Count Fríden’s younger sister─.
Julia Fríden was a diligent person.
She worked as a civil servant in the western part of the empire, and she was also quite a capable administrator.
Although she didn’t get along with the parliant, keeping her distance from the central governnt, she was still a competent figure.
In that sense, Julia Fríden was indeed soone who fit the image of a ‘Fríden.’
Maintaining a distance from the central nobility was a long-standing tradition of the Fríden family.
It had been this way even before the empire established the ‘parliant.’
After the parliant was established, this tendency had only beco more pronounced, and as a result, Julia Fríden was not very knowledgeable about the capital’s affairs.
At most, she was aware of only a few major incidents.
Because of this, Julia Fríden couldn’t understand the whispers of young nobles at the wedding.
“Isn’t that Eric, the one reading a book over there? I think I saw him a few years ago at the ‘HolsXLupin Contest’…”
“He’s probably just soone who looks like him.”
“No, I’m telling you, it’s really him… I was sitting in the front row at that award ceremony. Do you know how much I spent to get an invitation to that?”
“Then why don’t you just go and ask him? Tell him you’re a fan.”
“What? Are you crazy? Talking to him directly would be sacrilege!”
“Is Eric the one called Hor? What sacrilege?”
“Honestly, isn’t Herodotus more entertaining than Hor?”
“What? Are you not afraid of the 10 million Hor followers in the empire?”
“How did that cult grow so big?”
“They only have a few hundred followers, but all of Hor’s fans can be considered potential Hor followers.”
The young nobles were gossiping, occasionally glancing at her nephew, Ed. It seed they were discussing the author, but their eyes kept straying toward Ed.
It was probably because her nephew was quite handso.
When he was a child, he had been cute and gentle, but the nephew she saw after a long ti had grown up and looked rather charming. He must have had many girls crying over him─.
But seeing him read books at the banquet, uninterested in socializing, made her think that worrying about him wasn’t necessary.
Rather, it made her wonder if he would ever get married.
Should she bring up the topic? She approached her nephew, who was reading a book, and tried to strike up a conversation again.
“Our handso nephew, what book are you reading?”
“Oh, it’s just a book about war.”
“I see? Is it because you’re a boy that you like such things? I also love books. Do you mind if I sit next to you and read with you?”
“Sure.”
She sat next to him and looked at the book.
But she couldn’t read its contents. It was written in a language that Julia Fríden didn’t know.
She was familiar with languages like the Haren language, a few dialects used in so duchies, and ancient or religious languages used in the Bible, but this was a completely unfamiliar language.
The shape of the characters was so different that it looked more like pictures than letters. Was it pictorial writing?
“Nephew? What language is this?”
“Oh, it’s ‘Loavik,’ a language used in the southern deserts of the Haren Kingdom. I learned it after I ca across so books on the subject when I visited the Haren Kingdom.”
“Is that so…?”
“The characteristic of Loavik is that it’s a type of logogram—aning it uses ideographic characters, but at the sa ti, phonetic symbols are also mixed in. It seems like it’s a transitional writing style, where hieroglyphs evolved into phonetic characters. The order of reading is also interesting. It starts from the middle with the first character, so the aning expands from ‘the center’ to ‘the outside.’ This is likely related to Loavik’s religion—”
“I see… interesting.”
“Yes, yes. This page describes a battle that took place over a river that ran through the center of Loavik. It shows the way they recorded the number of soldiers—”
For a long ti, Julia Fríden had to listen to a lecture about ‘Loavik,’ ‘Loavik hieroglyphs,’ ‘Loavik numbers,’ and more.
During this process, she also learned how the language, religion, and writing system of Loavik were interconnected, and how she could infer the worldview and culture of the people of Loavik from it.
“Right. It’s quite fascinating…”
“Yes, yes. Oh, I’m sorry. I’ve gone on for too long, haven’t I?”
“No, no. It was interesting! But, nephew, while the book talk is nice, how about we talk about what’s been going on in our lives since we haven’t seen each other in a while?”
“Sure.”
“For example, now that Eric is married, is there anyone you’re seeing, my handso nephew?”
“Ah, no.”
“Any particular tastes or preferences when it cos to won? What do you think of arranged marriages?”
“Well, I’m not sure.”
“If you’re okay with it, I could introduce a few candidates…”
“I’m not thinking about it yet.”
“I see…”
“Yes.”
