Gospel Country, Nabistin Imperial Palace, the Empress's bedchamber.
On the Royal Long-staple Cotton Bed piled high with dolls, Annan slowly opened her eyes.
She did not get up right away. Instead, she casually took the Lala Fat doll beside her into her arms, clamped the fluffy blanket between her legs, and bit her nails as she thought.
These dolls naturally were not her hobby. Liss had arranged every one of them. Women might all have gone through an age when they liked dolls, but very soon they would feel that dolls took up space, had no warmth, and did not know how to act cute. Annan and Diya, for instance, had little interest in dolls, because what they wanted more was the doll's Upper Position substitute.
Dolls, however, could be owned by everyone, while the Upper Position substitute they liked was an out-of-print exclusive. And not only were there many collectors who wanted to make a move, their strength was not weak either...
Annan's feelings were actually rather subtle.
If they were discussing "love," then her love was probably the weakest among everyone's, perhaps even weaker than Siffrin's—if Siffrin also fell into this pit in the future. The reason, in the end, was probably that when the others met Ash, they all seemed to be in the most beautiful years of youth, around twenty. They yearned for romantic words like Eternity, brilliance, and meteor, and Ash happened to become a beautiful and important presence in their lives, so they repaid him with hazy yet blazing love.
But when Annan met Ash, she had already traveled around Gospel, and was an Agency Director who had spent years struggling her way through society. Tama Hill's experience was somewhat similar to hers, but Tama Hill was too much of a steel-straight woman, and