It was already two o'clock in the morning on Tuesday when Shad, soaking wet, returned home from his basement.
He ignored the water dripping onto the floor and hurried up the stairs, passing through the dim stairwell and reaching the second floor. He almost fell forward and pushed open the door, staggering to the kitchen, grabbing the biscuit box that he had placed on top of the cupboard to prevent it from being stolen by the cat, and stuffing the biscuits that were a little floury due to moisture into his mouth, and then he felt much better.
Although he had indeed filled his stomach by drinking water just now, the desire to eat something did not subside. Of course, this could also be the sequelae of overusing "gluttony". In short, Xia De was very hungry now.
Corresponding to hunger, the feeling of tiredness that arises unconsciously after returning home is gradually replacing hunger and becoming the strongest emotion.
But no matter what he was going to do next, Shade took a bath and changed his clothes first. Although this strange era was a little backward compared to his hometown, the development of the steam industry and the extensive steam pipes and gas lamps made taking a hot bath a very simple thing.
After taking a shower, he wanted to sit on the sofa for a while before deciding whether to go out for food or go to Quill Pen Street to see if the lights in Miss Louisa's apartment were still on. But when Shade sat down with his back against the sofa, the comfort made him close his eyes subconsciously.
So I said in my heart:
"I just closed my eyes and rested for about a few dozen seconds, then stood up right away."
So, with the woman's sweet laughter in his mind, he fell into a deep sleep.
Perhaps because he was too tired, he did not have any dreams that night. And what woke Xia De up a few hours later in the morning was not the warm summer morning light shining through the living room window, but the knock on the door downstairs.
Someone knocked on his door.
Xia De opened his eyes in a daze. He had fallen asleep while sitting, so he felt very uncomfortable all over after getting up. But corresponding to the slight fatigue of the body, the spirit was relaxed and comfortable.
It was eight o'clock on Tuesday morning, the 30th day of the Thunder Month, and he had slept on the sofa for about six hours.
"Today is the Day of Holy Prayer. I have to go to church in the afternoon."
After standing up, he gradually became sober. Yawning towards the window, Xia De reminded himself of today's schedule in his mind.
I sniffed and walked downstairs in my slippers. As I passed the dim stairwell, I recalled last night's adventure and felt lucky to have escaped.
He guessed that someone knocked on the door so early, it was a new client or friend. After opening the door, a small black shadow immediately rushed over. Xia De immediately widened his eyes and became fully alert:
"Mia!"
"Meow~"
The small orange cat jumped from the arms of the dissatisfied blonde girl to Shade, who hurriedly caught it. The cat jumped onto Shade's shoulder very quickly and kept rubbing its furry face against Shade's face.
Xia De also reached out to scratch its chin, making the orange cat tilt its head back and make a purring sound with its throat.
After playing with the cat for a while, he finally had time to look at the lady standing outside the door. Miss Louisa had a very dissatisfied look on her face, and she seemed to be angry when she spoke:
"Shad, aren't you going to invite me in first? When did you get back?"
Xia De originally thought that the blonde writer was blaming him for not going to see her immediately after he came back, but then he realized that her anger did not seem to be directed at him.
"I said goodbye to Princess Leicia yesterday and returned home at two in the morning."
He said this, and Miss Louisa immediately stopped talking and looked at him hesitantly:
"You really know who she is... Let's go up and talk... I brought you breakfast. Since you didn't go to pick up your cat last night, I guessed you got home very late and might not have eaten yet this morning."
She shook the stacked silver-gray metal lunch boxes in her hand, and Xia De resisted the urge to swallow:
"Ms. Louisa, you are such a good person."
The blonde girl smiled and motioned for him to lead the way.
Bringing goat milk, cow milk and this morning's newspaper upstairs, Miss Louisa opened the three metal lunch boxes at the dining table. The steaming food immediately attracted the attention of Shad and Mia.
But the orange cat had already eaten in the writer's apartment that morning, so when Xia De had breakfast, it got nothing and could only lie unwillingly beside Xia De's right hand on the dining table. Occasionally, it would stretch out its little claws to scratch Xia De's arm, and when Xia De looked at it, it would look at Xia De with its big eyes.
But for the health of the cat, Shade didn't give it anything, including the bottle of goat milk. Mia would make meowing sounds from time to time, but she was very well-behaved and never stretched her claws to steal food from the lunch box.
Finally, even Miss Louisa felt sorry for it, so she got up and found a bag of cat food in the kitchen, and pinched a few for Mia. Mia happily ate the cat food, but when Miss Louisa wanted to hug her with a smile, Mia swung her tail and lay back down beside Shad's hand.
