Exactly two days have passed since Ana and Arte agreed upon an agreement.

"Don't you think it's strange how everything we're supposed to be doing ends up being canceled," Edya observed.

"You think?"

"I never remarked," Ana lied.

The truth was that she had. And she knew this was Arte’s handiwork, even though he mostly insists on pretending it is not.

Being an apprentice flower, even if Ana was a fake one, Ana and the girls should've been taught more about the flower work for the entire week, but whatever the establishment had planned ended up being canceled for mysterious reasons, often leaving the trio with plenty of time to kill. Time which Ana, in the background, devoted to her investigation.

"Sigh…."

"Can you stop sighing so loudly?"

"Aren’t you two getting tired of being stuck here? Doing nothing?"

"Not really, I’m fine doing nothing," Ana answered.

"Really?! I am not."

"What do you want? You’re impatient to work as a flower already?"

"Well, yes, you two are not?"

At that question, Ina and Ana exchanged a quick glance.

"Perhaps we’re not," Ana answered.

"No."

"Well, I do. I do not know what you two are here for, but I am here to —"

"Get rich and show everyone in your village how wrong they were about it," Ina recited, mimicking Edya. "We know that, given how often you repeated it to us."

"Well, since you know... you should understand me, Rig—," Edya cut herself short when she noticed someone approaching them.

"Hi, you three."

"Hi, Uta."

"What were the three of you talking about," she asked.

"We weren’t talking, we were merely forced to listen to Edya's unending babbling," Ina explained.

It is what it is.

"Hey! I wasn’t babbling at all."

"Yes, you were."

"I see," she merely said, a warm smile on her face.

"And you, Uta, where do you come from?" Edya, curious, asked.

At that moment, strangely, instead of immediately answering that question, Uta ventured a discreet glance at Ana, which she didn’t miss to notice before flawlessly answering, "From the garden, I was… solicited."

"Oh..., it's the prince we've heard about, isn't it?" Edya approached Uta, touchy as she always is, with a bright yet deviant smile on her face.

Once again, she threw strange glances at Ana, leaving her both confused and uncomfortable.

"You… you know about him."

"Of course we knew about it. You're frequenting a prince, we’ve heard." Half-daydreaming Edya commented, "Aaah, a prince. You're lucky, Uta; I wish it were me."

"Eh?"

"Don’t mind her, Uta," Ina reassured, approaching Uta to get Ana off her like an owner would a pet. "She’s just this weird."

"See you two while Uta gets a prince; we’re stuck here doing nothing but wasting our precious time," Edya childishly complained.

Ana and Ina both sighed at how exasperating and unimpeded the girl could be.

"Excuse me, I’m not sure I follow what it’s truly about."

"It—"

"Enough, Edya," she finally intervened, before explaining to Uta, "Sorry, it’s just that apparently, our friend over here is done with doing nothing and wishes to, like you, already work."

"I… I see. It's true that you three have been here for one week, and soon two. I suppose having nothing to do must be really boring."

"Not at all— this is just her alone, we’re fine," both Ana and Ina agreed.

"Tsk, you two."

"You, silence."

"Still, I kind of understand. So what about you three going out for a bit? I'm sure a little walk around would relax and refresh the three of you."

"We can do that?!" The one to jump on the question was no one else but Edya.

"Yes,... the truth is that there has never been a rule prohibiting any flower from going out, so...

"Really, then we’re going. We’re going out," Edya announced, reaching for both Ana and Ina’s arms.

"Edya,..."

"Don’t go around involving me in whatever you see fit without my permission."

"Come on, girls, this is the perfect opportunity for a change of setting for the three of us."

"I have no need for a change of setting."

"Neither do I," also agreed Ana, as she wanted to make the best use of the time she had left to find answers to all the questions she was asking herself.

"Come on, girls…," letting go of Ana and Ina, Edya returned to Uta’s side, "fine, you don’t have to come, if you don’t want to. Uta will come with me."

"I…"

"Come on, Edya, enough with this. Nobody will accompany you anywhere."

"Uta will. Right, Uta?"

Certainly not thrilled by the question, Ana politely explained, "I… I don’t think I can accompany you; it’s been a few days since I've remained at the establishment. It should be time for me to go home."

But it turned out that making mention of the word "home" was a mistake since, at the moment she heard it, Edya, instead of being dissuaded, seemed to have gotten even more hooked."

