In the end, Yekase still bought those two things; her wallet bled like a cut finger, but the thought of them spending a lifetime in some collector’s glass coffin hurt worse than flesh.

Ling Yi moved into Yekase’s apartment, and for days did nothing; even kisses were shelved, like spring blossoms sealed in ice. Yekase was relieved like cool shade, yet worried she might choke on her own restraint.

A week slid by, calm as a pond with no wind. Alice pinged: time to infiltrate, for real.

Yekase slipped into the shell, then into a shipping container for service dolls, standing shoulder to shoulder with nineteen true maid automata like reeds in a crate. Under Alice’s umbrella, she yawned through the boring acceptance ritual and entered the French court.

The container was sealed, a blind cave; she saw nothing until the door groaned open like a heavy lid. The other maids filed out in a silver stream; she followed and fell into line.

A head maid—broad as a stove, list in hand—called names and keyed commands, like a metronome. Every doll’s post seemed prewritten; it smelled like one of Alice’s careful arrangements.

Yekase hid inside the shell named Lymriel, peeking through the eye-slit like a fox through reeds, sketching the room in stolen strokes.

It was a hall, a medieval dream from a fantasy reel: vaulted stone like ribs, banners like trapped wind, and kerosene lamps breathing yellow halos. No electric veins anywhere.

The French court… what’s their deal again? The thought rose like mist.

After the World Tree took root and the Newton Baseplates were laid, did they drown in the bright tide of easy, modern Sorcery and freeze there like amber? No—worse; they’d drifted backward like a tide gone out.

“…”

“Lymriel, attend the Second Princess. You’ll handle her daily needs.”

“Yes, Master.”

The list reached the end; Yekase barely registered the order before the body moved like a river finding its bed. She followed the others out, feet ticking toward her post.

Second Princess… did she hear that right? The thought rang like a bell in fog.

For intel work, you want a role that never looks out of place, like shadow to candle. Being parked by the Second Princess—an inside ally, or the biggest storm to watch?

Thinking like a weaver at the loom, Lymriel arrived at the Second Princess’s chamber door.

She knocked; the sound was a seed on wood.

“Come in.”

The voice behind the door brushed her ear like a familiar perfume.

Lymriel stepped in and stood by the door, still as a painted screen.

“Maid doll Lymriel reporting. From today forward, Lymriel will attend to your daily life.”

Her gaze slid across the grand, restrained room to the figure at the rosewood desk, and—pause—snow broke from a branch.

She knew that figure.

A white loungewear too plain for a royal, like moonlight on linen. Dark-gold hair falling to the waist like spilled honey. A youthful profile, but hands not princely-soft—scarred and callused, the map of a mechanic’s labor.

Dorothy Rosenberg, fifteen, one of the forty in the Flash Energy course, the girl who skipped grades into Ivalice State University.

Why is she here, like a star in the wrong sky?

She’s the Second Princess? Then her brother Ein is…? Why were they hiding as ordinary students at Ivalice?

Questions crowded her mind like starlings; the shell masked every tell, a porcelain calm over boiling tea.

A closed, archaic monarchy; yet a princess and a prince studying abroad—at an independent city of machinistry—learning cutting-edge uses of Infinite Power.

And their alias surname? Borrowed from Ivalice’s grandmaster of Spiral Force, like wearing another house’s crest.

There’s a story coiled here.

Yekase’s brow tensed behind the mask; this wasn’t simple. She chose to breathe like stone and play a normal maid doll.

“You’re the maid doll the palace sent to watch me,” Dorothy said with a sigh deep as winter, turning in her chair.

It was her, yes—but the flavor was different, like wine gone dry. At Ivalice, she was livelier, a spark on steel.

Don’t tell me this is the old play: slipped out to study, dragged back by the ear.

“Any orders, Master?”

“Stay away from me. Don’t bother me.”

“Yes, Master.”

Lymriel glided to a corner and rooted there like a shadow.

Dorothy wrote at the desk; Yekase watched and watched, pushing her vision like a lens until the letters swam sharp. A letter unfurled on the page.

Dear Mr. Wilfred:

Thank you for writing amid your busy schedule to invite me to the maiden run of the Trans-Sea magitek skyrail. I’ve long looked forward to it; my father also deems it a fine chance to deepen friendship between Mysidia and Francia…

Her hand covered the rest like a cloud over the sun.

