The trip back to her bedroom was long and tiresome. Joe was irritated, scared, and stressed, and this time there was no smug voice cackling inside her head to distract her from the imminent danger lurking overhead. Joe didn’t know what pissed her off more, the fact that Patricia Winsten was making shitty decision after decision on her behalf, or that she was utterly powerless to do anything about it.

Either way, she was pretty sure that the day couldn’t get worse.

Fuming and sulking simultaneously, Joe rounded a particularly sharp corner and almost crashed head-first to another person.

“Whoa whoa!” Nero’s familiar baritone sounded flustered as his hands steadily stopped her from what could have been a particularly nasty fall. “Nero is ever so sorry! Nero didn’t even see the lady! Is my lady quite alright?”

“Nero.” Joe looked up at him and silently promised herself not to run blindly in the hallways. Nero was a frigging tank, and she was lucky that he’d stopped her in time from a potential concussion.

“I’m fine, I’m alright. Don’t worry about it Nero.”

Nero looked at her thoughtfully. “Pardon me, my Lady, but you don’t look quite fine to me.”

Joe sighed in resignation. The last thing she wanted was to worry the man needlessly. She had, despite her initial resolve, inevitably grown fond of him and Lucia. And try as she might, Joe knew that she couldn’t really view them as mere servants. Were they her friends? Maybe. Would she ever tell it to them on their face? Yeah, definitely not.

“It’s nothing Nero. I told you, I am fi ---”

“Does my lady still want to meet the witch of the West?”

Joe snapped her mouth shut and peeked upwards to look at the man in the eyes. He had a strangely smug expression, the kind of all-knowing face she’d sometimes seen on Gracie when the girl knew a particularly juicy piece of information and wanted to show it off.

“I really don’t ---” she began, but stopped short. What would she say? It was her who had brought it up in the first place. It wasn’t their mess to deal with.

Nero grinned like a child and pulled her away to a corner. He looked like he desperately wanted to tell her something, but wasn’t allowed to. Joe raised an eyebrow. She thought that she had finally gotten used to his weird habits, but he was clearly holding back his full potential weirdness so far. Well, no matter. Joe wasn’t one to question people’s quirks. As long as they remained within reason, preferably.

She steeled herself and prepared to tell him that he needn’t worry, and that she would count on him when she needs him (which was bullshit, because Joe had a massive soft spot for her companions along with a particularly nasty case of martyr’s syndrome) and that she was fine indeed, but Nero opened his mouth and beat her to it.

“Do you want Nero to take to you to the witch?”

Joe snapped her mouth shut again. What was he saying? Didn’t he tell her that he couldn’t handle the witch? Was he teasing her? Why was this day getting weirder and weirder?

“Nero can take you to the witch, no problem ~ !” The older man sang again, and then leaned in to whisper conspiratorially, “Though if my lady really does want go, we need to take some early preparations.”

Her mind was whirling. “What about the others?” Joe managed to ask. “They’ll surely notice that I’m missing! And what about my parents?! They never let you off the hook for this! You’ll practically be putting your job and your life in risk!”

Nero giggled like a delighted child, not like a grown-up man at all, as if he’d expected her to say those words all along. Then he sobered up and stared at her straight in the eyes.

“Do you really have the time to worry about the others, young miss?”

Joe sucked in a sharp breath at the sudden shift in his voice. He was watching her intently, like he knew all the secrets of the universe, and she felt as if she was looking at a different person altogether. Joe was this close to tearing her hair in frustration. For a moment she considered pulling the ‘Who are you and what have you done to my Nero?’ card, but then it dawned on her that she really didn’t know this man at all. All she had done was assume that he was a harmless old ex-soldier with a penchant for acting cute and breaking into girly giggles.

“L-Look, I’m not sure what you mean, but rest assured that questions are going to be asked once anyone gets a wind of it.” Joe tried to keep her voice steady, and failed.

“Not if we are careful, though.” Nero whispered again, “And Nero can be veeeery careful, my Lady.”

“It’ll take half a day!” Joe whispered back urgently. “How the devil can we sneak out during the day?!”

“Oh, but we don’t ~ ! We sneak out at night, my lady!”

The girl swallowed apprehensively; for a mere servant of the famous Winsten family, Nero was looking to bite more than he could chew, and Joe didn’t like it at all. On one side she badly wanted to go meet the witch, before the talks of her engagement progressed any further and she was forced into any shitty marriage. But on the other side, Joe knew that she wouldn’t be able to forgive herself if her foolish actions got Nero or Lucia involved in a shittier situation.