"Home… You’re not living in the Rose Blanche, right? You’re one of the flowers living on their own, right?"

"Yes… What of it?"

"Since you’re going out, can I go with you to your home?"

"My home…Why?"

"I want to see and visit your place," Edya honestly confessed.

Uta's response appeared to be obvious, but when confronted with someone as obstinate as Edya, her ultimate response proved to be otherwise.

***

A couple of dozen minutes after their meeting with Uta, the trio and Uta were striding this busy street of the common district within which the Rose Blanche was.

"So what are you two following us for when you earlier both claimed not wanting a change of setting?"

"And we still don’t."

"But we're here to make sure you don’t behave appropriately."

"Humph, of course I'll behave appropriately, even without your supervision," she grumbled, clutching Uta's arm.

"I hope the three of you won’t mind, if we make a detour first. I’ve been eating at the Rose Blanche for the past few days, and now I realize I have nothing at home, so I would like to go to the market first. I hope it’s fine with you?"

"Fine by me," Edya said.

Both Ana and Ina merely nodded.

Thus, they first went to the market for Uta's course, which happened to be Ana's first time venturing to a commoner market, as the noble task of doing course has always been that of her servant.

While she had claimed to be going to the market to buy provisions for her home, it came across as obvious when they got to the market that Uta was trying to make the experience as appreciable as possible, since instead of just going on her own personal errand, Uta spent her time showing the trio around and even buying Ana and Ina clothes she and Edya thought would look great on the two of them. So, despite Ana's earlier reluctance, the market’s errand wandering experience was mildly amusing and interesting to her.

"Man, I’m beat," exhaled Edya on their way from the market to Uta’s house.

"Don’t worry, Edya? My house is not so far away anymore," Uta reassured.

"You have no right to complain, so: silence."

"Eh, Ina… Anyway, Uta, are you sure it’s really okay for us to have these?" Edya asked about the gift bought by Uta that she, Ana, and Ina carried in their arms.

"I got to agree with Edya on this; was buying these really okay?"

Despite the fact that the sum Uta spent was not much in Ana’s eyes, she had to admit that it was, for any commoner, a hefty sum, especially when spent on things like clothes that weren’t even bought for herself.

"It’s fine. It was nothing,"

"You’re sure? I still feel like I have scammed you off by not taking any money with me," Ina confessed.

"It’s fine, I said. Consider them as a senior’s doting gift. Besides, it's not every day that I am so generous—"

"I see. Thank you then," Ina finally said, accepting the gifts as they were.

"Thanks," also followed Ana.

"Thank you, Uta."

"You three are welcome," she said, burying the subject once and for all.

It was then that, out of the blue, Uta ventured out a question. "Say, Uta, I’ve always been curious; before being a flower, what have you been doing?"

"Me?"

"Yes,"

"There you go again with your indiscreet questions. Leave other people's pas—"

"No, Ina, it’s fine actually; I mean, there is nothing indiscreet in asking that. Well, about what I was doing before being a flower— Do you three mind if we make another detour? It’s not very far away."

Shaking their heads, the tree girls followed Uta to an alley between houses, within which stood an average, several-floored house that seemed no different from any other house on the surrounding block.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

"This is the place."

"The place?"

"Truth be told, I have no idea what exactly I was doing before becoming a flower; I just know that roughly three years ago, to survive in this city, pickpocketing was what I mostly lived off since it was what I thought I was doing best."

"Pickpocketing?!"

"Yes. From your reactions, I suppose I don’t look like a pickpocket at all."

The trio vigorously shook their heads.

"Well, to be fair, the pickpocketing part of the job wasn’t mine, so it makes sense that I don’t or never looked like one; my part of the work was to attract attention as it seemed I had that running through my veins."

"You were working with someone?"

"Yes, my big brother."

"You have a brother, Uta?!"

"Yes, I had."

From her implication and from the way she’s been staring at the building in front of them, both Ina and Ana chose to keep their silence, leaving only Edya, clueless as she was, to be the one bold enough to ask.

"What happened?"

In the recent few years, if one were to make reference to a somewhat life-changing experience, it has become most natural to assume that it would have something to do with the creature that a couple of years ago crossed the continent through and through: The Seven Calamities.

"When the water and ice calamities reached the city’s walls, the earth shook and houses collapsed, including this particular one, which collapsed onto my brother and me."

