Translator: Nox

Chapter 10

The head maid and the rest of Aubrey’s household staff stood frozen, their heads dipping in a panicked bow.

The tension had even reached Aubrey herself. She had been preoccupied with curating a mountain of year-end luxury items to soothe her son, Tedrick. The boy had been inconsolable ever since his Direct Lineage Necklace was seized, and she felt he deserved twice the usual indulgence to compensate for his misery.

“Every retainer in the estate is buzzing about the fact that you haven’t assigned a single servant to Tulia!”

Lilius’s voice boomed. To him, public image was everything.

“The rumors are disgusting! They claim I’m harbor a secret grudge against my brother, Marquis Aster, and that I’m taking it out on his daughter with these petty slights! Do you have any idea what this does to us?”

While the gossip had only just begun to trickle through a few circles, it was a devastating blow to Lilius. As the youngest sibling, he had spent years carefully cultivating a persona of total indifference toward power and inheritance.

Aubrey’s complexion drained of all color.

“That boy is a fool who lost a family treasure through his own incompetence,” Lilius continued, his voice sharp with disdain. “Why are you showering him with gifts as if he’s done something worthy? Stop this at once!”

“But he hasn’t eaten in a day! He’s crying constantly!” Aubrey protested, her maternal instincts flaring. “We have to do something to comfort him!”

“Silence!”

Lilius leveled a finger at his wife, his eyes narrowed.

“Get a competent head maid and a full staff to Tulia this instant. If the retainers are talking this much, the girl must be living in squalor. We have to kill these rumors before they spread any further!”

His gaze then fell upon the itemized list of bribes intended for Tedrick, and he scowled. He was already forced to play the sycophant toward Grand Duke Assis Frazier because of his son’s blunder, yet here was a list of absurdly priced treasures.

“Give me a pen!”

His assistant moved quickly, placing the instrument in his hand.

“This one, this one, and these,” Lilius muttered, slashing lines through the paper. “Send all of these to Tulia instead. And make sure every noblewoman and retainer in the castle hears about our generosity!”

The items he selected were the crown jewels of the collection: a white ermine cloak lined with gold-embroidered lotus blossoms, and ten bolts of artisan baroque lace that cost a staggering fortune for every few inches. He even included a heavy gold pendant encrusted with a border of brilliant diamonds. These were the very treasures Tedrick had been begging for.

Lilius dropped his public mask of the affable gentleman, his expression souring into a bitter grimace.

“That Tulia girl has become… different. It’s unsettling.”

His mind drifted to Marquis Aster Frazier. Despite the Marquis being absent from the Grand Duchy for over a decade, his shadow remained long; he was still the undisputed heir in the eyes of the elders and the military. Lilius’s face twisted with sudden fury.

“She’s clearly conspired with her father. That’s the only way a simpleton like her could coordinate such a successful strike against us.”

He leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper as he looked at Aubrey.

“When you choose her new head maid, make sure it’s someone who belongs to us. I want her every breath reported.”

---

“Not bad. At least the food isn’t freezing anymore.”

I had to admit, my plan worked. Making my hair look like a bird’s nest and following Ruk’s subtle advice to appear disheveled in front of the retainers had paid off. Even after I moved into the main castle, the service had been an insult. The variety of food had improved since my days in the storage unit, but the temperature was usually ice-cold. A bowl of hot soup had been a distant dream.

It seemed that after I played the role of the neglected waif for the court to see, Lilius had finally put his foot down with Aubrey.

“Food should never be used as a weapon. It’s beneath anyone with dignity,” I told myself.

I took a bite of the cream stew. The vegetables were perfectly tender-crisp, and the warmth spreading through my chest was a genuine relief.

I knew what would come next. Within forty-eight hours, a team of professional maids would arrive—all of them spies intended to track my every move. They were likely terrified by the sudden shift in my personality and desperate to find the source of my new competence. They probably suspected I was receiving secret dispatches from my father, Marquis Aster Frazier. They would likely ransack my quarters the moment I stepped out.

