Chapter 140: The Things I Want to Learn
“……”
Faced with Carle’s sudden question, Rachel didn’t know how to explain herself. She thought Armand might step in to help her out, but to her surprise, he said nothing. He just calmly drank his water while looking over the page full of notes.
Are these two… interrogating me?
Rachel only now realized, this was like she had walked into a makeshift interrogation room.
Thinking back, she realized that ever since Armand said on the road, “At first you called me Dad just to survive, and now you're scared of me,” he had probably already been planning something. Bringing her to the vice-captain, Carle, was probably just part of his plan.
They’re going to find out…
Rachel’s small hands started sweating as she nervously twisted her fingers.
No, no, she can’t let them find out!
This was the Royal knights' headquarters. If she got caught, she might not even get the chance to run! Wouldn’t they just execute her on the spot?
‘Damn it, what kind of treatment is this? In my lifetime, I’ve ended up getting interrogated by both the captain and vice-captain of the Royal Knights?!’
“Alright, you’re scaring the kid.”
Just as Rachel was sweating bullets from fear, Armand finally spoke. He flipped the paper in his hand upside down and placed his teacup on top of it.
Whew…
Hearing Armand speak at last, Rachel finally let out a breath of relief.
It seemed that, in their eyes, she was still just a little three- or four-year-old girl. Not someone who needed both of them interrogating her. Maybe she had just been overthinking things because she was guilty inside.
“I was just curious. She seems very determined,” Carle said, but it sounded like he still wanted to dig deeper and wasn’t quite ready to let the topic go.
“Kids are impulsive, it’s normal. You’re probably scaring the whole teacher idea right out of her. Don’t be so serious all the time, Carle.”
Even though Rachel was indeed somewhat afraid of Armand, compared to Carle, she actually found him kind of gentle.
“Really? I think I’m fine. At least my daughter’s not scared of me,” Carle said, shrugging as he sat casually on the arm of the couch.
“Well, this one is my daughter,” Armand said as he suddenly pulled the tiny Rachel into his arms and pointed at Carle. “Don’t be scared of him. I outrank him, I’m his boss. If I’m protecting you, what are you afraid of?”
Suddenly wrapped in Armand’s strong arms, Rachel surprisingly felt a sense of safety, like she had someone strong watching her back. And because of his words, she even felt a bit proud and smug.
‘My dad is the captain of the Royal knights' headquarters! Who dares mess with me?!’
—She had completely accepted this make-believe “father-daughter” relationship with Armand by now.
“Oh really? Then why did you come asking me about teachers? If you’re so amazing, why don’t you take care of it yourself?”
“Come on now, don’t be like that,” Armand said quickly as Carle started to get up. He grabbed Carle’s wrist. “Let’s not mix things up here. Little Rachel, tell Uncle Carle what you want to learn. I’ll ask him to help you.”
“Umm…”
Rachel looked at Carle, who was now sitting across from her and no longer looked as strict as before after a short chat with Armand. She started thinking carefully about how to answer.
She felt that if she didn’t say something now, she might never get another chance. And if she said something too bold, she could always pretend it was just childish nonsense later!
So, she had no choice but to gather her courage and quietly say.
“I… I want to learn… alchemy…”
Rachel took a deep breath and decided not to beat around the bush anymore. She spoke out her true thoughts from the bottom of her heart.
Even though she had tried to be brave, her voice was still very soft.
“......”
But the moment she said the word “alchemy,” the atmosphere around her instantly changed.
However, it only lasted for a second. That feeling of tense silence passed quickly, so fast that Rachel thought she might have imagined it.
“...Alchemy?”
The voice full of doubt came from Carle. From Rachel’s angle, she couldn’t see Armand’s face, but he didn’t say anything right away.
“Y-Yes…” Rachel nodded. “I want to learn alchemy.”
“Oh?”
Armand finally made a sound. He reached out and gently patted Rachel’s head, as if comforting her. Because of this, Rachel couldn’t look up to see his expression, and she didn’t notice the quick glance that Carle and Armand exchanged when she lowered her head.
“Little Rachel, why do you want to learn alchemy?”
Armand’s voice came from above her head. It was so gentle that Rachel lowered her guard a little, but she still didn’t tell the truth.
“I just… heard grown-ups tell stories. It sounded amazing.”
Like she could actually tell the truth? That would be asking to die!
At that moment, Carle stood up, picked up his fountain pen from the desk, then sat back down. He flipped over the sheet of paper Armand had placed on the table, the one full of course suggestions, and handed it to Rachel.
