LDTOTSDML Chapter 1

「No more need to grip a pen and write by hand!」 

「A revolution in the written word」 

「The typewriter, now a fixture of every office—orders so overwhelming that production is booked through next spring」 

「The slender rod that turns aside the wrath of the gods」 

「The North rolls out lightning rods empire-wide, on trial」

「Lightning damage cut by as much as eight-tenths」 . . .

「Invention, daring to become revolution」 

「The genius inventor the world is watching」 

「Protected by the North—the unidentified inventor is, in truth, the Duke's mistress...」

"Your Grace."

"Hm?"

"Apparently I'm your mistress."

"Have you ever seen my husband? Think you could win a fight with him?"

"..."

What did that have to do with the mistress rumor being false?

Arpina was no mistress to the Duchess Regnant, nor did she have any intention of becoming one.

Still, she reflexively pictured the Duke Consort. All she'd ever caught was a distant glimpse—a muscular, handsome man.

"...He looked healthy enough to rip something like me apart with one hand."

"Ha-HAH!"

The Duchess clutched her stomach and burst into a booming laugh. Her long, loose black hair swayed along with each convulsion.

She laughed for a good while before finally catching her breath.

"Ah, that's funny. Mind if I tell my husband what you just said?"

"I have a feeling he wouldn't like it—"

"The man I love isn't small-minded enough to get angry over a joke like that. If he were, do you think I'd keep him around?"

The Duchess looked at the seventeen-year-old girl before her and smiled.

A gentle face that looked younger than her age, pretty and slow to show emotion.

Her wool-curled hair was tinted the bluish color of dawn just before sunrise.

But look closer, and there was a strange, faint violet shimmer to it too—the deep, far-off purple of a sky higher than the heavens themselves.

Whenever the Duchess looked at Arphina's hair, she said the same thing.

"Your hair color is just like the dawn calling the sun up. As if you, right now, are the one bringing a new era to the empire."

Was that so?

Arphina glanced, not quite convinced, at the strands of hair spilling over her shoulder. She let the Duchess's flowery compliment pass without comment.

"Don't think too hard about it."

The Duchess returned to the newspaper rumor.

"Crap like this keeps popping up because nobody knows who the hell you are."

The mistress rumor was, of course, false.

But the reason such a ridiculous, baseless rumor made it into the newspaper at all was because of what Arphina had accomplished these past few years.

"It just means you're that impressive."

The Duchess hummed through Arphina's achievements as though singing a little tune, folding down one finger at a time.

"You invented the technology that stops what people used to call divine punishment—lightning. You invented the typewriter, which revolutionized clerical speed..."

A white lamp that stood in for the sun through the North's long, endless polar night.

A range of assistive devices for people with disabilities.

A circulating stove with remarkable thermal efficiency.

And beyond those, groundbreaking inventions that had made a name not just across the empire but beyond its borders, in foreign lands—all from an inventor of unknown identity.

Gender unknown.

Age unknown.

A genius of the century whose very existence was doubted.

"Arphina."

The Duchess looked at her century's genius inventor. If she were ever asked which of her achievements satisfied her most, she'd dare to say this:

That she'd made Arphina hers—that was the greatest achievement of all.

"You're already a third-year now."

"Yes."

"How old were you, when we first met?"

"Eleven."

"Six years already."

Struck once more by how fleeting time was, the Duchess looked at her ward with fond, tender eyes.

"Do your family ever contact you?"

"No."

Arphina's gentle eyes went briefly hard as she answered.

"And they'd better not. It's better this way if they don't."

Arphina held no lingering attachment to the family she'd cut off with her own hand.

Eleven years old.

Watching her family's estate shrink smaller and smaller through the carriage window as the Duchess's carriage carried her away—that was the moment she'd sworn it. That she'd tear the place down. With her own two hands.

"...Well, then, shall we talk about something else?"

Instead of the uncomfortable subject, the Duchess asked an ordinary, unremarkable question.

"Is the Academy fun? Term starts again tomorrow already."

"It's fun enough, I guess. There's already a bunch of students in the dorm."

"How's Sonia doing?"

"Not long ago she shook down some punks who go around shaking people down, then blew the money on cake."

"Glad to hear she's doing well. And you? Anyone you've taken a liking to?"

"There's no chance of that. I'm a confirmed bachelorette."

"Would you get angry if I told you that girls who say that usually end up married young?"

"..."

"Or, then..."

She'd meant that teasing jab, and now, having thrown it—

"...what about what I asked for?"

The Duchess got down to her real reason for calling her here.

"Did you bring it?"

Today was the day before the Academy's term began.

Arphina had a great deal to do, unpacking her dormitory things and the like, and yet the Duchess had summoned her anyway—specifically to confirm this one "favor."

Arphina moved the box she'd been keeping on her lap the entire time onto the table.

The neat square box was dressed up as elaborately as a birthday present, wrapped in gaudy paper and ribbon.

What was actually inside had nothing to do with birthdays.

"I couldn't test it, but it should work properly."