Sometimes Joe wished that she was more like the invincible Perry. If she had even half of that resolve and not some stupidly emotional heart, she would have bothered to worry about herself before a bunch of fictional, 2D characters instead.

But here she was, a blithering, indecisive idiot stuck in the body of a villainess and a rapidly increasing affection for the same 2D characters. The kind of idiot who couldn’t take an opportunity even if it slapped her in the face.

“That won’t do, Nero.” Joe said at last. “Even if we sneak out at night, the maids shall find me missing in the morning. There needs to be someone who can cover for me. Someone who can lie to the maids.” She shook her head in resignation. “I cannot let anyone know about this. Who will do something so dangerous?”

“I will.”

The voice was so familiar and yet so unexpected that Joe almost jumped out of her skin. What’s with people randomly sneaking up on her today? Was it Perry again?

It wasn’t Perry after all. It was a very determined Lucia standing behind them with her hands on the hips, looking like she was ready to go into war. Joe didn’t think that she’d ever seen that expression on her face. She blinked, and then sputtered when her brain finally processed the maid’s declaration.

“What do you mean, you will?!” Joe stared at her incredulously, “D’you even have any idea what you’re signing up for?!”

Lucia stared right back. “Hey, hey hey! O-Of course I do! It’s just a matter of a measly few hours!”

“Measly few hours, my ass! You’ll be frigging fired if they found out about my escapade!”

Lucia gaped at her colorful choice of words, when Nero cut in serenely. “Pardon me, my Lady, but Miss Lucia already knew the consequences when she offered to help. Nero doesn’t think that she would come to you if she didn’t want this herself.”

The maid nodded vigorously, her braids bouncing along with the movement.

“No, no, no, no, no.” Joe felt another headache coming. What was wrong with everyone today? Just when she’d decided not to involve anyone anymore, they come waltzing into the danger themselves. She didn’t know what had come over Lucia, but --- “Absolutely NOT! No offence Lucia, but you’re probably the worst kind of person when it comes to deceiving others!!”

“Hey, hey, hey!” Lucia squawked indignantly. “I can deceive people just fine! I won’t break my silence easily…my Lady just needs to trust me!”

“And if they find out that I’m missing, word will get out faster than wildfire.” Joe continued exasperatedly, “And once they find out that I’d sneaked out to meet some shady old witch in a shady-ass forest, they’ll just ignore my words and dump all the blame on you and Nero! Do you understand, you idiot?! You might be punished for putting the life of a noble to risk! No way is Lord Winsten going to let this slide!”

There was a pregnant pause. Nero smiled at her outburst, but to her utter horror, Lucia looked at her with teary eyes. “M-My Lady Joanna!” The maid clasped Joe’s hands with her own. “So Nero was right! You were actually worried about us! That’s why you told us not to get involved!”

Joe flinched at the declaration, and then stared accusingly at Nero. The man merely stared back at her blushing face with a knowing smile, and Joe again got the distinct feeling than he knew much more than he let on. It seemed as if he was secretly testing her for something, but she hadn’t got the slightest clue about it.

“Th-That’s not the frigging point.” Joe sputtered, feeling strangely embarrassed all of a sudden. “The point stands that you’re putting much more than your job at risk, and I don’t want to be responsible for that!”

Lucia paused, and then placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. It suddenly dawned upon Joe that in this world, Lucia was actually the adult, and that for all her pomp and importance, Lady Joanna Winsten was but a mere child. “It’s alright, my Lady, hey.” The maid told her with a smile, “I am really happy that you went out of your way to worry about the likes of me, when you didn’t even need to. But hey hey, this is the first time I’ve felt like this, but I still want to help you! And hey hey, I know that somehow, meeting the witch is very important to you, so please focus on that.”

Joe listened to the woman numbly, feeling a lump in her throat. Lucia looked at her with a renewed resolve, her eyes crinkling fondly.

“…And my Lady, no matter how I may look like, I’m still an adult after all. So hey, you can rest easy and leave this side of things to me.”

Nero nodded at her words, and Joe searched his face for any hints of fear. It’s alright, his kind eyes seemed to say, it’s alright to admit that you are not fine sometimes. You can count on us.

‘Did you see that, Lady Joanna?’ Joe felt the thoughts bubble up in her mind before she could stop them, even though she didn’t know if the villainess would ever come back. ‘These were the same people that you couldn’t care about. These were the same commoners that you’d discard without a second thought. And here they are, willing to jump into the shit with you all the way.’

The voice predictably kept silent, but Joe was somehow certain that the villainess could hear her somewhere in the depths of her mind.

‘I wish you’d get to see this, because you could never find it in any of that nobility crap or social obligation. You see, this is what real gratitude feels like.’