With that brief answer, Julia Fríden let out a resigned smile, as if her nephew was only interested in the subject of books.
Now that she thought about it, her nephew had always been like that.
Ever since he grew up, every ti he visited the Fríden estate, he would sit by the bookshelf, and whenever he went out, he always had two books in hand.
Whenever she playfully took a book from his hands while he was reading, he would silently look up at her with a cold stare, then pick up another book from the shelf and sit down to read again.
He did this repeatedly.
Comparing that to now, her nephew felt much more human. The nephew from back then… was a little…
It was eerie.
Seeing a child with a blank expression suddenly smile and act as if they loved their family in front of their parents would naturally evoke instinctive fear in anyone.
Fortunately, as the years went by, that eerie feeling gradually disappeared.
As a result, Julia Fríden had almost entirely forgotten about it.
Even when those mories occasionally resurfaced, she would dismiss them as re illusions.
Such a mix of complex and subtle emotions was reflected in Julia Fríden’s words.
“Our dear nephew has no interest in anything besides books, huh?”
“It’s just a hobby, really.”
“It’s good to enjoy hobbies, but you shouldn’t beco so absorbed in them that you miss out on everything else, okay?”
“That’s easier said than done…. Though, recently, we did go see a performance as a family. Hmm.”
“Hmm?”
“Now that I think about it, that was four years ago… No, maybe five?”
“Huh?”
It was hopeless.
It seed like their dear nephew was destined to spend his entire life with books.
With so little interest in anything else, no amount of matchmaking proposals would an anything.
But marriage was necessary… Or maybe becoming a monk wouldn’t be a bad idea?
Since he loved reading, perhaps it would suit him better.
While Julia Fríden was deeply lost in thought.
Suddenly, a mory crossed her mind.
“Ah! Nephew, what about our Isolette?”
“Pardon?”
“You two were quite close when you were younger, weren’t you?”
.
.
.
Isolette.
It had been quite a while since he had heard that na.
Co to think of it, there was a girl by that na with whom he had been close during childhood.
She was, if he rembered correctly─
“Aunt’s daughter?”
His cousin.
“Yes. She also loves books. Right now, she and her father─ William, are staying in Duke Kapeter’s territory, so they couldn’t attend the wedding.”
“…So, you’re suggesting I et my cousin for a match?”
“Not exactly in that sense. It’d just be nice for you two to reconnect. I thought it’d be good for you to et and chat casually!”
“Ah, I see.”
“She even writes novels, you know….”
“I’ll go et her right away.”
“Eh?”
.
.
.
Looking back, the first piece of literature he plagiarized in this world wasn’t Don Quixote.
Sohow, while rewriting Andersen’s Fairy Tales for his brother, he had felt a strange familiarity.
As it turned out, he had already plagiarized a fairy tale when he was very young.
It had been for a child he used to be close to.
At that ti, his aunt and father seed to have quite frequent interactions.
It was before his aunt was reassigned as an administrator to the western empire, and her husband, William Reinhardt, had not yet moved to Duke Kapeter’s territory from the capital.
As a result, Isolette, the aunt’s daughter, often visited the Fríden estate.
Since the adults wanted the children to get along, they were left together in a room─
But being no ordinary child himself, he struggled.
Apparently, he wasn’t cut out for entertaining children.
So, he decided to read books as usual. Or rather, tried to.
“Why won’t you play with …? Do you hate …?”
“…….”
“Sniff….”
But Isolette burst into tears, and despite his general disinterest in others, he wasn’t cold-hearted enough to read a book while a child cried beside him.
To comfort her, he created the fairy tale of The Little rmaid.
“Isolette, how was the story?”
“Hmm! It’s sad that the rmaid’s love didn’t co true, but…. Letting go with a smile is what grown-ups do, right? Hehe. I think the rmaid must’ve been happy even as the wind….”
“Oh? Why do you think so?”
“Hmm…? Uh, well, if it were , I’d feel that way…. The rmaid’s love failed, but her heart was so beautiful. She knew her love was nearly impossible, yet she sacrificed her tongue and chose to beco human. Even when she had the chance to reverse everything, she chose to throw herself into the sea instead of stabbing the prince with the knife. So, isn’t the heart behind her choices more important than the outco?”
“…Haha!”
“Huh?”
“You’re a remarkable kid, aren’t you!”
“Eh?”
In short, Isolette had been the first reader of a story he had plagiarized.
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