interim (short one!)

When Naomi went to bed, she didn’t go to sleep right away – but oh how she wanted to! There were points to review and grinding to plan.

The relationships page was still relatively sparse. Her relationship stat with Melaenis was creeping up into the positives, Argus’ teetered back and forth and Alitta’s was … oddly high for how little they’d interacted. Maybe the food Melaenis had brought was just that good. Predictably, both Arsinoe and her Lady thoroughly disliked her. Whatevs. So long as Naomi managed to stay out of punching distance, she could handle a spoilt consort and her attack dog. The Peacock Consort – Lady Auset – seemed to dislike her more, but that was probably the fault of the original goods’ personality.

System?

YES, NAOMI?

How long do I have until the main story event? The festival or whatever.

God, she was tired.

THE KEYSTONE QUEST <FESTIVAL OF THE NEW MOON> IS IN FIVE WEEKS. QUEST REQUIREMENTS: COMPLETE PERFORMANCE FOR COURT. USER CAN RECEIVE <BAD>, <ACCEPTABLE> OR <OUTSTANDING> RESULT.

Five weeks, huh. That seemed like a good amount of time to get her performance to an acceptable quality. Maybe everyone else would be quite bad, and she’d pull off a surprise victory.

Naomi couldn’t quite wrap her head around why the General’s one line in the novels about the Owl Princess had been so positive. The game had made her seem a saint, tragically taken too young and misunderstood by her father and sisters. There’d been theorists assuming the teased prequel would reveal her as a White Lotus-type (and possibly as the real final villain) but Naomi had always dismissed such posters as being prejudiced against female characters. The comments so often assumed that any woman other than the female lead had to be either her enemy or an obedient servant. The truth was far more complex, it seemed. The Princess was hardly evil, but she had clearly been unlikeable and bitter. Evidently, the young original General had been blinded by the Princess’ royal status and some small kindnesses – but this time, Naomi was going to make sure the girl got big kindnesses. The most extravagant ones that the Owl Palace could afford – which, admittedly, wasn’t much compared to the other palaces, but Naomi would just have to improve her standing. The poor kid had practically drooled over the tea snacks, so clearly she wasn’t well-fed. Naomi’s fangirl affection had morphed into a protective urge strong enough to make her risk being punched again.

If she did well with her performance at the festival, she would probably advance her position enough to get tutors and scholars to visit. This would both let her learn from them and let her dazzle them with her sparkling personality and wit – further improving her popularity! The palace had suffered because its lady was a shut-in, but Naomi could fix that. Hopefully.

Considerably worn out by all her scheming - and slightly afraid of an escalation in violence - Naomi sank into a deep and largely dreamless sleep. When she woke up, she felt only marginally better than she had the previous morning, although Melaenis’ delicious cooking helped. The Owl Palace seemed horrendously understaffed, with just three maids working under Melaenis who were all currently ‘off sick’ and a gardener who didn’t appear to do any work at all. At least, that was what Naomi assumed from what parts of the garden she had seen so far.

She spent the three days until meeting Argus’ contact ‘helping’ Melaenis in the kitchen, which mostly involved sneaking Alitta snacks and accidentally getting burnt on things – and therefore giving poor Melaenis a heart attack. The highlight was probably a cheesecake-type dessert, with fruit, honey and triangles of pastry to decorate. It was one of the most delicious things Naomi had ever tasted, and also uncannily resembled the real historic desserts she’d researched while plotting fanfiction. Life imitates art, perhaps.

Naomi couldn’t blame the girl for treating the Princess like she was made of glass – considering how much fainting this body had done in just the first 48 hours Naomi had spent in it. Also, assuming that the reason she’d felt so awful on the first night had been because some snake oil salesman sold the Princess poisoned hair dye on purpose, she seemed to have inherited some enemies.

The Princess’ death, then, in the original novel, could have been from another plot. Naomi would have to be careful going forward – although, she’d already significantly cheesed off the Peacock Palace, whose faction had considerable sway in the court. Oops. Maybe she should get a food taster? She jotted that down on her mental list of ‘how not to die’ (thankfully, the System let her make notes on a page of its interface). No wonder the characters in historical harem dramas went crazy from the stress; it was like the jungle in here. Hopefully she would work her way up to being a tiger soon, but right now she was probably something quite small, squishy and low on the food chain. It made her miss university, coursework deadlines and even working for the coffee chain that shall not be named. At least only one customer there had ever hit her, whereas she’d been hit and poisoned already here – although, did that mould infestation at work that had made everyone sick count as poisoning too? Well, at least the food was good in the palace.