“Yes please,” Natalia replied. “What about you, Coach Gosetsu and Roo?”
“Yes, I shall be glad to partake of it.”
“Me too! I love tomatoes! What about you, Lydilia? What’s your favorite?”
“Eh? W-Well, umm...f-fried shrimp...I suppose?” Though Lydilia had been glaring at Allen, she was soon swept along in conversation with the others.
For a while, the dinner went on with noisy chatter and laughter. Lydilia was shrinking in her seat awkwardly—but eventually, she heaved a great sigh and hunched down her shoulders, turning to Allen. “Enough. Tell me, Allen. What exactly are you scheming?”
“It’s simple,” Allen said, spreading his arms as wide as the table where they all sat together. “This is it—this is your naughty lesson, Lydilia. I’m giving you...this whole scene.”
“This scene...you say?” Lydilia’s brows furrowed dubiously.
“Exactly. What I mean is...” Allen paused with a sneaky smirk. There was only one thing that Lydilia, the saint who died young and scorned society, could desire. “From now on, we’re your new family!”
Lydilia drew a sharp breath, and color drained from her face. “M-My new...family...?!” she squeezed out the words in a trembling voice, as her face became distorted in pure rage. She slammed her fists down on the table and bellowed, “Don’t make me laugh! I... I don’t need a thing like that!”
Allen shrugged calmly. “Are you sure?” He took out some bound papers from his breast pocket and began to read out loud. “You awakened your powers at the tender age of ten, and due to an illness...you died young at eighteen.” The tale of her life as a saint was short—but it was full of details of her glorious achievements and her benevolent, picture-perfect family. “You’ve left behind countless legends, but your family is known for their remarkable deeds too. I found so many stories about them.”
“I’ve heard those as well...” Natalia put down her knife and fork, and crossed her arms, looking sullen. Apparently, she was reluctant to talk about her family—she talked as if they were someone else’s ancestors. “I was told that Lydilia’s parents were both admirable people, and her younger brother, who became head of the family after them, worked hard to help the people and the society at large. At the mansion, there’s still a portrait of the happy family all together, hanging on the wall.”
“Hm. ‘Happy family,’ eh? Is that truly how it appeared to you?” Lydilia mumbled.
“Well, yes...happier than my family, at least. Oh, but—” Natalia put her hand on her chin, lost in thought. “There was only one portrait of Saint Lydilia. The one that was painted when she was very young. I wonder if they didn’t want posterity to remember her as an invalid.”
“No, that’s not why. There’s a reason they couldn’t have another portrait.” Allen took out another bundle of papers from his breast pocket—these papers were so ancient they looked like they might crumble into dust any second. But they held crucial records about the saint. “The truth is, you were only ten years old when you died. Isn’t that right, Lydilia?”
“Wha... Ten years old?!” Natalia blurted out.
“Sh-She was even younger than me?!” Charlotte gasped.
In contrast, Lydilia hardly reacted. She stared at Allen, her face fixed in a grim expression. “What makes you think so?”
“The first clue was when I realized your secret.” Allen tossed the bundle of papers at Lydilia. Her face clouded over in an instant. He knew that gloom wasn’t due to what was written there. “You can’t read, can you?”
Lydilia said nothing.
“It’s a strange story, isn’t it? The saint who saved her kingdom, but doesn’t know how to read. So I looked into your history again.”
He’d tried to continue his research using the materials he sneaked out from the Athena School of Magic, but as she had lived in a different country three centuries ago, there was a limit to the information he could dig up. He’d tried asking Gosetsu too, but since she had been living on a different continent in that era, she barely had any recollection of the saint. So he turned to an acquaintance of another species known for their longevity: Dorothea, the dark elf. He hadn’t had high hopes, but she’d turned out to be a jackpot.
“So you did hear any rumors about the saint’s death...?” Allen had asked her.
“Oh yes, it was a common piece of gossip at the time,” Dorothea had said. Like Natalia, she had disappeared somewhere in the midst of the battle of naughty lessons against Lydilia, but Allen tracked her down to a streetside café, elegantly sipping some black tea. She pressed a finger to her temple and traced back her distant memory. “Hmm, lemme see... If I recall, Saint Lydilia must’ve been born out of wedlock, between a prostitute and the then lord of the Evans family. I heard somethin’ or other about him givin’ into temptation when he visited a countryside village for inspection, and that’s how she came about.”
“A textbook case of a pathetic nobleman, I see...”
“And just like the pathetic nobleman he was, he turned a blind eye to the woman and his child.”
