The next morning, Rosalind stopped in front of the office door she had been shown to.
Set into the center of the door was a polished brass plate.
Economic Advisor Rosalind Abel
Just a few short words, and a surname.
That was all it was.
Rosalind traced a single groove of the lettering with her fingertip.
The curve of the R in "Rosalind."
—Still my father's surname, then.
Not "Her Highness the Crown Princess," not "His Highness Alfred's," not "the villainess." Only her name and her post, engraved at the center of the door as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
(This position was only arranged yesterday, or the day before.)
And yet the brass looked a little more weathered than that would explain. Rosalind chose not to think about how long it had been waiting.
"Lady Rosalind."
A voice came from the other side of the door.
"We have been expecting you. Please, come in."
There were five people in the office.
A middle-aged man who introduced himself as the chief secretary—Oswald. Two secretaries, and two young clerks. All of them rose and bowed to Rosalind.
"We look forward to working under you, starting today."
Oswald's voice was courteous, no more and no less than it needed to be. It was not the gaze of someone sizing up "the villainess" or "the cold-hearted woman," nor the look of people waiting to see what the new hire could do.
It was the gaze of subordinates who were simply hoping a capable superior had arrived.
Rosalind returned a bow and looked at the desk.
On the large central desk sat neatly organized stacks of documents.
The latest trade records, the customs ledgers, the income and expenditure reports from each port, the three-year trend in coin minting—the very materials Rosalind would have asked for first had already been piled up before she could ask.
(...So this is what they call a workplace that actually functions.)
In a corner of her heart, Ritsuko Tanaka let out a low groan. In her past life, on the morning she'd been assigned to a new department, what had been waiting on her desk was a stack of invoices her predecessor had left behind when he quit, which no one had bothered to deal with.
"We would be honored to receive your guidance as our head."
Oswald bowed deeply once more.
The two secretaries followed suit. Only the two young clerks stood a little too straight, their faces just slightly tense.
Rosalind walked up to the desk and looked at each of the five faces in turn, just once.
"I will take responsibility," she said briefly.
"So you may act on your own judgment."
Oswald's brow moved, ever so slightly. One of the young clerks went round-eyed.
Rosalind continued.
"I will not reproach you for decisions you make where I cannot see. On the contrary—halting your work to wait for my instructions would get in the way of mine."
"...Understood."
Oswald lowered his head one degree deeper than the first time.
For the next three hours, Rosalind did nothing but read.
She did not leave her chair. She did not touch her tea. She followed figures with her quill, scribbled on a separate sheet, and opened the next ledger.
She ignored the glances the secretaries exchanged. In her past life, she had felt looks like the new girl's staying late again and when does she even sleep on her back hundreds of times. If she held a third-degree black belt in anything, it was concentrating while being stared at.
Three hours later, Rosalind set down her quill.
"Oswald."
"Yes."
"About the trade route that passes through my homeland—the Kingdom of Albert."
Rosalind slid the figures on her separate sheet to the center of the desk.
"This arrangement is at least ten years out of date. Switch to a direct northern route, and customs revenue rises by twenty percent. Routing everything through my homeland's transit ports benefits no one."
Oswald leaned over the sheet.
Within seconds, the color of his face changed.
"This must be reported to His Grace."
"Would you report it for me?"
Rosalind lightly twirled the shaft of her quill between her fingers.
—My homeland's customs revenue will lose twenty percent.
In her heart, Ritsuko Tanaka murmured only, "Oh, my."
The knock came at precisely the moment she finished murmuring "Oh, my" inside her head.
"Excuse me."
It was Lucas himself who walked in.
Oswald hurriedly moved to hand him the sheet, but Lucas stopped him with a look.
"First, I'll hear what she has to say."
Without pulling up a chair, standing just in front of the desk, Lucas said only, "Go on."
Rosalind explained once more her proposal to switch to the northern trade route.
Twice along the way, Lucas lowered his eyes. A habit of his when he was thinking, she judged. When he raised them the third time, he nodded once.
Until she had finished, Lucas did not interject a single word. He did not say "Get to the conclusion," or "Be more concise," or "Never mind that."
Once he had heard her out, Lucas spoke briefly.
"We'll proceed with your plan."
"I shall bring you the documents for approval by the end of tomorrow."
"Reporting after the fact is fine."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Reporting after the fact is fine."
Lucas picked up the sheet from the desk and checked just the final figure once more.
"You act on your own judgment, and I put my seal on it afterward. That's all."
With that, he left the office.
After the door clicked shut, no one moved for a while.
The first to move was Oswald.
He folded the sheet carefully and returned it to Rosalind's desk. Then he turned toward the young clerks and spoke in a very small voice.
"...His Grace listened to someone's explanation all the way to the end."
One of the young clerks stood there with his mouth hanging open.
"And he said he doesn't need the approval documents."
Rosalind pretended not to hear and opened the next ledger.
In the tally column for tax categories on the open page, she made a small mark. A habit from her past life. On any morning when a superior told her she could act on her own judgment, she always drew a little circle on the first page of the day.
It had nothing to do with whether the books balanced or not.
—Ritsuko. Did you hear what he just said?
In her heart, a call no one else could hear spilled out once more.
There was no answer.
Only the morning light streaming through the office's tall windows, gently illuminating the back of the brass plate from the inside of the door.
After the secretaries had withdrawn for their midday break, she happened to look up and find, at the corner of her desk, a white porcelain cup of steaming tea and two baked sweets on a plate.
There was no sign of a maid anymore.
Reaching for the cup, Rosalind glanced toward the door.
—I wonder whose instructions these were.
She started to think about it, then stopped. Most likely it was part of managing working hours. (Labor management is the foundation of running an organization, after all,) she murmured to Ritsuko Tanaka, almost like an excuse.
The tea was much, much hotter than she had expected.