Melissa and I left campus and strolled through the town. Some time had passed. Just as I was starting to feel uncomfortable from all that walking in silence and keeping pace with her tiny stride, Melissa suddenly halted and took a sideways glance at me.
“Let’s stop here. We can have a private conversation safely at this location.”
Then she pointed—to the very teahouse where Albert and I had wandered to when we were gathering intel in town. It was there that we had inspected the drugs.
Not many people would know that he and I had used this teahouse that day. Unless Melissa was onto us? The question briefly popped into my head, but I dismissed it. The establishment was a sad little inconspicuous teahouse on the edge of town. If she wanted a place where we could talk in private, it was high on the list of candidates.
“Something wrong?” Melissa asked.
“Oh, no. I was just thinking.”
She gave me a curious look back.
Now that I think about it, I was really on guard that day. There’s no way I wouldn’t have noticed Melissa following me. Yeah, Melissa started following me recently. That has to be it.
“Welcome,” the miserable-looking proprietor greeted us dully as we entered the teahouse. He then returned his eyes to his book without showing us to a table.
Melissa’s eyes shifted anxiously from the unexpected welcome. I took this as my cue to escort her to the table farthest from the entrance.
“Um…have you been here before?”
“It’s a long story. Why don’t you have a seat here, Melissa?”
She walked toward me as if she were on a tightrope. Then she scurried the rest of the way to her seat, lowered her brows, and assumed a solemn expression.
It was too little too late to try and look cool, but if I said anything, that would only delay things, so I shut up.
“I’ll take one Earl Grey—no, make that two, please.”
“Sure thing.”
We paid our cover charge in the form of two gross cups of tea. We were only here to talk, so it didn’t matter what we ordered here. Not even batting an eye at my careless way of ordering the first thing on the menu twice, the proprietor gave us the shortest answer possible before wandering off.
Perhaps surprised by the brazen way I’d just ordered for us, Melissa looked at me with wide eyes. But then—
“Thanks…you’re a lifesaver.” She pursed her lips and bowed her head, realizing she would have had a hard time deciding what to order as well.
“Don’t mention it.”
To a couple well-bred young ladies who attended a prep school for the nobility, this teahouse was quite intense. Just ask the dilapidated building, the rickety chairs and tables, and the surly proprietor.
“Two Earl Greys. There.”
As we waited in silence for our order, the proprietor (who was probably the only employee here) arrived with two teacups. They were plain vessels, only serving the very basic function of holding tea, and they were filled with a liquid whose color certainly resembled tea.
After she made sure the proprietor was gone, Melissa took a sip. “……No words.”
To top it all off, the tea’s flavor was adjacent to gross—it was bound to dumbfound her. Even common folk would never set foot in here again after sampling that beverage. For a sheltered rich girl, it was just too shocking for words. Melissa just sat there, a complex, catlike expression coming to her face.
Wait…what kind of face even is that? I’m kinda curious, but I’ve got more important things to tend to—
“So. Why the sudden change of heart? Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that you’ve decided to have a chat with me.”
I wanted to know what had made Melissa decide to talk to me.
After a moment’s thought, she looked back up at me. “After observing you for a while…I deemed you were someone I could trust. Prince Albert and Princess Colette are good judges of character. Them trusting you was part of it.”
Part of it. That meant there was another reason. I waited quietly for her to finish.
“And the other reason was—you. The warm way you looked at them. Nobody gets that look in their eye unless they truly care about somebody. That was what clinched it for me.”
Hearing those sappy words made my cheeks burn. My impulse was to deny it, but I hesitated to do that since this was what had made Melissa finally decide to talk to me.
“D-did it, now…?”
It took all my willpower not to scoff as I said that, so I clenched my fist instead. If I asked her to elaborate, I’d probably burn up from embarrassment.
Now that I had fully slipped into the listening role, Melissa opened her mouth to say something, then swallowed her words. She repeated this a few times.
Eventually, she finally committed to saying it. She lowered her brows sharply and looked into my eyes. “I am…the Priestess of Eltania. I can hear the word of Lord Eltania. Did you know that?”
“Yes, Prince Albert told me so. And?”
When I heard her say that, I thought, We’re finally getting somewhere! but I maintained my cool facade.
The Lord Eltania. In my past life, I hadn’t given a rat’s ass about the deity, but in this life, it was impossible to think that Eltania wasn’t somehow related. And I didn’t think that words from the Priestess affiliated with the deity would be without meaning.
“Then that will save us some time. All right, jumping ahead—what we do is close to divination. We can sense the will of Lord Eltania, who is far, far away from us. It’s very abstract, but if we interpret His will properly, our prophecies are always correct.”