When it came to her absent uncle, Malwine found her attempts at comparing expectations to reality coming up blank—beyond the wariness that came from Anselm's comment, she genuinely didn't think much about Otto at all. In her mind, he was just that one weird uncle she'd never met.

Otto Rīsan - Human - Level ???

There was no need to feign curiosity here, but she had to hold herself back—she wanted to ask Abelard if her uncle was a higher or lower level than her grandfather, but that would have been dumb. She'd be giving away that she could see he was at Core Integration if she did so.

…Perhaps coming clean to more people about having reached the Mortal Esse should be something she did sooner than later. By now, she was fully committed to the idea of dodging a Matilda-like party by stealing all the Skill books and having Adelheid teleport her away.

"So that's your brother," Abelard's tone somehow managed to come off as equal parts neutral and judgmental, his eyes narrowing. "He certainly looks like… a character."

Malwine wouldn't disagree. Of all the siblings, Otto might have been the only one to really share Katrina's light brown hair instead of having some variation of Kristian's paradoxical blonde. She still wasn't willing to rule out the possibility that her grandfather's hair just subtly changed on its own every now and then to mess with people.

Otto walked slightly hunched over, his grip tight around the type of cane that looked like it might belong to a wizard instead of providing any actual support. Though lighter-skinned, he was noticeably freckled around the cheekbones, even from a distance. Malwine honed in on his features, looking for anything familiar—to confirm to herself that he must have had something else in common with her other relatives, even if he was otherwise the spitting image of Katrina. He had the lips, though his features seemed sharper.

Focusing that much on the general details kept Malwine from immediately noticing a tiny issue—her new uncle had no eyebrows. They didn't seem plucked, though she wasn't close enough to tell if there were no traces of them.

And even if she had been, it would probably have been weird to check.

His brow was surprisingly prominent in the absence of hair, though the skin of his forehead was smooth enough to look pulled back. Her gaze wandered to the widow's peak above it all—between that and the dark gloss he had tinted his lips with, he looked like the type who would have been a stereotypical emo kid back in the world of her past life.

And speaking of things that had Malwine reeling… his robes, while form-fitting, looked like they'd been crafted from a fabric that had Malwine vividly reliving the widow's memories of cleaning her old dryer's filter. It really took away from the dark wizard look she was convinced Otto must have been going for.

So distracted had she been with examining her uncle that she'd momentarily forgotten about the woman wearing a mushroom as a hat. Malwine couldn't help but scowl. She was almost aggressively nondescript, all the while being fairly pretty. Her long black hair mingled with whatever those things hanging from the mushroom were supposed to be, and pale irises hid behind exceedingly long lashes. I didn't know brown eyes could get that light. They might as well have been khaki.

As Bernie sped away from the group of strangers she'd been talking to and approached her nominal stepson, Malwine once again forgot all about the woman. It was like she slipped into the background far too effortlessly.

Your [Mental Defense] Skill has improved! 20 → 21

Huh? That was admittedly a bit weird.

"What do you think you're doing here?!" Bernie was pointing at him as her stride came to a halt mere inches from his face. Once, it would have been bizarre to see her as anything but a stoic gentlewoman, but Malwine's guardian had been slowly losing it as of recently. …And she didn't even know about the second potential teleporting toddler she had in her hands yet!

"I was invited," Otto didn't even acknowledge Bernadette's gesture, instead eyeing the other guests as he spoke fairly loudly—he looked like he wanted an audience and wasn't exactly great at hiding it.

"I distinctly recall sending you a notice telling you not to attend!"

The next thing her uncle said wasn't loud enough for her to hear, and Malwine could feel the pout as it formed. She was about to open her mouth and ask if they could go down there when Thekla snorted.

"Abelard, get me something to eat," she waved her hand without turning, her gaze locked in on the scene outside the window. "This is going to be fun."

The Lizanąn sighed, shaking his head in false disappointment. "Seriously?"

"Seriously." Thekla laughed, then pointed at a woman near the argument who was carrying a tray full of snacks Malwine could not identify. "Look, she's got the right idea."

Wait a minute, is that Ximena?

Malwine considered the possible reasons for Ximena's presence for about half a second before deciding they ultimately didn't matter—the seamstress struck her as both important enough to make the cut when Bernie invited half of Beuzaheim and bold enough to show up anyway if she didn't.

"Fine," Abelard relented, making his way towards the door.

