After nominating herself as Mia’s number one protégé, Orania would often come to see Mia, entreating her for her wisdom with every visit. That day was just one of many, and once Mia had exited the cathedral after the weekly mass had concluded, she was greeted by Orania.
“Hello, Master...!”
“My, Orania. Greetings,” said Mia, the grin on her face appearing rather forced. This was bad timing, and Mia felt a cold sweat begin to trickle down her back. But why? The reason was simple!
“What do you have to teach me today, Master Mia?”
“H-Hmm, well...”
That’s right—Mia had already run out of ideas! As you may already know, Mia was not equipped with an endless spring of wisdom. If anything, her intelligence was more on the...well...measly side. In any case, her stock of axioms and insights had never been that plentiful in the first place.
Still, she couldn’t offer a half-baked answer, as that could quite possibly lead Orania to tell someone, “I’m just doing this because that’s what Master Mia said to do...” Mia wanted to avoid that at all costs.
And when Mia thought about the matter really hard, she realized she wanted her neighboring nations to be peaceful as well. If the flames of revolution ravaged its doorstep, Tearmoon could easily be engulfed as well. And knowing the Serpents, they’d happily pour some gasoline on the matter to make sure of it.
Thus, Mia shared her guillotine-escaping wisdom with Orania, which she had learned from invaluable experience. “You see, Orania, committing a wrong is of course a sin, but failing to do what is required of those of us sitting at the top is equally terrible,” said Mia, recalling her hardships in the Sealence Forest. “When faced with a problem, you must do all you can to fix it. That is important.” If you didn’t do all you could to escape, the guillotine would happily come and find you itself, after all. “There are plenty of things in life where ignorance can’t serve as an excuse. So ready your senses, and make sure you’re doing everything you can to discover any problems that could lead to misfortune.”
“You mean...the problems the nation ignores? The ones it pretends aren’t a problem at all...?” Orania’s expression suddenly turned sour.
“What’s the matter?”
“Oh... It’s nothing. Please excuse me, Master Mia...”
Mia saw Orania off and returned to her room.
“Welcome back, milady. I’ll prepare you some tea.” Anne seemed to have been making the beds, but she quickly began to prepare some tea and tea cakes.
“Thank you. I just met with Orania, and it ate up a lot of my brainpower.”
Mia naively praised her maid, thinking she was oh so very thoughtful. But what Mia didn’t know was that Anne had purposefully prepared a vegetable cake that lacked just a tad of its normal sweetness for Mia to prevent her from overeating. She was thoughtful in the real sense.
“I’m back!” came a cheerful voice. It was Bel.
“My, welcome back, Bel.”
“Right! I need to prepare for a meeting with the kids in the SEEC program! I’m gonna tell them all about my adventures!” Recently, Bel had been leading some SEEC protégés of her own in all sorts of fun.
She seems to have her morals straight...but can the same be said about her studies? Mia was Bel’s grandmother, and naturally, she worried for her granddaughter’s future.
“That reminds me, Bel. Has the future changed now that we have Orania on our side?”
“Huh?” Bel’s face was blank, as if she didn’t know what Mia was talking about at all.
Mia stared back at her. “Just to be certain, you have been checking Ludwig’s diary, right?”
“R-Right! Of course I have! I obviously would, right? I read it cover from cover every single night! I have the blood of the Great Sage of the Empire running through my veins, after all...”
Bel’s answer was enough to assure Mia of one thing—Bel definitely had not been reading the diary at all!
“Moons... If you’re not careful, the future will stray further and further from the one you came from. Check it right now,” said Mia, wagging her finger in proper scolding style. Though the fact that something so relatively sensible had fallen from Mia’s lips did raise some questions about the certainty of Tearmoon’s future.
“Fine, Miss Mia...” Bel obediently nodded and took out the diary.
Mia took this opportunity to ask a question which had suddenly occurred to her. “By the way, Bel, what was the state of Ganudos in the future you came from?”
“What was...what, exactly?”
“Were things going well? Were they in turmoil? That sort of thing.”
“Oh, right! I think we...probably had a typical diplomatic relationship.” There was something awfully noncommittal about Bel’s answer, and it earned a sigh from Mia. “O-Of course, if our relationship was really bad, I’m sure I would have remembered that! So even if they were our enemies, they must have been keeping a low profile. I never heard anything about them from Professor Ludwig... Huh? I haven’t, right?” she mumbled, pulling out the diary and flipping through the pages.
“Ah!” Bel suddenly screamed. “Th-This is terrible, Grandmother Mia!”
“What is it? That was an awfully sudden shout. It’s not befitting for a noble lady to scream like that,” said Mia, the very un-noble lady who let out cries like “hupty-doo!” and sighed like an old man.
Anyway, putting the jokes aside, Bel was in a real panic. “This is no time for that, Grandmother Mia. Ganudos Port Country...was destroyed!”
“Hwah...?”
Once again, the ball had started to roll.