"Your cat has no conscience."
The blonde writer sat opposite Shad and watched him eat.
"Technically, this isn't my cat... You're really good at it."
Shade looked up and praised her. Dorothy Louisa covered her mouth with her hands and smiled uncontrollably:
"So, how much do you know about Luvia and I?"
"There's not much we really know, most of it is just guesswork."
He said:
"Let's talk about these things after dinner. Oh, do you know what happened to me yesterday?"
"Luvia and I didn't communicate much last night. She only said something that she had to tell you."
Xia De nodded. It seemed that the princess and the writer were not as he imagined, and could be exchanged unconditionally anytime and anywhere.
"Meow~"
Mia was still eyeing Shad's breakfast, and when she saw that Shad didn't notice her, she stretched out her claws and scratched him again.
After Xia De finished his meal, the two sat on the sofa and talked about business. Miss Louisa didn't say much, but handed him a diary directly:
"I originally promised you that I would tell you our secret when Leicia came back, but because of the curse of the Mermaid Song, she cannot leave Coldwater Harbor for the time being, so we planned a Coldwater Harbor holiday for you."
"very nice."
Xia De lowered his head to look through the diary. The diary was not complete. The writer had separated the pages and only left those pages that Xia De could see.
Turning to the first page, the date was half a year ago, which was very close to the date when Father Augustus once said, "Since half a year ago, Louisa has become a little strange every few days. Now she is still normal. A few months ago we even suspected that she was occupied by another soul" (Chapter 43).
The priest's casual remark at the time, in Xia De's view now, was very close to the truth.
The relationship between Dorothy Louisa and Luvia Cavendish, the writer from Tobesk and the princess from Delarion, is actually an exchange of souls.
"This is the record we left when things first started. I think you will understand what happened after reading it. Leicia said that she showed you part of the diary. It's nothing special. It's just that after waking up, the souls were exchanged. The princess became a writer, and the writer became a princess."
Miss Louisa blushed:
"The princess who longed for freedom experienced the life of a commoner; and the commoner girl who had longed for the life of a princess in her teenage years had the opportunity to experience a day as a princess. After waking up the next day, we both returned to our own bodies, thinking that yesterday was an illusory dream. It was not until we discovered what the other had done with our bodies that we realized in anger and fear..."
Seeing Xia De smile, her face turned even redder:
"Don't make fun of us. After all, no one knew what was going on at the time."
In fact, Xia De smiled only because he was very happy that his guess was correct, and he also liked this kind of dramatic story.
Nodding to show his understanding, Xia De and the illiterate cat who was standing on the armrest of the sofa stretched his head to look at the contents of the diary.
Under the date "23rd December, 1853", there is only one sentence, which takes up three lines in the grid, which is a waste of paper:
Who are you
Familiar content, but this is not Miss Louisa's handwriting. The writing habits of the letters are completely different from those of the female writer. The cursive letters are very similar to those of Miss Carina. The nobles are accustomed to using this method of writing letters.
But on the next 24 days, the handwriting on the page returned to Miss Louisa's writing:
Who are you
Xia De looked up at Miss Louisa and said with a smile:
"You guys really like to communicate through diaries."
"There is no other means. A private diary is the safest method. Shade, don't you keep a diary?"
The blonde asked back, and Shade smiled but didn't answer.
He did inherit the diary from Detective Sparrow Hamilton, but he only made the same entries in it every day as his predecessor, such as "Nothing happened, deposit decreased" and "Client came to the door, he is really stingy."
If someone opened Shade's diary, they would definitely think that this was a detective who lived a very peaceful life.
Outsiders will not write their lives on paper.
"It turns out that Princess Leicia really did it on purpose for me. Now that I think about it, she was actually deliberately revealing more details for me to guess the whole day yesterday."
Xia De muttered quietly and lowered his head to continue reading the diary. And Miss Louisa also patiently explained:
"She and I both have the habit of writing diaries. Although we don't record important content, just trivial matters in life, we can roughly understand who the other person is by finding the diary and flipping through it. So in the first few times, after the memory became confused and fuzzy, we quickly figured out what happened to us. It's a bit funny to say that she actually..."
Her eyes wandered, as if she was thinking of past memories, and then her face turned red, she must have thought of some embarrassment caused by the exchange of souls. Fortunately, Shade, who was concentrating on reading the diary, did not notice the embarrassment of the blonde.