"This is… the villa's study. Have I returned?"
An unfamiliar place. He should have been talking to a high school girl in what seemed like some rural town in Japan, but before he knew it, he was back where he'd started.
Rest clutched a worn wooden box in his hand.
The opened door revealed an empty interior. Nothing was inside.
"This isn't… a dream, right?"
It had been an illusion… perhaps.
At the very least, it couldn't have been something that actually happened in reality.
"The queen dowager… no, Shoko…"
"Rest, are you alright?"
A voice called from the hallway.
He turned around to find Celestine peeking into the room.
"That box… it's empty, isn't it? What was inside it?"
"Miss Celestine… how long has it been since then?"
"How long… I'm sorry, but I don't quite understand what you mean."
"Um… how much time has passed since you left the room?"
When Rest rephrased his question, Celestine answered, though she wore a puzzled expression.
"I was only gone for about five minutes. I went to check the basement—it looks like it was probably a storage room for food and supplies. It's already been cleared out, and all that remains are empty wooden boxes and burlap sacks."
"I see…"
By his own sense of time, he'd felt like he'd been talking for at least thirty minutes, but apparently only five had passed.
He wondered whether time even flowed differently in that place, feeling like a modern-day Urashima Tarō.
"...If there was nothing in the basement, then there doesn't seem to be anything else in this villa. Shall we head back?"
According to Shōko... the queen dowager had no deep intention behind spending her final years at this villa. She simply wanted to spend her last days in a place that resembled her hometown from her past life.
If that was the case, nothing more valuable than that wooden box would remain here.
Rest closed the empty box and placed it back in the drawer.
"Let's leave the villa as it is. Until the day it naturally decays."
"...If Rest is all right with that, then so be it. This is already Rest's property, after all. Do with it as you please."
"Right... well then, let's head back. Sorry for all the trouble."
For Rest, it had been a worthwhile trip — he had learned what intention the queen dowager had behind Rodele's failed education... and of the existence of a secret society opposing the Council of Sages.
However, Celestine had simply been dragged along for nothing. He was starting to feel genuinely sorry about that.
"It's no trouble... you're hardly the only one causing inconvenience here."
"Hm? What do you mean by that?"
"I... well, the royal family and House Crocus will no doubt continue to be a burden on Rest in the future. When you think of that, this much trouble is quite light."
Rest had already demonstrated results in numerous battles, making it impossible for him to remain a figure divorced from central politics.
Going forward, he would no doubt be saddled with matters involving crises that threatened the kingdom as well.
"If there's anything I can do, please don't hesitate to call on me going forward. It's easier on me that way."
"...I'll see what I can do."
He shrugged at Celestine's words.
Having problems brought to him by the royal family was the last thing he wanted, but it was Rest himself who had sought to leap forward.
If he wanted to live an ordinary life, he should never have enrolled at the Royal Academy, nor gotten close to the sisters of House Rosemary.
He told himself that it was his own decision to climb higher, knowing full well what that entailed. It was selfish to resent the duties that come with privilege, yeah, he agreed with himself.
With those thoughts running through his mind as if he were lecturing himself, Rest left the villa where the queen dowager had spent her final hours.