After hearing Uta's confession, the trio finally noticed the difference in colored bricks on the building, indicating that it had been partially rebuilt at one point.

"Our condolences," Ana said on the trio’s behalf.

"I'm sorry. Maybe it would've been better if I hadn't asked that question," Edya apologized.

"No, it's fine; it's a sad story to tell, but it's not as painful as it could be. I don’t remember much of what happened that day; I just remember the house falling apart upon my brother and me, and then that was all. My next memory was of me being rescued out of the debris by my savior."

"Savior? Is it a single person?"

"Yes, all by himself, he removed me from the rubble and saved me. To tell you a secret, back then, when I saw my savior's face, I, for the first time in my life, fell in love ," she admitted, her face honest and slightly embarrassed.

Hooked by this sudden twist in Uta's story, Edya immediately asked, "Then? What else happened? What did you do?"

"... My injuries at the time may have been to blame, but..." Apparently embarrassed by what she did, Uta hid her face then confessed, "I confessed that if I were to wish for a life, if I were to survive my injuries, my dream would be to open a small tea shop within which I would die of old age with him by my side."

"You… you confessed to him on the spot?"

"Yes, I did."

Giggling, Edya rushed to Uta’s side and asked, "And? What did he say? Don’t tell me he didn’t understand."

"Nothing. He just smiled."

"Nothing? Really?! Nothing!"

"I mean, his reaction was understandable. There wasn’t much he could say in response to such a sudden commoner’s confession."

"Commoner? Wait, your savior was a noble?"

It was seemingly only then that the realization dawned on Edya.

Uta nodded. "Now, I think you understand what an awkward situation I must’ve put him in back then."

"I think... I do. But then what? What happened next?"

"Nothing. He left; he was only there to help, and regardless of what I said, in his eyes, I must have remained a commoner in distress, and nothing more, nothing less."

"Aaaww! Come on, don’t tell me it ends like that."

"Too bad, I guess; anyway, with no other way to survive on my own in this city, I ended up, like many other girls in my situation, in the Rose Blanche. Ironically—"

"Ironically? What? Don’t tell me you met your savior there." Edya was as engrossed in the story as she had ever been, so much so that she failed to notice the gurgling of her own stomach.

"What about we save this story for another time? I hear your belly is already requesting its fill."

"I’m not hungry, I just have an easily gurgling stomach, especially when I want to know something."

"If that’s the case, you should visit the medical gardener. They might have something for those strange symptoms of yours."

"Wait, there are medical gardeners in the Rose Blanche?" Ana asked, confused since she didn’t remember having heard of them.

"Yes, there are. They are as much an important staff of the Rose Blanche as the gardener and guards are. I think I mentioned them to you the first day you arrived. "Just tell any gardener nearby, and the medical staff will come to take care of you," I recall saying."

Hearing Ana’s explanation, Ana finally got the final piece of one of her many puzzles. But this one, the one of the flowers’ abductions, was finally resolved in her eyes.

"Oh, so that's how it... was."

She realized she had been wrong on one particular aspect of her investigation; for so long she had wrongly assumed the "rat" was a flower, as there was nothing closer to a flower than a fellow flower. Up to this point, Ana failed to consider who else could be as close as the abducted flower.

Now that she had, the answer was obvious.

"Lizzie? You’re okay."

"Uh, yes, I’m fine. sorry."

"You’re sure?"

"I’m fine, truly, no need to worry."

"I see. Well, then, I think we should get going, and I’ll try cooking something up. I think I’ve wasted too much of your time with my stories. Follow me; it's a few streets away from here."

Done with that peculiar topic, Uta and the trio finally made their way to their initial destination: Uta’s house.

As they walked down a narrow alleyway between the cramped, multi-level townhouses of the common district, Ana noticed a peculiar expression on the face of the girl walking next to her.

"Is there a problem, Ina?"

The girl looked at her for a moment, then said in a barely audible voice, so much so that Edya and Uta, who were in front, didn’t hear a word: "Look ahead."

Obliging, Ana looked ahead but failed to understand what Ina wanted her to see.

"Wha—"

"Look ahead. Keep looking ahead. Behind us. There are people following us."

When Ina mentioned people following them, Ana was tempted to turn and confirm her words, but she remembered Ina's instructions and managed to refrain from doing so.

"Who?"

