HSMDW 2

Chapter 2 

What if I end up leaving Viphalten?

They might fall out after their wedding night.

It had even been written in the notice seeking a bride.

If you don’t like it, go back.

Even so, she had no intention of returning to this estate.

No one would welcome her anyway.

Her father, Viscount Arlen, didn’t love her enough to accept her back after a broken engagement.

He would probably cast her out instead, complaining that she had tarnished the honor of the viscountcy.

Bang!

The knight slammed the door shut, making the entire room echo.

Judging by the knight’s attitude, it might take a little while, but sending people out to investigate would still be much faster than running around herself.

She would have her wedding night with him anyway.

The mistress of House Viphalten had already been decided.

There was no need to be impatient.

Eileen calmed herself down once more.

It was still dawn, before the morning sun had properly risen.

It was the hour when only the silhouettes of people and objects could barely be seen through the faint light.

More than a dozen people were moving busily beside a wagon.

There wasn’t even a light, and they could easily have bumped into one another or caused a small commotion, yet they moved swiftly without making a sound.

The large wagons were loaded mostly with rice, fruit, and other food.

The goods had been carefully selected for their quality and meticulously packaged before being hidden beneath blankets.

Embroidered across the blankets in green, the color symbolizing trust, was the image of a soaring hawk.

[Esid]

Beside it was the name of the merchant company that distributed these goods.

“Move faster! We’re leaving before sunrise!”

The merchant guildmaster’s voice rang through the surroundings.

Eileen turned toward them.

Someone ran up to the guildmaster and bowed.

“Guildmaster, if we leave this early, the children might freeze.”

“If we leave now, we’ll arrive at the entrance to Viphalten territory at exactly two in the afternoon. It’ll be fine.”

Viphalten?

Eileen watched as the guildmaster lifted the blanket to inspect the goods.

Thick cotton padding had been placed beneath the blanket.

It was probably meant to protect the food from the cold rather than from impact.

“Everything’s ready!”

Amid the perfectly coordinated movements of the merchant company workers, the guildmaster lifted the blanket covering the final wagon.

And there, Eileen clearly saw it.

Among the food was something completely out of place—

A mobile decorated with elaborate ornaments in ten different colors.

Eileen’s eyes widened.

“Ah…”

Apparently, her dream wanted her to reach Viphalten as quickly as possible.

Autumn, when Eileen was seven.

Her first prophetic dream.

Even now, the image of her younger brother falling from the terrace on a snowy day remained vivid in Eileen’s mind.

Sid…!

The young Eileen didn’t even know what the dream meant and clung desperately to her parents.

Unlike Viscount Arlen, who dismissed it as nothing more than a dream, Viscountess Arlen realized that it was a prophetic dream.

She became terrified of winter, and as the weather grew colder, she gradually descended into madness.

Sid will fall from the terrace on a snowy day and die.

It was as though those words had been carved into her mind.

Whenever Sid merely went near the terrace, the viscountess would have a fit, and on snowy days, she wouldn’t even allow him to leave his room.

It was a desperate attempt to prevent his death by any means possible.

No!

But Sid didn’t fall from the terrace.

Instead, he fell down the stairs inside the estate.

The culprit was the unusually tall emergency staircase on the third floor.

Unfortunately, the edge of the stairs dealt a severe blow to young Sid’s head, and after lingering in illness for some time, he eventually died on a snowy day.

No matter how desperately they struggled, the prophetic dream could not be avoided.

“Have you had any dreams about me?”

After Sid’s death, Viscount Arlen would interrogate Eileen every time he saw her.

Young Eileen was frightened of her father.

Every time she shook her head in response, Viscount Arlen would grow anxious that he might suffer some accident in the near future and relentlessly badger her.

“You madman!”

Unable to stand it any longer, Eileen’s maternal grandmother slapped the viscount across the face.

After that, rather than interrogating Eileen about his future, the viscount began treating her as something horrifying.

Seeing the future was a terrifying ability.

Eileen’s grandmother absolutely loathed the curse that had been passed down through the maternal line.

Eileen felt the same way.

When she was young, she wanted to believe that her dreams were nothing special.

But the dreams that remained unusually vivid even after she woke up came true every single time.

They unfailingly showed her the future, and those dreams always came with a mobile.

The very same thing that had hung above her head when she was a child.

Sometimes, when Eileen looked at the mobile her mother had given her, she thought of her mother from before she went mad.

She had been a loving mother.

Until Eileen foretold Sid’s death.

Why did you have to dream something like that?!

The resentful voice her mother had cried out at Sid’s funeral still seemed to echo in her ears.

You cursed girl, born with the blood of dreamers…

Eileen’s maternal grandmother could only look on sorrowfully at Viscountess Arlen, who had already lost her reason.

She hated prophetic dreams.

“Miss. It’s Brad.”

At that moment, someone knocked on the door.

“Come in.”

The door flew open almost at the same time as Eileen gave permission.

Even if she hadn’t told him to enter, he probably would have come in anyway.

It was the knight from the Arlen family whom she had previously ordered to investigate the merchant companies.

“Thank you for your hard work.”

The words came automatically.

The knight left the room without saying a word.

Just like a week ago, the door slammed shut with a loud bang, making the room echo.

The list contained only three lines.

Even though this was the capital, if he had ignored the smaller merchant companies and started by looking into the larger ones, there was no way it should have taken a week to investigate this.

As expected, he simply hadn’t done his job properly.

[Esid Merchant Company]

But the information Eileen wanted was there.

After confirming the location of Esid’s capital branch, she stood up.

