Miabel Introduces a Friend to Grandma
“Wait… But… How? Huh?”
Even though it was hard for her to say anything, her mind couldn’t stop going.
Sweet moons… But just how did I die?
Mia’s tragic flaw was that she couldn’t stop herself from looking up her own cause of death. After the guillotine and poison had been used, what was next?
Would she go to sleep peacefully? Or one with a lot of violence? She was most interested in this part of her death.
She looked through the book quickly. And at the end, she read, “Bandits attacked me at night and killed me. Then wolves ate my body. This doesn’t seem like a good way to go at all…”
She gave a shiver. This picture wasn’t much better than the one of someone dying from poison and bleeding from every hole in their body. It could be even worse than the first one, which at least happened in bed.
“W-Well, I guess if I die before I get eaten, at least getting eaten won’t hurt… Still, how in the world did I get murdered by bandits?”
Mia was still the Princess of Tearmoon, even if she didn’t tell everyone every day. Keeping her as a hostage would be useful, but there was no mention of a ransom demand.
“…So they must have killed me before they could catch me. Was an arrow shot at me? Or knifed in the back? Ugh… Ooooh… Just thinking about it makes me feel sick…”
She walked shakily to her bed and fell face-first into it.
“…Why were bandits even after me in the first place?”
After reading the Chronicles again, she found out a few more things.
First, she had sneaked off Saint-Noel Island during the Holy Eve Festival and left. It seems that the bandits attacked her while she was galloping across the plains outside of the island on a horse.
“I see… Hm hm… Mmm…”
She read the important pages over and over again and then let out a long sigh.
“Nope. I still don’t know how any of this came about. What in the moons?”
She couldn’t even think of a reason why she would sneak out of Saint-Noel on Holy Eve. It seemed like such a crazy thing to do. What could have gotten her to act that way?
“I have the feeling it was for something stupid and silly… If I stay in the academy, there shouldn’t be any problems, though. If I’m careful and don’t leave the island, I should be fine…”
Rafina made Saint-Noel Island into a place where people could be safe. It was not easy to trespass into it.
Still, Mia couldn’t shake the feeling of worry that kept coming back.
It would happen on the day of the Holy Eve Festival, after all. The most people would come and go from the island at that time every year. Of course, to keep out would-be killers, everyone who came in would probably be closely watched.
But what about the ones who are leaving? Couldn’t you hide in some kind of vehicle that was going away? What if she gave some money to a merchant behind his back and asked to go for a horseback ride in the evening? Could she get off the island by herself?
Perhaps.
But even if that is true, how did she die?
“In any case, it would be a fatal mistake for me to let down my guard. The best thing I can do is stay on the island. Even so, I should still get ready for emergencies, just in case.”
In this situation, the first thing she had to do was find out ahead of time what could happen during the Holy Eve Festival. Knowing was very important.
“First, I’ll have to ask Miss Rafina what she has planned for the festival. Time to find out what’s going on.”
She stopped talking and pursed her lips as she had another thought.
“Also, it says I leave on horseback, so I’ll have to get better at that.”
She was up against skilled thieves. And maybe even wolves. But as long as she rode a horse, she might be able to get away.
“The horse runs faster the less I weigh. I think I should give the horsemanship club my full attention for a while. Hm. Well, that’s over with…”
Now that she knew what she was going to do in the near future, she started to think about something else.
Her death was the end of the Chronicles. So, it didn’t tell her how the academy city project went, if a new strain of wheat was made, or what the effects of the famine were.
The question, “What about my kids?” was even more important.
Bel especially…
Bel, who is supposed to be my descendant, couldn’t have been born if I died so young… How does that work?
She looked at Bel, who was scratching her head, and then she looked back at her. The girl didn’t seem to have changed at all. The story in the book didn’t seem to fit with that.
Don’t tell me… Did Bel tell me a lie? Is she really the killer, and she’s been playing me all along?!
She looked at Bel straight in the eyes.
She only got a few innocent blinks and a confused tilt of the head in return. Her full cheeks gave off a completely calm vibe that was too far from the violent images of assassins to make sense. She was also the one who gave me the Princess Mia Chronicles to begin with.
It would be odd to trust the book but not her. If I can trust one, I should also be able to trust the other. In other words, there must be something else going on if things don’t fit together.
Mia looked back and forth between Bel and the book as she thought. She swivelled her head around a lot before coming to a decision.
“Ah, now I get it. This is why. Whatever “it” is, it got lazy…”
There was a very satisfying moment when a piece fell into place and she saw how everything fit together.
In a nutshell, this is her logic.
It probably wasn’t too hard for her diary or the Chronicles to rewrite themselves. It was easy to do, so their contents changed often.
Bel, on the other hand, was a different story. Rewriting a person’s memories or even their very existence by making them go away and come back again was probably very hard.
Whoever or whatever is doing this rewriting must find it very annoying that she keeps changing the whole fabric of reality every time she does something small. Even beings that could change the past got tired, right?
So God or whoever or whatever is in charge probably decided to wait until the direction of history is clear before making everything else fit.
The more she thought about it, the more it made sense and seemed easier. It was kind of like how the cafeteria worked. Changing the flavour of the jam on her bread was easy, but if they kept changing the dinner menu, the kitchen staff would go crazy. They would tell her to figure everything out first before giving them the order.
In fact, she had a vague memory of being told the same thing in the past.
But that was back when she was still the selfish Princess of Tearmoon and could still get her way, so her complaint was worded in a very roundabout way.
Oh no, I’m onto you. You want to do the least amount of work possible. Who would have thought that the gods could also be lazy?
After giving this higher being a personality trait she didn’t know much about, she felt a connection to it. She felt like she could pat it on the shoulder and say, “I know how you feel, man.”
But because she was working so hard on her thoughts, she didn’t hear what Bel was saying.
“Oh, Miss Mia? Did you hear me?”
“Huh? Oh, uh… I wasn’t, no. I’m sorry about that.”
She sighed loudly and shook her head.
“So much is going on. I had to stop for a moment to get my thoughts in order. Could you tell me again what you were saying?”
“Okay. I was talking about how I became really good friends with someone I met over the summer. I’d like to tell you about her.”
“My! Bel, you made a friend? Certainly. I’d love to meet her.”
Mia quickly got out of bed and put on a soft, grandmotherly smile. As soon as Bel opened the door, the smile turned into a strained, twitching half-grin.
Especially since the young girl who walked in…
“Your Highness, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
She smiled in the nicest way.
“I am the daughter of Duke Yellowmoon, who is a loyal servant of His Imperial Majesty.
I am Citrina Etoile Yellowmoon.”
Author’s Note:
* Setting disclosure for consideration
Mia’s reasoning is somewhat correct, but for the sake of those who want to think about it, some settings are disclosed. It will be a spoiler & it’s not science fiction, so it’s somewhat fuzzy… but if you’re interested, go ahead.
“Time Paradox and Resistance”
Basically, if a time paradox occurs in this story, correction power will work to correct it. The diary, the description of the princess, etc. have been rewritten with the correction power.
And depending on the time-shifted objects, there are those that are susceptible to the corrective force and those that resist to some extent and try to maintain their current shape.
Basically
Written character <tool (existence) <living thing<? ? ?
The resistance increases in the order of , and if it is a living thing, it will be almost unaffected. However, since it is not completely cut off from his own time axis, if he dies…
As for “???”, it will continue to maintain its shape without being affected at all, but eventually it will be integrated into one time axis and processed as ~~, so the person in question will not notice it. …….
