropped the silk pouch I'd been holding. The silver laurel branches inside spilled onto the floor.

Flustered, I crouched down at once. Crouched down like this in front of a man so far above my station—God, I was mortified. I wanted to die on the spot. Forget the dust or whatever—I just wanted to sweep it up fast and get out of the way, but a pair of long legs fold down in front of me.

Long fingers gather up the silver laurel branches, neat and careful.

What is even happening right now....

"The pouch."

"Yep."

Lesche took the silk pouch from me and set the branches inside.

"Thank you, Your Highness."

I gave my thanks and turned to go at once, when Lesche's voice reached me.

"Heading out to the frozen lake again today?"

"Yes, Your Highness. I'm going with Sir Elliot."

"I don't quite understand it."

"Pardon?"

Lesche picked me apart with his eyes, the way you'd size up some rare, curious creature.

"As I understand it, Linon has already put more than enough care into the Stern's wedding hall. Is it still not enough?"

Not enough—what's that supposed to mean?

"You don't need to go to such trouble checking the glacier."

Linon—I knew that name too. Lesche's chief aide, and a fairly reliable comic-relief presence in the original as well. If he was the one who'd prepared it, that meant—

"...So it was you who arranged all this, Your Highness."

So Lesche dressed up the wedding hall as payback for the glacier checks.

That tracked—the original's male lead was always a man who dealt clearly in reward and punishment.

No wonder the hall looked prettier and more lavish than I'd expected. I'd thought Kallis was the one who'd put in the extra care.

"Wasn't that the point of putting in all that effort? Every time you've visited the castle before, you'd scream if anything displeased you even slightly."

Lesche said it in an unbothered tone.

"Never in front of me, mind you. But the servants would fall ill from the strain of attending you. More than a hundred of them."

"……."

Seria. Please.

I felt cold sweat threatening to break out.

What do you even have to do to make more than a hundred servants come down sick?

What I had to go on were only the fragmented memories left behind in Seria's body. Fortunately, her learning, her knowledge, and her habits had all survived completely intact. If not, every last one of the aristocratic lady's ingrained mannerisms would've evaporated too—thank god for small mercies.

Which is exactly why I can still manage an awkward smile like this, right on cue, even now.

"Then I'll work hard enough for all hundred of them—to make up for what they suffered."

Lesche let out a short, breathy laugh.

He laughs?

So he does know how to laugh. I stared, flat-out—the sight was that strange to me.

"It'll be a bit of a shame, when you leave for Haneton."

For a moment, I doubted my own ears.

A shame? Who said that? Lesche—about me?

Whether or not I was staring at him with a strange expression, Lesche went on checking through a few of the boxes and added,

"Whichever Stern comes next year won't do things the way you have."

"Ah."

Fair enough—no other Stern was likely to check the glacier every single day for a full week, the way I did.

Still, hearing something like that from the male lead feels a little like… a life-insurance check, guaranteed to clear.

I smiled, just a little. A hope was rising in me: if I kept working this hard even next year and the year after, the real ruinous ending might drift further and further out of reach for good.

That's how it goes: hope comes bundled with motivation. That day too, I cut through a cold that felt like it was carving into my cheeks, out to the glacier and back—but I felt so much better than usual.

When I got back to my room, an unexpected surprise was waiting for me.

"My lady! Look how many gifts have come!"

"Look at this!"

My two personally assigned maids were positively giddy.

"Weren't all the noble gifts already sorted yesterday?"

"These just arrived from Marquess Haneton!"

"From Kallis?"

"Yes! Look, this sapphire is so clear, and such a deep color! And there's silk, and ribbon made by a designer from the capital, and a chapeau—[a broad-brimmed lady's hat trimmed with ribbon and lace]—and rare tail feathers from some precious bird…."

"Couldn't you open a dress boutique with all this?"

I set aside a few of the gifts to hand out to the Haneton noblewomen tomorrow, then tilted my head slightly.

Digging back through Seria's memories, I opened the innermost travel case and found a glittering bracelet inside.

"Wrap this one up for me, would you?"

"Oh, a demon-crystal bracelet."

"Isn't that terribly precious? Are you sending it to the Marquess?"

"Mm-hm."

"Oh my!"

"Understood! Shall we have his name engraved directly onto it?"

"That's right!"

"Do we really need to go that far?"

"Well, when you're giving a gift anyway, doesn't it feel nicer if the other person's happy about it?"

"...That's... true, I guess."

I went along with the maids' suggestion.

They looked genuinely moved by it, but honestly… hm.

That's not it, girls.

Seria had almost no money of her own.

Not that she had no money at all.

More precisely: she had no personal savings to speak of.