Early the next morning, a maid woke me up.
She appeared outside my door, holding a set of clothes that looked expensive at a glance.
Her silhouette stood out clearly against the sunlit paper doors of the Japanese-style room.
That was how I knew she was kneeling with her head bowed to the floor.
...Good grief. In two lifetimes, this was my first time experiencing a wake-up service so deferential it practically shaved years off my life.
I hurriedly called out, "You don't have to kneel!"
But the moment I finished speaking, the stabbing pain in my throat brought back some unpleasant memories.
The good news was that the maid understood me.
The bad news was that she looked even more terrified.
And she had brought a bowl of pitch-black medicine, too.
Me: ...
Only then did I belatedly realize that in a place as rigidly hierarchical and hidebound as the Zenin Clan, saying "You don't have to kneel" would only make people think I had been offended.
...And therefore intended to punish whoever had offended me so viciously that they would lose the ability to "kneel."
Also, the medicine tasted awful.
The servants spent the entire morning tending to me like a precious, fragile collectible, including but not limited to dressing me, washing me, and brushing my hair... If I hadn't done everything I could to stop them, they would even have spoon-fed me.
Their thinking wasn't entirely unreasonable. After all, I really wasn't very old, and physically, I was still a child.
But being treated that way genuinely made me uncomfortable. My mind had been independent for years!
Still, I absolutely couldn't tell them that, so I could only awkwardly accept this unwanted "meticulous care."
If only my old attendant were still here... His neglect gave me a relatively comfortable environment.
I asked curiously, "Where's my old attendant?"
The maid's expression was cold. "He failed in his duty to care for you, miss, repeatedly spoke disrespectfully to you, and even dared to withhold your charcoal... He will never appear before you again."
So he really had been withholding my charcoal.
I immediately lost interest. Looking up instead, I eagerly asked her another question. "How did you find out?"
The maid lowered her head and answered with abject deference, "The steward responsible for distributing charcoal keeps records of everything. Nothing can be hidden from the family when it comes to where the supplies go."
Oh, I get it.
So they knew exactly what I was going through, but didn't want to intervene.
How cold... Or did they simply not care, thinking it didn't matter?
I was getting a little angry.
My father in name only sent someone to fetch me.
By the time I arrived, he had already been standing in the main hall for a while. He wore his usual smile, looking like a sly fox.
This time, though, he wasn't carrying a sake flask and looked much more respectable than his previous drunken self. Perhaps because we were going to meet the elders, he had even changed into a haori bearing the clan crest.
"You're here, Kuang Wu. Let's go."
After several minutes of walking and countless twists and turns, I finally saw the secluded Japanese-style room.
As we slid the door open and entered, a heavy, decaying atmosphere hit me in the face.
It's too oppressive. I don't like it.
Perhaps sensing my mood, the Divine Dogs leaped out of my shadow and nuzzled my hand a few times. Only then did I relax a little.
But suddenly, a racket erupted around me.
The bunch of shriveled old geezers seated up front started buzzing nonstop like flies over a garbage heap-
"It really is!"
"The Divine Dogs! One black, one white! That's it! There's no mistaking it!"
"The Ten Shadows Technique! Hahahahaha! The Gojo Clan can forget about lording it over our Zenin Clan again!"
"Grade one! These two Divine Dogs actually have grade-one strength!"
Watching the scene, I remained expressionless, while my father in name only began to laugh, looking thoroughly pleased with himself.
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