CH 97

After changing clothes and taking a bath, I thought about Marieta while eating the meal Anne prepared for me. Why did she bring a child? Marieta is my classmate, so she’s 14 or 15 years old now. Did she bring her little sister or niece? Or did she find it somewhere and protect it? No, before that, can you bring a small child to the academy?

“Hey Anne. What kind of child did Marieta bring?”

“That’s right. She was a cute one-year-old girl with pink hair and amber eyes.”

Pink hair. . . Is it Marieta’s blood relative? I wonder if the theory of sister or niece is dominant.

While thinking about that, when I was eating and having tea, someone came to visit my room, so Anne went out to deal with it. Anne came back to the room after having a few words at the entrance.

“Ojousama, its the young lady from earlier. She calls herself Marieta Zeromon.”

Marieta Zeromon? Not Marieta Prea? No, if her mother got married, her last name will change. If her name is Marieta and her hair is pink, I decided that it’s Marieta, the heroine I know, and instructed Anne to let her in the room.

It was Marieta who came into the room with Anne after a while, as I expected, but I was surprised to see her. When I met her when I was a child, she had smooth hair to her chest, and in the otome game, she braided her long hair and put it together cutely at the back of her head, but now she has . . . a short cut. It’s very short. It’s much shorter than the boys I saw in the academy today. She has a good face, so even if it’s short, it’s very cute, but what happened to her head? No, it looks good on her, but what happened? The heroine of the otome game. . .

Having become such a boyish beautiful girl, she stood in front of me, who was confused, and smiled while holding a girl with fluffy pink hair.

“Well. . . um. Ah, Marieta? Long time no see.”

“Yes, it’s been nine years, Isabella!! I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again. I really wanted to write a letter, but I didn’t know the destination.”

Ah, I see. Is there a way to get in touch by letter? I couldn’t think of it at all. I’m sure if I asked Ursch-kun, he would have looked up the address and delivered the letter, but I thought ‘I couldn’t she her until I entered the academy’ = ‘I couldn’t get in touch with her’.

“Ahh, sorry. I should have sent you a letter. I couldn’t think of it.”

“It’s okay, because Isabella doesn’t know my address either.”

No, if I looked it up, it should have been investigated. I’m really sorry. While apologizing inwardly, I looked at the baby moving around in Marieta’s arms.

“Well, Marieta. I think it’s tiring to keep standing with a child in your arms, so sit down first.”

When I said that, Marieta sat in the chair that Anne pulled out. When Marieta sat down, Anne quickly prepared tea and served it in front of Marieta with the sweets. When I was ready to talk, I immediately started talking to her.

“Hey Marieta. I’m sorry for asking so many questions again, but what happened with that child? And why has your last name changed?”

“I got married. And this child is my daughter Bella. She’ll be one year old soon. Today’s entrance ceremony was exempted for students with children, so I came to see you during the day, but when I think about it, Isabella participated in the entrance ceremony. I was disappointed. That’s right, my room is in the mother and child dormitory of the academy, so please come and visit me next time.”

Wait. Wait, Marieta. There’s too much information, and Tsukkomi can’t catch up.

First of all, getting married and giving birth? What does it mean that the heroine of the otome game is a married woman with a child at the start of the story of entering the academy? From the main character’s setting, there’s no way to start an otome game.

And then. . .

“Well. Your daughter’s name is. . . Bella-chan.”

“That’s right!! She got her name from Isabella. I hope this child will be another hope for me.”

I see. . . I’m the origin of the name. . . Alice-chan calls me Bella-chan, but her name mixes it up.

“And your husband’s name is Zeromon-san.”

“Yes. We moved to a place famous for wine. In a place where there is a vast orchard as far as the eye can see, my mother and aunt work at the wine factory there, and I sometimes went to help, but one day they decided to import a new machine to bottle wine. Some of the engineers came from the Kingdom of Metalia, where the machines were imported from, to install and manage the machines.”

“The kingdom of Metalia, where 70% of the people are called dwarves, on the other side of the Garo Empire?”

