Leonardo’s eyes widened as he stared at the air, and he let out a puzzled breath.

“Eh?”

Hugo, who had been concentrating, followed his gaze as Leonardo slid aside and half turned his head.

“What is it?”

“That — is that a turtle?”

Leonardo nodded toward the statue. Hugo, arm draped on the chairback, narrowed his eyes and answered.

“It seems so. Is there a problem?”

“No, nothing like that....”

Why is that there?

Leonardo’s lips faltered as he began to speak; he had just discovered something tied to the topic he’d meant to bring up. If it truly was related, that would be one more story he couldn’t tell this man.

He glanced up at the tops of the pillars flanking them to see if the same statue appeared elsewhere. But aside from decorative reliefs adding to the lofty atmosphere, no animal sculptures were present. In other words, of the six stone pillars, only one bore a turtle.

Isn’t uniformity usually important in landscaping? Why only one?

And a turtle? Decorative animals were usually lions or eagles...

He forced a puzzled expression while his mind raced. As his vision widened a little more over the turtle, the villa building behind it layered into the background.

Simultaneously, a memory that had been hazy sharpened, and the scene from that strange castle he’d been about to describe unfolded.

A particular hall that had stood out projected before his eyes.

Marble pillars and golden candelabra lined in order, and water channels ran along the floor. The temple-like space sat surrounded by a lake. There, a bizarre sculpture stood: a detailed miniature of the castle itself. It couldn’t be a real turtle, yet its overall shape, if likened to an animal, resembled one.

At the right moment, a train that had come from afar passed under the castle’s pilotis in fitting perspective.

He’d said of it then,

“A turtle riding a train.”

At the sigh-like remark, Hugo’s eyebrow relaxed.

Leonardo retraced what he had seen and ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) scanned his surroundings again — the pillars, the rippling floor, the lake. And the turtle, the turtle.

The lone turtle up there occupied the center in terms of composition, placed amid the arc of the architecture. More precisely, it sat at the center of the glass dome Leonardo had looked up at from the bath, as if perched atop a long structure.

As the pieces fell into place, a prickling ran up his forearm. Mouth opening wordlessly, he asked Hugo urgently.

“You said this place is old, right? You said maybe a few hundred years.”

“Hm, as far as I know.”

“Then do you know what that turtle means?”

Straightening, Hugo regarded Leonardo with a curious expression.

“Suddenly curious about that? I’m more interested in your story.”

“...It’s related to that.”

“Hmm.”

After thinking for a moment, Hugo spoke.

“Turtles are often symbols of patience, so perhaps it carries meanings related to that. The aesthetics of waiting and leisure... or maybe wishes for longevity, immortality.”

“...Immortality?”

One of Leonardo’s eyebrows lifted.

“If I speak a bit politically, the villa’s previous owner was a distant relative of the imperial family before I bought it.”

At the word imperial, Leonardo’s expression visibly stiffened. Hugo, watching him quietly, refilled an empty glass and continued.

“Even as relatives, they were eight degrees removed — a nominal link at best. The person died half a century ago, so the title was effectively unclear. Their descendants were more like commoners than central power-holders.”

His tone seemed intended to reassure; Leonardo looked out over the villa again. He recalled hearing in the hall that the place had been acquired secretly not long ago. Yet the villa bore the current owner’s stamp unmistakably.

It was hard to imagine any previous owner other than the one Hugo suggested.

“This villa wasn’t originally your family’s?”

“It was. Sharp-eyed, aren’t you. It belonged to the Agrizendro family at first. But because Rogia long remained a duchy, some lands and villas had to be offered to the imperial household as an act of fealty. This was one such place. A few months before I was looking for a place you could stay, I took it back.”

To understand his tale required traveling further into the past. The preface began when Raina and Rogia unified: Raina took the throne, while Rogia’s former lands were acknowledged as a duchy — a longue durée history.

The imperial household honored the Rogian royal house by allowing the Agrizendro family to retain hereditary autonomy over certain lands. Thus the Agrizendro duke stood both as a direct vassal to the emperor and as the sovereign of an independent duchy. The peace accord even stipulated that the duchy’s autonomy was treaty-guaranteed and could not be annulled by the emperor without the duke’s consent.

Even without that clause, Rogia possessed territory three times Raina’s old lands and corresponding military strength. So even a ruler who held imperial power would lack means to preserve an integrated empire without acknowledging Rogia’s legitimacy.

Thus the arrangement endured like an immutable law until those who had witnessed the merger passed away.

But human affairs, not truth, governed history — and permanence is a myth.

Centuries later, those who’d lived through the unification had died, and Raina-origin nobles, who had long eyed Rogia as a thorn beside the capital, gradually increased their influence.

From then on, Rogia was pressed to show greater loyalty to the empire, and to avoid charges of sedition it had to pay tribute in gold and land annually. Naturally, a royalist faction advocating restoration of Rogia’s royal prestige arose, while a pro-imperial faction argued to keep the reduced forces and territory and avoid provocation.

Because there was a common target of scrutiny, the two opinions within a family didn’t become violently opposed — but about three centuries ago, a duke of Rogia was framed and forced to kowtow before the emperor under accusations of instigating rebellion.

As a result, the duchy was demoted to a marquisate. Internal factional strife intensified, but by then the emperor’s power had grown overwhelming. Rogia endured humiliation to avoid disintegration, and a force openly hostile to the imperial house emerged within the family.

The present head of that faction happened to be Gladia Agrizendro. Hugo had not explicitly stated that fact.

“My ancestor wanted to reclaim Rogia’s lost lands and honor. Publicly it might look a certain way, but I understand and respect his intent — he acts for the family’s revival and loves it for that reason.”

Hugo looked out over the spread lake and continued.

“Therefore, starting from my father’s generation, the house gradually recovered lands confiscated under the pretense of tribute. The villa’s former owner was a distant relative of the fractured imperial line, and I reacquired the place for those reasons. It had been empty for half a century, so I thought it safe for you to stay. It’s peculiarly beautiful, peculiarly warm.”

Listening dully to his low voice, Leonardo swallowed. He’d only ever guessed about the intrafamily struggles of Agrizendro from rumor; he hadn’t expected to hear them from the duke himself.

“You can tell me things like this?”

Hugo tapped his lips with his hand and met Leonardo’s gaze.

“Why, uncomfortable?”

“No. I just— I thought it might be dangerous.”

“It’s fine. The lawful reclamation of land was sanctioned by the previous emperor. And... everything we say here stays between us, doesn’t it?”

His blue eyes curved pleasantly. Before Leonardo could fully accept it, he nodded as if under a spell.

“We wandered off topic, but about the turtle — if it might mean immortality, as I said, that ties back to the previous owner’s wish related to Raina’s royal house —”

“Immortality, yes.”

Leonardo cut in. Hugo paused and answered with a glance.

“Right, immortality. You know the grand structure on the way to the imperial palace? ‘Porta Aeternitatis’, the Gate of Immortality.”

“...Yes.”

“Perhaps the desire to make the impossible possible was projected onto the turtle. I don’t know when it was placed there, but some say turtles live for centuries — sometimes far longer.”

Leonardo watched Hugo lift his glass and sip. He seemed to believe the turtle had been made by that villa’s imperial-affiliated relative. Indeed, unlike the other aged sculptures, this turtle appeared to inhabit its own time, its exterior unusually pristine.

Like an ancient castle shrouded in mist.

Logically, one might judge it to be relatively recently created, but Leonardo’s intuition differed. He felt it had been there from the beginning.

If the time he’d spent at that castle wasn’t merely a dream.