The maid automatons had a small storeroom, a night roost where they hibernated to save power like moths folded in dusk. After the day’s work, the team’s only human—the Head Maid—would dock a charging post into the port set below their waists, then seal them one by one into vacuum maintenance sheaths made of twin sheets of black latex, compressing them into a tidy stack like lacquered books to save space.

But Lymriel, as the Second Princess’s personal maid, had to attend her bed even through the night, clamped like a Bandai toy mechanism locked by a clasp, unable to take half a step from that crescent of shadow.

Yekase felt the chill first—she was twenty‑eight, maybe even had a family, and staring at a fifteen‑year‑old girl’s sleeping face all night felt creepier than a moth to a flame. And the girl was her student; this wasn’t some sleazy sim. Better to practice quiet virtue when alone.

Luckily she’d modded the shell into armor before coming, a carapace like a beetle’s night coat. Once Dorothy’s breathing slowed to the soft tide of true sleep, she dropped the disguise, and drifted through the room like a fish testing new water.

Wandering a fifteen‑year‑old’s room while she slept felt even creepier, a moonlit trespass that tugged at conscience.

Then Yekase did something creepier still: she began rifling through Dorothy’s bookshelves and desk, like a fox nosing through leaves.

“The Machina Catechism. Chronicles of the Twelve Apostles…” The spines were heavy with machinery and Christendom, tomes that felt more cathedral than adolescence, more stone bell than heartbeat. But a shelf might be inspected; it didn’t tell the truth. Try the old trick—pull every book from bottom to top, left to right, like testing bricks in a garden wall. No secret door, no clicking lever. Nothing. A pity, like a pond without carp.

Yekase turned to the desk. On it lay the reply Dorothy had written in front of her, a promise to attend tomorrow’s ceremony and ride the cross‑sea magitech sky‑rail “Love‑Over‑City.”

Wait, hold on.

Why was the letter still sitting there, like a message in a bottle on a dry beach?

“…”

Did she… forget?

Yekase replayed Dorothy’s evening, memory like candle smoke curling. After dinner, she bathed in the vast royal bathroom, water echoing like a cavern. Then she went to her “big brother’s” room.

The two of them plotted in loud voices about courses and experiments in Ivalice, earnest as cartographers scratching coastlines, looking nothing like a helmet‑and‑cloak spy duo, and everything like scholars reading for France’s rise.

Then Dorothy came back and did her homework—the big problem Yekase had assigned. She pondered long and hard, thoughts like crows wheeling.

And wrote it wrong.

Yekase watched from the side, wanting to give her a quiet shortcut, but swallowed it in the name of secrecy, like a bitter pill.

After that, Dorothy went to bed, sinking into sleep like a pebble into a well.

So she just forgot to send it, right?

…Then again, whether this sky‑rail’s launch ceremony happened or not wasn’t Yekase’s business. Better to pretend she hadn’t seen, like a passerby under rain.

She kept searching the desk, fingertips sifting like wind through grain, and finally found what she wanted in the lowest drawer’s bottom layer.

Dorothy and Alice’s correspondence.

Just as Yekase had suspected, Dorothy was Alice’s inside agent at court, a little candle carried three years running through palace corridors. This fifteen‑year‑old had been at it since she was twelve.

Her elder sister, Ein, who appeared to the public as the Crown Prince, had been trained in imperial statecraft since childhood, which let her touch secrets kept behind velvet curtains. Once she learned, Dorothy wrote letters from the roots up to the branches, delivering them to Alice like birds flying treeward.

The two had a clear goal: leverage Alice’s power to overturn the royal line, like pulling a rug from under a throne.

And Yekase saw something more startling—the French humiliation in World War II had been planned in secret by the King and his First Minister, a sacrifice offered to the World Tree like blood poured at a root.

The results were plain—the Golden Apple did not grow, no gilded fruit on that mythic bough. Every effort was for nothing, like rain on iron.

At least she’d confirmed Dorothy could be trusted. Tomorrow she’d find a chance to show her true face, a moth lighting on a friendly palm.

Yekase knelt and put the papers back in place, careful as a gardener re‑beds soil. Then a faint rustle brushed her ear like a reed in wind.

She looked up. The page on the desk shimmered with a cool, indifferent white, then folded itself into an origami crane, slipped through the half‑open window like a night moth, and flew toward the heights of the dark sky.

So that’s how it’s sent? Scheduled delivery? A message that rides the moon like a sail?

Kind of… romantic.

Yekase marked the sorcery trace in the folding, memory sketching lines like frost on glass, and decided to reverse it when time allowed, a puzzle waiting under tea.

She returned to her original spot. The shell rose from her feet like tide climbing a pier, wrapped her body, and she became again a perfect maid automaton, a porcelain statue under hush.

Automatons didn’t fidget, didn’t speak, didn’t think; they were still water under ice.

Moonlight like white gauze spilled through the window, laying a veil over the oak floor.

The Second Princess’s bedchamber settled back into silence, as if nothing had ever happened, as if a dream had been folded and tucked away.

…

…

May 7th. Europe’s first cross‑sea magitech sky‑rail, linking the City of Sorcery, Mysidia, with Manchester in England, entered service amid a storm of cheers and a rain of petals, a spring tide of voices and color.