“That’s right!! One of the engineers who came at that time is this child’s father.”

“By the way, your husband’s race is. . .”

“Of course it’s a dwarf. He decided to live in this country, so he married me. Now he’s managing the machines at a local wine factory and waiting for me to graduate and come back.”

What should I do? The more I listen, the more information I get and I feel complicated. I’m catching up on the situation with an acquaintance who has been away for a long time, and there’s too much information at a level where we can’t finish with ‘We’ve changed each other’s lives.’ In the first place, there is only a level of contact that I don’t even know if I can call her an acquaintance, but at the time of naming her daughter after me, it may already be past that. I don’t want to comment.

And your husband is separated not only from his wife but also from his daughter, is that okay?

“I understand that the entrance ceremony is dangerous and you are exempt if you have a child, but in the first place, isn’t the entrance of children not allowed?”

“People with a lot of magical power are obligated to enroll, so even if they have children, they are forced to enroll.”

“In spite of that, I feel that there were few students who gathered at the entrance ceremony. It was enough to fit in the auditorium after gathering from all over the country.”

“Ah, that’s because students coming by horse-drawn carriage from far away are coming late. That’s why the solicitation of the departments is 7 days, and there are 10 days left until class starts.”

“Certainly, it’s hard to move with other children. It would be nice if trains were running in the area where they live, but most of them are in territories that don’t have railroad tracks. Besides, the train fare is not cheap, so some students won’t be able to ride it.”

“There are some subsidies from the territory, but some people are thinking about floating that money. But you may be exempted from admission.”

“Even though if you have a child, you won’t be exempted?”

“Yes. Children who are registered as adventurers and are already active as magicians will not enter the school. In the first place, adventurers work across countries, and they stay at an inn and don’t settle down, and they don’t pay taxes, so they’re not included as citizens.”

“There are adventurers who settle down with a house, right?”

“But they’ll leave the country immediately for work, and if they’re asked to be nominated, they’ll go to work, so it’s not a class. If they retire, return their license and settle down, they will become a resident of the land. But by that time, they are over the age of the admission policy.”

Come to think of it, when I fought the Colors Collector, the adventurer twin tail sister, who helped with the defensive wall, was old enough to be an academy student, but she didn’t feel like she was attending the academy.

“I see. It’s not the country that adventurers belong to, it’s an adventurer guild.”

“That’s right. So, if you register in the adventurer guild, you will lose the country you belong to, so if you are sentenced to deportation, you can stay in the country if you become an adventurer.”

“Huh?”

What do you mean? Since it’s deportation, don’t you have to leave the country? When I was speechless because I didn’t understand the meaning, Marieta gave me a supplementary explanation.

“It may be different in places depending on the laws of the country, but at least according to the laws of the surrounding allies, deportation and entry bans are different. Even if you go out of the country due to deportation, if you register as an adventurer outside the country, it’s no problem to enter this country for work. So it’s okay to register as an adventurer in an outside guild and come back and stay in the country.”

“Marieta. . . You know very well about the loopholes of such a law.”

“It’s something I learned from repeating my life. Anyway, you have to lose the protection of the country and you don’t have to be a citizen, so if you become an adventurer, the deportation will be completed. In addition to deportation, heavy punishments are also sentenced to immigration, but if their names and status change in other countries, the country won’t know, so they can come back.”

“Hey, have you every been deported by ‘Isabella’ in your repetitive life?”

“There is no real Isabella, but there is a fake Isabella. I was also told to be banned from entering the country, so I went out of the country. But after that, I couldn’t follow her whereabouts, so I don’t know where she went.”

Real Isabella and fake Isabella. Can you answer whether the prediction Ursch-kun told me before is correct?

I leaned forward and asked Marieta a question in a low voice.

“Do you remember the warning that you gave me a long time ago?”

“Yes, I remember.”

While answering that, Marieta glanced at Anne.

“Let me match the answers. Marieta was talking about the girl who takes away my life and the fake Isabella, did you mean Anne’s twin sister ‘Mary’?”