[5] Chapter 1. Reversing the Pendulum of Time (4)
“…”
“Ah, I feel like I’m coming back to life. Sleeping while standing and getting drenched in cold dew, it was so stiff, you have no idea how hard it was~!”
The last phrase was almost a hummed song lyric. Fernciana looked at him with an absurd expression, but Ilyas buried himself in the bed without even looking back. Fernciana let out a deep sigh.
He said he could look up detailed information once he returned to the capital, so she had nodded her head in understanding. But after finishing the meal, he followed her, so she thought he had more to say, but as soon as she opened the door to her room, he threw himself inside. And what he said as he lay on the bed was that he felt like he was coming back to life.
“This brother will really sleep for just one hour and get up.”
“…”
“Hey, hey. Yes? This brother will find out everything you’re curious about. Really, I’m really the leader of a successful information guild~!”
And with that, Ilyas buried his head in the bed and fell asleep.
Fernciana looked at Ilyas’s sleeping figure in disbelief, then lowered her head. The regret of just finding out once she arrived in the capital belatedly rushed in. Not only did she have to buy him more than 3 servings of food for the meal, wondering just how much he ate, but she also paid for the food he had mooched off of yesterday with free food, and now she was about to lose the intact bed too.
Should she hoist the man up and throw him out the window like this, Fernciana thought that for a moment, then shook her head to clear the thought with a short sigh.
In the “dream,” she had trained and trained to be able to kill the emperor, so she could easily hoist up a man, but now it was a bit different. She remembered the knack, but she lacked the strength, so she didn’t think she could do it properly.
‘Then for now, I need to earn money.’
Fernciana looked down at the still blank notebook with a prudent expression.
If that Ilyas was the real Ilyas Seyran, he would probably find out the information she wanted. The problem was what came next. Ilyas Seyran would become the crown prince’s closest aide in the future, which meant that in her endeavor to seize the Emerald Tabula from the emperor, he would be the first person to oppose most fiercely.
So she had to gain strength and information through someone else for her real purpose. She had no idea how much money that would require.
She remembered doing all sorts of things as they came in the “dream” too. Well, her parents had suddenly passed away before she even turned twenty, and she didn’t have the ability to take revenge, so she needed money to do it somehow.
‘Money…’
Fernciana gripped the fountain pen with both hands and pondered deeply. It was different from last time. Back then, she had no skills, no experience, nothing. She had no interest or will for the future, so earning day by day and living day by day was enough. She couldn’t do that now.
‘What should I earn money with?’
Recalling what she earned money with in the “dream,” Fernciana rubbed her neck.
When she was really desperate for money, she would carve and sell wooden accessories. Gripping a metal knife hurt her skin, so she wouldn’t hold it unless she was really desperate, but in that “dream,” every day was really desperate.
Fernciana sighed. Soon, desperate times would come here too.
For now, Fernciana roughly recorded what she remembered from what she had seen in the “dream,” then neatly put away the notebook and fountain pen.
By the way, her clumsy crossdressing seemed to be really effective. Ilyas kept calling her “brother” at the end of every sentence, referring to himself, and even barged into her room to sleep without any hesitation. Fernciana confidently rolled Ilyas to the very edge of the bed and pushed him.
“Let me sleep a bit more…”
“Sleep. I’ll take a nap too.”
Fortunately, the bed was on the wide side and Fernciana herself was small in stature, so it wasn’t awkward to lie together. Fernciana snatched Ilyas’s pillow to lay her head on, but out of magnanimity, she only divided the blanket in half to cover him.
*
“This is straight-up robbery!”
“Ah, no. Hey, calling me a robber, a robber to your brother, that’s too harsh…”
But even Ilyas, who said the words were too harsh, had an awkward smile on his face. Fernciana looked at the ceiling in disbelief, then glared at Ilyas.
“Look here. I untied you from offering free food. I fed you three meals a day from that day until the day before yesterday, let you sleep that day, fed you yesterday, let you sleep yesterday, but what? You want me to pay for the carriage fare to the capital?”
“You even rolled me on the floor when letting me sleep… Ah, no. I’ll deduct this from the information fee. I’ll give it to you when we get to the capital!”
“What makes you think I’ll believe that?”
“This little one can’t trust people again… Ah, if you really can’t trust me, put a leash on me or something~!”
Ilyas raised his voice instead. Fernciana, who had been glaring at Ilyas, blinked her eyes.
“Should I?”
“Ah, no. Look here. What I meant was…”
Fernciana shot a glance at Ilyas, who changed his words, then went to find the merchant group that had stopped by the village and calculated the carriage fare for two people. The employee of the merchant group glanced at the two, who stood out in this remote village, and nodded.
“We leave after lunch, so don’t be late. And… No matter what happens, we can’t take care of you that far. Do you know basic self-defense?”
“Ah.”
Fernciana, who paused for a moment at those words, clenched and opened her hand. How rigorously had she trained in the “dream” to infiltrate the imperial palace and even assassinate? Although her stamina, strength, and body didn’t cooperate at all now, the memories still remained.
‘I should practice the basics while I still remember.’
With that thought, Fernciana answered the merchant group employee with a “a little.”
“Heh… You know martial arts too?”
Ilyas asked in an amused voice beside her. Fernciana glanced at Ilyas, then slumped her shoulders as the memory of how grueling and difficult the training was in that “dream” came to mind. Even now, she couldn’t fathom how she had endured all that and gripped a sword back then.
“Ah, no. I just asked. Why are you making a face like you’re going to kill someone?”
“I realized I need the ability to kill people.”
“…”
At first, Ilyas burst into laughter, holding his stomach, but he soon shut his mouth at Fernciana’s chilly gaze.
As soon as a brief, busy preparation time ended, the merchant group’s carriage headed straight to the city above. The two’s seats were at the very end of the supply wagon.
Fernciana spread out the blanket the merchant group employee had given them to make their seats. After departing, Fernciana enjoyed the feeling of the carriage journey for a while but soon fell silent. Ilyas, who was sitting next to her, had started to get motion sickness.
Fernciana looked at Ilyas with an absurd, pale face. Ilyas looked at Fernciana with a pallid face.
“Ugh… Urgh… How… How can you… with this shaking…?”
“Just drink some water…”
Ilyas looked like he wanted to make more excuses but didn’t open his mouth and sat as close to the wall of the supply wagon as possible.
As Ilyas’s face grew even more pale, and Fernciana’s sighs deepened, the carriage moved on toward the city.