In her room on the day before her departure, Rosalind was engaged in a rather peculiar task.
An estimate of how many years her former employer would last after she quit.
In her past life, no one would have bothered. An employee who had handed in her resignation, seriously calculating how to keep her old company alive? That went well beyond good-natured.
But the Rosalind of today had every right to do it. Her employer was now the Grand Duchy of Vernant. She owed no loyalty to her homeland's accounting department.
"At best, seven years. At worst, five."
She set down her quill and looked over the sheets of parchment lined up across her desk.
The day before her departure, three in the afternoon. Outside the window, the Abel estate's gardener was tending the roses for her send-off, one bloom at a time.
It was a very peaceful afternoon.
Except on top of her desk, where it was anything but.
There were three sheets of parchment.
The first: the Kingdom of Albert's customs revenue over time.
Down twelve percent over the past three years already. Once she redesigned the trade routes on the Grand Duchy's side, it would fall by another twenty percent.
The second: funds flowing out of the church foundation that Saint Miria's money passed through.
Donations to the same orphanage booked twice across different months, with only one of the entries pulled from the ledger. Scripture copying fees exceeding the number of copyists. Purchase records for ritual implements showing the same item bought again four times a year.
Sloppy concealment. The difference wasn't buried anywhere—it was simply skimmed. Which was why Rosalind had only needed to look it over for an hour or so before the skimmed amount floated right to the surface. Roughly eight percent a year. The evidence, the other side had been kind enough to leave behind on its own.
The third: Crown Prince Alfred's budget overrun rate. Fifteen percent in the most recent accounts. No intention of improvement.
Rosalind laid the three side by side and added them up once more.
"Well, yes. That is how it comes out, isn't it."
She tried saying it aloud. Alone, in her own room.
(By my old instincts, this is—a midsize trading company that keeps rolling over its promissory notes, I suppose.)
The year before she collapsed from overwork, one of the client companies Ritsuko Tanaka had handled as an accountant had numbers exactly like these.
Numbers that somehow came out pristine at every closing. Textbook cooked books.
That company really did go under, the year after she died.
Rosalind stacked the three sheets of parchment neatly.
(I am not that company's accountant. Nor its client.)
(The me of today is—a former employee who quit promptly and is putting her onboarding paperwork in order for the new job.)
At the edge of the desk lay one more document, in a class of its own.
A copy of her employment contract. The one she had hammered out and signed last night in a corridor of the Abel ducal residence, in front of Grand Duke Vernant himself.
Rosalind placed her finger on the penalty clause.
Article 7. In the event of unilateral termination of this contract, the terminating party shall pay, as compensation, a sum equivalent to six months of Rosalind Abel's annual salary.
"Six months of annual salary."
She said it aloud and traced it once more.
(...A perfectly sensible sum for an individual contract.)
Whether she was the one who quit or the employer was the one who dismissed her, the same six months. Mutual. Not an amount one could swallow lightly on a whim, nor an amount that would leave anyone unable to make ends meet. A figure set just right to keep either party from walking away.
(The employer understood that too, and accepted an equal chain so that I could sign without worry. A fair contract.)
That was how she read it.
(—Well, if one tried to pile on any more than that in a contract between an individual and a state, it would no longer be an employment contract at all.)
An employment contract was an employment contract. Anything involving her homeland, the employer would arrange separately within an intergovernmental framework—she had obtained verbal confirmation of that in the corridor last night as well. A separation that kept the weight of one individual's signature from dragging a nation's budget into it.
(—How very kind of him.)
"How very kind indeed."
Rosalind gave the copy of the contract a light bow, in proper ladylike form.
There were two knocks at the door.
"My lady, it is Graham."
"Come in."
Graham, the old butler, entered with tea and a plate of baked sweets on a silver tray.
Rosalind reached out without thinking.
A baked sweet. Warm against her fingertips.
A sign of tension and fatigue—though she herself had not noticed. She simply put it in her mouth, chewed, and let out a short breath.
"My lady."
"What is it?"
"A moment ago you were murmuring to yourself, 'If only this world had the concept of paid vacation.'"
"Oh, you heard that?"
"A young lady's murmurings fall within a butler's scope of duties."
"Are you pointing out that my ladylike manner had blown away like the books at annual closing?"
"Quite so."
"I'm aware of it."
Rosalind giggled. Then she shifted her gaze to the other bundle of papers set beside the silver tray.
"Graham. Have you sorted out the additional severance?"