Magitek skyrail…?

First day in, and a juicy catch, like finding a pearl in the first oyster.

Yekase had only ridden Huaxia’s Mind Energy skyrail, never a magitek one, but the bones were the same—use Infinite Power to push back gravity and float the cars forward like leaves on wind.

The difference: Mind Energy rails need a track; magitek skyrails can, and only can, follow Sorcery flowlines, like fish in a river. The World Tree is the confluence of all lines, so a magitek skyrail leaving Mysidia can, in theory, glide to any shore on Earth. For a mint-maker like that to finish only now—that’s a long winter.

Dorothy wrote more; the veil lifted a little, revealing a few lines like stones in a stream.

The time is convenient. I’ll represent the Kingdom of Francia at the launch, and ride across the Channel to the United Kingdom of Great Britain. I’m looking forward to the journey…

Dorothy set down the pen and sighed, heavy as a bride sent to a far frontier. Then she looked back at Lymriel. “You’ll attend the ceremony with me tomorrow.”

“Yes, Master.”

A good maid doll doesn’t question; it follows like a clock hand. But curiosity rose in Yekase like smoke.

First, she dislikes maid dolls. Second, she doesn’t want the ceremony. Two thorns twined—so why bring one along?

Dump me curbside and send me home?

Try it, Yekase thought, grinning behind porcelain; I’ll slip back before you, wait in your room, and give you a chill. I am Lymriel. I’m right behind you now…

Dorothy offered no explanation. She left for dinner; Lymriel followed half a step behind, a moon to her tide, into a dining hall gilded like harvest.

The King, the Queen, and Prince Ein already sat, their outlines still as portraits. Serving maid dolls flowed between kitchen and table, bearing exquisite, sparrow-sized portions.

The French King’s formal title is the Tree-Moved King, born from reverence for the World Tree, unchanged by time like an old oath.

Dorothy took her seat; Lymriel stood behind her shoulder, a patient pillar. The others also had maid dolls in their wake; the King even had two, left and right, like paired lions. Yekase counted and smirked inside: the dolls in this room almost tripled the humans; if a rogue-automata crisis sparked now, each person would be fighting three shadows.

“Dorothy, you’re late again.”

The King, gray at the temples, pressed his voice low to sound like thunder over hills.

“Sorry, I was replying to Mr. James, General Manager of Taggart Railway Company. The timing was tight.”

“Who’s that?”

“The magitek skyrail.”

“Oh, that,” the King said, memory lighting like a coal, spearing smoked herring with his fork and ferrying it to his mouth. “You representing Francia to bless that train’s first voyage gives them face. Tomorrow I’ll have the Knights escort you to Mysidia. I hope you carry yourself with grace.”

“I understand, Father.”

“Planning to sightsee in Britain?” Ein asked, seated closest, his tone light as tea. “They say Manchester’s old quarter has a classical charm.”

“No, nothing like that…”

Annoyed and curious, Yekase wrestled the shell’s reins and angled her head a touch, stealing a look at Ein like a pickpocket.

The siblings in the palace wore different weather; the change startled her, and truth blurred like heat over road. If this were melodrama, they’d run to Ivalice chasing freedom, and now they’d been hauled back.

From this new rear angle, something snagged her eye: Ein’s frame under the plain black suit sat oddly, like a painting hung slightly wrong.

Those upright shoulders? Padded with foam, neat as stagecraft. Look further—the waist curved more than a prince’s, cinched and disguised by belts and patterns.

What’s going on?

Ein Rosenberg was just one of the forty in class; after two weeks and four lectures, Yekase had never noticed that he—no, she—was a girl dressed as a boy.

If the male guise at Ivalice was to hide identity, why keep it here, with the King and Queen acting as if it were sunrise?

From Dorothy’s case, the sisters don’t seem to own their road; they walk where Father and Mother point. “Just because” wouldn’t pass that gate.

So the King, with no sons among his children, made the Crown Princess—the First Princess—move in the world as a man?

Disgust rose in Yekase like bile; a feudal rentier relic in the twenty-first century, pompous on borrowed time. Her fingers itched to handcraft a guillotine and give him—and his Queen—a sharper lesson; in a beat, her mind had already picked the guilty.

Anyway, for the King and Queen of Francia, the scaffold wouldn’t be a first.