The man in the seat across from her checked Rosalind's face. Three times.
Through the second time, she pretended not to notice. At the third, she couldn't help tilting her head.
—Was the Ice Grand Duke really someone who watched people's faces this closely?
They had passed the border checkpoint, the carriage had given one great lurch, and the sound of the wheels had just changed from cobblestones to the smooth paving of a well-laid highway.
"...Your Grace, do I perhaps look unwell somehow?"
"No."
Lucas turned his gaze away, out the window.
"I was only checking whether the long journey had tired you."
People generally didn't check that sort of thing three times. Rosalind thought so privately as she rested a hand lightly on the document case in her lap and turned her own gaze out the window.
—Ah. This is...
Before she could even draw breath, her eyes had already registered the difference.
The road was straight.
The furrows on either side were evenly spaced. When they passed a cart, their driver didn't click his tongue even once. The other driver, too, gave a small nod as he went by.
(...Traffic control actually works here.)
Out of a bookkeeper's habit, that was the first thing Rosalind thought. You could tell most of what you needed to know about a country's officials from how well a single road was kept. In her past life, a client's parking lot she'd seen on some business trip had been kept in much the same way. That had been a well-run company, too.
"The highways of the Grand Duchy of Vernant are repaired twice a year, with the person in charge rotated each time," a low voice informed her from the seat across.
When she looked back, Lucas Vernant was watching her, his long fingers laced on his knee.
"Rotate the person in charge?"
"Leave it to the same man and he repairs only his own territory. Since we switched to rotation, the quality of the highway as a whole has improved."
"...I see."
Rosalind looked out the window once more.
—Rotational staffing, and a switch in performance metrics.
In her head, past-life jargon supplied the translation on its own.
(I can't yet say whether they have the concept of overtime pay. But at least it seems I've arrived in a world where slackers don't simply get away with it.)
Before long, the town appeared.
White walls. Roof tiles gleaming silver. Three-story merchant houses standing shoulder to shoulder in neat rows.
Walking the streets were women carrying shopping baskets, a young merchant checking how the barrels were stacked in front of his shop, a boy with what looked like a delivery basket on his back.
By her past-life sense of time, it was probably around seven-thirty in the morning.
Not a commuter rush, though.
Everyone wore the face of someone walking to their own place of work.
"The Silver Tower is in the center of town," Lucas added, briefly again.
"You'll see it soon."
"The Silver Tower, being..."
"Our castle. It's called that because of the roofing."
"...So you don't call your home your home."
When Rosalind replied offhandedly, Lucas's mouth stilled for an instant.
"Home, hm."
"Ah, no. I ought to have said your place of business."
"No."
Lucas turned his gaze away, out the window.
"That may be more accurate."
It was a short voice, like talking to himself.
(So Your Grace is also the sort who lives at the office.)
She nodded only in her heart and pursued it no further. Executives generally spent more time in their offices than at home.
—No. The president at my old company was the exception, wasn't he.
(He had his employees living at the office, while he himself would drop in for an hour or so whenever the mood struck him, then head home to his tower condo in Roppongi...)
The moment the memory surfaced, her temple seemed to twinge, and Rosalind quietly put a lid on it. His Grace was different. At the very least, he was someone who was on the ground himself. That alone made him a hundred times more trustworthy than her past-life president.
The carriage swung wide to the right.
The view opened up all at once.
A circular plaza. At its center stood a slender, lofty tower, roofed in tier upon tier of silver.
A white palace spread out to the left and right from the base of the tower. Sweep-clean paving stones. Every guard in the ranks stood with a perfectly straight back, and not a single word passed between them.
Rosalind held her breath, just for a moment.
(...This is beautiful.)
It was clearly different from the mornings Ritsuko Tanaka had looked up at from a gray station platform. She'd been used to those, in their own way, so she wouldn't call them bad.
But the morning here—didn't hurt the eyes.
A well-ordered landscape, by itself alone, loosened a person's nerves a notch.
The carriage stopped. The door opened.
"Welcome, Advisor Rosalind."
The one who stepped forward from the center of the ranks was a man in his forties. A deep gray coat, a silver insignia on his breast.
"We have been awaiting your installation as Economic Advisor."
