ICHV 5

Chapter 5

“What happened?”

“Miss Kesselaya ordered a dress for a ball being held at the Imperial Palace in the capital, and Betty—that foolish girl—accidentally tore it. I heard it was a dress with an enormous amount of lace. To cause such a major incident right after starting work as a maid!”

“No, how could she……? Why would the lace tear in the first place?”

“Apparently, the lace was very intricate and elaborate. It seems it caught on something while they were putting the dress on or taking it off. Betty tried to free it herself, but I don’t know what she did wrong. The threads all unraveled at once. She should have waited for an employee to come! Why did that girl have to step in? Betty’s always been a little inflexible, hasn’t she? All diligence and no sense! Why did she have to interfere? Why!”

“Ah…….”

Sella couldn’t even manage a proper response to the director’s words.

A debutante dress, torn lace…… That was supposed to be an episode between the heroine and the male lead.

Her head was spinning.

What on earth had happened?

In the original novel, Kesselaya had a very expensive dress made for her debutante ball. When she went to try on the finished dress one last time before taking it home, she encountered Rodiak there, and he tore the lace on her dress.

Kesselaya had simply been unlucky enough to cross paths with the male lead when one of his sudden bouts of madness struck.

But why had her sister torn it? Why was everything unfolding so differently? Had something gone wrong with the story?

But what reason could there be for anything to have changed?

Although she had entered this world, she had shut herself away in the orphanage and lived quietly, without making any connection to the people involved.

There was no way she could have influenced the plot of the novel. Her sister Betty, the one who had torn the lace, had been born and raised in this world.

“Did Miss Kesselaya happen to meet a man there?”

As an orphan who had no reason to know about the former Crown Prince, Sella couldn’t exactly ask whether the former Crown Prince had shown up at Bliss.

“What?”

The director raised one eyebrow, as if wondering what sort of nonsense Sella was talking about.

“When the lace on the dress was torn, was anyone nearby besides my sister Betty?”

“You think your sister couldn’t possibly have caused the accident, is that it? Are you trying to write some sort of novel? What does a man have to do with any of this?”

So they hadn’t met?

What was going on? The torn dress was supposed to be the very thing that connected the hidden villain and the heroine.

Although Rodiak had torn Kesselaya’s dress, his madness subsided as soon as he saw her. And from that moment onward, he became obsessed with Kesselaya.

Perhaps his madness subsided when he met the woman he loved. Or perhaps it was something else.

There must have been an explanation somewhere in the novel for that phenomenon, or at least for the correlation between the two…… But Sella had only skimmed through the story, focusing mostly on the steamy scenes because everyone had said they were fantastic. She hadn’t even finished reading the whole thing, so she had no idea.

On top of that, several years had passed since she had transmigrated into this world, and she couldn’t remember the parts she had read with any accuracy anymore.

In any case, Rodiak immediately apologized for tearing Kesselaya’s dress and even compensated her for it, all to win her favor. He had no idea that she would wear that very dress to the Imperial Palace and fall in love with the Crown Prince.

But she did fall in love with the Crown Prince, and that was when the tragedy began.

“Anyway, this is a real problem. That dress must have cost about six months of Betty’s wages. We won’t be getting any childcare payments from her for a while, and now we’ll have to cover the cost of that dress first. Honestly! What rotten luck! I find her a job, and she causes an accident right away. What an idiot.”

Did the director not realize that the person she was insulting was Sella’s older sister?

It wasn’t as if this was anything new, but Sella was still infuriated all over again by the director’s awful character.

However, the director strode roughly into the orphanage, seemingly unconcerned with Sella’s feelings.

“Ah!”

Sella had been staring resentfully at the director’s back as she walked away, still insulting her sister, when a sudden cry escaped her lips.

“My sister…….”

She was trapped in that household now!

Only then did Sella realize that, because of the cost of the dress, her sister’s employment had effectively been converted into a lump-sum arrangement.

Under this system, orphans weren’t hired and paid a regular salary. Instead, they were paid an amount equivalent to several years’ worth of wages in advance.

However, even in this arrangement, the orphan’s outstanding debt for their upbringing still had to be repaid. As a result, none of the money actually remained in the orphan’s hands. Instead, several years’ worth of debt owed to the orphanage director was simply wiped out all at once.

Such lump-sum arrangements were uncommon, though.

From the employer’s perspective, they had to pay a large sum upfront to acquire a servant, then feed, house, and employ that person for several years. But even if the servant they had purchased failed to meet their expectations, the orphanage wouldn’t accept a “return.” In other words, it was a risky investment.

Furthermore, this kind of lump-sum arrangement required the adult orphan being hired to agree to it. Most orphans preferred a regular salary instead. If the working conditions in their employer’s household were decent, they could at least count on job security. But if they weren’t, the orphan could end up trapped in that household for years, suffering like a slave.

That was why most employers chose the arrangement in which the orphan’s wages were sent to the orphanage until their upbringing debt had been paid off, while the orphan themselves received only room and board.

