When Cecilia entered the apartment bathroom, she stood in a daze for a solid minute.

Her reflection stared back at her from a mirror that was larger than any mirror she had seen outside a royal dressing chamber. The counter beneath it was smooth and white, while the faucet gleamed under soft, recessed lighting.

The shower stood behind a panel of clear glass, its head wide and flat like a polished disc. The tub was deep enough to submerge a grown man. And the toilet—

The toilet had buttons.

This was a royal family’s bathroom, by her world’s standards.

Cecilia had bathed in such bathrooms before and ever since she married three loaded or mythical men who built convenient inventions from scratch.

Except, according to Eastiel, this was not a palace. This was not even an estate.

This was an apartment, a dwelling for common people who worked jobs and paid bills and apparently had access to bathrooms that would make an Iondoran duchess weep with envy.

Was this truly the standard for common people now? Had the world advanced so far that even ordinary workers could bathe in what she had considered royal luxury?

The thought was dizzying, but it also made a certain kind of sense.

If the systems and items could be replicated with enough mass production, and if the technology of this world had advanced to the point where convenience was no longer the exclusive domain of the wealthy, then of course bathrooms would be standardized. Why would they not be?

What truly fascinated Cecilia, though, was the height. When she had looked out of the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room earlier, she had seen the city spread out below her like a glittering carpet. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

They were on the fifteenth floor. Fifteenth.

How did one build a bathroom so high up in the sky? How did the water travel upward, defying gravity so easily? How did the waste travel downward?

And there were two bathrooms in this apartment. Well, yes, this was a four-bedroom apartment that occupied the entire floor, Eastiel had mentioned that, but still. But still, right?!

The water, the toilet, even instant hot water, emerging from the faucet at the twist of a handle, no fire required, no waiting, no hauling buckets from the kitchen stove?!

Cecilia wanted to go to the library. The kind that contained the accumulated knowledge of this world’s engineers and architecture. She wanted to understand how all of this worked.

But first, she wanted to try everything in this bathroom.

Once she managed to turn one faucet on, she wanted to study the others. The flushing system, with its two distinct buttons for different volumes of water. The bidet, which she accidentally activated and then immediately understood the purpose of.

The shower gel dispenser, which required her to figure out the pumping mechanism. The array of gadgets mounted on the shower wall, each one with a different function.

She was amazed each time she succeeded.

In the end, she spent almost two hours inside the bathroom.

When she finally emerged, she was wrapped in a bath towel, one around her body and one around her hair. But...

CLANG—

Popcorn scattered across the living room floor.

SLAM—

A phone, that rectangular object she now understood what it was called, fell directly onto someone’s face.

Trickle-trickle-trickle—

A faucet kept running as the person using it froze in place, his hand still extended beneath the stream of water.

Cecilia blinked.

The three men were in their pajamas.

Oathran was sprawled on the couch, his white hair unbound and falling past his shoulders, a phone-shaped red mark blooming on his forehead where the device had just smacked into him.

Eastiel was standing between the living room and the kitchen, his hands still cupping around the empty air where a popcorn bowl had been, his golden eyes wide and fixed at her.

And Arkai was at the kitchen sink, his sleeves rolled up, his hands submerged in soapy water, frozen mid-motion.

"Sorry," Cecilia apologized sheepishly.

"Eastiel, I forgot to bring a change. Where are the clothes we bought earlier?" She scratched her cheek, a small, absent gesture that made the towel around her body shift by a dangerous fraction.

Eastiel blinked and immediately stuttered. "O-oh. It is—it is downstairs. Still in my truck." He swallowed. His lion ears had turned a shade of pink so deep they were approaching crimson. "I-I-I will get it now!"

He spun on his heels so fast he nearly lost his balance, his bare feet skidding on the floor. He yanked the apartment door open, vanished into the hallway, and then, three seconds later, came stumbling back inside, grabbing his keys from the bowl by the door, and ran out again.

The door slammed behind him, and the sound of his footsteps echoed down the corridor in a frantic, fading rhythm.

Cecilia chuckled. "Aww, what a waste." She knelt down, her towels shifting precariously, and began salvaging the popcorn that had not yet touched the floor. The unspilled kernels went back into the bowl, while the scattered ones would need to be swept.

"Where do you guys put the broom?" she asked innocently.

But Arkai and Oathran, who were still rebooting their systems, immediately jolted to life as though they had been electrocuted.

"No, no—let us—let us do it, yo-you just get insid—" Arkai was already moving, reaching for the broom closet, desperately needing to do something with his hands and definitely not staring at his houseguest.

"Yes, yes—inside here?" Oathran had rounded the couch and was gesturing toward the nearest bedroom door. He opened the door, revealing a room that smelled distinctly like him, and then immediately changed his mind, closing that door and opening the one beside it. "Actually, this one. Sorry, sorry. Yes, this one is—this one is the guest room."

Cecilia entered the room, her bare feet padding softly on the smooth floor, and Oathran closed the door behind her.

Slam!

...

She stood in the center of the empty, furnished room and listened to the muffled sounds on the other side of the door.

...

Hushed whispers. The clatter of a broom being deployed.

...

The soft thud of something, perhaps a forehead, being pressed against a wall.

...

"Pfft—"

Cecilia giggled.

Weren’t they perfectly grown adults here? Fully independent men with jobs and apartments and lives that had nothing to do with the kings and lords they were in her own world?

Why were they still acting like shy teenagers, like in the school romance scenario, who had never seen a woman in a towel before?

Also, if her speculation was true, and it almost certainly was, they had already had sex with her in this apartment. A month and a half ago, the original Cecilia of this world had hooked up with the three of them.

They had seen her naked. Touched her naked. And yet here they were, dropping popcorn and slamming phones into their own faces and fleeing into hallways, as though the sight of her in towels was more than their composure could handle.

Adorable.

As she waited for Eastiel to return with her clothes, Cecilia looked around the room.

It was empty, but it did not have the sterile, impersonal emptiness of a room that had never been used.

The furniture was simple but well-made, a bed with a soft-looking duvet, a nightstand, a dresser, a small desk by the window... The walls were painted a calm, pale grey.

The window looked out onto the glittering city skyline, now fully dark, the lights of a thousand buildings flickering like earthbound stars.

There were faint marks on the floor where furniture had been rearranged. A fading color around a picture frame’s outline on the wall. The room had belonged to someone, and whoever that someone was, they had moved out quite recently.

That was when she saw the printed picture.

It was tucked into the edge of the mirror on the dresser, a small, slightly curled print. Cecilia crossed the room and picked it up.

Four men. And a baby.

Oathran was there, his white hair shorter. Arkai was there, his arm slung around the shoulders of the man beside him. Eastiel was there, grinning like someone who had never known true sorrow.

And Roarke.

He was there. And he was holding the baby.

The baby was small and dark-haired, bundled in a soft white blanket, its tiny face scrunched and disgruntled like a baby who had just been woken up.

Cecilia’s eyes widened.

Was that... Rinne?

Cecilia burst into a ticklish laugh.

This proud-filled picture—

"Why are you guys acting like you take part in the making of him—"