Chapter 34: Doing Things Not Fitting for This Age
"Not very appropriate."
Perched on her shoulder, Lakdevo carefully scrutinized Sylvia’s delicate face and eventually arrived at such a conclusion.
"Indeed."
The air in front of Sylvia rippled like water, then turned mirror-like, reflecting her face.
"It’s a bit too big. I already felt some resistance when inserting it."
Looking at the eyeball in the mirror, which was noticeably bulging from her right eye, the puppet girl rubbed her chin.
Then, she raised her right hand, popped out the eyeball, and reinserted the original one.
"Mm..."
"Maybe I need to process this eye a little."
As she spoke, starlight began to gather in her hand and eventually transformed into something resembling a sheet of paper, although one side bore some very tiny protruding grains.
Next, she wrapped the eyeball in this starlight "sandpaper" and began gradually polishing it.
This entire operation caused Lakdevo, still squatting on her shoulder, to widen his eyes:
"You... you're..."
"Polishing."
Sylvia looked out the window as she leisurely repeated the motion with her hands.
"......"
At that moment, Lakdevo fell into a brief silence and started questioning reality.
A divine relic left behind by a god—could it really be polished?
...
The carriage passed through the now-open iron gate and slowly came to a halt.
Then, Clade stepped down and walked toward the front door of the house.
Following behind him, Sylvia, now back in a black cloak, followed his footsteps in the same direction.
They passed through the corridor, ascended the staircase, and stood before a window at the end of the second floor. The puppet girl cast her gaze upon the garden, where the servants had begun their busy work.
At that moment, a door behind her creaked open. A blonde girl with slightly unsteady steps peeked her head out and looked around the corridor.
In the next second, she saw the figure standing in front of the window.
Seemingly sensing the gaze from behind, Sylvia turned her head, and her eyes happened to meet Isabella's.
"Your Highness, you're here!"
Wearing a silk nightgown, the girl was briefly startled, then stepped out from behind the door with a smile on her face, looking at the puppet standing there.
"What’s wrong?"
Noticing the girl's slightly evasive gaze, Sylvia asked curiously.
"N-Nothing."
Isabella let out an awkward laugh, then continued glancing around. Once she confirmed no one else was present, she quickly left the doorway and walked toward the washroom.
"Your Highness, I’ll just go to the washroom first!"
As she spoke, she used all her strength to walk as fast as she could toward the door at the other end.
It also seemed that, perhaps due to her urgency, she was barefoot, not wearing any slippers.
Sylvia, sharp-eyed as ever, noticed that the girl was holding a silver-rimmed porcelain cup in her hand—and within it, a deep, dark liquid...
Deep and dark?
Upon seeing this, the corners of her lips lifted involuntarily:
"Are you going to pour it out?"
"Uh... huh?"
The flustered Isabella responded instinctively at first, then realized something was wrong and quickly turned around with a guilty expression, making a "shh" gesture.
Just then—
The sound of steady footsteps ascending the stairs rang out, accompanied by the voice of a young woman:
"Miss—"
"Are you trying to dump your medicine again?"
"Ah? Uh... no, that..."
"Maria, I wasn’t... mm..."
"I just thought it was too hot..."
"Yes, too hot. I wanted to cool it down with some cold water!"
Watching Isabella's ever-changing expressions, Sylvia couldn’t help but let her smile slip.
In that moment, she seemed to see her younger self.
Back then, to avoid drinking those unbearably bitter herbal brews, she would sneak them down the drain while the adults weren’t looking.
However, something about Isabella’s expression felt a bit forced?
She then saw the maid, called Maria, speak with visible resignation:
"Miss, please drink it. Madam says it will help your recovery."
"Okay."
Isabella retracted her flustered expression and nodded obediently.
"And Miss..."
At that moment, the puppet girl's gaze dropped to the girl's bare feet.
"Even if you're at home, you should still wear your slippers. You are a lady..."
Then, under Sylvia’s gaze, Isabella took small, hesitant steps back to her room.
...
After the maid left, Sylvia entered Isabella’s room and saw the girl in a white silk nightgown sitting on the bed, looking a bit troubled.
"You weren’t really that flustered earlier, were you?"
The puppet girl sat on the same chair she had used before, speaking with a smiling tone.
Hearing this, Isabella visibly froze for a moment, then offered an awkward smile:
"Yes, Your Highness."
"Every time I make that face, Maria won’t watch me too closely. And she won’t report it to my mother either."
"......"
Sylvia nodded with some amusement, then turned her eyes to the porcelain cup in Isabella’s hand:
"If you don’t want to drink it, I can pour it out for you."
"Ah? Really?"
Isabella looked over with a hopeful gleam in her eyes.
"Mm."
The gray-haired girl nodded, and then Lakdevo, standing on her shoulder, spoke up in her place:
"This stuff is no longer of use to you."
"A potion made with petals of the Shalorz flower, Hoamp vine, and black goat horn has a soul-calming effect."
"But what you need now is physical recuperation, not spiritual peace."
Upon hearing that, Isabella let out a long breath of relief:
"This medicine really tastes awful."
She muttered under her breath.
Watching her, Sylvia’s lips curved upward again:
"You don’t seem to take noble etiquette all that seriously."
"Hmm? Is that so?"
Isabella tilted her head.
"Before I met Your Highness, I’d been bedridden for a long time due to my frailty. I didn’t even know if I’d live to see my sixteenth birthday."
"And those social events had nothing to do with me."
"So I never studied any of that etiquette properly."
"You can start now."
Leaning back against the chair, Sylvia spoke bluntly.
Hearing this, Isabella frowned, clearly troubled.
Seeing her reaction, Sylvia suddenly had a wicked little thought:
"By the way, how’s your literary and artistic education?"
One of her greatest joys used to be watching others study while she rested.
Back in her hometown, she once made her middle-school-aged niece do something far beyond her age—
On the girl’s birthday, she gave her a full set of college entrance exam mock papers as a gift.
That dinner, she was stared at from start to finish with an extremely bizarre look in her niece’s eyes.
Of course, what she had actually intended to buy were high school entrance exam papers—she had just picked up the wrong set by mistake.