CH 41

Thud.

Sera dropped the bag she was carrying to the floor. When the bag that was big enough to fit a child inside it fell, the sound of it was enough to let anyone know how heavy it was.

“What’s going on now, Your Highnesses!”

Sera expected that the twins would pull another prank on her again, but when she saw Ferre trembling in one corner of the room, she rushed to his side. Seeing him up close, his face was pale with fright.

She knelt down to be on his eye level, and Ferre hugged her. His back was also damp with sweat.

“Sera… What do I do…?”

Ferre’s eyes quivered as heavily as his voice shook, and he was already crying.

“Why, what’s going on? Where is Her Highness Rosé?”

She looked around urgently, but she couldn’t see Rosé anywhere.

Ferre tapped Sera’s shoulder with a small finger and slowly pointed towards the ceiling of the study wordlessly.

Naturally, Sera’s gaze followed where he pointed. Only then did she see Rosé, stuck to the ceiling, her expression frozen and her face practically blue.

“Your Highness Rosé!”

Sera covered her mouth with both hands.

Rosé was floating close enough to reach the ceiling. If she went up a little higher, her head would hit it already. With her body stiff, it was clear how uncomfortable she was.

“What happened? Your Highness Rosé, are you alright?”

Compared to the urgent situation, Sera sounded calm in her own way.

“Sera… Sera… I’m scared.”

And her big green eyes were shedding tears. Her eyes were already swollen red, and her nose was runny. As her face was wrought with fright, she looked a bit of a mess. Both Rosé’s tears and her runny nose dripped to the floor.

“Your Highness Rosé, you’re going to be alright! Please stop crying…!”

And then—

Sera had no time to soothe Rosé because the child suddenly wavered up and down.

“Waaaah! I’m scared! Stop it!”

Rosé cried louder as her body shook in the air. This dangerous movement repeated over and over again, and she could really hit her head on the ceiling.

“Stop! Stop it!”

Rosé’s sharp cry induced Ferre into action, but all she could do was hold onto Sera’s collar and bury his face in her chest without even looking at her sister’s frightening condition. Wet tears and a runny nose also seeped into the tutor’s clothes.

“Just what is going on…”

Sera looked alternately between the twins, trying to understand the situation. And there was only one answer that came to her mind.

“Unstable mana.”

Looking devastated, Sera muttered in a small voice.

To use magic, one has to have inherent mana in their body, however children between ages six and eight had a 50% chance of developing an incomplete form of mana regardless of their will, and this would affect how they used spells with their still unstable mana.

This phenomenon would naturally disappear when their mana would be fully developed as they grow up and learn how to deal with it through lessons, and… This situation was exactly that.

‘This must have happened while they were trying to pull a prank on me…’

Sera let out a sight. While her heart was stinging, she scolded herself, thinking ‘I’ve been scolding them too gently so far, so this incident happened.’ Sera vowed to scold them more firmly from now on.

But for now, the first priority was to get Rosé down from there.

‘Should I call someone else…’

Sera’s gaze was still fixed on Rosé, who was fluctuating near the ceiling. The best way was to safely pull her down through the use of magic, but the problem was that Sera herself couldn’t wield it.

‘What should I do…’

Sera winced as she agonized over what to do next, and Ferre hugged her tighter. She couldn’t move as the small Ferre held her.

As soon as she felt that she could breathe again Ferre looked up from her nape. A long runny snot connected his nose to her clothes like a silver thread.

If the current situation wasn’t dire, Sera would have smiled at the cute face, but that was something she couldn’t do right now.

“We h-heard that Sera was coming so we tried to make a prank while using mana, but we couldn’t… control it so Rosé’s so up high now. Sera… I’m scared… Please hurry and get Rosé…”

Ferre had been silently crying until now, but he just now sniffled and confessed. His eyes, which had grown as big as saucers, blinked and looked at Sera.

“I’m scared! I’m scared! I’m going to crash!”

Regardless of Ferre’s confession, Rosé was still in danger—her body was wavering even more in the air. She continued to move up and down violently, and she was nearly at the ceiling. Her arms and legs flailed because she couldn’t control her body properly.

“First, both of you, let’s calm down…”

“Uuung, no!”

Ferre shook his head vigorously in Sera’s arms. His transparent snot stuck close to his face.

Sera wiped his face using her long sleeves, she herself not knowing whether to laugh or to cry.

“Your Highness Ferre, please calm down. I won’t be able to get Her Highness Rosé down from there alone, so we have to call someone else for help. Give me a second.”

As she tried to set him down, Ferre sniffled and hugged her tighter.

“WAAAHHH!”

“UWAAAHHH!”

And the twins burst into tears at the same time.

Rosé fluctuated even more, and she eventually bumped her head against the ceiling several time.

“Your Highness Ferre, please calm down… We have to call someone else, so can you wait here a little bit?”

“No! Sera, don’t go! Heli Hyung will scold us if he finds out we used magic. We promised not to use magic until Heli Hyung taught us how!”

“I’ll keep it a secret then. Please just wait a little while, I’ll bring someone else quickly so that Her Highness can come back down.”

“Uuung, I don’t wanna! Don’t go!”

Sera tried to persuade Ferre in a soft tone, but he wouldn’t budge. Just how much strength did this small body have? She really couldn’t pull away the little boy.

And apart from that, the mana that changes due to one’s mood continued to be a threat to Rosé. Whenever Sera tried to say that she was going to get someone else, Rosé cried in a louder voice as she wavered more violently.

It was a vicious cycle.

“Ugh… hicc… hicc.”

Rosé looked as though she would faint any moment now and she didn’t have any more strength to cry loudly, only sobbing now. If Sera said one more time that she would bring another person in to help, it seemed that Rosé’s safety could not be guaranteed.

‘If someone outside could hear our voices, it would be great if they could rush right in, but.’

Sera looked towards the thick doors of the study with a desperate expression, but it seemed unlikely. Of course. If they could hear their voices from outside, they’d have already gone in so much earlier.

Somehow, this became a problem that she must solve by herself.