“Alchemy isn’t something you can learn just because you want to. You need a strong foundation. For example, something simple, can you write your own name?”
Rachel felt a bit annoyed when she saw Carle hand her a pen and paper.
Write my name? That’s too easy!
I’m a genius alchemist! How could I not know how to write my name? Don’t treat me like a real three-year-old!
But the moment she took the fountain pen, she froze.
In her past life, signing her name with style was the easiest thing ever. Sometimes, when her alchemy experiments needed approval, she’d sign her name at the bottom like a boss. That feeling of power and control? Unmatched.
But now, when she held the pen, it felt heavy.
Not just heavy, the pen’s body was thick and smooth, and her small, childish hand couldn’t even grip it properly.
What the heck…?! How is this happening?!
Because she had designed this alchemy doll body for a growth experiment, its specs basically copied those of a real child her age. Even though her mind was still her own, her body functions were exactly like a little kid’s.
Rachel quickly realized that she couldn’t hold a regular pen correctly. She kept fumbling with it and ended up awkwardly gripping it in her palm.
Not only was her grip totally wrong, but her first stroke came out crooked and shaky. Her tiny body had never been trained to write properly, so her pen control was a total disaster.
A simple straight line looked like a squiggly worm. A curve turned into a weird misshapen blob. After just a few strokes, she had already torn holes in the paper with the pen tip. By the time she had written half her name, her hand was so sore she couldn’t even hold the pen anymore. It was just too heavy for a normal child.
What a total humiliation!!
All of Rachel’s earlier confidence was gone. Her face was red with embarrassment as she stubbornly tried to finish her signature, hand shaking as each stroke turned into a messy scribble that no one could read.
“......”
Carle and Armand silently watched her struggle to write out her full name. The silence around them made Rachel feel even more awkward. When she finally finished and put down the pen with a heavy sigh, Carle picked up the badly torn and messy paper and said, though it wasn’t clear whether he was speaking to Armand or to Rachel.
“It’s a bit too much for her.”
—Aaaaahhh!!
Rachel screamed in her heart at those words. What a humiliating comment!
How did things turn out like this…?!
If I can’t even hold a pen properly, how am I supposed to keep studying alchemy?!
As Rachel cried out in her mind, Armand silently took the paper with her name on it. After a short pause, he quietly said,
“Yeah… it’s really too much for her.”
Even Armand said that… Rachel wanted to bury her face in shame.
What she didn’t notice, though, was that while Armand’s voice sounded the same as always, there was a faint emotion hidden in his tone.
The Crown Prince had once told him, after the ballroom incident, about the spy Armand had taken care of at the clock tower. The information they had uncovered said that people in the Second Prince’s faction had once been involved in research on a kind of mysterious alchemy, although the details were still unknown. That’s why the word “alchemy” always made Armand extra alert.
Today, he had originally planned to use this opportunity to play good cop and bad cop with Carle. The idea was to get the mysterious little Rachel to open up a bit, learn what this girl, who claimed to be scared of him, or what she really liked, and maybe find a chance to make up for that prank he’d pulled on her earlier.
But the moment they heard the word “alchemy,” both their expressions instantly changed.
Carle, as vice-captain, didn’t know the details of Armand’s deal with the Crown Prince, but as one of the knights' headquarters’s leaders, he had also been warned to keep an eye on any alchemists. Since alchemy was a rare and distant topic for ordinary people, there wasn’t much information to investigate to begin with.
To be honest, both of them, a soldier and a businessman, didn’t know much about alchemy themselves. But as the saying goes, “If you don’t understand, go learn.” So when they heard even a little child talk about it, they still paid very close attention.
Besides the message from the Crown Prince, they also had half a handwritten page of notes, just a list of basic material names, but they could use the handwriting as a comparison. So when they asked Rachel to write her name, part of the reason was to check her handwriting.
But after seeing how Rachel struggled to even hold the pen and how childish her writing was, both of them felt like maybe they were overthinking things. It seemed ridiculous to treat a three-year-old girl as a potential suspect.
That’s why the two men ended up saying the same thing, ‘It’s too much for her.’
On the surface, it meant, ‘If this is the best she can do, learning alchemy is probably too hard for her.’ But the real meaning was, ‘Using her as a clue is just too far-fetched.’
And while they were coming to that conclusion, poor Rachel was still staring at the messy, ugly name she had written, so frustrated she had puffed up her cheeks like an angry little pufferfish, completely unaware that her childish handwriting had actually saved her life.