T/N: This is an extra chapter that takes place after the Stuarts’ arrived in the Royal Capital, before the siblings’ enrollment at the academy.
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Arrival in the Royal Capital [Part 1]
One horse-drawn carriage raced through the Royal Capital’s streets in the middle of the night.
The torches lighting the city had already been taken down, and the carriage ran through the moonless, pitch-black road like a gust of wind.
That carriage turned from the main street into a small alley and stopped before the gate of a certain mansion.
“Meowww”
Perhaps to inform the passengers that they had arrived at their destination, the horse drawing the carriage uttered a strange neigh.
Well, it was no wonder.
After all, the one drawing the carriage wasn’t a horse but a frighteningly huge jet-black cat whose fur allowed it to blend perfectly into the darkness.
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“Nee-sama, please give it a break, seriously!”
William Stuart said the line he had uttered so often that he thought it had almost become his catchphrase for another time today, too, to his older sister in an upright manner.
“We made it in time anyway, so isn’t it fine, William?”
The Stuart family’s older sister, Emma, replied to her younger brother’s candid advice without the slightest remorse.
“We made it in time because the cats became the ones pulling our carriage halfway through the journey and didn’t even rest at night!”
‘That was such a nightmarish journey,’ William held his head, feeling greatly perplexed.
Right when the family already gave up, thinking, ‘Ah, it’s impossible. We definitely won’t be able to arrive in the Royal Capital at this rate,’ the cats with night vision volunteered to draw the carriage at midnight. They drove the carriage day and night without rest, and the family finally managed to reach the Royal Capital late last night.
Even though it was a long journey from the borderland Palace, they should have arrived in the Royal Capital several days ago if they had driven the carriage normally.
They departed early with plenty of spare time but ended up only arriving late at night yesterday, drastically falling behind schedule. It was truly a grand mysterious adventure.
“No, we didn’t make it in time, did we? Why do you think we are making beds for insects so early in the morning?”
William and Emma’s older brother, George, heard the two’s conversation and rebutted Emma with a sigh.
If they had arrived on schedule without a hitch, they could have participated in tea parties and evening parties, became acquainted with students who were going to enroll in the academy this year, exchanged information about courses, and most importantly, had enough dry runs to get used to noble etiquette.
What the two meant when they said they made it in time was them not being late to the party hosted by the Royal Family that would be held this night to celebrate new students’ enrollment at the academy, but even that wasn’t without any problem. They were still left with one headache.
They hadn’t prepared Emma’s dress.
George stared at his younger siblings’ faces and sighed, ‘Who was it again that said to just splurge and order a new dress from a tailor shop in the Royal Capital?
Why did no one predict we would arrive at the Royal Capital this late?
Even though we have Emma [the main culprit of every commotion] in our family.
I can only think it was because we were too excited about moving from the borderland to the city.’
The insect bed-making that the three siblings had been doing at a quick pace since morning was also unplanned work.
In the first place, Emma’s insects should have been transported carefully from Palace in a custom-made insect carriage, and that carriage could have been used directly as an insect shed by simply taking the wheels off.
Now then, just what exactly happened to the family on their way to the Royal Capital?
To be precise, what exactly did Emma do?
