With Ruvik’s guidance, Leticiel finally arrived at the dining room. The manor seemed to be two stories tall, with the dining room on the first floor and Leticiel’s room being the farthest away on the second floor.
When she entered the dining room, the gazes of the four people already seated there, who were likely Drossell’s family, mercilessly pierced her. The man with silver hair and blue eyes sitting at the back of the dining room must’ve been her father. The woman with red hair and purple eyes on his left was her mother, and sitting across from her was Drossell’s older brother with his silver hair and purple eyes, and a girl about the same age as Leticiel sat next to him.
Naturally, she could be wrong since she’d only been guessing based on their apparent ages, but it was the sort of thing she would figure out eventually.
Leticiel’s seat was closest to the door. There were six seats at the table, but since she wasn’t sitting across from anyone, she was essentially sitting alone.
The seating arrangement placed her at the very bottom of the hierarchy, which would have been incredibly humiliating before, but now…
Oh, I’m close to the dining room entrance. That’s convenient.
Her thoughts had changed to become more flippant, as if commenting on how nice it was to have a store closeby. It no longer mattered to Leticiel whether her seat was at the head of the table or the bottom.
“Hmm? Diane, what happened to Salinya?” the man, Drossell’s father, asked her mother, who was apparently called Diane.
“It’s not like her to be so late,” Diane agreed. “Freid, do you know where she is?”
“No, not at all,” Freid, the silver-haired young man, replied before sighing and closing his eyes.
“Um, Mother, Sally said she was busy getting ready to leave and that she would eat breakfast in her own room.” The other girl sitting at the table raised her hand and spoke timidly. She had strawberry blond hair and large, round, lavender-colored eyes. Her cuteness made anyone who laid eyes on her want to protect her.
“Oh, that’s right. She’s departing for her fiancé’s estate today. Thank you for reminding me. That was a huge help.”
“Thank you, Mother. You’re welcome,” the girl replied shyly, happy to have been praised by her mother. With the sun streaming in through the windows, the scene that had played out in the dining room was a picture-perfect moment of a beautiful family.
Can I start eating? I’m hungry, Leticiel thought, completely uninterested in the peaceful family scene. To her, it didn’t make sense that you had to wait for the entire family to gather before you could start eating. Back when she was a princess, it had been normal for people to start eating when they arrived in the dining room. You could wait for others, but you didn’t have to.
Though not everyone had arrived, Drossell’s father’s comment seemed to have been the signal for breakfast to start. The four family members sitting at the head of the table chatted happily as they ate, the butlers behind them joining in from time to time. Only Leticiel ate silently.
She gazed intently at the breakfast spread in front of her. She assumed the mysterious crescent-shaped item was bread and obviously recognized the thickly sliced bacon, but didn’t know what the yellow thing next to them was.
In Leticiel’s mind, bread was something round, fluffy, and a little dry. It had been a rarity in her country. “Ruvik, what is this mysterious bread?” she asked.
“Mysterious…? It’s just a regular croissant.”
“I see. Then what is this soft yellow substance?”
“Y-Yellow substance…? Those are regular scrambled eggs.”
“Indeed. Ah, don’t worry. I just felt like asking.” Satisfied with the answers, Leticiel ended the conversation without a second thought for Ruvik, who was internally shaken after having been asked such common sense questions so coolly.
Ruvik’s mistress Drossell was usually a moody woman. She would get angry for no reason and hit the servants, yet wished for them to spoil her when she cried. Ruvik had been her personal butler for many years and knew her better than anyone.
Still, she was acting extremely strange today. One moment she suddenly tried to kill herself, the next she looked enlightened and started speaking and behaving completely differently than before. She’d gotten a little colder, almost as if she’d stopped caring about others.
Ruvik had no clue why she’d suddenly started acting strange. Had she gone mad from the cold treatment she received from those around her?
“Ruvik, where does this bacon come from?” his mistress asked.
“The lord prefers this flavor, so we order it from a merchant he favors in the south.”
“Hmph, it’s not clear enough. It tastes quite bland.”
“Huh? Uh…bland?” Ruvik stammered.
“Yes. When bacon has proper fat on it, it’s slightly transparent and quite delicious... apparently.”
“Apparently?”
“I’ve never had it myself.” In her days, you were lucky if you had meat at all. Even the royal family was lucky if they could have meat once every three days. Hoping for good quality bacon was beyond their wildest dreams. Remembering this, Leticiel took a large bite and filled her cheeks with the thick bacon she had sliced.
Quickly finishing her breakfast, Leticiel left the dining room before the others and retraced her steps to her bedroom, where she collapsed onto her bed and looked up at the ceiling. She’d been through so many unexpected events today. She’d been able to get through them just by going with the flow, but she should probably take the time to organize the information she had gathered.
First of all, she was the princess of a remote kingdom in a time of war but lost everything when a neighboring country invaded. Disillusioned by the world, she had committed suicide. But for some reason, she had been given a new life as a complete stranger named Drossell, who seemed to come from a high-ranking family.
Leticiel was a realist. She didn’t speak of or believe in baseless fantasies, but it seemed like she had no choice but to start believing.
It’s almost as if I’ve been reincarnated.
Reincarnation, the idea that souls of the dead could be reborn after obtaining a new vessel. The idea of such salvation had been highly welcomed in her desolate world, with new religions that promoted it springing up all over the place. Naturally, Leticiel didn’t believe in the idea, but it was the only potential explanation for her situation.
Drossell’s family consisted of her parents, one brother, one younger sister, and one more sister who could be younger or older. But it seemed as if none of them liked Drossell.
She didn’t know her father’s name or her other sister’s name. The only other person whose name she knew was Ruvik, her personal butler.
What’s more, the kingdom of Platina that Leticiel had found herself in seemed to be the epitome of peaceful. As a princess from a time of turmoil, she’d been astonished at the thought, wondering if it was some sort of joke, but from what she had seen of this manor, it seemed to be true.
To Leticiel, breakfast was a time when she would receive at least three reports of conflicts, and a taster was needed to ensure that there was no poison in her food. More than anything, this family had enough money that they could afford luxuries, so it was obvious that they weren’t pouring money into expensive military equipment. In conclusion, the country wasn’t at war, so they did not need to devote all of their attention and funds to the military.
Just how much time has passed since my previous life? This had to be a completely different era from the one Leticiel had lived in. She wouldn’t know exactly when the war had ended or how much time had passed until she could read some history books and find out.
As she was sitting up, planning to go to the manor’s library to do some research, someone knocked on her door. She answered and Ruvik entered. “What is it?” she asked politely.
“Miss Drossell, it’s almost time for you to go to the academy.”
Leticiel was shocked by the announcement. An academy? She could only assume it was a place of learning, but what exactly would she be studying? “The academy…?” she echoed.
“Huh? Yes… The academy.” Leticiel grew silent, and Ruvik asked, “Miss, are you sure you’re all right?”
“Why are you worried?”
With astonishing mental strength, Ruvik managed to swallow the words, “Because you’ve been acting strange since this morning,” before they could leave his tongue.