Chapter 2: Deep Inside the Castle
I could sleep longer the next day since I had no work, and I woke up feeling nice and refreshed. The weather was good too — a perfect day for going outside.
Keith would usually come with me whenever I went to the castle, but today he was busy helping Father with his work, so my maid, Anne, came with me instead.
“Don’t do anything reckless and make sure that you are not, under any circumstance, alone with Jeord,” Keith said.
“Do not do anything abnormal. Do not run around with your skirt pulled up,” Mother followed up.
The two of them then asked Anne to be very, very careful.
Is it just me, or am I still being treated like an 8-year-old child despite being a 18-year-old, respectable, adult lady?
Regardless of this treatment, at least they gave me permission to go to the castle (I insisted that I wanted to thank someone for returning something important which I had lost), so I promised to do as they said and boarded the carriage.
Upon reaching the castle, I decided to go to the room where my book had been kept. If I went there, I could probably seek out the person who had found my bag, and ask any questions I had directly.
I also wanted to ask Jeord if he knew about the note, but Keith had told me that “Prince Jeord is very busy with his official affairs, so if you want to greet him, limit yourself to a brief goodbye right before coming back home,” so that would have to wait.
Accompanied by Anne, I went to the storage room. I was walking deliberately and elegantly, as Mother had instructed. I can be ladylike if I need to.
The last time I’d been to the castle was during the graduation party for the twin princes. Back then the whole place had been covered in festive decorations, but now it was back to normal.
When I reached the room, I spoke to one of the servants who was working there and, after stating my name, asked to see the person who had found my bag. That servant rushed to lead me to a table in the corner of the room, quickly bringing me tea and snacks.
I hadn’t received the castle-treatment in quite a while, so I went ahead and commented to Anne under my breath. “When I’m treated like this, I kind of feel like I’m some kind of noblewoman!”
“...Young miss, in case you have forgotten, you are a noblewoman,” she replied, amazed.
Of course she was right — I was a noblewoman who had people take care of everything, from dressing up to preparing meals, for her. But Mother gave orders to all the servants to be very strict with me, so they would say things like “Do not leave crumbs around when you eat.” That didn’t really make me feel like a noblewoman.
I was still thinking about that when the person in charge of the room, a middle-aged man, came in. He greeted me gracefully and replied to my questions. Unfortunately, he didn’t know who had first found my bag and brought it in here. The mysterious benefactor just found it lying around in the castle, carried over to this room, and left it here. The servants all happened to be very busy at the time, so nobody took the trouble to look at the person’s face, and now they couldn’t even agree on whether it was a man or a woman who had done it. I felt disappointed that I had gained no information at all, but the man’s sincere apology at being unable to help kept me from saying that out loud.
“After it was brought here, could anyone have touched it?” I asked him.
“Was anything missing from your bag?!” he replied, turning pale.
Of course I couldn’t just tell him that there was a note talking about an otome game in there, so I came up with an unrelated, half-hearted excuse.
“No, it’s just that thinking that anyone could have touched it is a bit... you know...”
The man, relieved, explained that in general only the servants had access to this storage room, but, considering that sometimes they were all so busy that they had to leave the place unattended, he couldn’t say with 100% certainty that nobody had access to it.
Furthermore, only one of the servants, a woman, had opened the bag to check its contents. I casually asked that woman whether she had looked inside the book, but she said that she hadn’t, as she wasn’t really into reading and wasn’t interested in books.
This left me with two possibilities as to who had put the note inside my book: either the person who had brought the bag here, or someone who had snuck into the storage room while the servants were away.
I left the room, convinced that it held no more useful information for me. I planned to ask Jeord if I ran into him, but that didn’t sound likely.
Neither he nor Sophia knew that this world was set inside a game. If they did, they would know what the “routes” and “ends” I sometimes talked about meant, and they wouldn’t look so weirded out. And they definitely would have mentioned it in the 10 years we’d known each other.
So, it was only reasonable to think that the note had been put in there by someone else who had entered the castle, or more specifically the storage room.
But who? If this person knew about the game, were they another person reincarnated into this world from Japan?
While I was walking alongside Anne, thinking hard about the information I had collected so far, Pochi came out of my shadow all of a sudden and started running away while wagging his tail.
This is just like that time at the party...
I knew that a Dark Familiar like Pochi wouldn’t soil the castle floors or anything, but I still couldn’t let him run around by himself. I have to do something!
I forgot about Mother’s warning, pulled up my dress, and started running after Pochi as fast as I could.
“Young miss! Wait!” I heard Anne call out from behind me, but I was too busy running after my dog to worry about her.
Following him, I ended up in a dark hallway. It was weird that the hallway would be so dark, since it was still afternoon. I looked behind, and Anne was nowhere to be seen. I’m going to get scolded once I come back, aren’t I?
Anyway, I had seen this hallway somewhere. I picked up Pochi, who had finally calmed down, and looked around.