“Let them look,” I whispered to the empty room. “They won’t find a thing.”

The secret to my transformation wasn’t a hidden letter or a secret tutor. I looked at the shimmering status window, the golden star that only I could see, and finished my meal in peace.

I stood up and began clearing the table myself. Back when I played the game as Coriko, I didn’t have to lift a finger for chores like this. But since I was currently the black sheep of the Frazier family, the lower-level servants still treated me with cold indifference. It was easier to just do it myself. Compared to my past life as Han Ina, washing a few dishes was hardly a burden.

A sharp rap at the door interrupted my thoughts.

“Miss Tulia?”

I recognized the voice immediately. Ruk stepped into the room, and I looked up in surprise.

“Ruk? Is something wrong?”

“I hope your dinner was satisfactory,” he said smoothly.

Ruk was the only person in this fortress of a castle who treated me like a human being. Sometimes, after dealing with the coldness of Grand Duke Assis, Ruk’s polite smile felt almost warm. He was a true professional, an advisor who respected the bloodline regardless of personal politics.

As he walked toward me, however, his face suddenly went rigid.

I wondered what had set him off. He turned his head, his gaze turning icy as he looked behind him.

“Why is a lady of this house clearing her own table?”

I froze. Ruk wasn’t alone. Two maids had followed him in, and their already nervous expressions turned to masks of pure terror.

“I asked a question,” Ruk snapped.

“W-well, you see…”

“You told me specifically that you don’t stay to serve Miss Tulia because she prefers her privacy during meals,” Ruk said, his brow furrowing deeply. “How do you explain the fact that she is performing menial labor while you stand by?”

The maids remained silent, their lips trembling.

“She is a direct descendant of House Frazier,” Ruk reminded them, his voice dropping to a dangerous level. “To treat her with such blatant disrespect is an insult to the family name.”

“No! Chief Advisor, please!” one of them cried out, casting a desperate look my way. “The young lady… she’s so kind! She insisted on doing it herself to save us the trouble!”

“That’s right! She was being considerate!” the other chimed in.

“Considerate? Tulia Frazier?”

Ruk’s voice dripped with skepticism. The idea of the original Tulia—a girl known for her vanity and temper—helping servants was so absurd that the maids immediately fell silent, realizing their lie had only made things worse.

“Pathetic,” Ruk muttered. He ordered them to wait outside for their official reprimand. The maids tried to grab at my skirts, begging for mercy with tear-streaked faces, but they were ignored.

“I apologize for this, Miss Tulia. You shouldn’t have to endure such incompetence. I will personally oversee the selection of your new staff.”

“Thank you, Ruk. I appreciate it,” I replied with a forced smile.

His help was welcome, but it was a bit jarring to realize just how much he looked down on the ’old’ me. I needed to change the subject before things got awkward.

Before I could speak, a high-pitched, dramatic voice cut through the room.

“Oh, my goodness! Tulia!”

I turned to see a woman I had never met in person, yet whose face was etched into my memory from countless hours playing The Lady of the Flower. It was Viscountess Aubrey Frazier.

“Madam,” Ruk greeted her with a polite bow.

Aubrey offered her hand for the traditional kiss, her expression shifting from practiced grace to a mask of performative outrage.

“I heard everything from the hallway! You wretched girls! How dare you mistreat my darling niece?”

“Viscountess, please!” the maids sobbed.

“Silence! This is unacceptable!”

At Aubrey’s command, the retinue of senior maids following her lunged forward.

The sound of flesh hitting flesh echoed in the room.

Slap! Slap!

It was like watching a scene from a historical drama. The senior maids delivered brutal strikes to the younger girls’ faces without a hint of hesitation. Blood began to smear across their lips.

Aubrey didn’t even acknowledge the crying servants. Instead, she reached out and grasped my hands. Her skin was perfectly manicured and smooth, but her touch felt as cold and predatory as a snake.

She looked at me with the eyes of a doting aunt.

“There, there, dear. I’ll make sure those girls are punished however you see fit. What should we do with them?”