Chapter 20: The Melancholy of Mia —Princess Mia... Resolves to Reach Peak Decadence!—

As the cold of winter crept up on the cheery briskness of fall, the Holy Eve Festival was at last only a week away. On this day, Mia was paid a visit in her room by her friend, Rania Tafrif Perujin.

Every year, Perujin would supply the Holy Eve Festival with delicacies made from the fruit they’d grown. Saint-Noel gathered a large number of highborn youths from a variety of nations. There were also many students who, like Chloe, came from merchant families. If any of them took an interest in Perujin goods, it could lead to significant business opportunities. So, every year around this time, Perujin princesses would try extra hard to market their new confections to their peers.

Today, Rania had arrived bearing a type of pastry she planned to display at the Holy Eve Festival. The official reason for her visit was to have Mia sample them and procure some preliminary opinions about their quality. Her actual reason, though...

“Um... Anne, do you have a moment?”

The tasting session had gone smoothly, and Rania had just exited Mia’s room when she paused to whisper to Anne, who was seeing her out.

“Sure. What is it?”

Rania, visibly hesitant, took a few seconds to work up the courage to speak.

“I just thought that Princess Mia looks, um, a little down. Is something wrong?”

The real cause for her visit had, in fact, been concern for Mia, who’d been looking rather glum lately. She wore a somber expression wherever she went and was prone to melancholic sighs. Rania had brought her finest selection of delicacies in the hopes of cheering up her dispirited friend, but...

“She didn’t finish all of it. I’ve never seen her do that. It was so shocking, I could barely believe my eyes...”

Indeed, Rania had just witnessed an extremely rare sight. Mia, faced with a yummy pastry, had left it unfinished. This was unthinkable by the princess’s usual standards, which involved dutifully consuming every last morsel on her plate.

It should be noted, however, that the pastry Rania had brought today was a fruit pie. What Mia had left unfinished was not the soft, sweet filling but the crust, whose tougher texture was presumably less appetizing. Even in despondency, her sweet tooth reigned supreme.

Regardless, the fact that Mia’s appetite had been poor for the past while had already been widely observed. Her recent trips to the cafeteria had always ended with a bite-sized portion of food left on every plate, leaving the kitchen staff deeply concerned.

“The poisonous mushroom did give her stomach a lot of trouble. Maybe there are still some lingering effects?”

A cook had suggested this after one of her visits, and the kitchen staff promptly tweaked her meals to include extra recipes that were more easily digestible. To their dismay, their stomach-friendly additions all met with the same bite-size fate. For Mia, who’d ostensibly always held herself to strict standards of meal-finishing-ism, this was extremely atypical behavior.

Now, the astute may have already noticed that the math in this situation is actually a tad odd. Assuming a bite-size portion is ten percent of the total, leaving the same amount of food on every plate when “stomach-friendly additions” had been introduced meant Mia was eating ninety percent of the extra recipes on top of ninety percent of her usual meal, sending her well above a hundred percent of how much she normally ate. Nonetheless, the sheer impact of seeing her leave food on her plate was so great that this mathematical truth escaped the notice of everyone involved.

“Thank you very much for your concern, Princess Rania,” Anne said with a deep bow before her expression grew pained. “But the truth is... I’m not sure what’s going on either. It’s shameful, I know, but I don’t know what to do... It’s clear that milady is troubled by something, but she won’t tell me anything...”

Rania regarded the maid with empathetic concern.

“I’m sure she has her reasons. This is Princess Mia we’re talking about, after all. So don’t be too hard on yourself. I’ll keep looking for ways to cheer her up too. Let’s just do what we can.”

Angle deepened by gratitude, Anne bowed again as Rania departed.

Upon returning to the room, Anne found Mia gazing idly out the window. The maid, already saddened by Mia’s troubled mien, felt her heart seize as a mournful breath escaped her mistress’s lips.

“Milady...”

That terrible scene flashed across her vision again. Once more, she couldn’t help but see Mia collapsing after eating the poisonous mushroom.

That day, when we talked, she refused to promise me... She didn’t say she’d take me with her if she ever went to risk her life again...

Anne had been listening carefully during their conversation. She’d committed to memory every last word Mia had spoken. That was why she was painfully aware that nowhere in those words was a promise to be found; Mia had intentionally avoided it.

She might be expecting something to happen soon... Something dangerous like that terrible incident with the mushroom, and she’s probably worried...but she doesn’t want to drag me into it, so she’s trying to shoulder it all herself.

Furthermore, Anne had noticed something else.

Lately, her skin hasn’t looked as healthy as it should. It must be the stress. She’s probably not sleeping well...

Ever since this realization, she’d been checking in on Mia multiple times throughout the night, but she always seemed to be soundly asleep.

It’s her though. She might just be putting up a brave front so she doesn’t make me worry. I know she tends to do things like that...

...Does she? Mia’s behavior in front of Anne was frequently neither brave nor a front, but perhaps that is a matter of perspective. Even if Mia was trying to be a stoic hero, it wasn’t working, because Anne was worried. Deeply and genuinely worried.

As for whether Mia was, in fact, troubled to the point of losing sleep... Well, no. Not really.

