Finished my internship. Now I have to deal with preparing for next sem. Sigh.

EDIT: Edit


Amaryllis


Although she decided not to tour, Veronica still asked about the layout of the building so that she might at least know where to go. To this, Rosalina had responded by spilling everything she knew about the mansion, and though the girl wanted nothing more than to avoid the conversation once the woman really started rolling, Veronica forced herself to listen so that she would not have to deal with it all again later.

The dormitory had roughly three floors: the basement, the ground floor, and the second floor. The basement had the fewest rooms: a cellar, an armory, the generator, and a newly-installed server room. The ground floor had all of the functional rooms, the most notable of which were the guest rooms, chapel, ballroom, library, and an honest-to-God classroom. The second floor, meanwhile, was dominated by bedrooms divided roughly into two wings: the West Wing, which was where the caretakers and servants slept; and the East Wing, where all the Valkyries-in-training resided.

Rosalina took her through a side staircase, one that was strangely more ornate than the ones she saw in the entrance hall. It led to a corridor with very few doors, each spaced far enough that they could house a lecture hall from her previous life. She found out why when they entered through the first door.

Veronica's room was a suite. An actual full-blown suite with its own receiving room, bedroom, walk-in closet, and bathtub. There was a bouquet of red flowers sitting in a vase at the coffee table in the center of the living room. She would later learn that the flowers were called Amaryllis, which meant Pride in the language of flowers.

"Miss Veronica, if you need me or any of the servants, you need only to press this button."

Rosalina pointed at a panel by the door, which, among other things, has what appeared to be a doorbell.

"If that is all, then I shall be on my way." She turned towards Margaret. "And you…"

"Margaret Weber," Veronica's mother supplied.

"Weber." Rosalina said her name with a pensive expression as if to judge whether she liked it or not. "Come to my office at the end of the day."

With that, the woman left. As soon as her footsteps disappeared from the hallway, Veronica turned to Margaret and said, "How fast do you think they take to get a new caretaker?"

"Don't say that!" Margaret replied harshly, although the effect was ruined by the slight upward quirk of her lips. Veronica smiled at her and shrugged.

With how much the two had brought, unpacking did not take long. The two rested in the suite until lunch, where they set out to find the dining hall, as instructed. Veronica was surprised to learn that the building wasn't hard to navigate; there were only about two hallways you needed to take note of per floor and the rest had been built as hidden, narrower corridors for servants. It starkly contrasted with the architecture of her old home, which twisted and turned to its whims.

They found the mess hall soon enough. Veronica and Margaret bade each other goodbye; masters and their servants were not to eat in the same room, although Veronica would be sneaking the woman into snack breaks with her as soon as she could find a good enough hiding spot. Once the woman had left, Veronica pulled her face into one of cold neutrality— at least, as close as she could since she was still four— and entered the hall.

Three other children were already in the room. Veronica recognized Ella, but the other two were unfamiliar to her. One was blonde and had her face buried under what appeared to be an encyclopedia. The other had her mop of grey hair tied up in a bun and looked at Veronica with eyes that made it clear that the two of them would not begin on friendly terms.

Great.

"Veronica!" Ella said, waving. She was gesturing for Veronica to sit beside her, putting her on the opposite side of the other two on the long table that all of them would share. Veronica obliged and felt more than saw the only other alert Valkyre-in-training follow her to her seat.

"Lena, Edith, this is Veronica," Ella said, gesturing at Veronica. She turned to Veronica. "Veronica, this is Lena and Edith."

Lena was the bookworm, who peeked from behind the book before burying herself in the cover again. Edith smiled at Veronica, and she could instantly tell she was up to no good.

"Isn't your name too long?" Edith said.

Veronica raised an eyebrow. Really? She was reminded of a story from a certain online psychologist, that of the kind of fights little girls made. Social aggression; behaviors like isolation and demeaning others for the most trivial of reasons. The worst part was that, since there was nothing physical that happened, the kids could all claim that it wasn't a fight and fool the adults that they were completely innocent.

Which meant that she actually had to fight back verbally against children. Children!

She brought her attention back to the conversation. "You have a problem with my name?"

"Y-yeah!" she said. "It's too long!"

Fortunately, it seemed that Edith was still too young to be truly mean about it.

"Ella has a long name. Isabella. Are you saying that you don't like her name, too?"

Ella blinked, then looked at Edith with wide eyes. Edith's face reddened visibly as she stuttered for an excuse.

"N-no! It's just your name that's long!"