Most eyes turned to Dorothy de Blois, Second Princess of the Kingdom of France, who attended the launch and gave a speech on witnessing Mysidia’s growth and building a friendship of the arcane, words tossed like blossoms into a festival wind.

At her back stood a maid automaton with long golden hair and glassy eyes, a gift from Mysidia’s Chief Ancient Alchemist, Alicia Alicia, a symbol that the alliance of a nation and a city would endure like two oaks rooted side by side.

The automaton wasn’t only beautiful beyond telling, like a carved angel in candlelight; it carried a measure of artificial mind, and rumor said it could even fight, a blade wrapped in silk.

Yet no matter how brilliant an automaton, it was still but a halo around Dorothy, a moon circling a sun.

She wore a lavish crimson gown, complex as a peony in full bloom. The skirt had thirteen layers of wavy pleats like ripples on a lake; from chest to belly ran six rows of omega‑shaped embroidery like little storms; between arms and body draped a mist‑like sash, setting the tender girl off like a fairy stepping down a cloud.

Inside the shell, Yekase stifled a laugh—the public loves an open secret. Another thirteen, plus a six‑by‑three array flaunted right to the face. Clearly they were dead set on secularizing and clinging to Mysidia’s thigh for support, like ivy finding its pillar. Yet remembering that these two “the girl who will be the king” plot nightly to upend the crown for a parliament, one couldn’t help but sigh like rain on old stone.

After a long, contentless speech that floated like steam and tasted like air, Dorothy led Yekase into First Class, the carriage right behind the engine, a cozy nest of privilege.

Sofa. Coffee table. Drink dispenser. Massage chair. And a full home theater, lights like stars in a private sky.

Goddamn feudal nobles, fat on velvet!

Overthrow it. A monarchy this rotten begs to be overturned like a wormy log.

…Wait, this train was made in Mysidia. Goddamn monopoly‑capitalist magi in silk robes!

Dorothy shut the door, settled onto the sofa, and used the translucent panel in the armrest to close the windows. She let out a long breath, like a kettle finally off boil, and her whole body slackened into salted‑fish mode, the radiant princess aura vanishing like sun behind cloud.

No one would bother her before England. She could nap a little, drift like a leaf on a slow stream…

“I say, Princess Dorothy.”

“…?!”

“This automaton speaks in my voice, and you never noticed. Plus you missed that problem last night. Seems you don’t listen that closely in class, do you?”

Tap, tap.

Lymriel, without receiving any order, walked to the center of the carriage, her steps like soft hammers on a drum.

Like a frame from a horror film, an inexplicable pressure spilled through First Class, a hush like fog thickening.

In front of Dorothy’s eyes, widened by fear like moons, the automaton waved a hand and peeled away its false shell, lacquer sliding off a statue.

Yekase stood there, flashed a V‑sign like a gull’s wing.

“Wha—aaah?! Pro—Professor Luciferin?! Why are you here?” Her voice fluttered like a sparrow.

Good. Back to square one, like a chalkboard freshly wiped.

Yekase grinned wider and sat on the other sofa, a cat finding a warm spot.

“Don’t scare me like that, Professor… hiding inside an automaton…”

“Mas Oyama, a karate master, once hid inside a plastic dinosaur model to sneak into a rival’s place. I only borrowed the anecdote, like a trick from an old folio,” Yekase said, all solemn play.

“Then who’s your rival?”

“A system calcified into bone. Heard of the Lunar Resistance? I have some ties to their leader,” she said, voice like a blade tucked in velvet.

“!!!”

Dorothy was thunderstruck, a lightning bolt through clear sky. She knew Professor Luciferin’s background, and had heard rumors of Satan, but she’d never imagined the Crimson Evil Empire’s reach already stretched beyond Earth, tentacles into star‑dark.

“So, Princess, if you’ve got nothing urgent, I’ll play automaton and take a stroll through the later cars,” Yekase said, casual as wind skimming grass.

“Professor, just call me Dorothy… What for?” Her question rose like a kite in light wind.

Yekase wagged a finger and explained, words like stones lined on a path:

“‘Luxury vehicle’ plus ‘maiden voyage’ spells trouble, like a red flag fluttering. And this is the first cross‑border venture between a city‑state and a sovereign nation. No way it won’t draw eyes. The toilet‑paper isekai MC would lie there and wait for the event. We move first,” she said, stretching in the soft sofa like a cat waking, then rose to don her shell.

“Then the headline will read, ‘The Second Princess, with her maid automaton, resolves a sky‑rail attack.’ It’ll lift your reputation like wind under a banner.”

“Stopping an attack and protecting passengers is best, of course. But what about your credit?” Dorothy asked, guilt like a shadow under her words.

“I don’t need credit. I’ve got so many titles, they overflow a room like books stacked to the ceiling.”

Yekase stepped into Dorothy’s blind spot, a shadow slipping around a corner.

Dorothy turned. The maid automaton Lymriel already stood waiting, a swan stilling on dark water.

She was docile and obedient in pose, yet carried a crisp severity, like a sword wrapped in paper.

“Give the order, Master.”

“Yes… Lymriel, please protect this sky‑rail and all passengers. Whatever the enemy, make sure everyone reaches the destination safely,” Dorothy said, the words steadying like a hand on a helm.

“At your command.”

Lymriel opened the rear door of First Class, and her figure vanished down the coupling corridor, a quiet arrow loosed into the dark.