Father, I Won’t Do Anything

Elia was the most admired woman among the ladies and daughters.

That’s why the social gatherings held by Princess Elia and her associates weren’t open to just anyone.

Charlotte belatedly started looking around her surroundings. Unfamiliar scenery came into view. It seemed she had ended up in the palace gardens.

“No one asked for a harpsichord performance, so what am I doing here?”

“You snuck in like a sneaky cat.”

The faces of the ladies and daughters looking down at Charlotte instantly turned cold.

“This is not simply a matter of a social gathering. If you’ve trespassed into the imperial palace, you’ll have to explain how and why.”

“Wait a moment! Your Highness Princess Elia, there’s a story behind this!”

“That’s something you can tell the guards.”

Princess Elia spoke in a chilling voice. Charlotte pleaded for mercy, but there were no exceptions in her book.

“There won’t be any fool hiring Charlotte as a harpsichord teacher now.”

“I had trusted her with my second daughter, I’m worried what mischief she might have done to our family under the pretext of the harpsichord lessons.”

The ladies hid their faces with fans and whispered as Charlotte was dragged away by the guards.

‘No, no. This is a dream!’

Too late, Charlotte regretted tormenting Jaina at the Magic Tower, but it was already too late.

* * *

Luckily, Charlotte did not end up imprisoned. But that was no consolation to her.

The status she had built up in high society crumbled in an instant.

It was almost as if she had been socially buried.

Now, she would find it difficult to interact with anyone or marry.

Exhausted, Charlotte returned from the palace not to her home, but elsewhere, staggering with uneven steps.

“It’s because of you all that I’m ruined! My life is over!”

Charlotte shouted as she flung the door open with all her might.

There were two people who had agreed to meet her.

“I tried to get close to the Tower Lord like you said! But do you know what happened?”

“I’m sorry, but you don’t need to tell me.”

“What?”

One of them placed a hand on Charlotte’s head.

With a sound as if her head was crumpling, Charlotte crumpled lifeless like a puppet with its strings cut.

“I can just look directly into your mind, so there’s no need to listen to your useless ramblings.”

“Why…”

“You’re of no use to us now. You should have just quietly stayed near the Tower Lord like we told you instead of sticking your nose where it didn’t belong… Tsk tsk.”

“You’re not… human…”

“That’s right, we’re not ‘human’. Have you only just realized that?”

Charlotte wanted to ask what that meant, but couldn’t continue and went limp. The woman kept her hand on Charlotte while closing her eyes for a long time, then opened them with a flash.

“It’s that child. As expected, she was in the Magic Tower.”

The two recalled when they had seen ‘Jaina’ at the fire scene some time ago.

They had happened to witness the fire while out enjoying the festival by chance.

-What a nice day for an outing, and this happens.

-Unfortunately, the festival passed over.

As the two surveyed the fire scene, they picked up a peculiar jar fragment from the ground.

-Looks like something interesting happened here? I sense a dragon’s energy from this broken piece. Could this be a sacred relic?

-As far as I know, there are no other dragons in the capital besides us.

-An unreported dragon used a sacred relic? Could it be… they knew that our clan needed the sacred relic and deliberately got rid of it?

Before long, they were able to find clues about that dragon.

-No one was hurt, from a building burned down so badly?

-It can only be called a miracle.

The two exchanged glances. It was clear an unknown dragon had healed the people using a sacred relic.

They subtly cast a mind magic spell and placed their hands on one of the healed, brightly smiling people.

Thump.

-Huh? Why did they suddenly collapse?

Probing their past memories with mind magic revealed that the one who saved the humans was an adorably young child… holding a sacred relic.

-It definitely broke through the ceiling to escape, though we didn’t see it.

-The dragon must have used transparency magic.

-Cloaked itself with dark magic. Then it’s likely of the Black Night clan?

-But judging from the scale of destruction… Could it be a young dragon?

They once again used mind magic on the people before examining their memories.

As a result, the two dragons learned that the child who saved the people was part of Prince Rosian’s entourage, and a girl named ‘Jaina’.

“But how did a dragon end up living in the Magic Tower?”

“It’s hard to definitively say that child with blue eyes is a dragon. Her hair and eye colors differed. Meaning she’s neither of the Black Night nor Blue Sky clans.”

“But she used a sacred relic.”

“That is perplexing. That she used a sacred relic only usable by dragons…”

“Maybe it wasn’t that child, but another dragon who used it?”