It was time to move.

“Who might you be?”

“Eileen de Arlen.”

There were some people who knew House Arlen, but very few knew what position someone named Eileen held within that family.

The clerk at Esid Merchant Company’s capital branch wore a doubtful expression.

He was clearly trying to determine whether the woman standing before him was pretending to be a noble.

Unless one was a noble who considered memorizing the genealogies of every family part of one’s education, there was no reason for him to know her name.

In any case, House Arlen had almost no presence outside the estate, and her father, who was the only one who participated in outside affairs, treated her as though she didn’t exist.

Eileen spoke.

“Eileen de Arlen. Isn’t it enough that I’m a member of House Arlen?”

“Then please wait a moment.”

The clerk ultimately couldn’t bring himself to ignore a noblewoman and went inside.

Perhaps asking to meet the guildmaster immediately had been too much.

After spending quite some time inside, the clerk returned and said,

“He says he’ll be back if you wait half a day.”

It was an obvious excuse.

How was she supposed to know where the guildmaster was and simply wait half a day?

No, telling her to wait half a day without even offering her a chair was essentially a polite way of refusing to meet her.

If they were going to behave like this, there was only one way.

After making sure no one else was nearby, Eileen spoke quietly.

“I hear you have a large shipment of goods leaving for the north soon.”

The clerk answered indifferently.

“Of course. Boro Territory is one of our main destinations.”

Boro Territory was in the north, but it was much closer to the capital than Viphalten.

It was closer to the central region, where the capital was located, than to the far north of the empire.

“I’m talking about much farther north.”

Her voice was filled with certainty as she continued.

“I understand that you have many wagons carrying food bound for Viphalten. Viphalten has very little contact with the outside world, so I doubt they’ve established trade with many merchant companies.”

If Eileen hadn’t had a prophetic dream, even she would have found it difficult to narrow it down to this particular company.

If an ordinary viscount’s daughter could easily find this information, there would be no reason for Viphalten to be called an isolated territory.

People lived in Viphalten, too.

But in a place where the weather was colder than the capital’s winter all year round—even on the days they called summer—crops couldn’t possibly grow.

Then where did they get their food?

Did they stockpile an entire year’s worth of food during the summer, when the weather was at its mildest?

That couldn’t be it.

There were countless variables involved in managing a territory.

There had to be a road leading to Viphalten even during winter.

Only a tiny number of people knew about it.

It wasn’t winter yet, but the weather was already quite chilly.

Viphalten had probably already become a frozen hell beneath the blizzards.

“…Please wait a moment.”

The clerk, suddenly serious, went back inside.

Apparently, she had found the right person.

Eileen was certain.

“This way.”

The clerk guided Eileen with a subdued expression, as though he had become an entirely different person from the one she had spoken to earlier.

They followed a winding corridor deeper inside until they came across a sign reading Guildmaster’s Office.

The sign was lavish, almost as though it were deliberately showing off.

But the clerk walked right past it and opened the door to a small room farther inside.

“Guildmaster. I’ve brought her.”

“Thank you.”

After the clerk left, the guildmaster welcomed Eileen with a smile.

“You said your name was Eileen de Arlen?”

She was far removed from the flamboyant image Eileen would normally associate with a merchant guildmaster.

The guildmaster wore a simple white shirt and practical trousers.

It was exactly as Eileen had seen in her dream.

“Yes.”

“Since this is a sensitive matter, I hope you’ll understand why I’d prefer to discuss it in here.”

The guildmaster bowed deeply before speaking.

“We don’t trade with Viphalten.”

That can’t be true.

Eileen’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“To begin with, our wagons don’t go to Viphalten. I’m not such a cruel employer that I’d send wagon drivers into a territory plagued by such fierce winds.”

She smiled naturally.

“It is true that large quantities of food are distributed to the north. But those goods are scattered among Boro Territory and the surrounding territories. As you know, the north is vast.”

If she hadn’t seen it in her dream, perhaps Eileen might have accepted that explanation.

But she already knew the truth.

“If you don’t believe me, would you like to inspect the wagons yourself? We’re preparing them right now.”

“All right.”

The guildmaster personally guided Eileen to where the wagons were being prepared.

It was exactly as she had seen in her dream.

The only difference was that it was late afternoon rather than early morning, but the wagons were still being carefully packed with cotton padding.

When Eileen stared at the padding, the guildmaster smiled.

“You need it when traveling through the northern regions. There aren’t many roads smooth enough for wagons to travel on.”

“I know that, but—”

Eileen pressed down firmly on the padding.

The wagon was larger than she had expected, and her hand sank surprisingly deep.

“Even if it’s cool outside, it’s still too warm to transport fresh goods. If you used this much cotton while traveling around Boro, wouldn’t everything inside spoil?”

Eileen withdrew her hand from the padding.

The guildmaster smoothly responded.

“I don’t know how you came to take an interest in our goods, my lady, but—”

“But.”

Eileen interrupted the guildmaster’s eloquent explanation.

“If you’re going to a winter region, that’s a different story.”

A winter region.

That was another name for Viphalten.

A place where the weather remained colder than winter throughout the entire year was sometimes called the Winter Region.

It was a far more dignified name than its other nicknames, such as the Land Abandoned by God or the Land of Monsters.

Eileen took out the letters she had brought with her.

One was the letter she had written.

Behind it was the letter she had received from House Viphalten seeking a bride.

Eileen showed the guildmaster the letter bearing the crest of House Viphalten.

“If I want to become this man’s bride, would that change your mind?”