Lydilia lived in the brothel where her mother worked, doing menial work, until she turned seven. But as soon as her miraculous powers of magic were discovered, the head of the Evans family bought her for a handsome sum of money. This was the birth of the ten-year-old saint. She then quickly disappeared from the public eye. Officially, she was supposed to be convalescing from her illness, but that wasn’t the whole story.
“Rumor had it that her family was tellin’ everyone a big fat lie—that the saint was already dead from usin’ up too much of her power too fast. No one knew for sure, but everybody talked about it like it was true,” Dorothea had explained.
“As for the accounts of her reappearing in public once in a while, was that a dummy or a double?” Allen had asked.
“Yup, that’s what the word was. I heard she kept most of her face hidden when she came outside.”
At that time, the Kingdom of Neils was gathering strength, mostly thanks to Lydilia. Alliances were being struck up between other powerful states, so the upper echelons must have deemed her presence necessary as the symbol of the kingdom. They had to keep her alive somehow.
Allen got the overall picture, so he’d raised a hand and gave his thanks. “I owe you one, Dorothea. Even you can be useful sometimes.”
“Not at all, not at all. Anyhoo, how ’bout a cuppa, Master Allen? Care to stay for tea with me? Everythin’ on their menu is fantastic, y’know!”
“No thanks. I have to go straight back, obviously. And I don’t want to keep you from your work either.”
A slight panic came into Dorothea’s eyes. “B-But you’re more than welcome! I want you to stay! Or else, I’ll be thrown back into the manuscript-writing prison in hyperspace with nothin’ else to do—”
“That’ll be five minutes. Visiting time is over.” The man in a black suit who had been standing behind her cut her off.
“Nooo! It can’t have been more than three minutes?! What about my human rights, or elf rights?! Gyahhhh!!!”
With a snap of the man’s fingers, a gaping hole appeared in midair, and Dorothea was sucked right into it. The hole vanished in another instant.
Allen thanked the man too—he was Yoru, Dorothea’s editor. “Sorry to interrupt when you’re so busy.”
“It’s true that there isn’t a hair’s breadth of spare time in her schedule. However, I can always squeeze out some interview time if it’s a request from you, Mr. Allen.” Yoru bowed to Allen respectfully without moving a muscle in his face. Apparently, Dorothea had been lying earlier when she’d said she’d finished up her work. She had actually sneaked out when Yoru had let his guard down, and he had hunted her down to capture her again. He pressed a hand to his chest and said, stone-faced, “Her new romance novel based on you, Mr. Allen, is flying off the shelves. I have been thinking that I must pay you a visit to thank you formally. We are very grateful for your cooperation.”
“That ludicrous book is selling...?”
“Yes. It’s the biggest hit the publisher has had in the last hundred years. In fact, many of our own staff are avid fans, and they are eagerly awaiting the sequel,” Yoru said calmly with a nod.
The story of Allen’s own romance getting published without his knowledge, and flying off the shelves into the hands of thousands of readers—he felt tempted to blow up in a fit of rage, but managed to stifle it.
Yoru took out his business card from his suit jacket and said in a cool, monotonous voice, “Apologies for not introducing myself earlier. My name is Yoru Darkhorn, and I manage the publishing department of the Elders Alliance. I am pleased to make your acquaintance, and I hope we will continue to work together for a long time.”
“Wait, you two are part of the alliance of long-living species...?”
The Elders Alliance was an underground organization consisting of all kinds of species with longevity, such as elves, dragons, spirits, vampires, and so on. It was said that if one could come into contact with even a few members of the alliance, it would be easy to change the world. For a connection that came from buying a secondhand mansion, it was an extraordinarily good deal.
Now, back to the dinner party.
Lydilia was still glaring at Allen, not even trying to hide her irritation. “What...are you suggesting?”
“It doesn’t matter how tough you act...you’re a little child who was used up and thrown away. That’s the true story of the saint,” Allen said calmly.
“And what about it?!” she barked. There was no hint of aloofness in her manner now. Her agitated power made the plates clatter on the table, and her hair rippled in the air like snakes. Though she hadn’t unleashed it yet, the force of her magic was far stronger now than it had been when she lashed out at Natalia.
Finally, I’ve peeled away her mask... Allen snickered inwardly at his success.
Oblivious to his reaction, Lydilia kept shouting. “Yes, I died when I was young! I barely had an education, and all they wanted of me was to behave like a saint!” Big drops of tears welled up in her eyes. As one of them rolled down her cheek, her emotions overflowed. “I wanted to know what it was like to be loved! That’s why...that’s why I worked so hard...but no one ever loved me!!!”