The truth of the matter...is that Mia’s melancholy, which had been a profound source of anxious concern for her friends, was, in fact...not existent at all! She wasn’t losing sleep. She wasn’t putting up a front. Heck, she wasn’t even glum to begin with. Her ostensibly mournful sighs were in no way related to any mental anguish. Their source was actually more physiological. Gastrointestinal, to be specific. Those who observed this princessly specimen more closely would have noticed that every time she engaged in her exhalant respiratory behavior...

“Phew...”

...Her hand would go to her abdomen and give it a rub. In other words, she was suffering from chronic hyperingestion—that is, over-snacking!

Admittedly, she wasn’t completely free of concerns. The knowledge of her potentially impending demise had weighed on her mind, but she’d soon gotten over it, figuring it wasn’t worth living in constant fear of prophetic doom.

Why bother thinking about it all the time? Plus, I’ve already done basically everything I planned to do to make sure I don’t die.

On the night of the Holy Eve Festival—the time and date of her foretold death—the student council party would, by her design, be in progress. She’d gotten them to beef up security too. She’d done what she could. Since the rest was out of her hands, she’d convinced herself to stop thinking about it altogether. Mental flexibility was, after all, one of Mia’s strong points.

So why was she behaving so strangely then? Simple.

In the extremely unlikely event I don’t survive, I need to make sure I don’t go with any regrets. If I’m going to die anyway, then why bother holding back anymore? I should be living it up!

Thus, she’d decided that until the day of the Holy Eve Festival, she would engage in a celebration of life so extravagant that it would put lifelong hedonists to shame. Basically, she’d shifted to “if the world’s ending tomorrow, then I can do whatever I want today” mode. Mia, you see, was now living in the moment. And the moment decreed that she should begin by debauching her brains out at every meal.

Eat only the best bits and leave the rest! That’s the plan! Forget about wastefulness. Just take one bite of the yummiest part of everything. That...is the ultimate form of luxurious eating!

Many of you might have forgotten, but Mia was, in fact, the princess of a mighty empire. Sure, she hadn’t exercised her rich girl muscles in a long time, but it wasn’t like she’d forgotten how to. When it came to sensual gratification, she was a pro.

Oho ho, it’s time to reach peak decadence! Watch out, yummy foods, because I’m coming for you!

And so, true to her word, she went after said yummy foods, only to realize...

B-But, hnnngh...not eating this would be such a waste... Maybe I can take one more bite? Ah, but this one’s really good too. Okay, two more bites, then...

...That one did not simply walk away from frugality. Her penny-pinching had become a habit, and she now had a deep, psychological aversion to wastefulness. She’d intended to eat only a small bite of everything. Instead, she ended up leaving a small bite of everything. As a result, the meal she’d ordered, which consisted of more food than usual to account for her nibbling approach, proved to be far too much.

And she kept doing this too, thinking she’d be able to stick to the plan next time, only to fail over and over, resulting in the kitchen serving her even more food on top of her order in the form of special stomach-friendly recipes. She ate so much that she started developing acute F.A.T., which was a little worrying.

Her dietary chaos was reflected in her skin, whose luster began fading under the effects of her unbalanced diet. The phenomenon was similar to people used to bland diets suddenly gorging themselves on luxuriously rich food and suffering an all-out stomach revolt. Only now did Mia realize all that healthy eating had robbed her body of its capacity for debauchery, leaving it with nothing but...well, healthiness.

“Okay, when it comes to eating, normal is best. I should just stick with my usual diet...” she concluded after her failed attempt at culinary excess. “I’ll have to reach peak decadence some other way then. What else can I do? Hm...”

She mulled over her options. The first thing that came to mind was to run through the academy, scribbling nonsense on every surface like some sort of graffiti lunatic—a magnified application of the propensity of young children to deface school property. She quickly discarded the idea, deeming the cost of such an act too terrifying in the case that the Princess Chronicles’ prophecy proved unfounded.

Though she was acting on the assumption that the world—her world, anyway—was ending soon, she was acutely aware of the possibility that it also might not. In that case, even if the Chronicles didn’t kill her, a furious Rafina would after seeing the mass property damage she’d committed. However she went about seizing her remaining days, it couldn’t be too crazy.

“Scribbling on things doesn’t even seem that fun... Hmm... You know what? Having fun doing bad things is harder than I thought.”

It took courage to do evil. For Mia, who was a chicken at heart, deriving pleasure from misdeeds was too tall an order. After much contemplation, she finally clapped her hands in inspiration.

“Oh, I know. If I’m going to die anyway, I might as well flirt with Abel to my heart’s content! I want to go on horseback dates, and forest strolls, and trips to town...” The idea excited her. “Actually, that just made me realize something. I’ve been too focused on trying to survive lately. There’s been no gratification in my life. I should have spent more time with Abel and gone on more mushroom hunting trips! Ugh, what a terrible mistake. I need to make up for lost time...”

Just as she was about to rush off, a thought gave her pause.

“But Abel probably has things he needs to do... I wouldn’t want to be a nuisance by dragging him around with me.”

Another bout of thought resulted in another flip-flop.

“No, I don’t need to worry about that. I’m going to die on the night of the Holy Eve Festival anyway, so I’m just going to do whatever I want!”

Having found the perfect way to reach just the right amount of peak decadence, oxymoron notwithstanding, she grinned.

“Oho ho, nothing can stop me now! I’m invincible!”

So, Mia, proud liver in moments, went looking for Abel.