Present (Eunuch)

  Piano Sonata Number 12.

  “You want to go out of the palace?”

  Peach Mitani quietly nodded her head.

  The eunuch gazed intensely. He was examining her.

  Does she know that I want to assassinate her?

  He said, “Explain yourself, and I might consider your offer.”

  “I actually want to harvest the healing herbs for his majesty. I think it would be quite a grand gesture if I put the wreath of healing herbs on his tombstone."

  She was gesturing with her hands, and the head eunuch could tell that she was nervous.

  It was an enticing offer, and, in all honesty, she looked adorable. She looked as adorable as a dog or a rabbit.

  He considered all his options, and he gradually came to his senses. He understood that it was very sweet of her to leave the palace to go to the enchanted forest.

  It was all for the better, for he no longer needed to find an excuse to drag her into the forest to accomplish his mission.

  He nodded his head and said, “Very well, then, you may go. As a head eunuch, I give you my permission to leave. But dear, let me accompany you.”

  Future (Palace Investigator)

  Piano Sonata Number 13.

  "There was this sound, and it was very reassuring to hear this sound. It was calming my nerves. I tried to analyse the sound. It was not the sound of waves—it was the sound of chalk crushing. Yes, I was standing before the blackboard, and the teacher was crushing the chalk.

  "I came to a realisation that there was another sound coming from far away. It was a sound reminding me of paper rustling. The paper was neat and clean. But it was not the paper; it was the fire. The fire was making a sound. It was creaking. The creaking sound was transparent—it was cutting the edge. I believe it was the edge of something hard and clean. It cut, and it made me shiver. It cut, and it made me pacified, for the hardening process was satisfying, but in a good way.’

  The shepherd opened his eyes. His eyes were heavy, and he felt he could not hold them and that he ought to put them together. He was pretty much exhausted, and he wanted to sleep.

  But he must not sleep—he was an investigator.

  It was the second year before the anniversary of the great lunar calendar. The moon was high in the sky.

  He was at the Palace of the Crescent Moon. He was reminiscing.

  He liked reminiscing. His reminiscence was of a different kind, though.

  He was lonely.

  The lone shepherd came from an ancient noble lineage. However, he was still a shepherd. He did not have his treasure. His grandfather spent all his treasure on acquiring a golden whip made of a horse tail; he became obsessed with his golden whip.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The lone shepherd was not born back then. He existed as another human being. He was the father of his grandfather.

  The lone shepherd appreciated the nature of Mother Nature, and he did everything in his power to coexist with its wilderness and hills, but his savage son procreated, and with time, he spent all his savings on gold.

  When he died, the golden whip was the only thing that was left to his son’s son and his grandson’s son, himself.

  He died, and then he was born as his grandson’s son.

  Left with nothing, he was finally at peace; alas, his father wanted him to serve the Khabugun as the councillor to the king. He was very intelligent, and he was a wild lad, but he was not academically inclined, so he could not become the minister of the third order. Instead, the country of the blue sky hired him as a private investigator who was on a contract, like a dog on a leash. He did not want to become a dog on a leash.

  So he tried all other means to become a councillor. He went through several procurement procedures in the private sector of other palace branches. The private sector of the mercenary guild and the private sector of the foreign ministry affairs.

  He failed them…. He failed all of his exams. It seemed like he didn't try hard enough. But he knew that he tried as best as he could, and he knew that those officers just could not accept the wild nature of his heart.

  In his heart, he hated them. He was envious of them because they had a steady income, while he was now just a private investigator investigating the death of an irrelevant consort whose name he could not even remember.

  The stench of the dead body made him shiver. It reminded him of his old ways—of the nature of the earth, of the fresh snow, and of the smell of a horse. He looked at the motionless body, and he tried to get to the bottom of the case. He envisioned all the possible scenarios, and he tried to feel the force of nature.

  It was pointless, though. The smell of the smoke was too strong, and it was dulling his senses.

  It must also be said that the smell of the smoke from the local factory was a grim reminder of how he was going to end, trapped in a maze forever and ever smelling the piss; likewise, the smoke smelled like piss.

  However, he still needed to investigate the case of an irrelevant consort. He was a private investigator, and he needed to sustain his body with heavenly nourishment.

  The body of a concubine was cold. It was soulless. It was apparent that she was poisoned. There was a trace of death on her lips. She was crying.

  He leaned in, and he made an effort. He kissed her. He tasted her poison. It was a poison made of steel. Oh, how he liked the steel. It was bitter, but there was something majestic about its taste.

  The steel tasted like an ant. Like the gaster of an ant. Oh, he remembers it now… He remembers how he tasted the gaster when he was just a child.

  ‘Poison made of formic acid. That means that the assassin might be a skilled chemist. The real question, though, is where he found such a rare poison, and by rare, I mean the formic acid. It is certainly a mystery. I need to go to the soap shop to acquire all the necessary information.’

  Present (Peach Mitani)

  Piano Sonata Number 13.

  Peach Mitani needed to acquire all the necessary information because she was curious.

  In her, there was wonder. She was wondering about something. She was wondering who wanted to kill her.

  The fault was in her. It is needless to state that deep within her, she knew that the tenth noble consort, Turakine, wanted to kill her. However, she was also wondering who else had been tasked to assassinate her.

  She was wondering why a skilled assassin belonging to an official guild would make a grave mistake, such as putting poison in a completely random girl’s soup. It was a trivial mistake, and she was secretly laughing about it.

  Is there any chance that there was a butterfly effect, a time traveller perhaps? She was a time traveller herself.

  “What are you thinking about?” the head eunuch asked her.

  “Nothing that matters really,” she answered.

  They were all headed to the enchanted forest: she and the eunuch. It had been nearly three hours since she had left the palace. But she was already feeling serene, as if she had swallowed a fresh meadow. She wanted to rest, though. Her back was hurting from too much riding. Despite all her past struggles, the body, a vessel, she has been occupying belonged to the girl who had once been rich enough to get shipped off to the emperor.

  'There must be a little cottage around here,” she thought. I know the area, for I once lived near the enchanted forest. How many years have passed? Three hundred years?'

  Past (The Testimony of Magical Creatures)

  Piano Sonata Number 14.

  “The thing is that… The thing is, my parents have not always been bad folk. They have not always been that bad. It is the system itself. The society… I don’t know how to explain it, for I have not always been good with words. But I want to say… What I want to say is that life itself is miserable. It is supposed to be miserable. So they have been miserable, too. It had made them miserable.”

  The little girl stopped talking. She was crumbling now. She was hesitating.

  “You are really bad at words, aren’t you?” I said.