/
Joshua watched Kiana as she slowly climbed into the wagon.
“Goodbye then, don’t forget what I asked for earlier.”
Kiana opened the carriage window, and he spoke one last time.
“Kyana, it’s been six years, six years.”
I still wanted him to investigate the crown prince and Heaton.
Joshua sighed and shook his head.
“Nothing happened, nothing will happen. Huang’s work… Leave such dangerous and complex tasks to grandfather.”
And whispered with a low voice.
“The Emperor will pass away soon, and Prince Heaton will ascend the throne. The position of the missing prince has no meaning. Only His Majesty the Emperor has vain hopes.”
Kiana shrugged her shoulders as if she couldn’t hear.
Seeing that, Joshua suddenly thought that her face was too pale.
At first, she thought it was because she had a lot of motion sickness, but as time passed, her complexion did not improve.
“Kiana, but… .”
Looking closely, her arms protruding from her checked dress were too thin.
“Did you have a good time at the academy? Why are you so skinny, why are you so pale? Besides, it’s hard to ride a carriage like this, what the hell is wrong with your physical condition?”
“I have been doing good, and my complexion is always bad.”
As if Kiana didn’t care, she replied nonchalantly.
“Why are you worried again? But only verse 1.” *
tl/n: in think he is referring to the first thing he said after she came to him.
Then he added with a smile.
“We haven’t had any proper contact for six years, so what…”
The window closed quickly. And the carriage started right away.
The wagon carrying Kiana went smoothly down the hill and soon disappeared.
Joshua’s fine brow furrowed slightly as he stared at the dust created by the
wheels without entering his mansion right away.
<What?>
Leah asked, tilting her head.
<What’s the problem?>
“No, it looks too skinny…  You’ve lost a bit of weight than when I first saw you, and aren’t you too small?”
<Hmm, i stand with what your little mean sister said.>
“What do you mean?”
<You said you haven’t been in touch for 6 years, why are you pretending to be worried now?>
At that, Joshua brushed her hair and straightened up.
“What did you say. She used to send me well-being letters once a month.”
<What?>
“We  ask her to come to the Duke’s residence every anniversary, and we also ask if we can go to the academy once… Is it weird that she is the who is bothered ?”
<Ah, did it bother you?>
“Yes, she replied only once in 20 times, Even worse, the professors said, ‘Don’t provoke Kiana, she hate seeing her family so much.’ I was about to send a letter directly to her.”
<Really?>
“Because the academy is such a closed place, I couldn’t go there randomly. But if you’re  invited, you should be able to go. Later, when I heard that family would be able to attend the first thesis presentation, I felt a bit betrayed. Is it really necessary to live like a stranger? Well, of course I live like a stranger.”
In the end, what Seukali was able to do was to get Kiana’s updates from the professor at the academy.
Kiana is doing very well and she skips class after class, she said. She also heard that she was pouring out quality papers once a month.
Of course, he didn’t bother telling Melissa all this. Melissa was the victim anyway, so he didn’t feel the need to talk about Kiana.  I’ve never had a deep conversation with Melissa on other topics.
<Ah, really?>
Leah nodded easily and yawned
However, Joshua bit her lip once, and he looked at the road where the wagon had disappeared with a strange feeling of awkwardness. And he exclaimed that his intuition, which had been dealing with information for so long,  shouted that this awkwardness should not be buried.
“…I guess I’ll have to go after it.”
< Huh? where?>
“To Kiana.”
Joshua muttered lowly.
“I’ll go and ask again properly. What the hell made her feel so interested?”
* * *
“Princess, shall we go home now? have lunch… ”
“Let’s buy a cup of coffee and go to the general store. I need to buy something before I go home.”
After telling her destination to my spy maid, I thought about it again in the carriage.
Joshua’s overly sensitive reaction to her request for the crown prince bothered her.
‘Aren’t you worried a little too much than you thought? Didnt i tell telling me that it’s dangerous?’
Of course, it was a dangerous topic. But even so, I thought Joshua wouldn’t mind.
Of course, we hadn’t seen each other even once while I was at the academy.
No one in my family ever told me to come to the duke’s residence, nor did they come to my graduation ceremony.
tl/n: nooo, misunderstandings againn
And during that time, I had sent no more than ten letters. I even sent a letter to my family to come to my first thesis presentation, but it was ignored…
‘But why are you pretending to be so worried? Not helpful.’
I had no insight of what Joshua was thinking.
“The Imperial family… leave such dangerous and complex tasks to grandfather.”
As Joshua said, he entrusted everything to his old and sick grandfather, so his entire family ended up hanging.
“The Emperor will pass away soon, and Prince Heaton will ascend the throne. The position of the missing prince has no meaning. Only His Majesty the Emperor has vain hopes.”
Vain hope…
That’s wrong too.
I slowly began to recall the past.
* * *
The first time I saw Melissa at the age of thirteen is still vivid in my memory.
“This is Melissa, who will be living with us from today. She is the same age as Kiana. Get along like her real sisters.”
She said she was the daughter of my uncle, who  left home a while ago saying he would marry. And when her uncle and wife, who had been hiding among the commoners, died, she was left to  grandfather.
Melissa, dressed in her shabby clothes, greeted her shyly, and her nanny happily took her hand.
“Welcome, Miss Melissa. She will be a proud Prelai from now on, even as a young lady. She looks very much like the Little Master.”
Here, the ‘Little Master’ was Loki, her father’s brother and Melissa’s father.
“A direct descendant of Prelai can command summoned beasts. But sometimes her relatives can also summodn a beast. So now you need to know the concept of summons…”
Then Melissa said in a puzzled way.
“Actually, I… I already have a summons. Pyeol, do you want to come out?”
Then a yellow lark flew over from her tree and landed gently on her shoulder.
<Don’t be afraid of new environments. Everyone will love Melissa.>
The Prelai duchy designated only one heir, and  recognized only the children of it heir as direct line.
Her father had already been designated as heir. Melissa, therefore, belonged to collateral
It wasn’t a surprise since sometimes there were people summoning summons from the collateral. Even so, the collateral that could command summons was recognized as a direct descendant within the Prelai family.
Melissa, who had been petting Pyeol, looked at us with a wide smile.
“I want to see the number of other people’s summons. Especially Kiana, we’re the same age. What is your summon?”
At that innocent question, I turned around and ran straight into the room.
Every day since that day, I started dreaming of Pyeoly shouting, ‘I belong to Kiana!’
And just looking at Melissa, she was overcome by her strange urges, so she teased her persistently, saying, ‘Pyeol was originally mine, but you took it away, right?’
When I turned 16, so six years ago.
I ended up attacking Melissa in the middle of the night with a knife and was caught by her servants.
Everyone thought it was a crime that went too far. Because I’ve always gone too far.
But at that time, I actually had a purpose that no one knew.
“What is this… did it work, right?”
Since Melissa came to the duchy when she was 13, I had secretly taught myself magic engineering and made my own magic tools.
The magic tool that I had been developing desperately for several years was to change her eye color.
I didn’t want to make my eyes red. I wasn’t stupid enough to suddenly change the color of my eyes one day and make people laugh.
The person I had targeted from the start was none other than Melissa.
The purpose was to change the color of Melissa’s eyes so that anyone could not say, “Melissa fits the princess of The Prelai.”
Everyone may think it’s strange to see Melissa, whose eye color suddenly changed one day, but it wasn’t my situation. It’s because other people won’t even think they can change the color of their eyes anyway.
The user’s blood was needed to activate the horse tool.
So that night I rushed to stab Melissa with a knife and was caught by the servants. And my grandfather scolded me for the first time then.