MPBGS 47

Chapter : 47

By now, her head might already have been severed. Daisy turned her gaze away from the window, where falling petals looked like severed heads. From now on, whenever she smelled the scent of flowers, she would think of Merai.

“How are the children? Do they seem to be adjusting well?”

“Yes. It seems they are.”

Unlike Daisy’s worries, the children adapted easily to the mansion. Among the servants of the Rohanson estate, Evangeline was known to be the most difficult to deal with—but perhaps because the children had been brought by Evangeline herself, they adapted unusually quickly.

Yulma, who had a talent for handiwork, went into the kitchen. However, perhaps due to the habit of preparing meals for many people at the orphanage, she was often scolded for using too much of everything.

Lannon entered under the butler’s supervision. He had always been known to be intelligent and good with numbers, but no one expected him to catch the butler’s eye so strongly. Though initially neglected because he had been brought by Lady Evangeline, he now practically stayed by the butler’s side at all times.

“Mary….”

Mary was doing very well, as if she were Mary Rohanson rather than Mary Gold.

Since there was no particular work to assign to a child, she was allowed to wander around the mansion freely. Mary, in particular, clung closely to Melek, who had also been confined in the underground.

Melek volunteered to become the stable keeper, wanting to earn his keep. The once-fierce horses seemed to submit the moment they saw him, making him a welcome presence. Mary’s task was to feed carrots to the horses at his side.

As promised by Lady Evangeline, once the children sold by the director were returned, more people would gradually fill the estate.

“Are you satisfied?”

At Evangeline’s question, Daisy nodded.

When she had fled the mansion in fear, she had believed she would never return.

“Very much so.”

She never imagined she would come to feel such peaceful sentiments while looking at the fibrous webs covering the walls and the eyes sprouting from them.

What perfect weather for dying… I feel like I should at least exhale some dramatic breath or something.

My whole body felt languid. I just wanted to lie down and eat grapes fed to me by Kanna.

If it had been my usual self, lazing around like a shut-in wouldn’t have been a problem—but now, this was the only time I could actually relax.

After Gabriel suggested that I attend banquets with him, I suddenly became someone who never had enough time, even if I had ten bodies.

That whole debutante thing was the problem.

Evangeline was not some pinnacle of high society—she hadn’t even made her debut yet. So to properly attend balls and banquets, there was a lot of preparation required first.

“The young lady was too weak to even complete her debutante.”

Daisy said Evangeline had been too frail to enter society, but given that she had enough strength to torment others, it seemed more likely that the count had prevented her from going out, fearing she would behave like a villainess again.

When the count received my message announcing my debut, he replied that, although he doubted he could stop me, he asked me to behave as normally as possible. He also sent back accompanying private tutors.

It seemed he still recognized that I had amnesia and wanted me to be re-educated.

But six tutors? Etiquette, dance, painting, horseback riding, embroidery—and I didn’t even understand why poetry was included. There were six tutors in total. At least history wasn’t forced on me, which was a relief.

And none of them were particularly helpful.

The poetry tutor, being a literature major, was highly emotional himself. He described the Rohanson mansion as “a fragment of hell sprouting upon the earth, a demon-filled inferno where fiends run rampant,” and quit without even stepping inside the gate, submitting his resignation with poetic flair. In short, he ran away in fear of Evangeline’s notorious reputation.

The embroidery tutor fainted in tears, begging me not to cut her throat when I accidentally pricked my finger and drew blood. For reference, my embroidery skills were deemed beyond improvement.

Horseback riding didn’t even require training—the horses listened to me so well that the instructor declared there was nothing left to teach and dismissed himself after a single day.

When the art tutor asked if there was an art room, I led them to a storage room nearby. Perhaps due to its gloomy atmosphere, they seemed unnerved. When they asked if they could see my work, I showed them the canvases I had uncovered—not mine, but Evangeline’s—and they fled in terror.

And honestly, it made sense. Every painting Evangeline had created depicted the same person.

A woman, always in the same pose, staring straight ahead—there was something eerie about it. It felt like her eyes might start moving, like in a horror film. It looked strangely familiar too… but who was it?

“Do you know who it is?”

“It must be the late lady of the house.”

Cold sweat broke out on me. I had misspoken earlier. Looking again, it wasn’t like a horror film—it was like a movie. Evangeline had created art. The familiarity must have come from her resemblance to Evangeline herself.

Daisy explained that she had entered the count’s household after the countess had passed away, so she had never seen her in person.

In her diary, the countess had often spoken cursed words toward the count, wished for death, and lamented herself—but in the painting, she wore a faint smile.

“She’s a beautiful woman.”

