Vera brought the unconscious Lian to the window, letting her lean against her knees while ensuring ventilation.
She then tapped Lian’s cheeks lightly, trying to wake her.
This child really looks like him.
The more she stared at Lian’s face, the more she felt that way.
Her Eyes and brows, and this attitude that had no sense of distance when dealing with her… all of it was so similar to Lian En.
The only thing that was not similar was probably her Swordsmanship.
But this also fit her deduction of Lian En’s teaching abilities.
“You weren’t lying about what you said last night, were you? You’re really not her daughter?”
She rubbed Lian’s sleeping face—it felt truly soft.
When I was her age, did I have such good skin? No… I’m not much older than her.
Maybe my current skin isn’t bad either…
With this doubt, she touched her own face… then shook her head with a bitter smile, thinking that time truly spares no one.
“Ugh… Melia… don’t squeeze it anymore.”
Even with her cheeks being rubbed like this, Lian did not wake up.
She frowned and kept mumbling while struggling slightly on Vera’s knees.
“You little brat—being disrespectful to me is one thing, but you even dare to call her by her name… You must’ve picked up this habit from being around that guy.”
Vera, feeling somewhat displeased, applied more force to pinching her face.
But at the same time, a trace of doubt quickly arose in her heart—
Xiao Lian thought it was Meliya who was rubbing her face… so to speak, have she and Meliya already met?
And there were even intimate actions between them exactly like what I am doing now…
She knew that Meliya didn’t particularly dislike Lian’s appearance from the start, but she hadn’t thought that these two had already become so close without her knowing.
Did she accept Xiao Lian’s existence even faster than I did?
Moreover, when this child calls her name, she doesn’t even use honorifics.
This feeling of having no barriers between the two of them… was simply just like him.
But she is clearly Xiao Lian—
“Vera? Where are you?”
“Hello? Teacher? Where did you hide?”
Just as she fell into distress over this, the voices of Meliya and Milin calling for her came from the entrance of the Bathhouse.
“I’m here.”
There was a hint of anxiety in their voices.
Vera knew they should be worried about her physical condition… so she waved her hand at the swirling mist, signaling her location to the mother and daughter on the other side.
…
……
………
“Ugh… I told you not to rub… Meliya…”
Lian slowly woke up from the feeling of her face being rubbed.
She reached out her hand, wanting to swat away that hand that kept pinching and poking her face, but unexpectedly hit something particularly soft with a “punyu” sound.
“Ah… ahh.”
That hand froze instantly.
But she suddenly discovered that the embarrassed voice emitted by the owner of that hand felt particularly familiar.
She slowly opened her eyes—
“Where do you think you’re touching?! Let go of Mother at once!”
What came head-on was a fist—a pink fist from Milin.
Lian, whose face received a direct hit, made a “guga” sound like a mere mob character and rolled over to the ground nearby.
This punch completely awakened her hazy consciousness—I should have been taking a bath with that fellow Vera in the Bathhouse… I seem to have fainted from soaking.
But why is Milin here too?
She just said let go of Mother… that is to say—
Lian snapped her eyes open, her eyes wide with shock.
She saw Meliya leaning against the wall, looking elsewhere with a slightly red face, one hand supporting the bath towel on her chest.
She looked at Milin guarding beside Meliya again.
She saw her eyebrows raised in anger, glaring fiercely at her.
Then just now… where exactly did I grab?
She looked at the somewhat crooked bath towel on Meliya’s chest, and then let out a voiceless scream.
“Uwaaah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah!”
She rushed quickly to the edge of the pool water, and then buried her head into the pool water.
I, I actually touched… no, I’ve touched it long ago!
But that feeling… was completely different from before!
Different in all sorts of ways!
Lian felt her head was already hotter than the pool water.
So she immediately pulled her head out of the pool, which had no cooling effect at all.
And as soon as she raised her head, she found a silent gaze watching her from the side.
“……”
That person was Vera, soaking in the pool water.
She stared at Lian’s face with a very strange look in her Eyes.
“W-what’s wrong? Princess Vera…”
“…It’s nothing.”
After saying this, she turned her head away, appearing somewhat distant and cold.
Lian couldn’t help but feel a bit confused—
What happened to her?
She was clearly so clingy just now.
Is it because Meliya and Milin are also here now, so she’s become reserved?
“I can’t believe it… I actually thought you’d gone back to being normal, Ren-nee! Looks like I’ll have to keep calling you a crazy woman like before!”
“Milin… don’t shout like that… she definitely didn’t mean it.”
The daughter’s fierce words and the wife’s whispered defense made Lian feel very hurt.
She ran back and lowered her head to apologize to Meliya, while Meliya nodded slightly toward her with a red face.
“Y-you… how are you guys here?”
Seeing that she still had an awkward look, Lian hurriedly changed the subject.
“What do you mean ‘how are you guys here’? This is my family’s bathhouse, isn’t it?”
Milin, sitting next to her mother, cast a speechless look.
“I heard the teacher was sick, so I came back to visit her as soon as the second round of the competition ended. Mother, you came back for the same reason, right?”
“Mmm.”
Meliya also nodded, confirming her daughter’s statement, “I rushed to the mansion as soon as today’s matters were over, but the kids there said she had already left after recovering. I heard from them— you took care of her the whole day, didn’t you? You must have worked hard.”
“It wasn’t any trouble. This was my work for today, after all. Besides, it was Princess Vera who specifically asked me to come.”
“…Really? Princess Vera actually asked you herself to take care of her?”
Meliya looked surprised.
She lowered her voice, on the premise of not letting Vera, who was soaking in the pool water, hear, and confirmed with Lian.
“Yes. She had the head maid send for me to go to the West Dragon Courtyard, and after that, I spent the whole day attending to her—”
So Lian told Meliya everything she had seen and heard throughout the day, including, of course, the matter of her participating in the Martial Tournament.
However, she hid the facts that signing up for the competition was based on Vera’s request… and that Milin wanted to have a Duel with her to determine who was superior.
Because these matters were things only the relevant people knew clearly.
The news that Vera signed her up was told to her by Sephy, and as for Milin, it was only when she secretly came to find her that night that they agreed a winner must be decided between the two of them.
Lian believed that the matter of having private contact with Sephy was certainly not suitable to let her know.
As for Milin… throughout the process of her conveying it to Meliya, she had been casting looks that carried the meaning of “not allowed to say it.”
She probably just didn’t want her mother to know she had made such an agreement with her.
After all, not being able to run into each other during the two days of the Preliminary Competition meant that the two would definitely meet in the Finals on the Final Day.
And that match was to be held in front of Meliya.
“No wonder that kid of Nolan’s was also in the changing room… so she came along with you. But come to think of it, both of you passed the preliminaries. That’s really impressive.”
Meliya doted on her daughter by stroking her head, while also praising Lian.
“I didn’t expect that even a mere maid like Ren-nee could pass the preliminaries~ Maybe the two of us will run into each other then~”
Speaking as if it were something unexpected… this girl, really.
Looking at her joyful appearance immersed in her mother’s praise, Lian smiled helplessly.