Oh, right, this is the same place he ran off to during the party!
The hallway had also looked very dark back then, but I hadn’t given it much thought, since it was at night.
Maybe there are a lot of trees planted around the windows or something.
I also saw that even though it was still pretty early in the day, the torches were already lit. I remembered that, during the party, I saw a woman in this hallway who told me that I wasn’t allowed to go any further.
I squinted to see through the darkness and made out the outline of a door. Was there a room at the end of the hallway? What kind of room could there be in the castle that people weren’t allowed to enter?
Curious, I started moving forward.
“Oh, a guest? That’s quite unusual,” said the cold voice of a woman from behind me.
I turned around and saw an elderly woman, followed by several servants, elegantly walking towards me.
Now that she was close, I could tell two things: the first was that she was probably somewhere in her fifties, and the second was that she looked so beautiful that, in her younger days, she must have been extremely popular.
“...My dog ran away, and I just followed him here, to catch him...”
The woman didn’t look angry, but since I was stepping in a place I had been told was off-limits, I thought I had to explain myself.
“Really? I am glad you were able to catch up to him,” she replied with a warm laugh. I was relieved that she wasn’t mad at me, but seeing her laugh so nonchalantly, I couldn’t keep myself from telling her what was on my mind.
“Excuse me... what is at the end of this hallway? It looks like there’s a door, so I think there must be some kind of room...”
“Oh?” replied the woman, blinking in surprise at my uncouth question. The servants behind her shot me cold stares.
I’m pretty sure I screwed up right here.
“Sorry, I w
as just wondering... I’m sorry I was so uncouth with my question,” I hurriedly apologized.
“Oh-hoh-hoh, do not worry,” laughed the woman. “We have nothing to hide here.” She then looked at the door behind me. “My son lives there,” she said.
“Your son?”
“Yes. He is well of age, but he refuses to leave his room — or do anything at all, really. Quite the troubled son, is he not?”
She sounded really casual despite the gravity of what she had said. First of all, I was surprised to know that there were shut-ins in this world as well.
“But,” she said, staring sadly at the door, “the reasons why he became like this are so serious that I cannot bring myself to force him out of his room. I let him stay there, and sometimes, like today, I visit him.”
“...That must be tough for you...”
Previously, I had considered shutting myself in the mansion to avoid the Catastrophic Bad Ends, but seeing the sad expression of a mother worrying about her child made me glad that I had ultimately decided against it.
Still, a shut-in inside the castle... who could that be?
Ah! I’m pretty sure that only the royal family and the servants live inside the castle. The servants have their own, separate quarters... and this place doesn’t look like that, which means that the shut-in is a member of the royal family! Unbelievable! And wait, if he’s royalty, then his mother must be...
“Excuse me, but you are...” I said.
“Oh, I have not introduced myself yet. I am Estella Stuart,” she replied.
“Stuart...?” I said to myself, surprised, as she chuckled.
“In regards to my rank, I am the dowager queen and stepmother of the current king. But now I am but an old woman, living away from the public eye and with too much free time on her hands.”
I’ve been talking to the former queen without any hint of formality... that’s why the servants were staring at me like that!
I introduced myself in a hurry. “I am Katarina Claes, daughter of Duke Claes.”
“Oh? The Katarina from the rumors?”
Rumors? What rumors?
“Oh-hoh-hoh, I am glad I could meet you,” she said with a smile. She seemed like a calm, kind woman.
“Katarina!”
“Lady Katarina!”
I heard two voices calling for me — Jeord and Anne. They were probably looking for me.
“I wish I could have spoken with you a while longer,” Lady Estella said, still chuckling. “But it seems that there are people looking for you. Let us meet again.”
She gestured for me to go towards Jeord and Anne. I bowed to her like a proper noblewoman should and went back through the hallway.
I walked back to Jeord and Anne, who started scolding me. “Don’t run around with your dress pulled up,” “Don’t do weird things on your own,” “Think before you act,” and so on and so forth. I knew it was my fault for running off like that, but I still felt dejected.
I also found out that it was Anne who had told Jeord that I was lost inside the castle, and the two had then started looking for me together.
“I’m very sorry. I heard that you were very busy with work today, and I made you lose time looking for me,” I apologized, and he looked at me in confusion.
“I did indeed have official business today,” he said, “however it was only a greeting which lasted but a few minutes. Who, exactly, told you that I was busy?”
“Keith told me, but I guess he was wrong.”
“Oh, I see,” he said, with a smile that seemed to be hiding something.
We went back to the guest room while chatting, and I was served tea and pastries. That was the second time that day, but I definitely wasn’t going to complain. Chasing Pochi had made me thirsty. As soon as I took my first sip of tea, Jeord started talking.
“How far into the castle did you go?” he asked. He and Anne had seen me walk towards them from deep inside the hallway, and they had apparently been wondering about that. I told him about my encounter with Lady Estella.
