“I don’t want an apology from you. I want that man—that rude man who bumped into her—to apologize.”
“Mille-Feuille, it’s okay...”
“No, it’s not!” I cried. “Apologies have to be sincere!”
The culprit hesitated for a moment, but he eventually stepped forward and bowed his head. “I apologize for my failure to pay attention to my surroundings.”
In a trembling voice, Madeleine said, “I-It’s no problem. Please, don’t mind me.”
“Are you hurt?” the man asked.
“No, I’m not.”
“I see. If there’s anything...” The man who first apologized stepped forward and began to say something, but he stopped and pulled down his hood to meet my gaze. He was a bespectacled young man about my age. “If there’s anything you need, please contact our house. House Langue de Chat.”
House Langue de Chat was known as the family of wisdom. They were a noble family just below the Four Great Noble Families in rank. That must’ve meant that the man this group was following was the scion of some high-ranking household.
“I’m Va—” the man in question started.
“Va?”
“His name is Van Citron,” the bespectacled man said, cutting off the other man.
“Citron?” I had never heard of that name before. Perhaps they were one of those upstart noble families. With this many men following him, they must have been part of a powerful dragonkin family.
Madeleine hid behind me. I couldn’t blame her for doing so, so I introduced her in her stead.
“She is Madeleine Bâton-Maréchaux.”
“And you?” one of the men then asked.
His haughty tone irritated me. It surely wasn’t the kind of tone one would use to ask someone’s name. But since I didn’t want to cause any more trouble, I let it slide.
“I’m Mille-Feuille Forêt Noire.” I was about to add “and you should just forget about me,” but I managed to swallow those words.
Van bowed to Madeleine and left. It seemed that the storm had passed at last. I breathed a sigh of relief. There had been a cloud of irritation hanging over my head, but it had cleared up.
As we entered the carriage, Madeleine admonished me.
“Mille-Feuille! I can’t believe you would cause a ruckus with those academy boys!”
“That was not a ruckus. I was trying to protect your honor!” I retorted.
“Jeez! My honor doesn’t matter!”
“Yes, it does! You’ll remember the feeling of being insulted for the rest of your life!”
“W-Well, you may have a point...” It seemed she had some memories to pull from. She dropped her shoulders, dejected.
“Just what have you been through?” I asked, prying.
“Oh, just a lot of small things over the years...”
I felt bad for Madeleine, and I gently patted her back to assuage her.
“You’re right, Mille-Feuille,” she said. “I need to say what I feel outright, or else I’ll end up regretting it for my whole life.”
“Indeed. But it’s also not right to just say things without thinking. You’ll end up endangering yourself if you retort without anything to back it up.”
“To me, your actions looked like you were saying things without thinking them through,” countered Madeleine.
“The boys earlier were magic academy students. If they were mere scoundrels from downtown, I would not have paid them any heed.”
“I see...”
Normally, an attendant was supposed to protect the honor of their charge. However, Madeleine’s attendant was a young woman, only about fifteen or sixteen years of age. It seemed that Madeleine’s family did not want to spend too much money on their daughter, because otherwise, they wouldn’t have picked such an inexperienced young lady to be her attendant.
“Mille-Feuille, what would you have done if that confrontation had turned into an actual fight?” Madeleine asked.
“We would’ve been fine,” I said. “Parfeil would’ve fought for us.”
Parfeil’s ears perked up at that, and she raised her fist to show us. The big smile on her face gave no hint of the strength she possessed.
“She might not look like it, but Parfeil is really strong. I bet dragonkin men wouldn’t stand a chance against her unless they transformed.”
“O-Oh,” Madeleine said, flustered. “I see...”
Parfeil’s appearance was deceiving, but she’d been training every single day in order to protect me.
“Madeleine, it’s most effective when you save your words for times like these. If you spout out your thoughts all the time, people will think you are a shallow person,” I advised.
“Defending one’s honor sure is a difficult matter,” Madeleine opined.
“Truly.”
It would’ve been disastrous if I had made a misstep while dealing with the conflict earlier. I needed to be more careful in picking my battles.
Upon heading home, Madeleine and I immediately rushed to the room in the basement reserved for magic use. An esteemed dragonkin household would always have a large room underground like this. If a family member suddenly went berserk, they would be sealed away in that room. Supposedly, it was to prevent them from receiving mana from moonlight. The women of dragonkin households would lock themselves up in these large rooms and continuously practice Suppression Magic on their family members who had gone berserk. Occasionally, there were times when people had to spend tens of hours underground, so kitchen equipment, baths, and even beds were commonly available in these rooms.
We were going to first make the ointment and then the candy in this underground room. I put on a frilly apron—the same kind a maid would wear—over my dress.
“First, we’ll place the marigold oil and the beeswax in a bowl and heat it over some boiling water.” I poured water into a pot, took a fire magicstone and traced the spell carved on it with my finger, and placed that into the pot as well. Upon doing so, the water immediately started to boil.
I poured the boiling water into another large bowl. I then took the bowl with all of the ingredients inside and placed it over the one with the water. After that, I mixed the ingredients together until they appeared creamy. Once the cream turned white, I poured in the other essential oils—lavender, rose apple, and giant hyssop—and mixed it up well. To finish up, we cast a spell to make the ointment absorb as much mana from the moon as possible.