Whenever someone from the Bellose Family came to see her, it was always irritating and exhausting, much like dealing with her senior, Jake.
‘……No. It’s more than just irritating.’
The discomfort was enough to twist her stomach.
The instant she saw the butler, the cold treatment she had endured from her family and the alienation she had felt among them came back like an old ache.
Despite being related by blood, her parents and younger twin siblings had shunned Mona like an ugly duckling.
When Mona was three, circumstances at home had forced her parents to leave her in her grandmother’s care and depart. That was when the distance between her and her family began.
*“Mona, we’re not in a position to care for you somewhere safe right now. I’m sorry.”*
*“Wait with Grandma just a little while. We’ll make lots of money and come back for you, Mona.”*
With those words, Count and Countess Bellose boarded a trading ship.
Yet when her parents returned eight years later, they treated Mona with the awkwardness reserved for someone else’s child.
*“About Mona…… I don’t know why she feels so unfamiliar even though she’s my own daughter.”*
*“Haa. Leaving Mona with Mother and all her strange research was a mistake. I never imagined she would turn into such an odd child…….”*
Her fraternal twin siblings, four years younger than her, went even further, avoiding Mona and openly recoiling from her.
*“Why’s she supposed to be our sister? Olivia is the only sister I have!”*
*“You suddenly show up and now you’re my big sister? Says who! I can’t stand the sight of you!”*
Parents who kept Mona at arm’s length.
Fraternal twin siblings who avoided her like the plague.
There had never been any room for Mona, who had joined the family late after they had already spent years forming a close bond with one another.
So she had given them exactly what they wanted and moved out of that damn house……
“What brings you here?”
At Mona’s cold question, the butler pulled a large envelope from his pocket.
“An invitation from the Imperial Family has arrived for you, Lady Mona.”
Mona carelessly broke the seal stamped with the Imperial insignia and skimmed the letter.
It instructed her to attend a victory banquet doubling as a memorial gathering in just three days.
“Do I really have to attend? If I show up, my parents will only think I’m disgracing the family.”
She gave the hem of her worn ocher robe a little shake as she spoke sarcastically, and the butler let out a short sigh.
“You already missed the Founding Festival before last, as well as the Imperial ball held most recently. If you continue missing major events, people in high society will begin to talk.”
“I don’t care what high society says about me.”
“The head of the family instructed me to tell you that, for as long as you continue using the Bellose name, you are expected to cooperate in preserving the family’s reputation.”
“…….”
Damn it.
Dragging the Bellose name into this was cowardly.
She had not received a single coin of support from her parents since leaving home, yet that damned Bellose surname was always the thing that shackled her.
Whenever the family used that surname as leverage to push troublesome noble obligations onto her, she had nothing she could say in response.
And she could not simply ask them to disown her, either. Under Imperial law, anyone without a surname was treated as a commoner and faced numerous restrictions.
Books related to monsters in particular were classified as forbidden texts, meaning commoners could not even gain access to them.
‘……That can never happen.’
That was also why Mona was enduring sleep deprivation in order to graduate early.
If she earned a master’s degree from the Imperial Academy, she would receive a surname along with the title of “Academic Knight.”
Of course, the title of Academic Knight was a low-ranking noble rank, roughly equivalent to a baronet, and it was not even hereditary, but who cared?
She would face no restrictions on her research, and she could bid farewell to the damned Bellose Family forever. It was killing two birds with one stone.
‘But for that, I need to get my first graduation thesis approved…….’
She was worrying her lips again, repeating the same concern she had been dwelling on all day like a broken record, when a thought suddenly occurred to Mona.
Attending this banquet might not be nothing but a nuisance after all.
‘I should attend the banquet and ask around about where Professor Thomas has been.’
She could not shake the ominous suspicion that the damned professor had simply abandoned her thesis without even looking at it.
‘If I’m lucky, I might even run into him at the banquet.’
He was the kind of man who strutted around with his mustache heavily shaped with wax.
Even if he almost never showed his face in his office, there was a good chance he would appear at an Imperial banquet.
Mona slipped the envelope containing the Imperial invitation into her robe and said,
“Tell Father that I will attend this Imperial banquet.”