Slightly walking slower than Ana, Ina answered, "I don’t know— but wait for me and behave naturally."

Ana was perplexed by the strange instruction, but after a few steps, she realized. Ana and Ina were carrying clothes and other items that Uta had purchased for them. It was a piece of clothing among the things that she carried that fell to the ground. One that Ana knew Ina had deliberately dropped to the ground.

"Oups, …" Ina improvised, turning around to pick up the fallen piece of clothing.

Sticking once again to what Ina had instructed her, Ana tried to behave as normally as possible. Halting in her walk for Ina, she turned around, thus finally granting her an opportunity to get a peek at the ones Ina claimed were following them.

It was with surprise and relief that the said person following them turned out to be just a child, at most a young boy of 13 or 14 years old.

Edya and Uta, noticing Ana and Ina’s halt, stopped for them.

Perhaps having come to realize her mistake, Ina, after picking up her piece of clothing, stood aside, nodding at the boy to walk past them, as he seemed to have been stuck behind for some time along the alley.

Smiling politely, the boy, accepting Ina's suggestion, approached, apparently with the intent of walking past them, but then before he could do so, something happened—

"What!"

—So fast that it took Ana some time to fully register.

As the boy passed by Ina, she quickly dropped all of the items she was carrying and grabbed onto his wrist. With a single, smooth motion, she flipped him over, using his own momentum against him.

"Guh!" Being flipped over, the boy's back slammed against the ground.

And as though all that had happened hadn’t happened suddenly enough, Ina followed by lifting the boy's neck up and abruptly pulling out a knife, which she held to the boy's throat, the sharp edge of the blade pressing against his skin, ready to slice through it at any moment.

"Ina! what are you do—"

"Before I separate your head from the rest of your body, tell your friend to come out of hiding!" Ina calmly ordered the boy.

"I don—"

"Spare me your masquerade, I am in no mood for that. Trust me, I’m not joking!" Ana threatened, running her knife slightly across his neck, causing it to start bleeding. "So I ask you again, tell him to come out."

"Okay–Okay. Dani!! Dani!!"

It was at that moment that Ana saw, seemingly in response to the boy's cry, a man suddenly appear several meters away from her and everyone else, having jumped off the roof of a nearby house, where he seemed to have been hiding while following Ana and the girls.

Ina was right; from the get-go, they were followed.

Ana could guess why they were here, but she was tempted to ask the only person who could confirm the truth: Uta, if she was pregnant. But the reaction Uta had to Ana's intense stare down at her belly pretty much gave Ana the confirmation she was looking for, even without venturing her question. Which also confirmed to Ana that she must've been these people’s target. The target of the people who could be safely assumed to be the people behind the Rose Blanche flower's disappearance.

"Is this really all of them! Where are the others?" Ana, threatening as ever, asked the boy.

"It’s just him. It’s just the two of us! I swear."

"He’s not lying; it’s just the two of us." Holding his hands up, the man requested, "So please get this knife off of his throat. You might accidentally do something you might greatly regret."

Lightning zapped around the man’s body, indicating that he was a noble and a lightning magic user.

"Is that a threat that I hear?" Ina asked, tightening her grip on the boy she was holding hostage.

"No, not a threat, nor a warning. Just an observation," he said before suddenly shouting, "Aiden!"

Seeing that the man was up to something, Ana proceeded to summon her magic, but before she could do so, something took her aback. Ina and the boy suddenly disappeared, only to seamlessly reappear beside the man.

The moment they reappeared, the man instantly unleashed a discharge. Ana, not having been able to predict that she was going to be teleported, got tasered unconscious by the man's discharge.

"Ina!"

Unlike Ina, who’s been struck by the man’s lightning, the boy was left untounched; "this bitch almost ki—"

Ana finally decided to act, regretting not taking action sooner, and flew the closest thing she had to offensive magic onto the men and the boy.

Stepping between the boy and Ana’s water-type attack, the man used his lightning magic with extraordinary ease to dismantle Ana’s magic into nothing but just simple water.

Ana was not surprised by the outcome; she was well aware that her magic was useless in combat. A shortcoming she never bothered improving upon.

".... A noble?! First this girl, now a noble…," the boy babbled, clearly not expecting Ana’s presence.

"You... who are you?" The man asked, clearly frustrated by Ana's most likely unexpected presence.

"I could ask you two the same. Who are you and why are you doing this?"

