Chapter 18: Disappearance/Interlude

"Phew... I have to say, after all that, I'm feeling a little tired."

With only a few days of the summer holiday left, Mia returned to her room late at night. She threw herself onto her bed, not even bothering to change out of her dress. It was the kind of behavior that would have earned her a good scolding from Anne, but between propriety and exhaustion, the latter ultimately won out.

After concluding her talks with the Outcount of Rudolvon, she set out on a whirlwind tour through the empire. Inspired by her success with the wheat issue, she decided to get as much done as possible before she left for school. Starting with an in-person inspection of the new hospital in the slums, she then traveled to storehouses to examine food reserves before departing on an ambitious journey in which she circled the whole of the empire, meeting with noble after noble to spread word of the institution she planned to build.

"Ugh..."

Within moments of hitting the bed, a bone-deep exhaustion began to spread throughout her body. It took no small amount of effort, but she resisted its soft embrace and craned her neck up.

"That reminds me... It's been a while since I've checked..."

She let out a deep breath before slowly pushing herself up and shambling toward the luxuriously-designed desk in her room. Stored carefully in the back of one drawer was a bloody diary... which served as an indispensable signpost for Mia. The last time she'd opened it was at the start of the summer. As she took it into her hands, her mouth formed a weary smile.

"...After all that, if this still points me straight toward the guillotine, then I might just cry a little."

She gingerly flipped open the cover and thumbed through the pages until she arrived at the one in question...

"...Huh?!"

...Only to let out a gasp of alarm. She gaped at the page that described her execution as the letters unraveled like loose threads before melting away into nothing. Simultaneously, the red stains that covered the page faded away. She rubbed her eyes and took another look, only to discover a blank page, pristinely white and completely untouched.

"Wh-What in the moons?! What just happ— Ah!"

In her shock, she allowed the book to slip from her hand. She caught it just before it fell, fumbling it a few times before she got a firm grip on it, only for it to begin emitting a faint glow the color of moonlight. She watched in disbelief as the diary disintegrated into tiny particles of light. Before long, it had disappeared entirely.

"How... It..."

For a long time, she stood there staring blankly at her empty hands, completely unable to process what had just happened.

"Wh-What is the meaning of this?! Why did my diary just..."

In a fit of panic, she ran around her room, looking high and low for her vanished book. She grew more flustered with each passing second. After all, the diary had been her guide. It was a cruel but critical compass for her actions, laying out the path that led her to the guillotine. Without it, how would she figure out which routes to avoid?

"...Hm?"

She froze as a realization hit her. That diary was written by her future self, and it detailed the events that would lead to her bloody death at the guillotine. As long as that future existed, so would the diary.

"Which also means... As long as the diary exists, I'm still destined to die at the guillotine. So... Um... If the diary is gone, then that means..."

Slowly, she worked through the logic, step by laborious step until it formed a clear and unbroken thread that steered her through the labyrinth of her confusion. She followed it to its end, where she arrived at a conclusion.

"Does that mean... the future where I die at the guillotine... is gone too?"

She spoke in a near-silent whisper, mouthing the words as though she couldn't believe what her own voice was saying.

"I... did it? Really? I... did it! Finally! I did it!"

She threw up her fist and punched vigorously at the air in a loud, passionate, and thoroughly unprincesslike celebration of sheer, unbridled joy. She burst into dance, twirling jubilantly around her room over and over, stopping only when her fatigue outpaced her excitement.

"Oh, I know!" she said after she'd calmed down a little. "I should write to Prince Abel!"

She clapped her hands together enthusiastically and smiled. Realistically, it was unlikely that he'd be able to write back in time considering how little was left of the summer. Furthermore, once school started, she could just talk to him in person. That did not change the fact that she wanted to tell someone about how happy she was feeling. She needed to gush, and she needed to do it right now. As for whom she wished to gush to most... Well... It wasn't a difficult question.

"I do wonder how you've been, Prince Abel. I mean, I know we'll see each other once school begins, but that seems terribly far away right now."

The gears of fate continued to turn, but one of them shifted in its place, slowly changing the motion of all its peers.

While Mia was raising a ruckus in her room, four men were trading whispers in an underground tavern.

"It's looking like the empire will actually manage to ride it out."

"I tried egging on a bunch of nobles, but things aren't going well."

"That little upstart in the Golden Moon Ministry... Ludwig, was it? He's good. And he's been a brilliant little wrench in our plans..."

"I figured a famine would be enough to do them in, but they're becoming much too prepared..."

"I heard that Princess Mia and Prince Sion are on friendly terms. We should take this to mean that efforts to turn them against each other have failed."

"Hmph, the 'Great Sage of the Empire,' huh... The meddling kid..."

"Don't beat yourself up. It was never going to be easy. Prince Sion is bad enough, what with him being a genius and everything, but Belluga's Rafina is no joke either."

"In any case, our ultimate goal remains the same, but I'm putting the plans for the empire on hold. We're changing targets..."

...Mia never did hear back from Abel.