Betty hadn’t been hired under a lump-sum arrangement, either. Sella had thought that if she could just persuade her sister, Betty could leave the household immediately.

But if Betty had to pay for the dress, then even if she changed her mind, she would have to remain in that household until the debt was repaid.

What do I do? What am I supposed to do?! A few months is more than enough time for the hidden villain to capture her and kill her.

Her mouth went completely dry.

She had to find a way to come up with the money for the dress as soon as possible.

The next day, Sella rushed to Bliss.

She wanted to find out the exact price of the dress her sister had torn, and also confirm whether Rodiak, the hidden villain and male lead, had visited the shop the previous day.

The timing wasn’t right for her to go straight to Count Seidan’s household, where Kesselaya currently lived, and visit her sister. After causing an accident involving such an important dress right after being hired, Betty would only get into even more trouble if her younger sister showed up.

“Twelve hundred gallons?”

Sella trembled with shock when she heard the price of the dress Betty had torn.

That was the equivalent of ten months’ wages. Her earlier plan to save a little money by setting aside the five gallons left over after buying snacks yesterday, then pocketing ten gallons every time she bought firewood, seemed laughable now.

“That’s the price of the entire dress. Since only the lace was torn, we charged six hundred gallons for the repairs. Handmade lace is expensive, so it accounts for more than half the dress’s total cost. We’ve already given her a bit of a discount. Anyway, is there anything else you need? I’m rather busy.”

The shop assistant looked Sella up and down as she spoke.

Sella’s appearance didn’t suit a place like this, and the assistant clearly wasn’t interested in helping her. She seemed to realize that Sella’s main purpose was to ask about yesterday’s accident and didn’t even want to bother dealing with her.

Sella was so devastated by the price of the dress that she couldn’t even bring herself to ask whether the hidden villain had come by.

Whether he had or not, her sister was the one who had torn the dress. Confirming that he had been there would only make her feel as though the noose around her neck had tightened.

With her shoulders drooping, Sella lowered her head and headed toward the shop’s entrance.

“Ah!”

But just as she reached the door, her forehead collided with something.

It wasn’t a wall, but it was hard—and yet somehow springy……

“Oh! Lord Rody!”

She had walked straight into the woodcutter Rody’s chest.

Rody, who had been entering the shop, had collided with Sella just as she was about to leave.

“Cool…… Sella?”

“I’m sorry. I was looking down, so I didn’t see where I was going.”

She thought it was strange that Rody had called her something odd, but she was so troubled by the dress incident that she didn’t have the energy to ask him what he meant.

“No, it’s fine.”

For someone who says he’s fine, he’s awfully short on words again today.

“I’m glad. Then I’ll be going now.”

Completely drained, Sella gave him a perfunctory greeting and headed for the door again.

“Did you come here to buy clothes, too?”

But Rody didn’t seem to have any intention of parting ways with her just yet.

Wait, “you,” as in “my dear”? Yesterday, he called me “you” in a much more casual way. Why is he suddenly talking like that……?

“No. It’s not as if I could afford to buy clothes in a place like this.”

“……?”

A puzzled expression crossed Rody’s face.

“They’re expensive.”

Sella moved a little closer to him and whispered so that no one else in the shop could hear her.

“Ah…….”

Rody gave an ambiguous response, as though he had only just discovered that the clothes in this store were expensive.

Well, it wasn’t as if Rody had ever bought clothes here before, either. He probably didn’t know much about clothing prices.

Did he come here to deliver firewood today?

“Then I’ll…….”

“Oh! Sir, you’re here! I was wondering what had happened when you didn’t come yesterday.”

Just as Sella was about to say goodbye to him and leave, the shop assistant who had treated her so coldly hurried over to Rody.

She greeted him with such exaggerated enthusiasm that one might have thought he was a precious customer responsible for the shop’s entire day’s sales.

Sir? He didn’t come to deliver firewood? And this doesn’t look like his first visit, either. She’s treating him like a regular customer.

Does a woodcutter really earn enough to afford clothes from a place like this?

“Bring out the clothes you prepared.”

Before the employee could even reach him, Rody stopped her with one hand and spoke in a commanding tone.

“Bring out the clothes you prepared”? What’s with the way he talks?

Apparently, Rody spoke to just about everyone as though they were his subordinates.

From the rather deficient way he had spoken to Sella yesterday to the way he was behaving and talking to the shop assistant now, he was consistently rude. It seemed he had never received a proper education and had never learned manners in the first place.

Still, considering how readily he had agreed to lower the price of the firewood, he didn’t seem like a bad person at heart.

If he’s like this because he never learned better, tsk. Poor guy…….

Sella found herself feeling rather sorry for Rody.

Once the employee had gone somewhere else, Rody turned back to Sella.

“If you didn’t come here to buy clothes, what did you come for?”

“I came to look into something, but I’m on my way back now. Anyway, I hope you take care of your business. I’ll see you next week…….”

Sella wasn’t in the mood to talk to Rody, so she tried to leave the shop.

“No, wait!”

But Rody caught her by the wrist.