"Poof."

But in the end, Belmode couldn't hold back and laughed out loud.

"Huh?"

The kimono woman in the room didn't seem to notice her little mistake, tilted her head and looked at her with some confusion, and then followed her gaze to the book she had put on her lap that had been taken upside down.

For a moment, Belmode saw very clearly that the delicate face of the woman in the kimono showed an extremely stunned expression.

Soon, the stunned turned into confusion again, and she didn't seem to understand how she could have made such a mistake.

Then, the confusion turned to blushing, and then to struggle, and she was probably thinking about how to make a "reasonable" justification for herself.

But in the end, the look of struggle disappeared, and only the self-deprecation after completely giving up on the struggle remained.

However, in a matter of seconds, these expressions flashed across the faces of the women in kimono, leaving the young Belmode dumbfounded.

"Ah...... This is really a major mistake in my life, I was still thinking of leaving a good image, I should have gotten up sooner if I had known......"

With a deep sigh, the kimono woman leaned back in her chair with a look of self-abandonment on her face, staring blankly at the ceiling of the room.

Until this moment, the image of everyone's ladies that she had deliberately created before completely collapsed.

But Belmode was somewhat pleased.

Because she actually prefers the image of kimono women at this moment compared to the traditional lifeless ladies of this country.

By the way, it turned out that the strange sounds she heard outside the room before were the movements made by the kimono women getting up in a hurry?

It's almost afternoon......

[What a person who can sleep.] 】

"Well, forget it."

But this self-defeating look only lasted for a short time, and the kimono woman quickly recovered from it, straightened up, and smiled again at Belmode, who was still standing at the door of the room.

"Little sister Karasuma, if I don't come in again, all the heat in my room will run out?"

The old butler didn't know when he had quietly left, and when Belmode heard this, he quickly took off his boots, entered the room, and then turned around and closed the shoji door behind him.

And in the process, the kimono woman has been sitting on the chair, looking at her with a smile.

"I heard you're coming from the other side of the Pacific?" The kimono woman asked.

"Well, yes."

Although she felt that a kimono woman would be a good person to get along with, Belmode was still a little nervous, and she nodded her head and knelt down on the cushion by the fire.

Only then did she notice that there was only one chair in the room, and that it was under the kimono woman at the moment.

Unable to open his mouth to ask for direct requests from his host, and not to sit too casually, Belmode could only learn to sit down in the posture of the traditional Japanese women he had seen a few days ago, and because he had never experienced this practice, the sitting posture was actually very awkward.

It's just that she didn't realize it at the time.

"Your hair is so beautiful and has a unique color, is it born to be curly?" The kimono woman asked again, her gaze falling on Belmode's long, silver curls.

"Well, it's born." Belmode nodded.

"It's so special...... Can I touch it? The kimono woman beckoned to her and made a somewhat unreasonable request.

Belmode hesitated for a moment, then stood up and walked towards her.

Then, very naturally, the kimono woman got up from her seat, stood behind the chair, and motioned for her to sit down.

"Well, it doesn't seem to be much different in terms of feel...... "Standing behind Belmode, the kimono woman reached out to hold her hair and said seriously.

"Because it's just normal hair......"

Belmode replied, but seemed to think that it was not good to answer such a sentence, so he spoke again:

"I think you're ...... Her hair is also beautiful. ”

It suddenly occurred to her that she didn't seem to know the name of the kimono woman.

"Huh? Thank you. ”

The kimono woman accepted her compliment without any modesty, and then withdrew her hand, but instead of letting Belmode leave her seat, she walked over to the cushion where she had been kneeling by the fire, and sat down in a very standard position.

It was only after a long time that Belmode learned that the kimono woman had noticed her extremely awkward sitting posture from the beginning, but she was afraid that it would hurt her to feel embarrassed if she called her over and sat down, so she deliberately used the excuse of wanting to touch her hair so that she could sit on the only seat in the room naturally.

"Little sister Karasuma."

Sitting quietly in front of the fire, looking down slightly at the red charcoal fire inside, the kimono woman suddenly asked.

"Do you know why the head of the Karasuma family came here today?"

Her gaze still fell on the fire in front of her, and the expression on her face suddenly became more serious.

At that time, Belmode had a vague sense that the kimono woman seemed to be saying something very important, but she was completely unaware of it at that time.

"I don't know, the head of the house didn't tell me ......" Belmode shook his head and answered her truthfully.

"That's ......"

The kimono woman nodded, her face flushed red as the fire lit up, but she remained in her slightly bowed posture of meditation, motionless as a sculpture.

The atmosphere in the room suddenly became a little oppressive.

In a trance, Belmode seemed to see a deeply hidden emotion in her eyes.

It's a complex emotion, with worries, expectations, doubts, and even fears that Belmode can't understand.

But in the end, all of these emotions turned into relief.

"Suddenly I remembered, little sister Karasuma probably doesn't remember my name anymore, right?"

As if she had let go of something very heavy, the kimono woman breathed a sigh of relief, raised her head, and looked at Belmode, her face once again showing that smiling and moaning expression.

As her mood changed, the originally oppressive atmosphere in the room disappeared completely.

"Yes, yes, I heard the old butler say that we met when we were young...... Belmode replied.

"Well, I did."

The kimono woman nodded, then raised her hand and gestured beside her.

"You seemed to be three or four years old at the time, I think you must have been a little taller, right? Well, but I'm not much older than you...... Keiko. ”

The kimono woman spoke suddenly, she was very jumpy when she spoke, and Belmode had to concentrate hard to keep up with her.

"Huh?"

But even so, she still didn't react immediately at this moment.

"Keiko Hatoyama, this is my name." The kimono woman said to her with a smile.

"Can't you forget it this time?"

(﹃)

(End of chapter)