She wasn’t even my mother, yet I suddenly missed my own mother. Still, it seemed she had at least shown her daughter a smiling face, which was fortunate.

To protect the paintings from sunlight, they were covered again with cloth.

Anyway, the art tutor also quit, frightened after seeing the paintings. The butler, exasperated, pleaded that it was difficult to keep the tutors in line and begged me to behave properly. I hadn’t done anything, yet I was the one wronged.

“Even though you mentioned memory loss, it’s a relief that your body still retains habits.”

At least the etiquette tutor, diligent in her profession, saw me through to the end. Perhaps thanks to some “possession bonus,” etiquette seemed to be embedded as a passive trait, so I didn’t have to relearn it.

This is what they mean when they say the body remembers. Somehow, whenever I spoke, my words came out a bit sharp—maybe my tongue remembered that too.

“Thank you for your hard work, Dolline.”

“I’m the one who should thank you, Lady Evangeline, for following along so well.”

Grateful that she hadn’t run away while teaching me, I instructed the butler to give her a generous bonus.

Dolline broke the cliché of a strict etiquette tutor—she was rather oblivious and kind. She also didn’t seem to know much about Evangeline’s reputation. Maybe that’s why she didn’t run away?

“Soon it will be time for the dance tutor to arrive. Since you were said to be physically weak, are you sure you can dance?”

My body wasn’t the issue. The problem was, once again, the dance tutor.

I had quickly learned the movements, but when we tried to practice together, the tutor refused to touch my body, claiming it would be improper.

“Lady, excuse me. Have you finished your lessons?”

Hena knocked and asked from outside the door. When I told her to come in, she greeted Dolline and handed me a letter.

The recipient was the dance tutor.

“…Don’t tell me.”

That “don’t tell me” turned out to be correct. After cutting through a long-winded excuse, the letter basically said they had already taught all the movements and that they were stepping down, having done all they could.

“Are they quitting again?”

“Yes.”

With that, all my tutors had resigned—except for Dolline.

Honestly, the dance tutor was strange. They had taught everything and then left midway—I didn’t understand why. Still, at least they taught me the movements, so I was grateful.

I told Hena to inform the butler not to reduce the tuition fee and to pay the full amount. If I didn’t pay someone who quit midway, who knew what rumors they might spread later? They might twist it into saying Evangeline had forced them out after learning everything without paying. All I had was money—was I supposed to be called a miser?

“Yes, I’ll pass that along.”

“Hmm… I should be going now as well.”

Dolline, having read the room, gathered her things and stood up.

“Dolline, do you know how to teach dance?”

“I can handle the basics. But to partner with you, I’d have to take the role of a gentleman, right? I’ve only learned dance as a social skill.”

So she couldn’t handle the male role.

“Perhaps you could ask Sir Gabriel to be your practice partner?”

I see… Since I would be dancing with Gabriel anyway, maybe I should ask him.

Dolline offered her advice and left, apologizing profusely.

Once she was gone, the afternoon suddenly felt empty. I returned to my room and collapsed onto the bed. Pudding climbed onto me and massaged me with her cat paws. It was cute, but completely ineffective…

Jelly watched this, then transformed into human form and began massaging me. The fatigue in my body melted away. Jelly was quite skilled at massage.

“Did you learn this somewhere?”

“My previous owner occasionally made me do this.”

I regretted asking. I had touched on something sensitive. Right… I sometimes forget, but Jelly had once been a beastkin slave.

“So making me do this—pretty twisted, huh?”

It sounded like she was telling me to feel guilty. I dismissed her, saying she could stop, and pushed her away. Sorry for being twisted.

“Jelly, do you know how to dance?”

“Do you think I know human dances?”

Right. You’re a werewolf who escaped from a slaver—you wouldn’t know. Still, since she said she had learned massage from her previous owner, I figured I’d ask.

“Do you know how?”

Jelly tugged Pudding’s tail while asking, and Pudding scratched her with its claws.

“You’ve got a terrible personality. If you don’t know, just say it.”

No—this was your fault for asking a creature that couldn’t even speak yet. Pudding must have wanted to answer.

“Why dance, anyway? Did the dance tutor run away too? Humans really are cowards.”

True enough. Everyone seemed so fearful. People like Dolline were rare.

“Still, it’s a relief that Dolline stayed.”

“How long do you think she’ll last? A day? A week?”

“Hmm.”

This guy Jelly looked like he was practically holding a ceremony to pray she’d quit. At this rate, he seemed ready to bet on when she’d leave.

“She should last at least two weeks.”

“Two weeks? Got it.”

My debutante was scheduled in two weeks. It was already the season for balls and banquets, so I was a bit late…