At that point in her thoughts, someone spoke to Neris.

“Hey, you there, first-year.”

It was the voice of a teenage girl, cold but still with traces of innocence, around puberty.

There was no way she couldn’t recognize that voice. Neris turned towards the source of the sound.

There stood Natasha Grunehals, a teenager with her ginger hair elegantly twisted up, looking like a picture.

Neris gazed at Natasha with calm eyes for a moment. Then she soon smiled brightly.

“Yes, senior.”

“Why are you here so late? It’s curfew time for first-years. Children should go to bed early.”

Student council members regularly patrolled like this to catch students who stayed late in school buildings causing mischief. Especially for lower grades, they couldn’t wander around after curfew unless separately reported.

Neris replied in an innocent voice.

“Wasn’t it reported to the student council? Sir Sheridan was supposed to have a social test rehearsal with students today.”

“Ah.”

Of course, since it was a gathering of students outside regular class hours, Sir Sheridan had reported the rehearsal to the student council. Natasha remembered upon hearing that.

“The classroom Sir Sheridan reported isn’t in this building. It’s in the next building.”

“Is that so? I thought it was here.”

The classroom for the test rehearsal wasn’t the usual social class room, but a building mainly used by upper grades. So a first-year could have been confused.

Natasha raised an eyebrow and said primly.

“Now that you know it’s not here, hurry along. Your permitted passage is limited to between the building the teacher reported in advance and your dormitory. You don’t want to get demerits, do you?”

“No. Thank you for letting me know, senior. If it weren’t for you, I might have kept wandering in the wrong place.”

Natasha knew well that she wasn’t a kind person and didn’t particularly intend to be kind, but there was no reason to feel bad about being praised. She looked down at the little one before her with softer eyes than before.

Famous purple eyes and delicate features. One could predict that if this child grew up just as she was, she would become quite a beauty.

No, actually, there were many beauties among this year’s new students. How famous was young Megara Likeandros already in the imperial social circles? And the pure Idalia Kendal?

Natasha was confident in her own beauty, but there was no guarantee that her boyfriend Abelus, who liked beautiful women, wouldn’t turn his eyes elsewhere ten years later.

Her father, Duke Grunehals, had driven out his perfectly fine wife to the countryside on all sorts of excuses and changed young beauties several times. Many men in high society did so.

Having grown up seeing that, she did not expect loyalty in a man’s love. So she had to firmly stamp down anything that had the possibility of climbing up.

A flash of contempt crossed Neris’s clear eyes as she gazed back at the thoughtful Natasha. But it happened in such a brief instant that Natasha didn’t notice.

Soon Natasha voiced a thought that suddenly occurred to her. Though their appearances were different, this child, when wearing a gentle expression, resembled Nelrysion strangely. Just like someone who had lived together for a long time.

“You look cute. Is it because you’re Nelrysion’s relative? You seem to resemble him more than Valentine.”

Valentine and Nelrysion had very different atmospheres when seen separately. While Nelrysion was calm and kind, Valentine was blatantly arrogant.

But if you looked inside, the two were as alike as if stamped from the same mold, though Natasha didn’t seem to know that fact well yet.

‘Disgusting demons.’

Neris thought that no one in the Elandria family could escape that description. It would be satisfying to bundle them all up and throw them into hellfire.

But by that standard, was she herself clean?

‘I suppose I’m the same.’

Neris, who habitually lied, schemed, and betrayed, would also one day be thrown into hellfire. And when that day came, she intended to lightly enjoy the pain.

While watching her sworn enemies screaming beside her.

But she couldn’t go yet. Because she had to finish as many tasks as possible.

So Neris smiled shyly.

“Thank you for saying that. I’d have no other wish if I were even a tenth as pretty as you, senior. In terms of cuteness, Megara in our year is really cute and popular. Everyone says she’ll definitely meet someone wonderful since her status is high too.”

Though she had tried to check Neris by resorting to kidnapping and such, Natasha eventually lost Abelus. Not to the new crown princess, but to someone else, Megara, who was the greatest beauty in high society at the time.

If Natasha at that time hadn’t been so focused on the marriage talks between the Elandria family and the imperial family, she would have naturally been most wary of Megara. Because that was much more likely.

Now the new students might be too young for people to focus on one person, but if she planted seeds of doubt several times, she could keep them in check to some degree.

Natasha blinked once at Neris’s words. Then she quickly erased all her thoughts with a businesslike smile and briefly ended the conversation.

“Aren’t you going to be late?”

That was right. Neris had no intention of wasting more time with Natasha either.

Having said what she aimed to say, Neris gracefully bowed and turned towards the exit of the building. The sound of Natasha also leaving that place could be heard behind her.

When Neris finally reached the exit where the star-filled night sky could be seen, she thought the garden spread out before her was rustling strangely.

A faint salty smell brushed her nose.

The smell was very subtle. But Neris, who had spent days trapped in a prison cell only able to smell her own blood and pus for a long time, instinctively and naturally recognized what it was.

It was the scent of blood.

Clank. Clank. The sound of metal objects colliding came from nearby. Neris first hid her body in the shadow of the building to assess the situation. Not long after, two boys in their late teens carrying swords walked from the far side of the garden to nearby.

“Did you find it?”

“I don’t see it. Didn’t he say it was this way?”

Neris’s eyes glinted coldly.

