"Ella, calm down. That one is a spoiled child. Two lifetimes, thirty years of living. There's no need to argue with a child."
Leaving the keep, Ella talked to herself as she went.
"Wait, am I forgetting something? Never mind. I'll worry about it after I've eaten."
Asking directions from a maid along the way, Ella soon found the canteen.
She ambled in.
In the vast hall only a scattering of guards and servants were eating.
Ella asked the cook there for a breakfast.
Boiled soup and rice, with a portion of dried salt meat and an apple. The food wasn't bad. More generous than her discount dad's breakfasts, at least.
Ignoring the taste, Ella simply kept shoveling it in.
The cold-faced maid from before walked over, and at the sight of the way Ella ate, couldn't quite hold back a smile.
After watching a while, the maid hurried off.
"...Was somebody watching me just now?"
Ella rubbed the back of her head and went on eating.
After finishing the first serving she went back to the cook for seconds and thirds, and when she set the spoon down she was finally full.
Ready to go back to Elos, she remembered before leaving to take a portion for her too.
***
Carrying the food, Ella made her way back to Elos's room.
"I'm back."
She pushed the door open and went in.
Elos had changed into day clothes. She sat at the desk with a quill in her hand, apparently writing something.
"Your breakfast."
"Mm. Set it down over there for me."
Elos's tone was offhand.
"Oh."
Ella, predictably, still couldn't manage to speak to anyone from a position of weakness.
She put the tray down, looked around, and sat on a stool a little way off, poking at the lilies in a flowerpot.
"Don't touch my flowers!"
Elos had been writing, and her voice jumped several degrees.
Evidently she was still sore about Ella gnawing on the potted plant yesterday.
"I'm full now. Besides, who'd want to eat leaves if there were any other option?"
Complaining, Ella nevertheless obediently stopped.
"That reminds me, you still haven't told me why I turned into a girl."
"It's a House Beaumont tradition. And a woman's constitution holds more mana, I suppose."
Elos gathered her hair back impatiently.
This damned family. Not only was there the curse that killed you before thirty unless you absorbed a partner's lifespan, but whether the head of the house was a man or a woman, their partner was, without exception, a woman.
As for the reason... perhaps a woman's life force was easier to draw off? Who knew. Elos didn't much believe it. Girls were certainly more agreeable, though.
"Right. Can I write my father a letter? Also, what are you doing?"
"You can. Once I've finished."
Elos glanced sideways at her. She knew this meant Ella wanted to leave, but she agreed anyway. The father would most likely refuse the request in any case.
"As for me... I'm doing an assignment my magic tutor set."
"Magic, huh..."
Ella's mind wandered.
"It's rotten."
Elos's tone was foul.
She hated magic. House Beaumont's curse existed because their mana ran too strong for their bodies to carry. In this world people came in two ranks, nobles and commoners, and only nobles had mana.
"..."
Ella didn't answer. She only stayed silent, waiting quietly for Elos to finish.
***
It took some time, but Elos finished the work her tutor had left. She turned her head to look at the breakfast Ella had brought her, and then went completely still.
"What... what have you brought me?!"
Her lips trembled, and she clutched her head and fell apart.
"Why would you bring me slop?"
"What? Weren't you the one who told me to bring a breakfast? I got it from the canteen. It actually tastes fine."
Ella was rather at a loss. What was this one having a fit about now?
"Did you not tell them the breakfast was for me? Are you an idiot? Who on earth would eat that?"
She picked up the plate. She wanted nothing to do with rice that soggy.
Simply and directly, she threw the metal tray at Ella.
"Sss..."
Ella sucked in a breath. Sitting quietly on her stool, she had not expected Elos to suddenly lose her mind. The tray came at her face-on and struck her head, and after the crisp clang came sharp pain.
Meat broth ran down her temple, and the sudden attack left Ella dazed.
She opened her hands, and an apple dropped into her palm.
"Get out. Have them make me a new one."
Elos drove her out.
"Eh, wait... the letter..."
Ella had more to say, but looking at the hysterical state Elos was in, she went out anyway.
"Makes no sense. What set her off all of a sudden? I really do hate children."
Her head still hurt a little, and Ella rubbed at her forehead.
She sniffed. Her nose didn't feel very clear. Ella took a bite of the apple she had caught on reflex.
"First, kitchen. Get someone to make that one a breakfast... then a bath."
Ella wiped the broth out of her hair. It was sticky. All right, it was genuinely disgusting.
"Haah..."
She sighed again.
"I miss Sephone..."
That was the orphan girl she had saved years ago, the one she had begged her father to take in. They had grown up together. You could call her a childhood sweetheart, more or less.
Unlike Elos, Sephone was good to her, never laughed at her, and was always trailing along behind her, calling her Big Brother Ella in that sweet voice.
If not for this accident, if she hadn't become a girl, her future should have been with Sephone.
"Honestly. Now that I'm a girl, how am I supposed to face her? Still, Elos says a woman's constitution holds more mana. So I'll get to learn magic later too, won't I?"
Ella couldn't be sure. She should have started learning magic long ago, but her discount dad couldn't afford a tutor, and so it had come to nothing.
***
Rather than the canteen, Ella went to the kitchen she had visited once the day before.
"Elos wants you to prepare a breakfast for her and send it up to her room."
She found one of the cooks.
"Y-yes. Of course."
At Elos's name, the young freckled cook went rigid with fright.
Ella could understand now why they were all afraid of Elos. She was a creature of unpredictable moods. Detestable.
With the kitchen set to work, Ella went on toward the bathhouse, and on the way she met the cold-faced maid again.
"You..."
Noticing the state Ella was in, the maid opened her mouth and closed it again. The young mistress had presumably lost her temper with the girl.
"Oh, it's you. The maid who makes no sense."
Ella did remember her, vaguely.
"Madam, milady says you are to bathe. Your clothes have been laid out."
Before Ella could get a conversation going, another maid came hurrying up.
"Oh. Understood. And stop calling me madam."
Ella's hackles went up.
Setting aside the matter of having once been male, what kind of madam was she? Whose madam gets ordered about like a maid? Never mind being deliberately abused. In this country, not even slaves were deliberately starved.