***
*“Grandma. About this experiment in the old book—I want to try it!”*
This was probably a dream.
A dream of herself when she was around seven years old.
*“If this experiment succeeds, do you think monsters might be able to become friends with humans too?!”*
As a child, Mona had found an old book titled 《Synthesis of an Aromatic Compound to Promote Heteromorphic Resonance》 in the basement of the annex and spoken in an excited voice.
The title was unfamiliar and difficult, but Mona had received an advanced education from her grandmother, who was a monster scholar, and she had always read extensively. She could therefore understand the contents of the old book in broad terms.
The heart of the book was a method for making a perfume capable of eliciting friendly reactions from monsters hostile to humans.
*“Right, Grandma?”*
But her grandmother’s expression was dark.
Her grandmother had always encouraged Mona no matter what she tried, yet that time, she inexplicably stroked the eyepatch over her left eye as she spoke.
*“Mona……. You are a child who takes after me in every way.”*
*“Yes!”*
*“This old woman knows better than anyone how alluring the abyss born of chaos can be.”*
*“…….”*
*“But do not stare into the abyss for too long. There is an old saying that the abyss devours those who try to measure its depth…….”*
Her grandmother’s warning went in one ear and out the other.
Near the villa where she lived alone with her grandmother, the neighborhood children openly looked down on and bullied the small, frail Mona.
Now that she had discovered the possibility of befriending fascinating monsters, there was no way she could give up.
Grandma. The darker the night, the more clearly the light shines.
I can find light within the abyss.
But before she could answer, the scenery in the dream gradually melted away, then transformed into a cramped, musty attic.
*“I’ve got a good feeling about today…… The mixture concentration is perfect, and somehow I feel like it’s going to work.”*
Time in the dream jumped forward, and she saw herself at seventeen, nearing completion of the experiment described in the old book.
Her younger self, consumed by excitement and exhilaration, pulled something from inside her clothes.
*“Now, if I just add this…….”*
But the instant she added the final ingredient, the substances inside the glass tube suddenly began expanding all at once……
BO-OOOM!
.
.
.
“Gasp—!”
Mona woke from the dream with a sharp intake of breath and instinctively grabbed the top of her shoulder.
Was it because of the nightmare?
The burn scar left by the failed experiment when she was seventeen seemed to sting.
Her entire body was already drenched in cold sweat, and her heart was pounding wildly.
Mona roughly wiped the beads of sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, then flinched.
What smeared across her skin was not clear sweat, but a murky gray liquid.
“……Damn it.”
Just as she expected, the sight reflected in the mirror was a disaster.
It had not even been a month since she last dyed her hair, yet the alchemically made dye had turned to powder and crumbled away like dust.
The ashen dye powder dissolved by her sweat made her face look as though someone had dumped filthy water over her.
Mona frowned as she scrubbed the dye from her face.
‘The interval between dye jobs keeps getting shorter.’
All she had wanted was to create a perfume that would let her befriend monsters.
But the result had been nothing like what she intended.
As a side effect of the failed experiment, her very constitution had changed.
‘A body that monsters naturally obey…….’
And that was not all. Her once-dark-gray hair had turned white as heavy snowfall, and the pigment in her gray irises had faded as well.
Her irises, now pale silver, subtly changed texture whenever light seeped into them, taking on a bluish cast.
If she had to compare them to something, they were like mist hanging over a blue dawn.
Even her fingernails had become pale and whitish, drawing a sigh from her.
‘And Grandma, the only person I can consult about these strange symptoms, has been completely out of contact…….’
Groaning, Mona picked up the cheap dye and colored her hair dark gray again.
Once she finished, she let her bangs fall messily over her forehead again and put on her glasses.
Only after hiding her face behind those thick lenses did she begin to feel a little calmer.
Then it happened.
KNOCK, KNOCK.
Someone knocked on the door of her dorm room.
Her visitor this early in the morning was the butler sent by her family.
“Lady Mona. The carriage is ready, so please come downstairs.”
Today was the day of the victory banquet hosted by the Imperial Family.
Which meant that soon she would have to face the family she had deliberately avoided for so long.
Her heart began pounding harshly again with renewed discomfort, but Mona did not let it show. She took one deep breath.
“Let us go.”