"—"
Without a sound, Rosalind drew a fresh, small breath.
It had been "Advisor Rosalind."
Not "Lady." Not "Princess-to-be," either.
She had just been welcomed as Rosalind Abel, Economic Advisor to the Grand Duchy of Vernant—by her name and her post.
"—Thank you," she replied, properly and aloud.
"Please brief me on the arrangements for commencing my duties, to whatever extent you are able."
"Very good."
The man in the gray coat—he introduced himself on the spot as Oswald, the chief secretary—bowed and began to lead the way.
It was ten minutes later that she was shown to her antechamber.
A high-ceilinged room with white walls. From the window she could see the rose garden in the inner court. It adjoined a bedroom, and on the bed, a change of traveling clothes and simple indoor wear had already been laid out, neatly folded.
"Advisor Rosalind. I understand today and tomorrow are to be days for you to recover from your journey," said an older woman who appeared to be the head maid, her voice low.
"Your hours of rest will be strictly observed. These are His Grace's orders."
"His Grace's orders," Rosalind echoed, half to herself.
"...Understood."
"I will come by later to ask your preferences regarding meals, the firmness of your bedding, and your hour of rising."
The head maid bowed deeply and quietly withdrew.
Rosalind waited for the door to close, and only then let out a long breath.
She sat down in the chair by the antechamber window, keeping her posture.
She folded her hands neatly in her lap.
(..."Your hours of rest will be strictly observed.")
(Made to rest. By order.)
Through Ritsuko Tanaka's mind, one after another, passed the platform at the last train, the ticket gates on Monday mornings, and the whiteness of the window as dawn broke while she lay slumped over her desk.
Back then, not one person had ever ordered Ritsuko to rest. No one had even told her she was allowed to.
Resting was always at your own risk. She'd once put in for a single day of paid leave without telling anyone, and ended up answering emails at home that day anyway.
And now—.
(Made to rest. By order.)
Rosalind gave a soft laugh.
She made no sound. It was a small smile, too slight for anyone to see.
But the grip of her folded fingers loosened, just a little.
Outside the door, two discreet knocks.
"Advisor Rosalind. A message from His Grace." It was Oswald's voice.
"The employment contract takes effect today. However, the first and second days are to be used as rest days. His Grace's view is that should you begin work straight after a long journey and fall ill at the outset, the loss to our side would be considerable. We will proceed on the arrangement that you begin in your office from the morning of the third day. Should you object to any of the terms, you may request a revision at any time—that is all."
Rosalind opened her mouth on reflex.
"—No, please allow me to begin my duties starting today—"
She got that far, then stopped.
Mountains of paperwork. Ledgers she wanted to get her hands into. Figures she wanted to move. —Her past-life fingers were already reaching for a pen on their own.
(...Ah. This is Ritsuko Tanaka's habit.)
(The moment someone tells me to rest, I try to go right back to volunteering for overtime.)
Rosalind held her posture before the door for half a second.
Then she composed her voice once more and replied.
"...Understood. I shall take today and tomorrow as rest days."
On the other side of the door, there was a very short pause.
"Very good."
Then a low voice, not Oswald's, added just one thing over it.
"—That helps."
It was Lucas. He had apparently carried the message himself.
Only two words, but the way he said them sounded like it helps that you're resting. Words that ought to have been for thanking someone's labor, offered to a person who had just decided to rest—a strange order of things, Rosalind thought absently.
Rosalind bowed her head slightly toward the door.
"I accept, with gratitude."
No reply came.
Two sets of footsteps quietly receded.
Still standing at the door, Rosalind repeated the same words once more, under her breath.
"I accept, with gratitude."
Just one night before, she had flung those same words at another man beneath the chandeliers of the royal palace.
That had been sarcasm.
This time, probably, it wasn't.
Back in the chair by the window, Rosalind deliberately left her document case closed.
(Stop doing today the work that can wait until tomorrow.)
(Rest, by order.)
Today she had tried making just one choice that her past self would never, ever have made.
That alone had taken far, far more courage than she'd expected.
(—My first time in a world where paid leave exists.)
Murmuring that one aside within her heart, where no one could hear, Rosalind folded her hands atop the document case.
It was a clear, bright morning, thin clouds drifting slowly over the Silver Tower.