"Really?" Veronica challenged. "Go ahead. Spell them out. See which one is longer."

"Um…" the girl began to count using her fingers. "V-E-R-O…" She started with Ella's name. "I-S-A-B-E-L-A! Seven!"

"That's wrong!" Ella screeched. "My name has two Ls!"

Edith was flabbergasted. "Two Ls?"

Ella nodded solemnly. "Two Ls."

Edith counted again. Disbelief crossed her expression, and she counted again. When she tried to extend Veronica's name by adding an extra N or an extra R, Ella was there to screech at her no no NO that's wrong wrong WRONG, which caused Edith to recount in embarrassment. Only after the fifth recount did she finally give up, throwing her hands and snorting as she did so.

"Whatever," she said, then glared at Veronica. "You're stupid. Go away."

"NOOO! VERONICA STAY!" countered Ella.

Veronica was debating whether she wanted to walk away from this or end it with threats of violence (She's just a kid, a part of her said; Well so am I, another countered) when the door opened and Rosalina walked in with a food cart, her ordinarily-frowning face set in a scowl.

"Looks like someone never learned her manners," she hissed. "Edith, we will have words."

Then, like flicking a switch, she put on a smile that Veronica could swear was directed towards her. "With that aside, I have brought dinner for everyone. Here we have Sticky Honey Roast—" Veronica bit back a choke— "Do enjoy your meals."

With that, she served portions to all the children.

Lunch after that was a quiet affair. None of the children particularly felt talkative after that. With, Ella, it was because she was busy stuffing her face with food. With Lena, she probably wanted to return to her book. With Edith, it was because she was busy glaring daggers at Veronica while unwilling to speak to her.

Throughout it all, Veronica simply kept an eye on everyone present, including Rosalina. The woman was actually the most concerning of them all; whenever she looked at Veronica, it would be as if she was looking at her favorite award or pet. Her eyes would look pleased, but it was the kind that did not have kindness in them. Meanwhile, she looked at the others with disdain, particularly whenever she saw Edith scowl at Veronica or whenever Ella reached the food on Veronica's plate since it was closer than the actual servings (Veronica actually let the girl take her food, and it would bring a frown on the caretaker's face).

Veronica found herself frowning. It was discrimination. But why? Was it because of the Holy Blood? That was about the only positive thing she could think of. It wasn't as if the other traits— orphaned, neglected, and likely uneducated— would be things a woman like her would be looking for in a ward.

It probably is like that, she decided. I'm a glorified trophy kid.

She likely saw Veronica as her key to moving up in life. Thinking by the playbook of cultivation novels, Rosalina would be thinking of sidling up with an up and coming Young Mistress in the hopes of becoming something akin to Veronica's personal maid and enjoying all the benefits provided from being the subordinate of the heiress that she could manipulate to her liking without pesky moral obstacles like parental guidance.

Veronica would admit, though, that it was a bit of an extreme theory. It assumed a lot and built off of tropes rather than the few things she'd actually read about studies on human behavior. However, she couldn't dismiss it. After all…

"Come to my office at the end of the day."

Rosalina's first obstacle to playing puppet master would be Veronica's legal guardian, Margaret.

Although Veronica was sure that the food had been delicious, she hardly remembered the taste of it. Lunch ended with a prayer. Afterward, the caretaker asked all four of them to stay.

"Dinner is at six and breakfast is at seven," she began. "Tomorrow, you all will be meeting your instructor after breakfast at the study, and then everything after that apart from meals will be decided by them. Is that understood?"

Ella raised her hand. "Um, who?"

The woman sighed. "Your instructor."

"Who's our instructor?"

"You'll learn tomorrow."

"Okay."

The girl put her hand down. That done, Rosalina turned to Veronica and gave her a smile with a crooked brow.

"Veronica, you will have a different instructor from the rest. Just stay in your room and wait for them to come."

She looked at the girl for a response. Veronica nodded her head stiffly and attempted to smile. Fortunately, the woman simply ignored her halfhearted expression as she opened the door. Then, she looked back and saw that they were all just sitting there.

"What are you all waiting for? Go now. Back to your rooms. I still have to wash the plates."

The four children were only glad enough to follow. Once the woman closed the door behind them, Edith blew past the group, making a beeline for the stairs without actually running and leaving the three of them in the hallway.

Veronica turned to the other two. Ella had a smug expression as she followed the confrontational girl's exit. Lena was clutching her book, eyes flitting between Veronica and Ella.

Veronica sighed.