"Another legend is born."

The Duchess took the box, a satisfied smile spreading across her face.

Click—.

Clack.

Click—.

Clack.

"Hmm..."

The Duchess turned the heavy silver piece of metal over and over in her hands, endlessly.

An object that had never once existed anywhere in the empire now sat in her hand. And yet she handled it with total familiarity.

Click—.

"So a genius isn't a genius for nothing..."

Her gaze, examining the object, was sharp.

Arphina had taken a "weapon" the Duchess had only ever imagined and given it perfect, concrete form.

Six years in the making, and now the finished weapon was in her hand.

Flawless. Nothing to fault.

No matter how many times the Duchess looked at it, she couldn't quite believe it. When she'd asked for this weapon to be built, all she herself had done was draw the outer shape.

How it worked on the inside.

What kind of parts it needed.

She had only ever imagined those things vaguely; she hadn't possessed the concrete knowledge herself, either.

And yet a mere seventeen-year-old student had gone and built it, plain as day. The Duchess marveled once more at Arphina's genius.

'This weapon wasn't going to change the world.'

The girl who'd made it would.

And the more radiance Arphina cast over the world, the more perfectly, completely that girl's revenge would come to fruition too.

Just then.

"Mother."

There came a knock at the door.

The Duchess put the weapon away in a drawer.

"Come in."

With a creak, the door opened, and her son and daughter came inside.

"Mom, Mom!"

Her six-year-old daughter, silver-haired, the very image of her mother, wrapped herself around her mother's leg at once.

"Brother used up all the paper!"

"Ah, the enrollment form?"

The Duchess held out her hand for it.

Her fifteen-year-old son—black hair and eyes aside, the spitting image of his father—handed over the papers, wearing a triumphant look.

"..."

A sigh escaped the Duchess as she read through the papers carefully.

"Hey, you."

Then she asked.

"You're seriously going to enroll like this?"

"You already said it was fine. Why act all shocked now, out of nowhere..."

"Seeing it with my own damn eyes—it's enough to leave me speechless."

"Brother, does that mean you're not a noble anymore?"

Her daughter, who'd already drifted back to her brother's side, blinked her wide, prim eyes and asked. The silver hair tied into two candy-wrapper pigtails swayed.

"Just for a little while, not a noble."

The boy writing out his enrollment form pressed a kiss to his little sister's forehead.

"So if I see you at school, do I have to talk casual with you?"

"Delia, you already talk to me informally."

"Oh right, I do."

"Instead, I am the one being formal to you. Good day, my lady. Might I have the name of such a beautiful young noblewoman?"

His performance was far too prince-like for a commoner, and his sister burst into giggles.

"Good day. My name is Fedeliana."

"What a truly lovely name!"

"And what might your name be, then?"

"My name is..."

While the children played among themselves, the Duchess looked carefully over the enrollment form her son had just been filling out.

「Name: Del」

And right beside it, in the very next box:

「Surname: None」

"...Damn it, honestly."

Looking at it again didn't make it any less absurd—she was still speechless.

"To think the ungrateful bastard, gone mad over some girl and tossing his own family aside, turned out to be my own kid. This isn't what I went through labor for."

"It's just temporary, Mother."

"Call me Mom."

The Duchess stroked the head of her daughter, who'd stuck herself to her side and was innocently asking, can you sell family too?

"You said she went into the Technical Department," Del said. "The Technical Department is mostly commoners, so it'll be easier for someone posing as a commoner to get close to her than a noble would."

"But—"

"Besides, given what she's been through."

"..."

"What if my being around makes things uncomfortable for her?"

Del was only fifteen, but he had heard and learned a great deal.

And the piece of information the boy had gathered with the most care and effort concerned a certain third-year "Senior"—an "Elder Sis"—at the Academy.

"..."

The Duchess even swallowed back her sigh.

There was so much she wanted to say to her son. Something along the lines of, for instance, is that any way for a sane person to talk.

'Hm, well, this might actually be entertaining.'

But the whole situation seemed like it would be quite fun, so she decided to step back and watch instead.

"When she dumps you later, I'll be sure to comfort you—while laughing right in your face."

"I'll bring my future bride home to greet you, so make sure the guest room's properly done up. What might her taste be, I wonder."

"It's not my place to say, but you really are a lunatic."

"Mom, that's a bad word! Uncle says that to Brother sometimes and kicks him too!"

"Oh dear."

Looking mortified, the Duchess asked her daughter to keep it a secret from Grandfather and Father.

Whether or not the mother bought her daughter's silence with candy—

'I can finally see her again...!'

The heart of the boy who'd written his own name as "Del" on his enrollment form kept swelling with anticipation.

The boy had exactly one dream.

"Someday I want a husband-and-wife grave with Sis. Somewhere the sun hits well..."

"Mom."

Watching her brother blankly, spouting insane things with a bright, guileless smile, Delia whispered under her breath.

"How did you even raise him, huh? He's a total lunatic now..."

'Is our family's future going to be okay?'