No Evil Lady in the World (Completed Main Story) - Chapter 45

Ariante sat on the plush carpet with her legs stretched out, her lips jutting forward. Her cheeks were puffed up sulkily and flushed bright red, as if deeply displeased with something.

Unlike her usual self, Beinti fidgeted restlessly, constantly wriggling her hands clasped in front of her. Whenever her face threatened to twist into a grimace, Meiana would give a pointed cough and jab her sharply in the ribs with her elbow, forcing Beinti to feign a smile until her mouth ached—an exhausting ordeal.

Ariante focused solely on tearing apart a thin sheet of paper—perhaps candy wrapping, perhaps something else—stiffened with grease, shredding it meticulously into fine strips. Already, a small, rounded mound of torn paper had gathered at the child’s feet, and throughout this, she hadn’t uttered a single word.

Finally, Meiana called out to Ariante. It was her tenth attempt.

“My lady.”

At that, Ariante abruptly whipped her head around to look at the two of them. Her tiny, sky-blue eyes sparkled so brilliantly that Beinti felt strangely as though she were seeing Ariante’s eyes for the very first time.

The child was declaring, with her entire body and expression, just how furiously angry she was. Beinti looked flustered and uneasy—not out of concern for Ariante, of course—but Meiana remained perfectly calm.

Snap. A sound rang out. Ariante had deliberately torn another strip of paper, adding one more thread to the pile that might as well have been called a hill of fluff.

Meiana spoke.

“My lady, what do you plan to do with all those papers? Are you going to build a house for a field mouse?”

Ariante’s head snapped toward her. After glaring fiercely at Meiana, she shot an even sharper look at Beinti—who hadn’t said a word—and turned back around with a blunt retort.

“You don’t need to know. And mice don’t live in places like this. Dummy.”

Meiana let out a short sigh, tinged with amusement. She crouched down beside Ariante, who kept turning her body away from her in every direction.

“Beinti says she’ll be kind to you from now on.”

That was it. Ariante’s anger was entirely Beinti’s fault! From Beinti’s perspective, she might have felt she’d fallen for Meiana’s scheme and suffered an utterly undeserved misfortune, but for Ariante, it was hardly a happy turn of events either.

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