"Wait!" Malwine crossed her arms. "Can I go with you? I can't hear anything from here."

Her future uncle just froze at that, seemingly confused as to how to respond to the eight-year-old in front of him. Her aunt, for her part, wasted no time slapping the windowsill as she laughed.

Malwine couldn't decide if she should join in or stare judgmentally at the two of them—the hardest part was trying to keep a straight face. Shaking her head, she turned back to Abelard, trying to give off her best impression of puppy eyes. "Can I goooo with you?"

Abelard kept his eyes on fiancée as he answered. "You may." He lingered for a moment longer before bristling at Thekla. "You're a bad influence."

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"I barely even talk to her!" Her aunt sounded offended. "But if you're both going… I'll meet you there."

Malwine didn't bother hiding her smile as she followed her uncle-in-law out the room. Now, she couldn't even hear the the guests at all. Someday, she really had to look into what made this structure so weird, as the estate remained a mystery to her—but that day wouldn't be today, because she had an argument to spectate.

To her immense disappointment, Abelard headed for the kitchens instead of grabbing food from the outdoor buffet. With every second that passed, they were probably missing more and more of the drama. As he finished piling foodstuffs on top of a second plate—both were probably for Thekla—he looked down to find Malwine glaring at him. "What?"

"I can't hear anything from here, either."

All of a sudden, his normally apathetic demeanor turned serious, even as he started filling yet another plate after inventorying the last one. "The first thing you need to learn about eavesdropping is that you cannot be obvious about it—pray tell, if my one and only goal is to get food, why would I walk twice the distance to the buffet? Especially after hours of dodging all the people your grandmother invited?"

Fighting off the immediate cognitive dissonance that came from someone calling Bernie her grandmother, Malwine narrowed her eyes. "Fair, fair. It would a bit weird if anyone thought too much about it… but that doesn't answer, how are we going to 'eavesdrop'?"

At that, her future uncle actually grinned. Seeing as he seemed to always present himself as the distant, scholarly type of person, it was stranger to see him looking like he was up to mischief than even seeing her guardian yelling had been, and Malwine's eyebrows shot up despite herself.

After gathering a couple more plates at an increasingly concerning pace—were these all seriously for Thekla?—Abelard started walking again, motioning for Malwine to follow. "First, you need to make sure you have a reason to be on the right spot. The truer it is, the better. Once you have that, you will want to consider why you might need to be moving around and lingering about. What you're doing and why you're doing it within earshot of what interests you both need to be ironclad."

Hey, what was that about Thekla being the one who was a bad influence?

"In this case, we went to the kitchens to grab food for your aunt. She is craving sweets. Unfortunately for us," Abelard shook his head in mock sadness, "I couldn't seem to find any sweets here. That leaves us with no choice but to try the buffet next, where the non-standard choices are—but since I'm already here, I might as well help with passing the food around, since staff have been making the rounds through the crowd as well."

"I hadn't noticed that," Malwine admitted. In her defense, she'd barely been paying attention. "But you're the groom. Wouldn't it be weird for you to be serving food?"

"Since I'm genuinely looking for food for Thekla, no," Abelard shook his head. "Not to mention, most people here have next to no knowledge of Lizanąn customs. They would sooner assume I'm naught but a foreigner acting oddly at his own wedding, than actually suspect me of being up to something." He paused for a second, moving to unlock the door leading from this hall to the outside. "Now, are there any other potential problems with our excuse that I should be looking out for?"

"You're asking me?"

"Of course. We're practicing here."

Malwine couldn't suppress the urge to scowl. She'd never liked it when people turned everything into a test instead of just telling her things, but she wouldn't deny the effectiveness of that strategy when it came to forcing her to use her head. At least there was no math involved. "Maybe how you're supposed to not know there wouldn't be sweets in the kitchen, but still know that the staff are filling generic plates to give to people? You must have looked outside."

"Is there any reason for there to not be sweets in the kitchen if there were in the buffet?"

"…I suppose not?" Malwine shook her head. "The excuse that the kitchen was closer could work, I guess. That said…"

She pointed a finger accusingly at him before lowering her arms, placing one upon each hip as she stared him down despite him understandably being much taller than her. "Abelard, if I missed the drama because you wanted to give me a lecture on eavesdropping, I'm telling Adelheid that hiding your shoes would be fun."

