Victoria had actually wanted to ask why hiccups could hurt someone's throat, but the understanding forged between old friends made her abandon the thought at the last moment—and she even came up with a fairly plausible reason for herself.
After all, Maggie was a dragon. When dragons hiccupped... the temperature might be rather high.
In a sense, Victoria's thought was subtly consistent with reality...
Seeing an awkward situation dissolve unnoticed, Maggie seemed to relax slightly. Then, looking at Victoria's face, she spoke before the other woman could raise another question. "How did your... contact with Mr. Modir go?"
What Victoria had mentioned earlier, such as being pursued by an ancient god and the samples, could all be regarded as material for an official report. What Maggie was asking now was about Victoria's personal feelings.
The Duchess of the Northern Territory fell silent for several seconds, seemingly recalling her encounter with the old man that day. Only after a brief period of reflection did she speak softly in an odd tone. "I don't know..."
"You don't know?" Maggie's eyes widened in surprise. "That doesn't sound like you."
"No one can plan in advance how they will meet a family ancestor. I couldn't either," Victoria said with a soft sigh, her tone complicated. "I used magic to confirm his blood relation to me. The reliability exceeded ninety-nine percent. Yet apart from that factual connection, everything about him—from his manner of speaking and temperament to his habits, from his way of thinking to his personality—feels unfamiliar to me... I want to understand him as much as possible, but the more I learn, the more I see an ancestor who differs in many ways from the family records and the history books... It's like facing a phantom that is both real and not real.