They were people she knew well too. Knight aspirants commonly seen in noble houses, who grew up as playmates in the name of taking responsibility for the life and education of their future master.

One was Abelus’s subordinate whom Neris had been indebted to when she was crown princess, and.

“Since His Highness the Crown Prince said so, I don’t know. He’s your master, Ralph.”

The voice of the other person once again painfully pierced Neris’s ears. She clenched her fist.

How could she forget him?

The boy looking around with Abelus’s subordinate was Nelrysion’s guard, Joseph. The very one who had come with Valentine in her previous life, pinned Neris’s body to the prison floor, and helped Valentine!

‘So you helped the imperial family at this time too.’

There might be few people who knew the closeness of the imperial family and the Elandria family as well as Neris, but even she had never specifically imagined how each family got along when she was twelve years old.

Well, if there was a chance for the sly Nelrysion to please Abelus by lending his playmate for a while, he wouldn’t miss it.

But what exactly was that chance?

Now genuinely interested, Neris listened to their conversation with muffled breath.

“I’m not sure. Is this the only way that guy could come? They’ve made all sorts of things like rabbit holes inside the school.”

“Let’s just search for now. Don’t lose focus. He’s crafty, so this might be a trap too.”

“Shh, don’t you hear something?”

The two boys stopped and looked around. Neris didn’t hesitate to make footsteps and reveal herself in front of them.

The two boys, who thought all the surrounding buildings would be empty, were startled and raised their swords. Neris screamed as if she was surprised to see them, standing five or six steps away from her.

“Kyaa!”

“What?”

Abelus’s knight, Ralph, frowned. As he was about to get angry, looking down on the small Neris, Joseph stopped him.

Joseph slightly lowered his sword and greeted Neris as if he knew her.

“Neris Trude?”

“Senior Joseph?”

Neris called Joseph cautiously with a puzzled face. The knight, he narrowed his eyes but answered kindly for now.

“That’s right. You know my name?”

He and Neris hadn’t formally greeted each other in this life yet. So the question “Do you know my name?” should have been asked by Neris first, but she didn’t ask that and just smiled innocently. As if she was glad to meet him in a place like this.

And to tell the truth, she was glad. Because if she greeted him now, it would be easier to throw him into a pit later.

Hmph, judging by how you recognized me right away, it seems Nelrysion must have given you a heads up?

“I’ve seen you with elder brother Nel before. I’m glad I remembered your name correctly. You’re elder brother Nel’s friend, right?”

“Oh, yes.”

Joseph, who let his guard down at that answer, completely lowered his sword. After all, what should a boy several years older have to be careful about just because a twelve-year-old girl suddenly appeared?

Meanwhile, Neris noticed that the bushes behind Joseph were not moving at all, to an unnatural degree. As if something heavy and quite large was pressing down on the stumps of the bushes.

She naturally averted her gaze as if she had never looked at the bushes and continued speaking.

“Are you on your way somewhere?”

“Oh, just somewhere. You must be going somewhere too?”

Joseph was always worse at acting than Nelrysion. Neris laughed inwardly as she saw his face showing awkwardness and discomfort.

But Ralph didn’t go along as easily as Joseph. A distant relative brat of the Elandria family was nothing to him, who was promised a path as the crown prince’s confidant even at such a young age.

If there was anything suspicious, it should be strictly investigated. That would help him advance further. He didn’t lower his sword and questioned Neris with a fierce glare.

“What are you doing here? It’s past curfew for first-years.”

“I came for a class. We have supplementary lessons for exam preparation. Other first-years are attending too, so the teacher got special permission.”

There were many omissions in Neris’s words, but the two boys had no way of knowing that. They understood her words to mean that all the other first-years were coming to ‘this very building’, and so they exchanged dismayed glances.

Ralph put his sword back in its scabbard and cleared his throat.

“Don’t wander around too late. We almost drew our swords thinking you were an animal.”

It was a lame excuse to say at this point. Even the person who said it immediately realized that fact, but Neris just nodded innocently.

“Yes. I’m sorry for startling you. I just got the same warning from senior Natasha of the student council too. I’ll go back right after class ends. I’ll tell the other kids to go back immediately after class too.”

“Okay.”

The boys looked at each other once more, and simultaneously judged that if they lingered here any longer, they would give a strange impression to the first-year.

Moreover, now that they heard it, wasn’t this child saying she would tell all the other first-years about meeting seniors here? Who knows if she might spread Joseph’s name too, just like she mentioned Natasha Grunehals’s name now.

They left as if they had been out for a walk.

Neris stopped acting like a talkative and diligent fool. And when she judged that enough distance had been put between her and the two boys, she carefully crawled into the bushes.

As expected, there was a bloodied boy curled up in the bushes.

It was a dark night and the bushes that had grown thick in spring provided some camouflage, but if the boys from earlier had searched even a little seriously, it was a position that would have been exposed instantly.

It must mean the injury was so severe that he couldn’t hide far away and had to collapse in a place as good as an open field like this.

Neris thought that even if this suspicious person had died during the time she unnecessarily prolonged the conversation earlier, it couldn’t be helped. But when she approached, the boy opened his eyes wide and glared at her.

Gray eyes sparkling like diamonds.

Though they were human eyes and couldn’t possibly emit light, the boy’s gaze seemed as clear as that of a nocturnal animal.

“Ne…”

ris Trude.

The rest of the words were swallowed into Cledwin Maindlant’s dry tongue without being pronounced.