Chairs had been set up in Anne’s room, and she now sat across from Brad in silence. The room was stark and impersonal, furnished only with the bare necessities. Sunlight poured in through the wide windows, though iron bars sealed them from the outside. We were outside the room, looking into it.
“It’s clean, but those bars make it feel like a prison cell,” Liscia murmured.
“You’re right,” Mary said, eyes lowering. “I chose a bright room so she wouldn’t be afraid, but with windows this large...we worried she might act on an impulse to jump. So we installed the bars.”
“I’m sorry,” Liscia said quickly. “I should’ve been more careful with my words.”
So they had to guard against suicide too. I remembered what Mary had written: “Anne is still haunted by nightmares. I stay with her at night, but during the day she can’t be under constant watch.”
She needs help... I hope Brad can reach her, I thought, watching them.
“Now, then...Anne, was it?” Brad asked.
“Ah!” Anne shuddered at the sound of his voice.
It was the first time she’d met him, and Brad, with his perpetually stern expression, must have looked intimidating. But to recoil just from being addressed...her nerves were already shredded. Honestly, Brad seemed like the worst possible choice for a psychiatrist. Weren’t they supposed to speak gently, with soft smiles and reassuring warmth? A man like Brad—with his blunt demeanor and sour face—felt like the exact opposite.
As I was wondering how this would go, Brad sighed.
“As expected. Ludia, take it from here.”
“Of course, Father.”
With small, quiet steps, Ludia walked past the dumbfounded Anne and came to stand beside Brad.
Brad lifted Ludia into his arms and settled her on his lap.
✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦
Huh? What was this? Were they about to combine like a giant robot? Was it time for Pilder On? Whatever was happening, Ludia looked adorable perched there.
“Hello, Miss,” she said.
“H-Hello,” Anne replied, bowing her head slightly.
“My name is Ludia. Mom calls me Ludy.”
“Ludy...?”
“Yes. That’s me. Who are you, miss?”
“I’m called Anne.”
“So you’re Miss Anne. It’s nice to meet you.”
“N-Nice to meet you too.”
Whoa... The conversation was actually flowing. How? A moment ago Anne had been trembling in front of Brad, and Ludia was supposed to be shy around strangers. Yet here she was, smiling sweetly and speaking with ease.
“What in the world...” I muttered.
“It’s probably because she’s sitting on Dr. Brad’s lap, Big Brother,” Tomoe whispered beside me. “Being on her father’s lap makes Ludia feel safe. It gives her confidence because she knows he’ll protect her. Meanwhile, Anne is so focused on how cute Ludia is that she’s stopped paying attention to Dr. Brad. Even if she notices him, she now just sees a doting father.”
“I-I guess that makes sense.”
So this was why Hilde had insisted Ludia come along. She must have known Brad couldn’t handle this alone.
I see. So this is Brad’s method as a psychiatrist. Since he was bad at communicating, he’d handed the training of young doctors to Hilde. That freed him to spend more time at home caring for Ludia. When he began researching psychiatric care, he must have brought Ludia along from the start, using her presence to put patients at ease.
So when he practices psychiatry, he and Ludia are a two-person team.
It was strangely satisfying—like watching scattered hints in a story finally click together.
With Ludia there, the rest of the examination proceeded smoothly. Once it concluded, we returned to Souji’s office to hear Brad’s diagnosis.
“The greatest obstacle to her recovery is her extremely low sense of self-worth,” Brad said, glancing over his notes. “She believes she isn’t worthy of forgiveness. In other words, the person seeking salvation is rejecting it herself.”
“Oh no... Why?” Mary’s voice trembled with sadness. She swayed as if she might collapse, and Souji gently supported her.
Brad gave her a sympathetic look before continuing.
“I went through her history. I can’t bring myself to blame her for ending up like this. She was an orphan with nothing, and becoming a saint was the only way to have a place to belong. But with that title came crushing responsibility and pressure—pressure she tried to pretend didn’t exist.”
“...”
“In the end, she lost her position as a saint and realized that the path she had walked was stained with blood. To be blunt, compared to the suffering she has endured, she has received almost nothing in return. There hasn’t been nearly enough good fortune in her life to balance out the bad.”
“She hasn’t had enough rewards or good luck?” I asked. “But wasn’t she praised as Fuuga Haan’s saint when he still ruled? Wasn’t that a kind of glory?”
Brad only shook his head.
“No matter how it looked from the outside, it meant nothing if she herself never felt fortunate. For her, being a saint was simply a duty—an obligation. She never indulged in luxuries and focused only on fulfilling her role. She began as an orphan with nothing, so once she was finally given a place to belong, she became desperate not to lose it.”
“I think I understand...” Mary whispered through tears. “The saint candidates were all girls who had nothing. We were raised as tools to win the favor of people in positions of authority. I know, because I was one of them.”
“Mary...” Souji murmured.
“Sir Brad, is there anything we can do for Anne?” Mary asked, lifting her head.
“It will take time,” Brad said gravely. “But first...you need to thoroughly pamper her.”
“Pamper...her?” Mary echoed.
“Yes. She has almost no experience being loved for her own sake—not out of duty or because of position. That kind of unconditional affection is what will begin to heal her.”
Souji raised a hand. “If I may. Mary’s already doing that, isn’t she? They sleep together every night, and Anne calls her Big Sister. She’s devoted to supporting her.”
“You’re not wrong. But she may not be prepared enough for what it truly requires,” Brad replied.
“Prepared?” Souji frowned.
“Yes. Isn’t some part of Mary thinking, ‘I can’t just spoil her forever. This isn’t a real solution’? And at the same time, isn’t some part of Anne thinking, ‘I can’t rely on Big Sister forever’? If one side hesitates to give love, and the other hesitates to accept it, the effect is limited.”
He wanted her to spoil Anne even more? Was that what he was saying?
“You’re telling her to pamper Anne even more?” I asked. Brad nodded.
“You can worry about whether you’ve overdone it after she’s better. If she wants you to sleep beside her, do it wholeheartedly. If she wants to call Miss Mary her big sister, then make Anne her little sister for real.”
“Make Anne Mary’s little sister? How would we even do that?”
“Adoption is common among the upper class,” Brad replied. “If you call yourself a king, surely you can find a family willing to adopt the two of them, if only in name.”
“Oh, that’s what you mean,” I said. That much was certainly possible. If I made the request, few noble houses would refuse. But it would be best to choose someone Mary already had ties to. Which meant...
“I know. A good candidate would be House Butchy, the family of Morris, the conductor of the Lunaria Girls’ Choir. They’re walrus beastmen, but that’s no reason they couldn’t adopt two human girls.”
“Sir Morris? The kind gentleman with the rich baritone voice?” Mary asked. She clearly thought well of him. If they wished it, I could certainly speak to him once I returned to the Kingdom, but that would take time.
For now, it was better to start with something immediate—something we already had prepared.
“There’s one more approach I had in mind to help Anne,” I said.
“And what is that?” Mary asked.
“You’ll see soon enough. That’s why I brought Tomoe with us.”
“Huh? M-Me?” Tomoe blinked in surprise, pointing at herself. But I was certain this would be the key to opening Anne’s heart.
I called it “Operation Tomoe the Caring Wolf.”
This might seem like a sudden topic to bring up, but we kept quite a few dogs and cats as pets in Parnam Castle. Originally, they’d been brought in to help control the mice, but their numbers had grown considerably since Tomoe first came to live with us.
At first, I thought it was like with the rhinosauruses and wyverns... That Tomoe’s power had somehow improved their environment and encouraged them to breed more. Yeah, no, that wasn’t it.