While that was happening, May was trapped inside a dream she would have given a great deal to forget.
Ten years ago, her mother had been murdered by bandits. April, who was eight years old at the time, was the only witness. The shock of what she saw was so severe that she lost the ability to speak.
That night, at their mother's funeral, May watched her little sister hold back her sobs with both hands over her mouth, shaking, unable to cry out loud even once.
That was the moment May decided she would protect April no matter what it took.
She did not want anything else. Not a title, not a match, not a season in the capital. She wanted her sister to be happy. She wanted to hear her laugh again — really laugh, from the bottom of her chest, the way she had before.
Years later, April finally spoke May's name again.
It should have been a miracle. It should have been the best day of both their lives.
Instead, it was the day May realised that the person living inside her sister's body was no longer her sister at all.
She jolted awake with her chest pulled tight and her hands fisted in the sheets. Before she could get her breathing back under control, a maid hurried in, flushed and excited, and told her to please hurry — the Emperor had summoned her to the palace.
By the time she arrived, she understood why.
Outside the gates, nobles had gathered in their hundreds, and they were shouting. They demanded the immediate release of the imprisoned lords. They insisted, over and over, that those men were innocent.
Standing at the window, May finally admitted to herself the thing she had been carefully not looking at.
Her ability alone was not going to be enough.
Her face went pale. Beside her, Reheim shifted his position — not dramatically, just a step and a turn of the shoulder — so that his body stood between her and the crowd below.
May did not quite understand the gesture.
And for a strange split second she found herself thinking that this felt like something that happened to a romance fantasy heroine, not to her, and wondering when exactly things had begun to turn this way.
"The situation is bad," Reheim said.
He did not soften it. The officials May had identified were so clean that the further he investigated, the less evidence there was to find. Most of them were founding nobles of the empire, men whose families had been in the room when the empire was made. They could not be held indefinitely without proper charges.
What he needed was a justification anyone would believe.
"So tell me," he said. "How did you choose them?"
Panic hit her instantly.
How, exactly, was she supposed to explain that she could see labels floating over people's heads?
In the end, she dodged.
"That's my secret," she mumbled. "Even famous restaurants don't hand out their recipes. Some things stay hidden even from family."
Then she moved away from the window and sat down before he could press, and reminded him — politely, in the manner of a woman changing the subject with both hands — that she had given him a deadline of her own.
"Please trust me a little longer."
Reheim studied her for a while. Then he agreed. Waiting a few more days was not, in itself, a great burden.
He did remind her what would happen if she failed.
May started shaking so hard that she barely looked like the same woman who had been giving instructions to an emperor thirty seconds earlier.
Just as the tension was beginning to settle, the head butler stepped in.
"Your Majesty. Lady Emma of House Lindsay requests an audience."
Reheim raised an eyebrow. Count Lindsay was among the nobles currently sitting in a cell.
"Since when," he said dryly, "did the Emperor become a stray dog that comes running when it is called?"
"Forgive me, Your Majesty. The request is not for you." The butler hesitated. "Lady Emma wishes to see Lady May."
"And her exact words?"
The butler repeated them, with the flat delivery of a man who wished to be somewhere else.
"'I want to see the bug of the romance fantasy world.'"
Sitting face to face with Emma Lindsay a short while later, May finally understood what that insult had been for.
Because it was not simply an insult. Nobody in this world talked like that. A bug of the romance fantasy world — the phrasing gave the whole thing away in five words.
Emma was a possessor too.
"April advised me to come," Emma said, settling her skirts. "She told me that if I came to see you, everything would be solved."
Of course she did. The fake sister, pulling strings from behind the curtain, as always.
Emma did not bother easing into the conversation.
"So step aside already," she said. "This isn't a stage where a side character like you gets to interfere."
That one landed hard.
May kept smiling on the outside — calm, polite, hands folded, the picture of a well-raised young lady receiving a guest. Inside, she was absolutely losing her mind.
Because she might look like a harmless noble girl who had never won an argument in her life. Mentally, though, she had been trained for exactly this kind of fight. And now that she was irritated, the switch flipped on all by itself.
So she started simple.
"May I ask the lady's name?"
Emma answered with a smug little smile. "Emma Lindsay. Youngest daughter of Count Lindsay — who is currently imprisoned without charges, thanks to your influence."
The tone made it perfectly clear that she was a woman used to getting her way.
May shut it down at once.
"I don't want that name," she said. "I want your real one."
Emma's smile stalled.
"Or don't you remember it anymore?" May asked, perfectly calm. "How long has it been since you took over that body? Long enough to forget who you originally were?"
Emma's composure finally broke. "You're far more impudent than I expected."
"Perhaps."
"Is it your special little ability that makes you so bold?" Emma leaned in across the tea table and lowered her voice to something almost kind. "Let me give you some advice. In a world made for protagonists, it doesn't matter how much noise an extra makes with petty tricks. You will never win."
May did not blink.
"If you truly believed that," she said, "you wouldn't be sitting here right now."
And right on cue, the door burst open.
Gail came in fast, with a folder in his hands and the news they had been waiting for.
"We found the evidence."
May took the documents and went through them, flipping pages faster and faster while Gail explained that preparations for the trial were already underway.
It was all there. Spies planted inside the Imperial Palace. Tax embezzlement running back years. Secret ties to the assassin guilds. The entire mess would be settled within a week.
Emma had begun to sweat.
"Do you really think," she said, "that any of this changes anything?"
May stood, crossed the room, and looked her straight in the eye.
"I promise you it will," she said. "We'll meet again in court."
Then she said it, quietly, at the door.
"Fake Emma."