sneaking out some crumbs from that amnesiac retsu au so i can convince myself to work on it again. in first person pov bc i was trying something different here
Alone again, a restlessness grips me, and I find myself scouring the house for clues. The Prince may have promised to help, but well⊠if heâs really a Prince, he canât possibly have the time to be bothering with a random knight.
Come to think of it, how did he get in?
After a brief moment of panic, I manage to re-unlock my front door. The lock was definitely functional. Do Princes just have masterkeys to every house in the Kingdom? That doesnât seem fair.
To distract myself from further unkind speculations about the Prince (such as him carrying lockpicking equipment, or stealing a spare key) I turn my sights on the house itself. Itâs minimally decorated. Having seen the kitchen and bedroom already, I wander through the other doors, of which there are far too many for a house so barely lived-in, until I find myself in a room outfitted with a set of bookshelves and a desk overflowing with paper.
It seems I was in the middle of writing several letters. All of them bear the same handwritingâpresumably mine, as one of them is signed with the name Iâd been called.
Another name I donât recognise.
The one with the signature is the only one thatâs been finished. Addressed to a Madame Setsuna Sion, it carries brief greetings and lists off a few unrelated sentiments, likely responding to questions asked in a prior letter. Indeed, thereâs a paper beneath it bearing a different, more elegant handwriting. It reads far more naturally than âmyâ response.
But it is at least finished. The same canât be said for the rest of the letters littered on the desk. They all address the same person, and they all whittle away after the first few lines.
In some, the name is scratched out and replaced with âLady Arleonâ. Those donât get past the first line.
Thereâs something about the display that feels deeply embarrassing to look at. I push the papers to one side, keeping the exchange with Setsuna Sion aside with a mental note to have it mailed. Unlike that one, thereâs no corresponding pair for the letters addressed to Haki Arleon in sight.
Surely someone who writes letters filled with nothing but notarised responses to prior correspondence wouldnât be drowning in a sea of unfinished letters at her own discretionâŠ
My instinct proves true when I tentatively tug at the drawer built into the desk. It opens easily; the key was already sitting in the keyhole, unturned. A mountain of letters to rival the one on the desk emerges.
The ones at the bottom are placed neatly in bundles, some even tied together with string. But thereâs a handful at the top scattered messily, half-in the envelopes they came in, as if âIâ just couldnât bear to look at them anymore.
