“I’m so sorry I’m late to the first day of lessons. I wasn’t planning to be late, actually-“

Sezh paused for a good moment to carefully consider what she should say next.

I thought I could come up with a good excuse, but I can’t think of anything right now. There’s no way I can possibly tell him that I’m late because my mother was busy beating me like a dog.

After rolling her eyes and racking her brain for anything that sounded at least somewhat plausible, she decided to settle on a common excuse for tardiness.

“Well, I- um, overslept, and…”

“Overslept?” Raytan laughed at her paltry explanation. His expression was so cold.

“You must be a terrible and ridiculously deep sleeper if you look like that after oversleeping once.”

At that moment, Sezh realized that she had run out of her room without checking her appearance first. Honestly, she was in such a hurry to see him that she hadn’t even though about what she looked like until Raytan pointed it out.

My cheeks were only a little swollen, and my nose bled a little here and there. Other than that, the pain is nothing much. Yerena did hit me more than usual today, but it couldn’t have made that much of a difference, could it…?

Sezh glanced at her reflection in the window behind Raytan. The clean, well-polished glass clearly revealed the extent of her abused face back to her. Only then did she realize that she looked quite awful indeed.

Her cheeks were, of course, very swollen—along with her nose and frankly the rest of her face. There was a streak of dried blood staining the skin adjacent to her mouth. A blue patch had begun to discolour her forehead, likely a bruise forming from where Yerena had slammed her face into the bedpost. She really did look like someone had just about beaten her to death.

Sezh could only stare in shock. She had never looked like this before, even after all the beatings she endured in her past life.

“Oh, but I can still stu-, study,” Sezh stammered, anxious that Raytan would tell her off any minute now for her unbecoming appearance and dismiss her like last time.

“It doesn’t hurt! It doesn’t hurt at all!” she insisted. “So you don’t have to worr-“

“Worry?” Raytan scoffed. “Who’s worried about you?”

The younger girl pouted her lips.

If you don’t care, then let’s not talk about it. Just pretend you didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. I’m getting embarrassed for no reason, here…

Sezh grumpily thought to herself that he had unfairly made her self-conscious, but she tried to hide her annoyance from him anyway since she didn’t want to derail the session any further.

Curious about what they would be discussing that day, if anything, Sezh’s gaze started to wander around the room before suddenly landing on a pile of books in front of the window. The stack of fascinating and mysterious-looking texts that she normally saw Raytan reading in that windowsill was long gone and instead replaced by a different set.

Despite the immense reluctance Raytan had demonstrated during his birthday dinner, he seemed to be an obedient son after all. No matter how much he hated the idea, he still followed Lise’s instructions to teach Sezh Kazaki.

Raytan silently peered at her as she looked expectantly at him. Wordlessly, he grabbed the set of books and rose from his seat. He started walking down the hall before settling himself at a seat with an accompanying desk on the other side of the room. Sezh followed him as quickly as her petite legs could carry her.

As Raytan sat down, Sezh hesitantly pulled out the chair beside him and quickly glanced at his reaction.

I think I can sit next to him? Fortunately, he isn’t saying I have to get out.

Filled with a sense of relief, Sezh started to clamber up the seat. Because of her lamentably short stature, even doing something as simple as sitting in a chair sometimes turned out to be quite the effort for her. This chair, like much of the furnishings in the Imperial Palace, was suited for taller, healthier occupants, not someone as malnourished and mistreated as Sezh.

“Aagh!”

As soon as she seated herself on the chair, she tried to right herself and her feet became twisted, causing her to fall to the floor rather unceremoniously.

Since returning to her younger form, Sezh found many things much more tiresome than before. For instance, whoever chose the design for the chairs in this library didn’t have any consideration for children at all, she thought with ire. She sighed and settled herself on the seat once more while mulling on her situation with annoyance.

Unbeknownst to her, Raytan had watched the entire escapade unfold in front of him.

“Big brother, what, what should I do first…?”

Sezh reached for a nearby pen and laughed awkwardly in an attempt to diffuse the tense atmosphere between them.

Raytan didn’t answer her. Instead, he just glared at her, like he always did, as if she was the most irritating person in the world.

***

Some time had passed since they finally managed to begin the lessons. She couldn’t believe that Raytan was really tutoring her in Kazaki. Whatever he talked about with Lise seemed to have really convinced him.

To be honest, the instructions he’s giving are so vague. He only said ‘this’ one is like this, and ‘that’ one is like that. Well, I can’t really say that I’m surprised, since I already expected he would do something like this…

But this attention still doesn’t mean that he is going to be kind to me from now on. Right now, he’s literally just giving me a private lesson because his mother asked him to, nothing more.

She never once in her life experienced such a self-centric tutor.

Far from teaching her basic consonants and vowels, Raytan quizzed her on subjects that would have been more appropriate for someone on an intermediate level. Sezh suspected that he was purposefully trying to overwhelm her with difficult questions so that he could make an excuse to say something like, “It’s ridiculous to teach Kazaki to a girl like you.”

But she did have a trump card that Raytan didn’t know about. In actuality, she could already speak Kazaki well since she had taken the time to study it in her previous life.

Raytan seemed surprised that Sezh was somehow able to keep pace with his challenging curriculum. His plan to discourage her had gone awry.

It never crossed my mind before, but now I can use my knowledge of Kazaki to find somewhere to live outside the palace in the future. These lessons are necessary for me to live a long and prosperous life… No, rather, I must do this so my life can continue this time.

Learning Kazaki again isn’t that bad, and I need to do this so I can achieve my goal of getting close to Raytan. I’ll try my best to get his attention as much as I can, even if it’s just a little bit.