Zenovia stood frozen, as if nailed to the ground.
Seeing that she had completely lost the will to lash out any further, Edmund finally let go of her arm.
For a long mont, thick silence wrapped around the three of them.
***
Naturally, Zenovia was summoned to Eisen imdiately.
“Zenovia.”
“......”
“You don’t even intend to offer an excuse?”
At those words, the boy’s face remained clouded with confusion.
“No, I just...”
She opened and closed her mouth several tis before firmly shutting it.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to make excuses—she simply had no idea what to say.
“It just... suddenly ca to . Like a certainty. I don’t even know why...”
Even she didn’t understand it.
Elodie, who had secretly followed along in her harvest mouse form, suddenly popped back into human shape and cut in.
She defended Zenovia without hesitation.
“Zenovia can't think of such bad things on her own. Sothing’s wrong.”
“This is not sothing you should be interfering with.”
Eisen swiftly shut her down and gestured to Eagles.
“Take her outside for a mont.”
“No!”
Elodie shrieked and clung to Zenovia’s waist.
The boy, who had already been trembling slightly, flinched at her sudden action.
“Zenovia's not that smart. She doesn’t even know which words are bad or dirty.”
She did know, though.
Zenovia looked slightly offended, but at least she had the sense to keep her mouth shut.
“Even if she repeated sothing she heard sowhere else, she truly believed it when she said it.”
“I’m not asking you to let this slide. Just wait a mont. Zenovia might’ve gone through sothing terrible.”
Even Eisen, who had been firm about excluding Elodie from the conversation, let out a sigh and pressed his fingers to his temple, as if dealing with a headache.
Despite being the one falsely accused, Elodie seed more concerned about Zenovia's fear than her own mistreatnt.
“You do understand that simply saying it suddenly felt like the truth is not an acceptable explanation.”
“......”
“If we go by the law, Zenovia Valkyrisen must be exiled. I do not make exceptions for family.”
For a mont, Zenovia’s face was overtaken by sheer devastation.
She had finally cleared up her misunderstanding—finally realized that her grandfather had cared for her all along.
And now Eisen himself would have to exile the grandchild he had cherished.
...I’m really going to be thrown out?
This had to be a nightmare.
“The only way you will not be exiled is if you were not acting of your own will. If you were completely innocent—manipulated in so way.”
Elodie seized that loophole without missing a beat.
“Zenovia is innocent.”
How do you know that?!
Zenovia almost blurted the question out loud.
Even she didn’t trust herself right now.
She was angry all the ti, quick to jump to conclusions, stupid, and had a terrible mory.
Even without being manipulated, she could easily have heard sothing, mistaken it for her own thought, and started spouting nonsense...
Yet, after hearing her baseless accusations, Elodie still stood up for her.
Still believed in her.
“Zenovia, you're dumber than a five-year-old. You don’t even know the Valkyrisen legal code.”
“......”
“The words you said to were too hard and too complicated. You couldn’t have thought them up on your own or even rembered them.”
How dumb does she think I am?!
So she believes because she thinks I’m too stupid to lie?
And why isn’t Grandpa saying anything?
Why does this work as an argunt?!
Dammit...
Overwheld with frustration, humiliation, and... gratitude—
Zenovia quickly wiped away the hot tears trailing down her cheeks with the back of her hand.
***
Zenovia sniffled as she trailed closely behind Elodie, dragging along Magic Cotton as well.
It was a pitiful sight.
Despite being nearly as big as Edmund, she looked like a kicked puppy.
“Even if Grandpa says that, he doesn’t actually suspect you, Zenovia. He knows the real culprit is soone else.”
Elodie pulled out a handkerchief that Sera had given her and handed it over.
Embroidered onto the fabric was a tiny harvest mouse, just like Elodie herself.
“Sniff...”
“Wash it before you return it.”
“Ugh, fine.”
Zenovia pouted, her eyes still red like a rabbit’s.
She seed to have cald down a little.
She was completely fine this morning.
Elodie studied her for a mont before asking:
“What did you do after Grandpa scolded you today?”
This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.
“Oh, right. Hey! How could you just abandon and run off? I had to sit through enough nagging to last a lifeti!”
Is that really the most important thing right now, you twelve-year-old?
“And after that?”
“I just had lunch. What else do you think I did?”
Then... had she actually eaten sothing bad?
Did soone poison her food or sothing?
“Oh, now that I think about it—”
Zenovia suddenly rembered sothing.
“On my way back from getting scolded, # Nоvеlight # so physician ca up to and nagged to take my dicine or whatever. I thought he was just picking the worst possible ti to bother .”
“dicine? So you took it?”
“Yeah, I had it after lunch.”
So it was sothing she ate.
“Why did you take it?”
Zenovia’s face turned red, and she hesitated for a long ti before finally confessing.
“Well... I told him I couldn’t sleep because I was annoyed about you, so he gave it to .”
“Annoyed?”
“That was before I got to know you, okay?! I definitely don’t think that now, so don’t get the wrong idea.”
She started rattling off excuses, even though Elodie hadn’t asked for any.
As if she was worried Elodie would be hurt.
Not that it was surprising. Given how she had acted when they first t, it was obvious she had hated her.
“And I definitely didn’t take it because of you today, either! It was just supposed to help with stress or whatever, and it was also supposed to help improve my attitude—hey, are you even listening?”
Elodie only half-listened to Zenovia’s unnecessary explanations.
Because there was sothing far more important.
She took dicine given by the physician... and then suddenly changed completely.
That ant the dicine had to be the cause.
There was a very high chance that the physician was the culprit.
Why wasn’t it 100%? Because there was still a chance the physician had been tricked by soone else.
Just like the maid who unknowingly served nerve poison disguised as tea.
The real question was how.
How do you make soone act like they have two personalities?
The second prince of Valkyrisen, soone who had always naturally gotten along with beastfolk, had suddenly started spouting prejudiced nonsense.
This wasn’t just the result of hearing so bad rumors and getting influenced.
It was brainwashing.
A completely different ideology had been implanted in her mind.
Her thoughts had been manipulated, with no logical connections, and yet she had fully believed them.
The scariest part was that she hadn’t even realized it.
She had thought those ideas were her own.
Yes, she was definitely brainwashed.
How could a drug cause brainwashing?
She didn’t know yet.
But she would find out.
“What’s the physician’s na?”
“I dunno, how am I supposed to rember that?”
“......”
Elodie stared at her with a look of utter disappointnt.
Feeling pressured, Zenovia grimaced and started thinking hard.
“Pa... sothing.”
Pa?
“Packer?”
“Huh? Wait. You know him?”
Elodie recalled the na she had once heard from Squirrel while half-asleep.
Physician Packer... the one treating Edmund’s insomnia.
She had heard that he used so kind of specialized sleep therapy...
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