Right on cue, the doors opened.
A small group came in — genuinely small — led by a person with adorably round cheeks and legs that did not reach very far.
"May! I'm finally here!"
The room froze when May greeted the newcomer with delight and called her master.
The master in question turned out to be Lady Elise Rishelstone, Duke Cedric's only sister, a late-born child whom the Duke treasured considerably more than his own life.
Physically, Elise looked about seven years old.
Mentally, she was twenty-seven.
On top of that, she had possessed romance fantasy characters twice before. In one of those past lives she had been rejected by Reheim himself, and eventually returned to Earth.
Nobody in the room had the faintest idea how to react.
May stood beside her hyping her up with both hands, praising the accomplishments of a master who looked as though she had walked directly out of a picture book, complete with dramatic sparkles for emphasis. The adults simply stared, openly questioning the nature of reality.
May did not waver in the slightest. They could doubt all they liked. Soon enough they would see how magnificent her master truly was — and not only her, but everyone she had brought along with her.
Because in romance fantasy worlds, the smartest people in any room are always the villainesses and the genius baby ladies.
The prime minister took a moment to recover. Then he cleared his throat and asked, with great politeness, how old Lady Elise was.
"It's rude," Elise said without missing a beat, "to ask a lady her age." She folded her arms. "But if my age troubles you, you're welcome to test me. Any time you like."
One of the others jumped in too, the girl with pink hair.
"We're not asking for special treatment. Just give us a little time and we'll show you what we can do."
Graham listened and nodded slowly.
"Testing can wait," he said. "Time exposes real ability on its own; there's no rush there. What concerns me is public reaction. How exactly are people supposed to receive an official who is not yet ten years old?"
He painted the picture out loud: tiny children with round cheeks seated at desks in the Imperial offices, side by side with grown adults, signing documents.
Even he sounded uncertain what to do with the image.
"There's no need to worry," May said calmly, "because they won't be acting as officials at all."
She admitted, then, that she had already arranged everything, with His Majesty's approval.
She had founded something called the Imperial Kindergarten.
Yes. An actual one.
In short, all the baby ladies would be enrolled there instead. It was a special school for noble children between the ages of six and ten, and it accepted only geniuses.
Reheim added the other half of it. Publicly, it would be announced that the ladies of the Jasmine Club were responsible for education at the Imperial Kindergarten.
That part was mostly for show.
Behind the scenes, the baby ladies and the villainesses would work together, taking on the key matters of the state between them. Meanwhile the regular officials would go on filing their papers without ever realising who was actually shaping imperial policy.
The plan landed surprisingly well. Graham thought it through for a while, then admitted it was solid, and — to everyone's relief — approved it.
May was so happy that she actually jumped, and rushed at Reheim, clearly intending to hug him.
He dodged at the last second.
She froze in the middle of the floor, panicked, and immediately began apologising, explaining that she had simply been overwhelmed with joy and had not meant anything improper by it.
Instead of being annoyed, Reheim reached out and patted her head.
"You did well."
That single gesture broke her completely. May turned red as a tomato and stood there wondering whether she was even allowed to file that under romantic.
Whether she was or not hardly mattered right now. She was just relieved that everything had worked.
At this point there was only one problem left.
Getting hold of that powder.
A few days later, the prime minister went through the newest round of reports and could not keep the amazement off his face. He kept turning pages, impressed against his own will.
The spread of the plague had been halted using a bedbug repellent developed by Countess Bole. A cure was already in progress, led by Lady Arya Berberin of the Imperial Kindergarten.
Over on the Mastan coast, the pirate fleets had fallen apart entirely after Lady Bell baited them into fighting one another.
As for the capital, violent crime had dropped sharply thanks to a magic anklet invented by Lady Elise herself.
Even Graham had to admit it. May Averil was delivering results everywhere at once. Set beside this, the achievements of her predecessors barely registered.
And most importantly, the empire's finances were finally stable — stronger than they had been in years.
Still, Graham could not fully get his mind around the woman.
She had appeared out of nowhere like a comet, and now she was reshaping the entire empire.
He opened a drawer and looked for a while at the red pouch lying inside it, murmuring to himself that he would find his answer eventually. All he had to do was keep watching her, and see whether she was truly worthy of becoming the next Empress.
Elsewhere in the palace, the scene was pure chaos.
Three of the other baby ladies were loudly protesting, demanding the compensation they had been promised — proper food, proper clothing, and guaranteed shelter, exactly as agreed.
"Wait a little longer!" Elise snapped back at them. "We weren't lying to you. I'm working myself to the bone here too, trying to fix everything as fast as I possibly can!"
May stepped in to explain that there were still procedures to be completed before that powder could be officially imported.
Just as she finished, Philip came running in with bad news.
The ladies of the Jasmine Club were collapsing from exhaustion. Without help from the baby ladies, they could no longer keep up with the volume of work.
May panicked and leaned in to whisper to Elise.
"What do we do now?"
The villainesses were at their limit. There was no time left to stall.