The transition from a fluorescent-lit office in Tokyo to a sun-drenched balcony in the Kingdom of Oakhaven was, in Akari's professional opinion, a massive breach of workplace safety protocols.
One moment, she was hitting "Enter" on a complex predictive model for a logistics firm. The next, she was staring at a plate of macarons while a man with hair the color of spun gold told her she was a "disgrace to the house of Valerius."
Akari—now Lady Elara—didn't cry. She didn't scream. She simply picked up a silver dessert fork, tapped the table three times to test the acoustic density of the wood, and looked at her "fiancé," Prince Julian.
"Based on the velocity of your spit while you yell," Elara said calmly, "you are currently losing approximately 0.5 milliliters of hydration per sentence. At this rate, you'll have a dry throat and a headache by the time the appetizers arrive. I suggest we move straight to the breakup. It's more efficient."
Julian froze. He was the Crown Prince. He was used to Elara weeping, begging for his affection, or throwing vases. He wasn't used to her treating his anger like a weather report.
"You..." he stammered, his face flushing. "You truly are... an interesting girl."
Elara sighed, a sound of pure, unadulterated boredom. "Statistically, Julian, when a man in a romance novel says that, the plot slows down by 40%. Can we just skip to the part where I move to the countryside?"
The Logistics of Magic
Elara did not go to the countryside. Instead, she was confined to the Valerius estate. Her father, Count Valerius, was a man whose financial literacy was roughly equivalent to that of a golden retriever. The estate was hemorrhaging money.
While her sisters panicked about the social season, Elara found a quill, a stack of parchment, and a bottle of ink. She spent three days locked in the library. She wasn't reading poetry; she was auditing the last ten years of the estate's grain production.
"The issue isn't the soil," she muttered to herself, drawing a bell curve. "It's the distribution. The carriage routes are optimized for scenery, not speed. We are losing 12% of the harvest to rot because the drivers like the view of the lake."
She emerged from the library with ink on her nose and a plan that looked less like a noblewoman's diary and more like a corporate takeover. She fired the head stablemaster (who was stealing oats), rerouted the supply lines using a primitive version of the Traveling Salesman Problem, and implemented a crop rotation system that the local peasants thought was witchcraft.
Within six months, the Valerius estate wasn't just solvent; it was the wealthiest territory in the province.
The "Interesting" Problem
The problem with being "interesting" in a fantasy world is that it attracts the one thing a data analyst hates: Unpredictable Variables.
The first variable was Duke Alaric of the North. In the original "story" of this world, Alaric was the "Cold Beast," a man who spoke in grunts and killed monsters. When he arrived at the Valerius estate to investigate reports of "illicit sorcery" (which was actually just Elara's new double-entry bookkeeping system), he found her standing in a muddy field.
She was holding a stopwatch and watching a cow.
"Lady Elara," Alaric growled, his hand on the hilt of his black sword. "Explain why you have fenced off the sacred groves."
"The 'sacred' trees drop a sap that increases the friction on the cart wheels," Elara said without looking at him. "By moving the fence six meters to the left, I've increased transport efficiency by 15%. Also, you're standing in a localized updraft. If you don't move, your cape is going to fly up and obscure your vision, which is a tactical disadvantage for a 'Beast' of your stature."
Alaric blinked. His cape immediately billowed upward, hitting him in the face.
He pulled the fabric down, his silver eyes wide. "How did you...?"
"Math," she said. "Now, unless you're here to help me calculate the caloric intake required for a winter-grade warhorse, please step out of my light. You're casting a shadow over my notes."
Alaric didn't leave. He sat down on a stump and watched her for four hours. By the end of the day, he uttered the words Elara had come to loathe.
"You are a very interesting girl."
"I am a very busy girl," she corrected. "There is a difference."
The Grand Ball and the Breaking Point
The climax of the "story" came during the King's Birthday Ball. Prince Julian, regretted his decision to break off the engagement after seeing the Valerius coffers overflow with gold. He approached Elara in the middle of the ballroom, surrounded by the elite of the kingdom.
"Elara," he said, trying to look soulful. "I see now that your eccentricities were merely signs of a brilliant mind. I am willing to take you back."
The music stopped. The court whispered. This was the moment where the heroine was supposed to blush and accept, or perhaps make a grand speech about her worth.
Elara pulled a small, leather-bound notebook from her silk bodice. She flipped through the pages.
"I've run the numbers, Julian," she said, her voice carrying across the room. "The ROI—Return on Investment—of a marriage to you is abysmal. You have a high probability of starting a border war within three years due to your ego. Your spending habits would deplete my current surplus in eighteen months. Furthermore, your genetic lineage has a recurring trend of male-pattern baldness by age thirty."
The room went silent. Someone dropped a glass of champagne.
"And," Elara added, looking him dead in the eye, "your 'Interesting Girl' comments have a 100% correlation with me wanting to hit you with a ledger. I've decided to marry the Duke of the North instead."
Alaric, who was standing by the buffet eating a turkey leg, choked. "I... I haven't asked you yet."
"You were going to," Elara said, checking her watch. "In approximately twenty-two minutes, after you'd had enough wine to overcome your social anxiety. I'm just optimizing the timeline. Do you agree?"
Alaric looked at the Prince, then at the terrifyingly efficient woman in front of him. A slow, genuine smile broke across his rugged face. "I agree. The logic is sound."
The Aftermath
Elara didn't become a typical Duchess. She turned the North into an industrial powerhouse. She built schools not to teach etiquette, but to teach calculus. She mapped the monster-infested forests and realized the "monsters" were just hungry because of poor forest management. She fixed the management.
One evening, as she and Alaric sat in their study—he cleaning his sword, she plotting the trajectory of the next lunar eclipse—he looked over at her.
"Elara?"
"Yes, Alaric?"
"I was just thinking... you really are—"
"If you finish that sentence," she warned, "I will recalibrate the castle's heating system to be three degrees colder on your side of the bed."
Alaric chuckled, leaning back. "I was going to say... you really are the only person who makes sense in a world that doesn't."
Elara paused, her quill hovering over the parchment. She felt a slight, statistically significant increase in her heart rate. She looked at the Duke—a man who was a total anomaly, a wildcard she hadn't accounted for, and yet, her favorite variable.
"Well," she whispered, a small smile finally touching her lips. "That's a scientifically acceptable compliment."