"Humph, I don't think you're the right person to get that answer from me," the man replied, before ordering the boy to "get her to the facility."

Understanding that something was about to transpire, Ana jumped into action to rescue the unconscious Ina, but it was too late. Without wasting a single second, in response to the order he received, the boy disappeared once again, taking Ina with him.

"Ina."

She was gone. Only the gods knew where she was taken with a teleporter like that around.

Despite the desperation and panic flooding her heart, Ana understood that, up to this point, there was nothing she could personally do to get her comrade, but she knew for the two others, there was something else that could be done.

Ana turned around without warning, trapped the confused and shaken Uta and Edya inside a bubble-like water prison, and fled through the air with them.

"Hold tight."

Without a single moment of hesitation, Ana flew toward the closest and probably safest place she could imagine herself being.

With a single glance behind her, Ana realized that the man was chasing after her.

One of Ana's hopes for this flight was that the man would not pursue her, as the abductions had so far been done silently without a single witness. Him giving up on Uta, therefore "them" was the outcome she was praying for. However, it appeared that her prayers were in vain.

The man was clearly ready to come at them, most certainly ready to carry out what he came for, even if it meant acting so indiscreetly.

She first unleashed her magic in the direction of the man—enough water to fill several dozen pools was unleashed. And it came, washing off everything in its path with a speed, weight, and pressure worthy of the volume of water unleashed.

For her second magic, she chose as her target the faraway sky, in the direction she was fleeing. This time around, Ana poured everything she had into the pressure; the water bolted into the distance at a speed she wished she could match.

A rainbow formed in the distance.

"What was that for?" Ana heard from behind her, along with the sound of lightning projectiles being fired.

"Tsk!"

As fast as her body and mind allowed her to, Ana summoned a circular barrier around herself while also reinforcing the barrier protecting Uta and Edya.

Lightning projectiles rained down upon Ana and the girls, and although Ana's barrier was able to protect them from the attacks, it soon returned to its primal, watery form. This little exchange had the effect of confirming to Ana the effect of the man’s magic on her. It came across as obviously and grimly clear that the man’s lightning magic was the bane of her water magic.

Landing atop a house roof, Ana stopped fleeing.

"Oh, running away is no longer your strategy now?"

While Ana still considered fleeing to be her best option, it included the high risk of being struck by the man's lightning magic, the little chance of actually outrunning him, and his teleporting friend, so Ana chose to stop running, face the man head-on.

Her element had a terrible affinity with the man’s element, yet, at least head-on, she expected, or at the very least hoped, that she would be able to come up with something. Somehow.

"Where did you take my friend? Why are you people doing this?! What are you people after?"

"That’s an awful lot of questions. But I have a question for you: who are you, and why were you pretending to be a flower because that’s what it seemed to me?"

"That would be two questions. If I were to answer both of them, would you answer mine?"

"Perhaps..." the man teased, approaching with slow and threatening steps.

Ana summoned her magic out, allowing it to float around her as a token of assurance while also giving the man what he desired: answers.

"I am a Aurora’s Academy scholar, my name is Análise Breslauer, but most people call me Ana." Glancing at the two girls she had protected inside her water barrier, Ana added, "though very recently some people have started calling me Lizzie."

"So Análise Breslauer of the Aurora Academy, what is a scholar such as yourself doing among these Rose Blanche’s girls?"

"I had been pretending to be one of them. I infiltrated the Rose Blanche."

"Why would you do that?"

"To investigate."

"Investigate? Investigate about what?"

Instead of straightaway giving up the truth, Ana lied or, at the very least, deceptively revealed, "to investigate the case of young girls being abducted."

"Oh, —that’s curious. May I know on whose behalf you were investigating?"

"You’ve asked several questions already, and I've answered each one of them. I believe it would be fair if you too were to answer mine."

"Fair, uh? I suppose you’re right. Too bad I don’t really operate on these simple principles of fairness."

Recognizing the danger of the situation, Ana immediately unleashed the magic she had on standby at the man.

"Flood!"

"—especially when you’ve answered all my questions just to buy time." Infusing his body with lightning, the man cut through Ana’s magic and drew the distance between them to an arm's length. "That was heavily underestimating me, Miss Analise."

His fists furiously clenched, the man swung his arm down at Ana’s shoulder. The single but heavy blow had the instant effect of knocking Ana out.