To The House Ark Gate Manor

As I stepped across the threshold of the Gate, I felt a chill against my skin, like stepping outside from a warm room in the middle of winter.

Just as Shia had said, once we crossed the Gate, we were already in the northern city.

I put on the coat I had been carrying over my arm. As I did, I felt a little reluctant to let go of Shia’s hand.

At the same moment I finished putting on my coat, the Gate closed, leaving behind faint traces of golden light.

Shia turned toward me, clasped her hands behind her back, and leaned forward slightly to peer at me.

“Welcome, Nova-san, to House Ark Gate.”

“O… oh…”

The first “oh” was my response to Shia’s smiling face.

The second came after I looked past her and realized just how huge and expansive the place behind her was.

The Gate had connected directly inside the manor grounds, right in front of the mansion itself, so all I had to do was turn my head to see the House Ark Gate residence.

My family’s manor was already quite large, but the House Ark Gate manor was even bigger and more sprawling.

The architectural style also seemed different, and I found the unfamiliar design interesting.

“Do you like it?”

“Yeah, this is incredible… If the exterior alone is this impressive, now I’m curious what the inside looks like.”

I was getting excited like a child despite my age, but I figured it couldn’t be helped. Whenever I saw a huge building, I naturally wanted to know what it was like inside.

It was a little embarrassing that Shia was watching me with such an amused expression, but I couldn’t suppress my excitement.

“Then perhaps we can wait a little before calling my sisters and I’ll show you around the manor first.”

“Come to think of it, I never asked. How many sisters do you have, Shia?”

If I remembered correctly, when we first met in the central Imperial Capital, she had said “my older sisters.” That meant there should have been at least two of them.

“I have one older sister, and then Aurora, whom you met the other day. So two in total.”

But Shia said she only had one older sister.

That didn’t match my memory, but Shia seemed perfectly normal, and it didn’t seem like something she would have any reason to lie about.

Maybe I had simply remembered it wrong.

“I also have an aunt and cousins, but they live in separate residences, so only the two of them are here right now.”

I see. Maybe she had referred to one of her cousins as an older sister back then.

“Ah, shall I have Aura come here? She wanted to see you too, Nova-san.”

With that, Shia seemed to cast some kind of spell.

Almost immediately, a maid hurried out from inside the mansion.

The maid ran down the short steps at the entrance and came rushing over to us.

Despite having sprinted all the way over, she wasn’t even out of breath. Shia addressed her with the authority befitting the family head.

“Could you go and fetch Aura? If you tell her Nova-san is here, she should come flying.”

“Y-Yes! At once!”

The maid bowed deeply to Shia, then immediately bowed just as deeply to me.

Her movements were quick and polished, but there was also something almost desperate about her demeanor.

I couldn’t imagine her standing around gossiping about someone the way the maids back at my family’s estate did.

“Ah, and tell Yuti to come to the reception room in one hour.”

“Yes!”

Shia stopped the maid just as she was about to leave and gave her another instruction.

Yuti was probably the name of Shia’s older sister.

I hadn’t heard much about her, but at the very least, I didn’t have a favorable impression of Shia’s sister.

Because my own older brothers were the way they were, I couldn’t help imagining her as a rough and inconsiderate woman.

There was even a chance that she, together with the former family head, had hurt Shia when she was young.

“Nova-san.”

Shia called to me from beside me, snapping me out of my thoughts.

I hurriedly turned my head and found her smiling gently.

“Shall we go inside? It’s a little cold out here.”

“Yeah, let’s.”

Following Shia’s lead, I entered the manor.

For some reason I couldn’t quite explain, her back looked unusually cheerful.