The Empty Wall

Noah would not have spared a single thought for Presepe's suffering. No more than he spared for those taxidermied animals. To him she was nothing but a toy he wanted in his hands—not a person.

"Grand Duke, are you aware? Taxidermy has its fashions, just as jewelry and dress do."

"…Fashions?"

"Yes. When I was a boy, specimens of small animals enjoyed quite a vogue. I collected them to my heart's content, and then the craze died almost overnight. So now I follow the prevailing taste and keep the large ones. My interest has a way of vanishing rather quickly, you see."

"And what became of the specimens that no longer interested you?"

"I disposed of them."

Fenrik said nothing.

"There were so many, though, that after a point I simply shoved them into a storeroom like refuse. A pity, considering the fortune they cost, but what can one do? A thing that has lost its interest is no different from garbage."

The way he had treated Presepe?

Fenrik bit down hard on his lip.

"In any case, every one of my specimens is bled while still alive and treated with chemicals at once, which is why they look so wonderfully vivid."

Again, Fenrik did not answer.

"Lately, however, something else has caught my fancy."

Noah chattered on, thoroughly pleased with himself.

"Monsters. I hear people have begun making taxidermy of monsters as well, and when I learned of it my heart fairly raced. They are dreadfully difficult to obtain, though."

Fenrik offered no reply at all. His gaze had gone instead to a comfortable sofa set in a corner of the room, against the wall. He crossed to it at an unhurried pace, drew a hand along the smooth leather, and let his lips part.

"You sit here to admire them, I take it."

"Yes. I end my days on that sofa, looking. Every day. Every single day. It is also the hour I love best."

At that, Fenrik smiled faintly.

"The wall does look rather bleak, left bare like that. You might dress it with the rarest specimen in the whole collection."

He said it while regarding the empty stretch of wall directly above the sofa.

"I've thought the same, and regretted it. I left that space empty on purpose. I simply haven't found anything that pleases me yet. With so many magnificent pieces already gathered, whatever is to serve as the centerpiece ought to be grander still, don't you agree?"

Noah talked on without tiring. Fenrik gave him nothing more. He only watched, quiet, crimson eyes alight.

Presepe spent two full days shut inside the tower, bent wholly on digging up anything she could about the True Male Lead. She could afford the search; there was still time before the next event. That event, unfortunately, was exhausting in the extreme.

The original plot ran like this. A few days after Dietrich's banquet, Presepe is swept—through no fault of her own—into a certain incident, and that incident is what truly opens the long road of suffering laid out for her. Put simply, Dietrich receives a mysterious letter. Its senders are the opposition he has not yet finished rooting out: the remnants of the Second Prince, once heir to the throne, until Dietrich killed him.

The letter is thick with mockery and insult, and the worst of it is that it contains something only Presepe ought to know. On the anniversary of his mother's death, Dietrich—who never so much as lets liquor touch his lips—drinks himself senseless and weeps the night away beside her grave.

Dietrich's mother had been empress, and she died of illness when he was young. Illness, they called it. Everyone knew better. The emperor's overflowing favor for the Second Prince's mother, a mere consort, and the way he treated the empress as an afterthought, had only hastened her decline. That was also the only season in which Presepe and Dietrich had been close. A frail boy with nowhere left to set his heart had no one but Presepe at his side, and so she had known that pitiful habit of his.

Dietrich was, in any case, a man who felt deeply for his mother. To have the dead woman dragged into the open and laughed at would have been enough to enrage anyone—and because a secret only Presepe should have kept had been laid bare, it was only natural that his suspicion would fall on her. In the end, the points that set him off were these.

The culprit, of course, was not Presepe. Dietrich in his fury hauled the remnants in and began an investigation all the same, and he threw her into the Ice Prison.

She repeats that wretched plea without end, and on exactly the third day she collapses. When she comes to, she is in the tower, naturally.

From there, seeking Dietrich out in his own quarters lets her clear the misunderstanding and raise his affection. Remaining in the tower instead brings Siegfried, sent on Dietrich's order to check on her, and his affection can be raised as well. Wander outside and lose the way, and the direction of that wandering determines whether she meets Noah or Atar—with the same chance, either way, to raise affection.

…But Atar is already dead, and a Bugged Choice surfaced with Dietrich. Will this even run properly?

If she was honest, a failure to proceed would be a gain in its own right. The game was already packed to bursting with painful moments, and spending days on end shuddering in the Ice Prison under a false charge was misery of a particular kind. The trouble was that if events refused to follow the set route, the game would become impossible to predict at all.

Fretting would solve nothing. Presepe decided to concentrate on the work in front of her.

"No matter how I look, there's nothing special here…"

She had gone back over old memories, opened the Incident Log for every character, and combed through every system window she had. Nothing came of it. All she gained was a stomach turned by illustration after illustration of herself suffering at the hands of those damned men. The Book of Memories still would not so much as open.

"Hmm…"

She had been brooding with her chin propped on her hand when she went abruptly still. Something had caught her eye a moment too late: the map of the Imperial Palace.

"Though calling it a map… I already know every place on it."

Still. Just in case. Presepe let out a sigh and moved her lips.

"Show me the map."

And then—

"Huh?"

Her face went blank with disbelief. Small wonder. There on the map was a place she had never once visited.

"Then you should have told me that sooner!"

A broken game among broken games—and garbage, at that. The curse left her mouth before she could stop it.

"Tell me the new location!"

And it was at that very moment.

"Lady Presepe."

Ella's voice came, entirely unlooked for.

…But nothing ever happened before the imprisonment event. Not until now.

What followed only doubled the question.

"Grand Duke Fenrik is here."

His visit was far too sudden. He was plainly an NPC bound to Dietrich's route, and Dietrich's affection was not even particularly high yet. It was still the early game. Presepe let him in all the same. The reason was simple enough: there might be something else to learn.

"I worry I may have been rude, calling on you so suddenly."

Almost no one in the Imperial Palace treated Presepe with any real courtesy. In a way it was only natural. There was nothing to be gained from a woman stripped even of her rank as imperial princess. Dietrich had kept her shut in the tower day after day, so aside from Ella she had scarcely any chance to meet anyone at all. Fenrik was close enough to Dietrich that he could not have been ignorant of that, and yet the courtesy he observed was almost embarrassing in its thoroughness.

"I am only grateful that you agreed to see me so readily."

"No, it's all right."

Presepe murmured it quietly.

"You said you had business with me…"

"Ah. It is nothing of consequence."

Fenrik answered as if to tell her not to worry.

"Prince Atar's party returned to the Thein Empire this morning. As I told you then, the matter will not grow any larger."

Presepe was silent.

"Still, it was a murder within the Imperial Palace. A thorough investigation, in every respect, will be the safer course. We cannot be certain the assassin meant to target Prince Atar alone."

"So did you learn anything more? Who killed Prince Atar, and how he came to die like that."

"I met Noah Debern yesterday, but there was nothing in particular to learn. In any case, Your Highness also saw Prince Atar that day, so I came only because I had a few things to ask. I hear His Majesty questioned you about that day as well, but there is no harm in confirming the account more than once."

So Dietrich sent him? A more than sufficient reason for a visit, at any rate.

"Mm… but I don't have anything particular I can tell you. What I reported to His Majesty was everything."

Presepe went on, slowly.