[Regalis: in search of Peace and Quiet!]

•chapter one•

And here is chapter one of this stress-written Isekai. Isn't it fitting that I finished this instead of learning for tomorrow's exam? :D

Warnings: absolutely no beta or proofreading or mistake-checking of any kind. Apologies. Also, Adetta, in a fashion completely unfitting any isekai protagonist, acts like a responsible-ish functional-ish adult.

The song for the day is Vienna Teng - Lullaby For A Stormy Night

***

•chapter one•

Girl gets a stepbrother. Girl goes to the garden. Girl experiences a thunderstorm.

•••

Elijah is a miserable little thing. Shorter than her, with sunken cheeks and haunted eyes—definitely long ways from the determined but kind youth he was in the game. He must have eaten very little in the past week, and Adetta, at least partly, understood why.

She doesn't say anything as her father introduced him to the servants and her mother, because she rarely spoke unprompted. She wonders if it counted as selective muteness already. Elijah doesn't seem too keen on speaking either, very much trying not to cry. His eyes are glossy.

Adetta narrows her eyes, thinking. She tries to remember what his hobbies were—each capture target had listed three most favorite things for them to do on their wiki pages, and she read them all, of course, out of sheer boredom if anything else. Now, however, she is straining to remember. If she isn't wrong, Elijah likes to bake, flower-pressing and scrapbooking. Not really anything she could use without seeming creepy-

She'd just take him into the gardens. That should work. It was summer—with abundance of summer storms and summer flowers and the annoying sun.

With that in mind, she walks over to Elijah who was making himself look smaller under everyone's pitying gazes. They must be annoying. The boy flinches with her approach, looking at her face, but she doesn't blame him—her default face switches between completely emotionless, creepy doll and a lazy 'I'm-so-done-with-everything' grimace. Right now, it was the creepy doll. It kept maids at bay.

"Want to go to the garden with me?" she asks and, with a little delay, he nods timidly, taking her extended hand. Adetta didn't quite remember how Adelia's first interaction with Elijah was supposed to go, but she is pretty sure there was a tantrum involved. The villainess made sure to show him that he was not wanted, but for Adetta, that would prove rather counterproductive. She wanted an amicable relationship with Elijah, maybe even a friendly one—anything that would lead him to thinking twice about murdering it, or lead him away from the idea completely.

Dragging him out to pick flowers, hand in hand and maybe a bit too solemn, is as good a start as any. Baby steps, one at a time, and she would have an amicable relationship with him before she knew. Probably.