They crossed their arms, deep in thought. After some time, the man spoke up.

“Come to think of it, wasn’t there an old rumor that Tower Lord was the lover of Bezrice, a member of the Black Night clan?”

“What? That Bezrice with a mere human male? Surely not. Impossible.”

“Right, everyone said it was impossible so the rumor was quickly buried as far as I recall… But if it were true? Then the child living in the Magic Tower who used the sacred relic could be a dragon, no?”

“Then you think that child might be ‘proof of empurity’?”

“Yes, if she was born between the Black Night clan and the Tower Lord, it would explain her black hair and blue eyes.”

“Good heavens.”

The woman’s eyes went wide. In a small voice, she whispered.

“Then we must kill her. For the honor of the dragon race.”

* * *

‘Should I say it was faster than I thought…’

Jaina calmly practiced the harpsichord, lost in thought.

Yesterday, she had heard that her harpsichord teacher Charlotte had resigned.

And simultaneously, she was informed that Diamid had summoned her for the first time in a long while.

-He wants to hear you perform on the harpsichord tomorrow?

Although Charlotte hadn’t properly taught her the playing technique, Jaina had been steadily practicing ‘Bezrice’s Song’ contained in the necklace.

Jaina was never the lazy student Charlotte had claimed.

However, self-studying meant an absolute lack of time.

‘I probably can’t even play half of what my mother performed.’

At that thought, Jaina stopped playing the harpsichord and turned her head.

Izren was looking at her with a concerned expression.

“The teacher was a bad person. But are you sure you want to perform like this?”

“I’m alright. There’s a saying I know – a craftsman doesn’t blame their tools. I don’t want to blame the teacher either.”

The meeting with Diamid was scheduled in the Magic Tower’s garden.

Jaina took out the harpsichord from her pocket and placed it in the center of the garden, surrounded by fully bloomed summer roses.

It was a place Jaina had never visited before.

Diamid had secretly concealed this garden with magic to avoid disturbances, only now opening it up.

‘He must consider the performance quite important then.’

Jaina turned to look behind her. There sat the Tower Lord, swathed in a black cloak, his jet-black appearance only matching Jaina’s eye color.

Out of place amidst the green, red, and fresh hues of the season, he alone seemed to have arrived in winter.

What would it feel like for one’s emotions to freeze over?

With what state of mind had he gone to battle the Demon King?

What kind of existence was Bezrice, who had shaken him so?

What vestige of Bezrice did he seek to witness in this performance?

“Begin.”

No sooner had Diamid’s words ended than Jaina’s hands glided effortlessly across the keys.

Bezrice’s composition wasn’t an extremely difficult piece in itself. However, it elicited various impressions from the listener.

-A sorrowful song. Does it convey the pain of parting?

-It seems to express a wistful yet tranquil heart?

-I just hear ting-tong sounds, what’s there to feel?

Without pedals, the harpsichord made it difficult to control dynamics and convey nuances.

Moreover, since Jaina had spent much time on the assignments Charlotte had given, she lacked sufficient practice time for Bezrice’s piece.

Most problematically, unlike the adult Bezrice, Jaina’s small child hands imposed limitations on her playing ability.

As a result, while similar, Jaina’s rendition sounded distinctly different from the original.

“…I’m done.”

Jaina withdrew her hands from the keys and awaited Diamid’s impression. But when no words came even after a while, she looked up at him.

“…”

Diamid had closed his eyes at some point and still kept them shut even after the performance ended.

‘Will he be angered by my amateurish playing?’

For him to have provided a large room, an instrument, and maids to support her, he must have had high expectations for her performance. While now the object of hatred, other Bezrice had once been someone immensely important to him.

‘Perhaps I might even be expelled from the Magic Tower.’

Might he use her failure to properly follow his instructions as an excuse to take away the necklace and banish her?

“…”

While Jaina was absorbed in such thoughts, Diamid remained silent. A heavy stillness lingered between them for quite some time.

How long had it been?

Diamid slowly opened his previously closed eyes. Yet the words that finally left his lips were completely unexpected.

“What did that woman tell you?”

As Jaina pondered who ‘that woman’ referred to, Diamid spoke again.

“I heard your harpsichord teacher didn’t properly fulfill her duties.”

‘Is he blaming me for not speaking up in advance?’

Jaina decided to simply acknowledge her mistake.