"Just a sec—mind if I cut in?"
This was a little before Ermes spoke with Katia.
Rose had gone to visit "her," who was waiting in a separate room at the church headquarters.
The young girl there—Second Princess Laila—was momentarily taken aback by both the sudden visit and the absurdly casual tone... but before long, she let out a soft breath, a faint smile easing across her face as though some weight she'd been carrying had finally dropped away.
"Sky Witch... Rose."
She murmured the words quietly, her gaze fixed on Rose.
"...You really do look just like Lily."
"Oh, yeah—honestly, even I was surprised by that. She's stupidly cute, that kid. When I saw her, I seriously couldn't tell her apart from how I looked when I was little."
"Subtly bragging, aren't you. ...So that's the kind of person you are. I had no idea—even though we're technically the same royalty."
As royalty and the Pope's daughter, Laila had access to a great deal of information and already knew the identity of the "Sky Witch."
But she knew nothing beyond that identity.
The reason was simple: her mother, Pope Ortesia, had never told her a single thing more.
Laila had assumed this was because Ortesia, the same as she told everyone else, considered Rose to be "such an embarrassment she couldn't even bring herself to speak of her"—but...
To think it was the complete opposite.
...Truly.
She hadn't known a single thing.
"..."
Laila fell silent.
Reading the emotions on her face, Rose quietly asked.
"So. ...What are you going to do now?"
"...What am I going to do, huh?"
Laila murmured to herself.
She knew. What she had wished for was never coming back.
Even if she was royalty, she'd wanted to be like an ordinary family—that naive, starry-eyed, foolish wish.
It had been broken from the very start. Her father, her brother, her sister—and above all, her mother.
Without her even having to do anything, it had long since... no one had ever been looking at her, and every last one of them had strayed far from any ordinary way of being.
What was left for someone like her?
Nothing she had wanted remained—
"...I believe in you."
...Come to think of it.
There had been just one thing, still, that remained.
The moment she recalled it, Laila opened her mouth.
"...The current royal family is probably done for. Neither their abilities nor their capacity was enough for any of them to deal with what's happening in the country right now."
"Probably. With one exception, though."
Rose smiled bitterly. Laila's tone made it clear she had seen right through what Rose was about to say.
As if drawn forward by those words, Laila continued.
"...Then I'll do it. The rule has always been that a royal who loses a succession dispute quietly submits to the one who wins. It's a rule that's never really been enforced, but I'd rather not stoop to breaking it and becoming no better than those nobles."
"I'd appreciate the cooperation."
"That was always the plan, you know. ...Besides,"
After declaring that she had no objections to cooperating with Lilliana…
Laila raised one more thing. With a firm resolve kindling in her heart, she spoke.
"—I absolutely refuse to let things end like this."
"……"
"I still haven't heard a single thing. Why Mother is so fixated on you. What she was thinking all this time serving as Pope, what those people said to turn her into what she became.
And… whether she truly never felt anything about me at all."
"You probably won't get the answer you're hoping for."
"That's fine. Even if she denies it, even if she rejects me. I want to settle this properly—in a decent, aboveboard way.
Even if my wish was something hopeless from the very start… I want the certainty that it really was. I don't want it to end with things just left vague—I want to draw a clear line with my own hands, as the final say. So—"
She paused her words—then, in a single breath, declared her wish.
"Just one more time. Let me speak with Mother, Sky Witch. If you can guarantee even that… I promise my full cooperation with your Third Princess faction."
"Understood. I swear on my magic—you have my word."
And so it was.
Laila, just like Katia, had made up her mind to face her parent—and agreed to cooperate with the Third Princess faction.
◆
"…I've heard you out."
And so, in the present.
Having listened as Rose laid out the current state of the Church and the nobles in full, Laila… quietly nodded, then asked once more to confirm.
"There's plenty I want to say, plenty I ought to say. But first let me ask… Sky Witch. How much am I allowed to say?"
"Everything. Hold nothing back, don't hold back in the slightest. Don't worry about my being a prisoner or any of that—just say what you need to say without any reservations."
"Understood. Then to start with, in brief..."
Having heard her out, she began by saying this:
"You lot. Every single one of you is far, far—
too kind
, aren't you?"
"...Too kind, you say?"
"That's right, witch's apprentice. Well, I more or less guessed as much from the moment you took Lily on, but... especially you, I'd say."
She turned her quiet — or rather, flat — gaze toward Ermes, who had raised the question.
"If you want people to cooperate, you lay out the entire situation honestly. You make them truly want to cooperate of their own free will, and then ask for their help — that's probably what you think 'persuasion' means."
!"
"Of course that's not how it works. At the very least, that approach absolutely hits a wall once you're trying to bring more than a certain number of people together. Persuading a comrade and persuading a crowd are fundamentally different things. There's no way you can spell out every goal and every thought to a group of complete strangers and expect them all to agree to help — it's simply impossible. If you want to unite the nobles, you need to carefully restrict the information you share... no, wait."
Mid-sentence, Laila suddenly stopped speaking and fell into thought.
After a few seconds, she wore a serious expression — one reminiscent of Rose lost in research — entirely absorbed in her own reasoning.
"Actually...
there's no need
to unify them
into a single
group
at all
, is there?"
Upon hearing that, Rose's mouth curved into an amused grin.
"Oh. Did you think of something?"
"Yes. We'll still need to work out the details, like who to pick, but... with those nobles, this approach is probably the best fit."
"U-Um... Big Sister...? Could you, um, explain in a bit more concrete terms what exactly you're planning to do..."
"I'll explain as we make the preparations, Lily. But right now... if we're going to do this, we don't have time. We need to settle things before those nobles start making a fuss, or before they calm down and regain their composure. So..."
After saying that to Liliana, who had raised her objections,
Laila looked over Ermes and the others once more and spoke.
"Could you gather those nobles together right away and make the preparations for the announcement?
...I'll show you how one uses 'the royal family of this country' as a starting point."
Getting the nobles to properly cooperate as military forces for the march on the Royal Capital.
The first task placed upon the newly formed Third Princess faction.
And that was... about to be carried out under the direction of a girl who had newly become an ally.
Next time: witness Lady Laila's skills in action. Stay tuned!