"Come on," she said. "Let's go see your rooms."

As expected, Ella spent the time going through the halls chatting Veronica's and Lena's heads off. Her topics were children's topics; things like what she got on her last birthday (a plush doll of a bear, one that was floppy and not stiff like the usual teddy bears), the biggest thing she discovered today (she had just discovered that one could change radio channels by turning the knobs, now she could finally try to find that fashion girl her mom would sometimes put up), to a complaint about something trivial (she was complaining about the lack of toilet paper— an opportunity to teach her the benefits of washing with soap and water).

It didn't distract Veronica from noticing that their rooms were in a completely different part of the building, though. Their rooms were also right beside each other, with two other empty rooms in the same hallway. Veronica bid the two girls farewell, making the excuse that she'd like to take a nap and such, and returned by going back downstairs and tracing the way she came from there.


The Flower Dormitory was a surprisingly bright place at night. Skylights and large, decorative windows seemed to be strategically placed to bring the maximum amount of moonlight into the halls throughout the upper floor. Veronica supposed she was lucky that the hallways were covered in long carpets; she wouldn't have to worry about alerting anyone with her footsteps.

After a short rest, she'd taken most of the afternoon memorizing the layout of the building. She did it alone; Margaret hadn't returned after lunch, which only served to fuel the girl's desire to map her surroundings. Her task had taken roughly two hours. In that time, she hadn't seen any other servants or house help around the building beyond dodging Rosalina every so often. She'd thought at first that it was because the woman was a cleaning wizard like Margaret. That lasted until she arrived at the fourth spare room covered in dust and varying growths of mildew. Only a few rooms looked like they were cleaned regularly and that list was mostly composed of the functional rooms.

At least that hadn't changed.

Beyond neglected rooms and moldy furniture, Veronica had a stroke of luck while searching through the kitchen. Hidden in a corner of the room and half-covered by a dish cabinet was a wooden sliding panel that opened up to reveal a steep and narrow staircase. It led upstairs to an entirely hidden hallway that branched off to other similarly-hidden doors and had multiple other staircases back down to the first floor. Veronica had then gone on to take a peek through one of the doors and found herself peeking at a bedroom she recognized belonged to the West Wing with half the entrance hidden behind a cabinet.

Servant passages, she realized. She had a faint recollection of older buildings having specially-constructed passages and staircases so that the servants wouldn't be seen in the "public" parts of the house. It was an unexpected discovery, but a welcome one.

Thus she found herself hiding behind the door leading to the head caretaker's office, listening in on a conversation between the only two adult women in the building.

"Miss Weber." Rosalina's tone was snippy and harsh, even through the layers of planks. "Have you thought of what I asked of you?"

"Yes," came the nanny's quiet reply.

"What shall it be, then?"

Silence. Veronica dared not breathe. She didn't know what this was about, not really, but everything thus far had pointed to a conversation about her custody, and while she had a lot of faith in her mother… there was a nagging voice in the back of her head. Margaret was still young, it said. She probably never wanted to dip her hands in Schariac politics. Who would want to take care of an orphan like her, one who could read, write, and calculate without ever receiving a proper education? Veronica was acutely aware of the pain in her chest and the growing urge to gasp for breath and scream! Yet, she forced it down; kept forcing it down as the seconds seemed to stretch into hours. Then…

"I will not give up her custody," Margaret finally said, and Veronica felt like she would meld with the wood she was leaning against.

The two argued for a few more minutes. Veronica couldn't catch what they said as she focused on controlling her breathing, which in itself was difficult when her vision, hampered as they were in the darkness, began to blur. It took all she had not to break down into sobs and was afraid that the few sniffles she let out could be heard by the women. Eventually, she regained control over her emotions, except she couldn't school the smile that had grown in her suppressed breakdown. She turned her attention back to the conversation. It seemed like the women were finishing up.

"... fine!" came Rosalina's voice. "I hope you know what you're doing. The Lord knows what would happen should you let this generation's star stray from the right path."

"I understand the risks, and I shall take responsibility for them," Margaret replied.

The other woman harrumphed. "Well, fine. You're dismissed now. Go on! I don't want to see you until morning!"

There was the sound of the door closing and some footsteps. Rosalina was mumbling to herself, but it was too low for Veronica to catch. It didn't matter anyway since she was done. Slowly, the girl crept away from where she was prone by the door and quietly snuck back down the passage. She was going to have to go back downstairs instead of using an exit in one of the servants' rooms again. She wouldn't want to be found still awake by her mother at this hour.