“Oh, so you met the dowager queen,” he murmured, staring down pensively. His usual smile was nowhere to be seen, and instead he had a concerned expression.
This must mean I’ve done something really bad this time...
“I shouldn’t have spoken so casually to her... I didn’t even know who she was,” I said, and Jeord looked at me, his expression still troubled.
“Not at all. Since the previous king died, she has avoided the public eye almost completely. Most people our age would not know her appearance, and, in any case, she is not the kind of person to be offended at not being recognized. You should not worry about it.”
“I see! So, what’s the problem?”
“Problem? What do you mean?” he asked, surprised.
“Well, you look so distressed...”
“Oh, that is what you meant,” he said, laughing gloomily. “I was simply embarrassed.”
“Embarrassed? Why?”
“Because you have come to know a most unfortunate truth about my family — the fact that my uncle has barricaded himself in his room and has not left it in years. We are not actively hiding that, nor is it a complete secret, but it certainly is not something we are proud of.”
The royal family would never be proud of an adult shutting himself inside the castle, that much was clear.
“But I heard that there were very serious reasons why he started doing that,” I said, remembering what the former queen had told me. Maybe he was scared about some Catastrophic Bad Ends waiting for him outside his room.
“Indeed, he has his reasons. But those, too, all relate to trifles amongst relatives... Katarina, you do know that the previous king had concubines, yes?”
“Yes, I know that much.”
Sorcié’s current king (Jeord’s father) only had one wife (Jeord’s mother) and no concubines. And since he already had four sons ready to succeed him, he had announced that he didn’t plan to take on any concubines in the future. I didn’t know about other kingdoms, but, at least here in Sorcié, monogamy was the norm.
However, I had heard that the ancient practice of holding concubines still remained in high society, with some nobles going as far as having several lovers. Apparently, the former king was one such noble. Because of my young age, the only king I directly knew of was the current one, so I didn’t have any more details.
I just figured that, as the most powerful person in the kingdom, kings would have to take concubines for political reasons, and I didn’t give it much thought. If anything, I was a bit surprised that the current king had only one wife.
“I see. But do you know how many?”
“...I don’t. Sorry,” I apologized for my ignorance. Maybe I’d heard about it before entering society as an adult and then forgot it.
Jeord shook his head. “No, it is expected that you would not know that. The royal family has tried to keep that embarrassing number hidden from public knowledge.”
“Did he have so many that it’d be embarrassing?”
“Yes. He felt five official concubines, but in truth he had so many that it would be impossible to count. And, as if that was not enough, he also had an incredible number of lovers,” he said with disgust on his face. “That information is supposed to be a royal secret, but all nobles at least as old as my parents know about it. Indeed, your father probably knows too, but elected not to tell you — this is no topic a young lady would want to hear about.”
Knowing that your king — well, former king, but still — had so many concubines and lovers wasn’t exactly pleasant. Much more so because my parents were so tenderly in love with each other that the idea of having a concubine just sounded unfaithful.
“You can imagine that such a large number of concubines would lead to a large number of children. As you know, in our kingdom the king personally selects his successor from amongst his sons, but the former king left this world before he had the chance to do so. Obviously, this resulted in a heated batt
le for the throne.”
The king had died before deciding who would get his crown, and left behind several children. Jeord went on to explain that the queen had no children of her own, and the concubines’ children joined the race, either supported by the high-ranked families of their mothers or by unrelated nobles who hoped to raise their social status. I was too young to have any direct memories of it, but most of the candidates either lost their lives or were exiled during this dispute, which lasted almost two whole years.
I already knew about this battle for succession, but I didn’t know that it had been this extreme. According to Jeord, that was because the details had been kept hidden as much as possible.
“My father was the son of one of the official concubines, a woman of high rank, but he did not care much for the crown. He says that he entered the conflict because he could not stand how unsightly the whole affair had become, but I do not know the truth about it. I only know that my uncle was the king’s youngest son, so his life was spared and he was left to live inside the castle. However, he has not left his room since,” he said, looking sad.
Even if his life had been spared, he had probably suffered tremendously at the hand of the other competitors. Now, Jeord said, the former queen was taking care of him.
With Sorcié as peaceful as it was now, this was hard to believe. And the fact that it hadn’t happened that long ago made it even scarier.
“I am far from proud of these circumstances, and I was anything but eager to talk about them, but I also did not want to hide the truth from you,” Jeord said, dropping his gaze. “My grandfather’s licentiousness disgusts me, and I have no intention of becoming like him. However, I cannot deny that I am his grandson.”
Jeord sighed, then went on. “Katarina, do you hate me now that you know what kind of promiscuous blood flows in my veins?” As he asked this, he had neither his shady smile nor his usual confident expression. I had never seen him look like this.
My Next Life as a Villainess Page 4