"Yes. From your personal funds, my lady. Here."
Rosalind flipped through the bundle she was handed.
The names of servants who had worked many years on the Abel ducal estate, and the additional amounts.
The head cook, the old laundress, the stable hand, the gardener, the young apprentice girls.
All of them. Not one missed.
"I calculated it as a living safeguard for the next three years, in case our homeland's currency collapses. With the inflation rate at the worst-case scenario."
"My lady."
"Yes?"
"My portion, my lady, this is..."
"Too much?"
"Far too much."
"Oh, and here I worried it wouldn't be enough."
Rosalind was entirely serious.
Graham started to say something, then lowered his gaze to the hands holding the silver tray.
"...I accept it gratefully."
"Good."
Rosalind nodded.
(I wonder if this is how a corporate slave feels on the morning she quits, quietly leaving a box of sweets on a junior colleague's desk.)
She hadn't been able to do it in her past life.
Ritsuko had used up all her strength just putting the handover documents in order, and collapsed with not only no parting gift for her juniors but even her own desk only half cleared.
This time, she could.
That alone meant plenty.
Evening.
The servants of the Abel ducal residence had begun gathering naturally in the entrance hall, arranging the send-off.
When Rosalind came down the stairs, they turned all at once and bowed.
"My lady Rosalind."
"Take care, my lady."
"Lady Rosalind."
—"Rosalind."
From mouth after mouth, her name was called.
Had the nobles who whispered about the "cold-hearted lady" in society seen it, they would probably have doubted their eyes.
But to Rosalind, it was an ordinary sight she had grown used to over eighteen years.
(In my past life, the section chief took an approval proposal I'd spent three sleepless nights putting together, presented it to the board as his own achievement, and my name was erased from the minutes.)
(Back then, the only person who called me by name was probably the lady at the register in the late-night convenience store.)
So in truth, she knew it well. That being called by your name was not something to take for granted.
(My servants are fond of me not because of any virtue of mine, but because I pay them properly for their labor, define their duties clearly, and make sure they take their days off.)
(I'm simply running the employment contracts the way they ought to be run.)
She genuinely believed that.
In a country where society's young ladies worked their servants to the bone on whims and moods, an eighteen-year-old duke's daughter was single-handedly taking labor management seriously. An anomaly.
And she herself regarded it as "normal."
Rosalind handed the envelopes of additional severance to each of them, one by one, with her own hands.
The old laundress took her envelope, clutched it in both hands, and bowed her head without a word.
The young stable hand asked, in all earnestness, "My lady, would it be impossible for me to drive the carriage all the way to the Grand Duchy?" Rosalind answered with a straight face, "It would. They have contracts with their own horses."
Last of all, the head cook held out a small package.
"My lady. For the road."
"Oh, baked sweets?"
"Your usual, my lady."
"Thank you. These will be very useful."
Rosalind tucked it into her breast pocket with a little clunk—next to the copy of the signed contract and the three years of preparation her father had given her.
Her breast pocket grew just a little heavier.
Night.
Back in her room, the last thing Rosalind did was gather up the three sheets of economic projections for her homeland that lay on her desk.
These she would leave behind.
She would give them to Duke Abel and let her father use them as he saw fit.
It was her final parting gift, to protect the house after she had left her homeland.
(I'm stepping off a sinking ship.)
(But I won't take the crew down with me on my way off.)
Rosalind slipped the bundle of parchment into an envelope and pressed the wax seal carefully.
Not the crest of House Abel—she chose her personal seal instead.
A private handover, from daughter to father.
By her old instincts, it was like the personal notebook one hands to a successor on the eve of changing jobs.
With the tip of the quill she'd set on the desk, she idly ran through tomorrow's schedule.
Departure at six tomorrow morning. Her father was not the sort to come out as far as the gate, so he would likely see her off from his study window. Emma would accompany her. The carriage would be sent by the Grand Duchy of Vernant, with that taciturn swordsman on the driver's box.
(...And the employer himself, I'm sure, will be waiting for paperwork in his office.)
(Well, there's no way he would come to collect me in person.)
Rosalind gave a small nod and blew out the lamp with a soft puff.
The next morning, when the carriage door opened from the inside and the man himself was sitting in the back seat, she would genuinely interpret it as "transportation falls within the scope of the contract terms."
But that was a story for tomorrow.
Tomorrow, she would cross a single bridge. Nothing more.
It was only that sort of night.