I know the chances are slim, but what if today is the day of the event when Maria is attacked...? No, that can’t be right. There’s no way.
But now that the thought had occurred to me, I could not easily dispel my worries. I quickly rose to my feet. If it turned out there was nothing to worry about, then I could calm down.
“Lady Katarina?” said Sophia, seeming perplexed.
“I’ve just remembered that there’s something I need to do, so I’m going to go and ask if I can leave work early today,” I declared, before running back to my department’s office.
When I made it to the office, I saw Raphael was just coming out of the entrance, so I told him I wanted to leave early.
“I don’t really mind if you leave early, but are you all right? You’re not unwell, are you?”
Since I hadn’t given him a reason, he was worried about me. That made sense. I need a good excuse... But I can’t think of anything.
“Um, I’d like to go and see Maria.”
“You want to see Maria? I’m pretty sure she went to visit her home today.”
“Yes, that’s right, but for some reason I feel like something bad might be about to happen to her. So I’m concerned.” Having no excuse, I just said exactly what was on my mind.
I worried he might think I was a real weirdo, but Raphael just widened his eyes slightly.
“Understood. In that case, I’ll grant you permission to use one of the Ministry’s carriages, so please take it and hurry.”
To my surprise, he even arranged for me to take a carriage.
“Um, I know it might sound strange for me to be asking this, but do you really believe what I just told you?” I was shocked that he’d accepted it so easily.
“I see your point. If it were anyone else, I might doubt them, but you aren’t the kind of person who would lie or jest about this sort of thing. And I can’t easily dismiss your intuition,” Raphael added with a slight frown. “I’ll give you a magical tool you can use to contact us if anything happens. Please take the utmost care.” With these words of warning, Raphael handed me a magical tool and sent me on my way.
And so I ended up in a carriage headed straight to the town where Maria’s family home was. Rattling as it went, my carriage arrived at the town where Maria lived, and I asked the driver to let me disembark near her house.
The uneasy feeling inside my chest never subsided during the journey. I still felt restless as I walked in the direction of Maria’s house, when suddenly I saw another carriage stop nearby, arriving at nearly the same time I had.
Surely this isn’t a lieutenant of the organization, someone like Katarina, I wondered as I braced myself for a fight, but the person who actually stepped out was just as surprising to me.
“Cezar?!”
“Katarina?!” he cried—apparently just as shocked to see me—our startled exclamations overlapping each other.
“What are you doing here of all places?” I asked.
“I might ask you the same thing. What are you doing here, of all places?”
“I-I just had this uneasy feeling all of a sudden, and felt like checking on Maria...” I stated honestly, unsure of how best to evade his question.
Cezar looked absolutely stunned.
“Do you have some kind of special ability for sensing danger?”
“Eh? Ah. No, just a hunch.” I was worried that I’d been horribly misunderstood, so I issued a hurried denial.
“A hunch?” repeated Cezar, looking even more bewildered.
Ah, this isn’t going so well. However, Cezar’s appearance here means the probability of that game event occurring today has just increased.
“Really! But none of that matters—let’s just hurry!” I urged him, sensing that a full explanation would be too much trouble.
Cezar furrowed his brow.
“I’m not entirely convinced, but I agree that we should hurry,” he said, and we both ran in the direction of Maria’s house.
“As a young noblewoman of Sorcié, are you sure you want to be seen running around with your skirt hiked up?”
“This is no time to be worrying about that kind of thing.”
During this exchange, we arrived at Maria’s house to find nothing out of the ordinary, at least from where we stood outside the door. The curtains were drawn, so we couldn’t see inside.
Come to think of it, wasn’t Maria supposed to be unofficially attended by bodyguards? I wonder where they are.
I looked around, but couldn’t spot anyone fitting that description. Just as I’d done when I visited Maria’s house in the past, I approached the door and knocked before calling out.
“Excuse me?”
No voice answered from inside. However...
“I sense that someone’s in there,” murmured Cezar.
Right. Though nobody answered, I also have a feeling that someone is inside. I tried to open the door, but it was locked and didn’t budge. What should we do?
“Forgive me for doing this, but this is an emergency. I promise I’ll pay for it afterward,” said Cezar, before proceeding to slam his body against the door, busting it open.
This act was so sudden, I stood there with my mouth hanging open for a moment. But without the door in the way, I could see inside, and I quickly regained my bearings. Having visited Maria’s house several times before, I knew that after entering through the front door, we would find a table and the kitchen. In this respect, its interior was like that of any commoner’s home, but Maria’s family had furnished the space so that, though it was modest, it always felt warm and cozy.
But we found in the normally charming dining space a terrible mess. The chairs had been knocked over, and there was a person lying face down on the floor. At first I thought it might be Maria, and ran over in a panic, but I was mistaken. Though she looked a lot like Maria, when I saw how long her hair was, I realized it was her mother.