Her future uncle actually seemed to miss a step at that, sputtering as he turned to fully face her. For a moment, she worried this might not have been the best way to handle this—he wasn't Veit, after all, and not everyone would react well to her acting more like… her natural self. But to her relief, his shock passed briefly, and he laughed. "I like to think I have gotten to the point where I understand most people here. For one, your grandmother"—again, calling her that!—"is exactly the type of person to latch on to a grievance like a leech and not let go until it becomes physically impossible for her to continue. I would be surprised if she'd stopped questioning Otto Rīsan about whether or not he was invited by the time we get there."

Malwine gave him a reluctant nod. "I see."

It was true that her impressions of Bernie as a grounded person had been thoroughly shattered, but was she that bad? …Actually, she probably is, isn't she? Maybe she and Kristian do deserve each other, after all.

"One thing, though," Malwine called out to Abelard before they got any closer to the guests. "Does Otto have an invitation?"

She could have sworn there was a glint in his eye as he answered. "Of course he does. Thekla wouldn't have it any other way—it would have been a boring wedding without him."

Wait a minute, did they invite him because there would be drama if he showed up? Malwine had to admit that made her proud. Not even reluctantly proud, she almost wished she'd been in a position to do the same, if this was going to turn out to actually be that interesting. It didn't take a genius to put two and two together—Thekla wanted snacks because she expected to be entertained.

"…as if I wouldn't put it past you to have forged the entire thing!" were the first intelligible words Malwine could make out as they approached. Bernie was indeed still shouting, snatching what looked vaguely like a piece of cardstock right out of Otto's hand. The act all but crumpled it irrevocably.

Wave take me, Abelard was right. She's STILL going on about it.

The closer they got, the harder it was to make anything out, as people had gathered around the argument quite shamelessly. Without the advantage of altitude, even if she could still hear them, there was little she could see.

"I would ask if you must truly always think the worst of people, but we both know you are wholly incapable of being suspicious in good faith." From how it sounded, Otto might have wrapped that up with a snort.

"If you want to babble about things we both know, then, surely you understand you cannot be trusted. I do not forgive lightly, and our coffers have yet to recover from what you did."

"As if you all, with the endless supply of harvestables, have need for coin!" He actually sounded a bit offended now. "Forgive me for needing something to pay for food with."

"Money is a construct," an unfamiliar voice chimed in.

Before Malwine could question anything, she noticed people parting as Abelard carved a way through the crowd.

"Pardon," he nodded to a random man in a suit before handing a plate to a well-dressed woman. "Here."

Malwine had to hand it to her future uncle—the combination of simply asking the absentminded to move while serving food to anyone who actually paid attention to them was working wonders, and soon enough, they were near the edge of the crowd. People had formed a surprisingly even circle around the three individuals, leaving a few feet of space as buffer. It was far more orderly than she'd have expected for people just as nosy—if not more so—than her.

"Don't be startled," Abelard placed a hand on her shoulder, motioning with his chin in the direction of a familiar window.

"Huh?"

The window opened. That would have been a surprise even if it hadn't looked to be the type not meant to be opened at all, but the main issue was that it seemed to disassemble in its entirely, all in an orderly but nonetheless disturbing fashion. Glass didn't shatter so much as cleanly separated along the grout lines with a hiss, tiles shifting around to make an admittedly short staircase that hovered in the air.

What the hell is that? Malwine couldn't feel anything out of place, no magic in the air tingling to her senses. A Skill on its own? Her questions would seemingly have to wait, as she soon found her thoughts interrupted.

"Otto, you piece of shit!" Thekla shouted as she somehow managed to move from the windowsill to the makeshift stairs, all while wearing a hefty dress. "You came and didn't even greet me!"

"I would have if your stepmother weren't so desperate to catch up!" Otto blinked. "What are you doing up there?"

"Isn't it obvious? Getting down!" Thekla waved him off before lifting her skirts as she took a step down then another. Previous steps of the staircase were unmade as new ones formed, like the world's most confusing tile-based escalator.

Bernie's shock, while welcome, was short-lived. "Thekla! Put that back!"

"I will once I'm done," Thekla shook her head soon before landing on the grass with a light hop. As the makeshift escalator once again became a set of tiles, it moved upwards. Instead of reaching the window, it smashed into the wall, shattering and gliding down as if it were water.

Thekla recovered quickly, merely looking on in disappointment at that, sighing as she cupped her face in her hand.

"They really don't make tiles like they used to."

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