He came here too?
Of course he did. Roselle was his fellow countryman as well.
Klein instinctively started to avoid eye contact — then remembered he was "Kleya," and smoothly redirected his gaze, following the docent into the room displaying Roselle's original manuscripts and notebooks.
"Is that Klein?" Bernadette said.
In the same moment Klein spotted her, she spotted him — the body-swap with Vincent having just completed.
"Yes. It's him."
Just like in the original novel, Klein had shown up at this exhibition. The difference was that now he was a "Witch."
Looking at his expression and small movements — he seemed to have fully settled into the role of a woman. Quite the adjustment.
"Bernadette — that toilet, was it really solid gold?"
"Yes."
Bernadette pressed her lips together. "But it wasn't actually the first flush toilet. Father built a number of prototypes before that — and only once the technology was mature did he have that golden version made."
Vincent cleared his throat. "What I actually wanted to ask was — does using a solid gold toilet make things go more smoothly?"
"..."
Bernadette moved through several more rooms, and in the process passed through the manuscript display hall. The moment she walked in, she spotted the manuscript written in Chinese — positioned in the most prominent spot in the room:
"March 6th. Damn it, the food here is making me constipated."
"Ha ha ha."
Vincent's laughter filtered through. Bernadette kept her expression blank and moved on to a section displaying albums and small toys, where she stopped.
She stood and looked at each item quietly.
"Father made all of these specifically for me — invented them, one by one. Back then, before his private life became what it became, most of his energy went into me. Sometimes he'd spend a very long time working out how to make me happy — lifting ideas from fairy tales, making little toys, whatever might get a smile."
Vincent ran through what he knew about Roselle. Before Bernadette was born, Roselle had essentially treated this world as a game — himself as the player, everything around him as content to be navigated. After Bernadette arrived, he'd begun to change. Blood ties formed. He'd developed a genuine sense of belonging — for him, Bernadette was his anchor.
Then later, when he'd learned the truth of the world and understood that the End Times were inevitable, he'd become the erratic, driven figure of his final years.
Bernadette walked through several more rooms. When a docent introduced a particular room as the Emperor's "love nest" shared with his Empress, she accelerated through it noticeably.
"What's wrong?"
"...I'd rather not hear about it."
Her voice had gone a few degrees colder.
"So it's not actually your parents' love nest?"
"It was his love nest. Just with someone else." She said it without expression. "When I was small, I wandered in accidentally once. He was there with a noblewoman. He told me she was ill, and that he was there to give her an injection."
Well. That's certainly consistent with Roselle's general approach to life.
Vincent thought for a moment and said, with a smile: "I didn't realise — Emperor Roselle was also a dedicated healer?"
Bernadette: "..."
The docent stopped ahead and gestured. "Coming up is a faithful recreation of Emperor Roselle's private study, including some of the Emperor's manuscripts — being displayed publicly for the very first time."
Bernadette drifted closer to the manuscripts. "Around the time we first swapped bodies and I was taking in all your world's technology — all the machinery, all the electronics — so much of it felt strangely familiar. Because Father had sketched ideas for all of it in these concept notes."
"Back then he was full of ambition. He said he intended to see every one of these ideas realised in his lifetime. But gradually his focus shifted elsewhere, and in the end these sketches stayed sketches."
She stopped mid-sentence, attention snagged by Klein — not far away, staring with a considering expression at a bookmark tucked inside a hardcover book.
"Has he found something?"
"Possibly."
If the fic's logic held, the Card of Blasphemy disguised as a bookmark would be somewhere in this collection.
Klein, voice carefully pitched higher, asked a docent softly: "Are all of these books Emperor Roselle's personal collection? I mean — the originals?"
"That's correct!" The docent nodded. "Everything in this room came from Emperor Roselle's own study, including but not limited to books, manuscripts, bookmarks, lamp stands, ink bottles… though a great deal more was lost or destroyed in various conflicts over the years."
Klein looked along the rows of books and manuscripts, inwardly calculating which one might hold the Card of Blasphemy Roselle had mentioned in the diary.
Bernadette glanced in the same direction, then moved unhurriedly with the crowd toward the next room.
"Do you think Klein found something?"
"You said yesterday that your father hid a Card of Blasphemy somewhere in these books, didn't you? Maybe that's what it is." Vincent added: "Do we move now?"
"..."
Bernadette gave a cool sound. "Do you think I'm invincible in Backlund? Tonight. We'll handle it tonight."
"Fair enough."
They spent the whole morning working through the exhibition.
When they finally walked out of the Kingdom Museum, Bernadette looked out at the sky, and said quietly: "Tonight we'll find out whether that Card of Blasphemy is actually hidden in those notebooks."
...
After lunch, Vincent entered the Nation of Disorder and distributed a few more Boon slots. The remaining grants were down to one Schemer, two Prosecutors, three Shadow Traders, and two Brokers — and the Scale was approaching balance.
"I wonder what Bernadette is planning over on the HP side to help run the Shadow Box roleplay."
He muttered this to himself, returned to reality, and almost immediately heard a prayer arriving from the Nation of Disorder. He went back inside, settled into the stone chair.
"Oh — it's Bernadette."
He quickly extended spirituality to connect. "That thing you mentioned yesterday — you said you'd found a way to run Shadow Box roleplay from your side. What's the method?"
Bernadette's voice was calm. "The most standard understanding of Shadow Box manoeuvring is the exchange of power and money, using authority for private gain. So I intend to use Lucius Malfoy to get me into the Ministry of Magic and then advance to the highest position I can manage in as short a time as possible."
Vincent blinked. Then his face lit up. "That's brilliant! If you could work your way up to Head of Magical Law Enforcement — or better yet, Minister for Magic — the Shadow Box potion might digest on its own!"
He'd had similar ideas about the Backlund side, of course, but the power structures in the LOTM world were far more complex, and there was no Lucius equivalent to smooth the path.
"Unfortunately, we're starting from a disadvantaged position."
"What happened?"
Bernadette laid out the Azkaban situation. Vincent pressed two fingers to his forehead. "That's my fault, honestly. If someone without a history of conflict with the pureblood families had taken this role — as long as Lucius was willing to spend money on it — the Shadow Box manoeuvring would have been vastly simpler."
"The problem isn't important — what matters is how we solve it," Bernadette said. "You said you picked up glimpses of past, present, and future through that ancient magic. Is there anything there we can use?"
"Let me think."
Vincent propped his chin and considered. Then his eyes brightened. "Actually, yes. There is a ready-made opportunity to earn merit."
"Say it."
"Once you're in Azkaban, you should look for a prisoner called Sirius Black. Then—"
To be continued…
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