On a morning at the threshold of autumn, a single ginkgo leaf clung to the office window.
"Rosie."
Lucas came around the corner of the desk and draped a coat over Rosalind's shoulders as she sat in her chair.
"Lord Lucas, the room temperature is exactly as regulated."
"You're seven months along. Your sense of warmth runs on different numbers from the regulations."
Rosalind's belly had already grown too round to hide.
On the desk, the agenda for the Finance Council and the list of name candidates for the child lay side by side, in the same spot.
Neither was settled yet.
"Lord Lucas."
"Lucas is fine. You don't need the 'Lord' anymore."
"...Lucas. Regarding today's agenda—"
"I'll attend."
"It falls within my purview."
"I'm serving as acting chair for the time being. I believe we settled that two months ago."
"As I recall, that was a matter of covering for me, not stripping me of the post."
Lucas let out a small breath and leaned toward the desk.
"Take it back whenever you want. Until then, I'll keep it warm for you."
—He's been saying it the same way for three years.
"...Is that what passes for flirting during business hours?"
"I'd say the same thing outside business hours."
Rosalind felt a faint warmth rise deep in her cheeks and hurriedly turned her face back to her documents.
—I still haven't gotten used to it.
Recently, she had realized she had no intention of getting used to it, either.
That night, the child kicked.
Inside Rosalind's belly, as she sat on the chaise, came a small but unmistakable blow from within.
"Oh."
Rosalind looked down at her belly without thinking.
"...What is it?"
Lucas, who had been putting away papers beside her, looked up.
"Just now, I think—"
"Mm."
"I believe it kicked."
Lucas looked at her, his face composed, yet for one instant his expression went completely still.
Then, with both hands resting on his knees, he didn't move for a while.
—He can't decide whether he's allowed to touch.
Rosalind let out a small laugh of her own, took his hand, and gently laid it on her belly.
"You may touch. Half of this child is yours, after all."
For a while, the two of them waited in silence.
Once more, from within, came an answer: a soft little thump.
Beneath Lucas's palm, someone was unmistakably there.
Only then did Rosalind see the corners of Lucas's eyes soften, just slightly.
It was a face he would never show in public.
"Rosie."
"Yes?"
"Thank you."
Spoken low. Only that.
Rosalind started to say something back and, in the end, said nothing.
She simply leaned in of her own accord and rested her forehead against his shoulder, just once.
Lucas went off to the bath, and Rosalind was alone again.
On the desk lay the black leather notebook he had left behind.
She turned the pages with a soft flutter.
The half year around her due date: blank, no duties. Finance Council, diplomacy, tariff milestones—all of it reorganized in Lucas's handwriting. Her schedule came first; his shifted to fit around it.
In a corner of the last page, a hasty scrawl.
"For when you return, your desk will be left as it is. Yours."
Rosalind slowly traced that one line with her finger.
—Not taken away. I never knew that could feel so quiet.
She leaned her head back against the chair.
A high, white ceiling.
—Ritsuko.
In her heart, she called Ritsuko Tanaka's name once more.
Picking up past what she had said two months ago, at the moonlit window.
—Hey, Ritsuko.
—Your belly, the one no one ever got to touch in your time.
—Right now, there's someone else here.
—This time, I'll hold them properly.
Inside the palm pressed to her belly came one more answer: a soft little thump.
That was enough.
Deep in the office, in a corner of the bookshelf, the Temple Stone entrusted to them by the Church lay sleeping beneath its cloth.
Rosalind had not touched it once since.
If she did, the strength would likely drain from her fingertips again. But there was no longer any need.
Whatever she had wanted to tell Ritsuko had surely, by now—reached her, in some gentle dream that girl had dreamed, someday, somewhere.
She didn't need the stone anymore.
"Corporate Slave 2.0 as Queen? I respectfully decline."
Three years ago, in the audience hall of her homeland, she had greeted that broken engagement with a fist pump.
If only she could tell the Rosalind of that day something.
Rosalind drew the list of name candidates toward her and added one more line with her pen.
And beneath it, as a memorandum for herself alone, one she had no intention of showing anyone, she wrote:
Happiness as Grand Duchess? I humbly accept.
Once it was written, her cheeks went warm deep down after all, and she hastily folded the paper in two.
Footsteps were approaching down the hall, just a little faster than usual.
They would look over the reorganized schedule together, no doubt.
They would laugh together again over the new line on the name list.
Outside the window of the darkened office, the white garland at the city's last shopfront swayed once more in the night wind.
Tomorrow, surely, someone in the city would call her name first again.